Searching for someone in northern Myanmar, and you call that earning tuition fees?

The voice on the walkie-talkie rang again.

"Viper Squad, respond if you hear me."

His tone was more impatient than before.

Ah Xue's face turned pale. She looked at the three unconscious mercenaries on the ground, then at the student squatting on the ground flipping through documents, and her throat tightened: "They're pressing us! If we lose contact, the others will come rushing over—"

Su Ming raised his hand and made a "shh" gesture.

He bent down, took the walkie-talkie from the belt of the burly man with the dislocated elbow, pressed the call button, and replied in fluent Russian.

"Viper Team, report. There are only three ordinary passengers in the target compartment: an elderly man, a middle-aged man, and a student. Target not found. Continuing the search."

His Russian pronunciation was perfect, his tone was cold and hard, and he even imitated the rhythm of the breathing exactly like the burly man.

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

"Received. Continue the search. Meet in carriage number three in fifteen minutes."

"clear."

Su Mingsong released the call button and casually put the walkie-talkie into his pocket.

Inside the private room, three pairs of eyes were staring intently at him.

Ah Xue's mouth was open, and she couldn't close it for a long time.

"You..." her voice was hoarse, "You speak Russian?"

"I learned it in an elective course."

"Elective course? Is this what you teach as an elective at your university?"

"Language is a tool. Mastering another foreign language will make it easier to do international business in the future," Su Ming said calmly.

Ah Xue gasped, pointing at the three "corpses" on the ground, her voice rising a half-octave: "You call that international business?!"

Su Ming thought for a moment: "It's a preliminary step in cross-border dispute mediation."

Ah Xue's lips twitched.

"How...how old are you exactly?"

Nineteen, freshman.

"Freshman year." Ah Xue repeated the two words, her voice carrying a sense of bewilderment after being repeatedly crushed by fate.

"See, his mentality has collapsed." Old Zhao sat on the lower bunk, holding a thermos in his hand, shaking his head and commenting in an elder's tone, "Young people these days have never seen the world."

Ah Xue suddenly turned her head and glared at Old Zhao: "I've never seen anything like this before? Is this something a human being would do?! Breaking three people's bones in three seconds! Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"This is nothing," Old Zhao said, unscrewing the lid of his thermos, blowing on the steam rising from the rim, and speaking with the world-weary tone of someone who's been through it all. "Young lady, you've only broken the bones of three people; the scene is still quite respectable."

Ah Xue stared at him in astonishment: "This is considered decent?!"

"Last week in Africa," Old Zhao paused, his eyes darting around, "he used a calculator to bankrupt a warlord. Guess what? That guy was crying and begging for mercy."

Ah Xue turned her head blankly to look at Li Changfeng, hoping that this seemingly normal, cold-faced man could give a reasonable explanation.

Li Changfeng leaned against the door and nodded expressionlessly.

"That's right, these three don't have heavy firepower, he didn't even warm up."

Ah Xue's knees buckled, and she almost collapsed.

She slowly squatted down, sat on the edge of the bunk, supported herself with her hands on the corner, and stared at Su Ming's back.

The tall, thin young man was squatting on the ground, deftly tying the hands and feet of two unconscious mercenaries to the metal frame of their bunks with his shoelaces. He tied them quickly and tightly, each knot precisely avoiding joints and arteries—neither too tight nor too loose.

"You said before... you acted in self-defense against over a hundred people." Ah Xue's voice was soft, clinging to the last glimmer of hope, "That was a joke, right?"

Old Zhao spoke up quietly from behind: "Girl, stop asking. The more you ask, the more desperate you'll become. I went to Africa with him, and after we came back, I saw a psychiatrist. After hearing my description, the psychiatrist immediately referred me to a psychiatrist."

Ah Xue turned to look at him.

Old Zhao, clutching his thermos, wore a look of knowing pity: "Don't be afraid, this is the standard onboarding process. The first stage is denial, the second stage is shock, the third stage is collapse, and finally, like me, you enter a period of calm and tranquility."

He took out a blister pack of nitroglycerin pills from his pocket, popped one out, and shoved it into Ah Xue's hand.

"Here, girl, suck on it, don't chew."

Ah Xue looked down at the small brown pill in her palm, completely stunned.

"I don't want to eat this—"

"You'll have to eat this sooner or later." Old Zhao's tone was tinged with the weariness of life. "When you come out to work with him, this stuff is more important than your life. Trust Uncle Zhao, you won't go wrong."

Su Ming ignored their conversation. He had already thoroughly searched the three mercenaries' personal equipment—two Makarov pistols, a tactical folding knife, three walkie-talkies, a hand-drawn train map, and a stack of wanted posters with Ah Xue's ID photo on them.

He picked up the wanted poster, looked at it for two seconds, and then looked at Ah Xue herself.

"You look better in photos than in person."

"You fucking dare to comment on my ID photo at a time like this?!"

Su Ming didn't reply. He spread the stack of statements on the ground and patted the face of the burly man who had dislocated his elbow and was sweating profusely from the pain.

"Awake?"

The burly man's face was deathly pale, his teeth clenched so tightly they were practically grinding together, as if he wanted to burn two holes in Su Ming with his eyes. But he couldn't move; his right arm hung at an inhuman angle at his side.

"Let me ask you a question," Su Ming said, waving the statement in his hand. "Can you write with your left hand?"

The burly man gritted his teeth, and after a few seconds, he squeezed out a single word: "Yes."

"Sign it." Su Ming shoved the pen into his left hand and pointed to the signature area. "This is the 'Voluntary Waiver of the Right to Use Force and Immunity,' a bilingual version. Take your time reading it."

The burly man, his hands trembling, crookedly signed his name at the bottom of the statement.

Su Ming put away the documents and then walked over to the other two mercenaries who had been woken up. One had a dislocated jaw and couldn't speak, while the other had a large swelling on his temple and a vacant look in his eyes.

Two minutes later, three fully signed statements were neatly stacked in the side pocket of Su Ming's canvas bag.

Ah Xue witnessed the entire process of a college freshman forcing three elite mercenaries to sign a waiver of liability, and her worldview was crumbling inch by inch.

"Then why did you still charge me fifty million?" she asked the last question, the one she couldn't understand the most. "With your skills, you could make money faster by robbing, right?"

Su Ming finally looked up from the pile of documents and stared at her with an expression as if she were an idiot.

"Robbery is illegal."

"Breaking the law will land you in jail."

"Going to jail will affect my GPA on my final exams."

"Without a good GPA, I won't get a scholarship."

He added with a serious expression, "I go to university to learn knowledge and build our country, not to become a lawless outlaw."

The private room was silent for a few seconds.

Ah Xue let out a long breath.

She looked down at the quick-acting heart medicine that Old Zhao had given her in her palm.

Then, she put it in her mouth.

It's fucking miserable.

But she was no longer so panicked.

Old Zhao smiled with satisfaction as he watched Ah Xue take her medicine.

"See?" he whispered to Li Changfeng, "another new colleague has joined the company."

Li Changfeng didn't reply. He glanced at the train map that Su Ming had taken from the mercenary, and his brows furrowed.

In addition to the three members of the "Viper Squad" marked on the map, there are four red dots, marked in carriages one, three, five and the locomotive control room.

"Su Ming".

"Um."

"There are more than just these three on the bus."

Su Ming tied the three burly men to the metal pillars of the bunk with their own shoelaces, then stood up and clapped his hands.

"I understand." He pulled another stack of papers from his canvas bag; it was a printed copy of the "International Asset Preservation Law."

"Make good use of these fifteen minutes first."

He glanced at his watch, then at the howling wind and snow outside the window.

Old Zhao's gaze followed, but he could see nothing but wind and snow outside the train window. However, the train's pace slowed down, and the sound of the wheels rubbing against the rails became deep and slow.

"The car... is slowing down." Ah Xue's voice trembled slightly.

The lights in the private room flickered as soon as he finished speaking.

"Snapped!"

The entire carriage was immediately plunged into darkness.