An 80s female translator was spoiled rotten by a rough and jealous man.

Chapter 272 Ability

Meng Youyou's work location returned to the highland observation post, and the regiment headquarters transferred a new translator from the rear to assist her.

The young man was not yet nineteen years old. His name was Xiong Ayou. He was a local from the China-Yunnan border region. He dropped out of high school halfway through and later worked with his father in a small business along the border. He spoke fluent Mandarin and was fluent in several major northern dialects. After multiple rounds of selection and training, he was approved for militia status due to his outstanding abilities and was sent to the front lines.

On his very first day, he immediately showed off his language talent to Meng Youyou, which really amazed her. She praised him for speaking as fluently and naturally as his mother tongue, saying he was very impressive.

Upon hearing this, Ayu suddenly became shy, scratching her head and repeatedly saying, "Sister Meng, you're much better. You're a college student!"

Meng Youyou smiled. "In this place, college students aren't necessarily as capable as you." This wasn't a modest refusal, but a genuine statement. It's a simple truth: sometimes, traveling extensively is more practical and useful than reading thousands of books. True skills cultivated in specific environments are often priceless and invaluable.

……

That morning, Xiong Ayou came to the monitoring room as usual to relieve Meng Youyou. In fact, he had mentioned to Meng Youyou several times that he was young and healthy and could stay up all night, so he wanted to relieve her.

But Meng Youyou rejected them all.

The actual operation of surveillance work is quite complex and requires comprehensive abilities in multiple dimensions; it is not enough to simply have outstanding language skills.

The enemy has put a lot of effort into preventing eavesdropping, employing a variety of tricks—dialectal distortion, constantly updated and changed coded encryption, a large number of decoy channels for interference, frequency hopping technology, and so on. One can easily fall into the traps carefully woven by the enemy, making intelligence gathering work even more difficult.

Becoming proficient is by no means easy; it requires time to accumulate experience and repeated practice to become capable of handling tasks independently.

Moreover, nighttime and early morning are peak periods for enemy communications, so Meng Youyou insisted on taking the night shift herself from beginning to end.

As soon as Xiong Ayou entered, she handed a small triangular white paper package to Meng Youyou. "Sister Meng, this is from Brother Da Lei. He said it was delivered by the mule team today." — Da Lei was the only cook at the observation post, and he also took on the role of sanitation worker.

Meng Youyou remained seated, glancing at him with a faint expression before taking his outstretched palm, putting it in her pocket, and offering a soft thank you.

"I see it says aspirin on the label. This kind of medicine seems to be a painkiller. Sister Meng, are you injured somewhere?" Ayu asked out of concern.

"It's nothing, just a minor ailment," Meng Youyou said casually, then turned her head and called out, "Ayou, come sit here."

Meng Youyou patted the spot next to her, then moved the spectrum analyzer in front of her about half an arm's length to the left. She pointed her left index finger at the fluorescent oscilloscope on the spectrum analyzer, and pushed over a stack of semi-transparent graph paper with her right hand. Her voice was calm and solemn: "Today I will teach you how to use this spectrum analyzer to draw graphs."

Upon hearing this, Ayu's expression immediately turned serious. He quickly sat down and looked at the military green metal device in front of him, his tone filled with surprise: "This is a spectrum analyzer. What is it used for?"

Meng Youyou took the tape out of the slot and explained without looking up: "Three days ago, the C war zone discovered that the enemy was using artificially created frog croaking sounds to transmit important intelligence. Our monitoring personnel focused all their attention on the human voices and completely ignored the background noise, so the intercepted intelligence was completely distorted. Under the misleading influence of false intelligence, the battle results were heavy."

Meng Youyou emphasized, "So from now on, we need to analyze the recorded enemy communication tapes every day using a spectrum analyzer to draw spectrum diagrams, compare them with the standard environmental noise samples sent by the reconnaissance team, and filter out those abnormal parts so that we can further crack the secret instructions hidden in them."

Ayu nodded as if she understood, "I understand, then please teach me quickly."

Meng Youyou shook the cassette tape in her hand, pressed the silver button on the left side of the cassette slot door with her thumb, and the moment the metal cover popped open, a faint smell of machine oil wafted out. She demonstrated and explained, "This is the cassette slot door. First, put the cassette tape in. When you put it in, make sure the guide rail grooves are aligned."

......"

Meng Youyou explained things very carefully, and Ayou listened very attentively. When he encountered something he didn't understand, Meng Youyou would go back to the previous step and demonstrate it again, showing patience and meticulousness.

Three minutes later, Meng Youyou decisively pressed the red freeze button on the spectrum analyzer and pointed to a green waveform on the oscilloscope, saying, "Next, we need to trace this waveform onto graph paper." Meng Youyou was about to ask Ayou if she understood when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a tall figure standing by the window of the monitoring room, his gaze seemingly fixed on her face, as if he had been standing there for quite some time.

When Huo Qingshan saw her looking over, he calmly met her gaze for two seconds before walking towards the door.

A moment later, there was a knock on the door. Before Meng Youyou could give any instructions, Ayou got up from her chair and ran to open the door.

Upon entering, Huo Qingshan stated his purpose directly, walked a few steps to Meng Youyou's side, took out a cassette tape from the inner pocket of his training uniform, gently placed it on the table, and said succinctly: "A sample of natural environmental noise recorded this morning."

Meng Youyou took it and looked at it from the inside out. Then she looked up and stared straight at Ayou. "Perfect, show me how to use this cassette tape."

Having just finished learning the material once, Xiong Ayou was about to face a surprise inspection. She suddenly looked distressed as if she were facing a formidable enemy: "Ah?" She let out a very faint sigh, but only managed to utter half a syllable before swallowing it back when she met Meng Youyou's sharp and bright eyes.

You know, he didn't do well in school and always had a headache when it came to exams.

Huo Qingshan stepped back a few paces and stood behind the two men, watching the whole thing with great interest.

When teaching, Meng Youyou can be described as a strict teacher. Her expression is serious and unsmiling, and her brows are full of seriousness and focus. Her voice is steady and flat: "No, there is a mistake here. We need to wait for the waveform to stabilize before freezing."

"Wrong, the baseline must be aligned."

"When marking characteristic peaks, you must remember... ...the errors caused by this small mistake cannot be ignored." As the girl spoke, her brows furrowed more and more tightly.

"...This kind of mistake is a big no-no. You must remember it and never let it happen again." It was a rare, exceptionally firm tone, carrying a sense of oppression. Huo Qingshan had never seen this side of her before.

Reliable. This word popped into Huo Qingshan's mind for no apparent reason.

She had previously worked in teaching-related roles for a long time, but there seemed to be a difference between the two. Of course, back then, Meng Youyou was also very serious about teaching foreign languages ​​to the soldiers at the June 24th Incident, and you could say she gave it her all.

But Huo Qingshan felt that something was different.
It seems that something has changed without us even realizing it.

In a daze, he recalled the words the girl had spoken to him while standing in the dimly lit acupoint, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a protest—"I am not the kind of person who is easily defeated by difficulties and needs to hide behind for protection. When faced with a problem, what I need to do is confront it, then solve it and overcome it."

"I think I may not be as indestructible as you, but I am certainly not as fragile or vulnerable as you think."

"I hope you can respect my feelings and thoughts, and be able to break free from preconceived prejudices and fully understand my capabilities."

At that moment, Huo Qingshan truly realized for the first time that he might have really taken the wrong path. This realization made him feel very uncomfortable.

When I first met her, I thought she was a rose in a greenhouse—beautiful, but too delicate. A gust of wind would break her back, and a pound of rain would cause her petals to fall.

Upon closer inspection, it resembles a sea buckthorn quietly growing in the wilderness, standing tall against the wind amidst the swirling sand.

Whenever the wind and waves, carrying sand and gravel, swept in, she was blown almost to the ground, utterly defenseless, always feeling as if she would be swept into the endless yellow fog at any moment, with no end in sight. But when the wind subsided a little, you rubbed the fine sand from the corners of your eyes, opened them, and looked again, and there she was, still there.

Isn't it bizarre? Unbelievable, isn't it? But there she was.

He thought he knew her well and that he was doing her a favor, but in reality, she was far more capable than he imagined! Perhaps... she didn't need that self-imposed, ineffective, and superfluous protective shell that he had built for her.