Rebirth of a Mercenary: The Ace Mercenary Forced to Be the Beloved of the Group

Just as Wen Yan walked up to Bai Ye, the wind on the training field stopped.

Bai Ye sat on the cement platform, the introductory book on tactical topography open in front of him. He looked up, against the glaring afternoon sunlight, at the military medic standing in front of him.

Wen Yan was backlit, the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses reflecting the sand and figures on the training field. His eyes behind the lenses were not visible, but the curve of his lips was clear—gentle, restrained, with a faint joy that only comes after a long separation.

"Little White, do you remember me?"

Bai Ye stared at Wen Yan for a few seconds.

He was recalling. Not his own memories—the 007 of his past life had never met this person.

But within this body's memories, there does seem to be a shadow of the man before her.

He vaguely remembered someone applying a warm towel to his swollen knees after training, someone putting a sugar-coated pill in his mouth when he had a fever, and that person's voice was just like the one in front of him—unhurried and gentle, like a cup of water at the perfect temperature.

But these memories don't belong to him. They belong to the real sixteen-year-old boy who lived in this body before the White Night. That boy is gone, leaving only these fragmented, uncontrollable remnants of memories that occasionally surface suddenly.

Bai Ye nodded, then shook his head.

Wen Yan didn't press the matter. He reached out, his slender fingers running through Bai Ye's wind-blown, messy hair, and gently ruffled it on the top of his head.

"It's okay if you can't remember," Wen Yan smiled gently. "There will be plenty of time to remember later."

"Don't rub it randomly."

Li Mo's voice came in from the side, neither loud nor soft, but every word seemed to have been chilled by a cold wind.

Wen Yan turned to look at Li Mo. Then she looked at Bai Ye, who was sitting quietly under her, not reacting much when she was rubbed.

He sighed, withdrew his hand from Bai Ye's head, and said with a familiar helplessness, "Captain, you're still so protective of your child."

Li Mo didn't reply to him.

Wen Yan didn't care. He had worked with Li Mo for nearly eight years and knew the man's temper better than anyone else—getting him to reply with an "um" was already the highest level of social response. Expecting him to argue with you was like expecting a torrential downpour in the Gobi Desert.

He stood up, brushed the pebbles off his knees, and glanced at the bandages on Bai Ye's body. His gaze lingered for a moment on the gauze below her collarbone, where a faint yellowish stain of medicine had seeped through, before he looked away. Then he turned and walked to Li Mo: "Hands up."

Li Mo glanced at him but didn't move.

"How am I supposed to see if you don't lift it up?" Wen Yan didn't urge him, just stood in front of him and waited, a patient smile on her lips.

Li Mo paused for two seconds, then raised his right arm.

Wen Yan stretched out both hands, supporting Li Mo's elbow with her left hand and unbuttoning the cuffs of his training uniform with her right hand, pushing the sleeves up. The bandages were unwrapped one by one, revealing the stitched wound underneath.

Wen Yan's brow furrowed very slightly.

Li Mo noticed the frown: "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing." Wen Yan turned Li Mo's arm over and over, examining it twice before finally letting go and adjusting her glasses. "I just think the suturing technique isn't very good. The person who stitched it used too much force; a few stitches went through tissues below the dermis that shouldn't have been penetrated. It will definitely leave a scar after the stitches are removed. And the swelling indicates that the wound wasn't cleaned thoroughly enough; there might be trace amounts of foreign matter left under the skin—did you leave without getting an anti-inflammatory injection after the stitches were done?"

Li Mo thought for a moment and said, "The military doctor said it's fine whether we do it or not."

"He said it's fine whether you fight or not, and you really won't fight?" Wen Yan's voice didn't rise, but every word was like a scalpel cutting through skin, precise and merciless. "The risk of infection for this kind of penetrating wound is at least thirty percent higher in the Gobi Desert than inland. You injured your right arm during a mission two years ago, and the tendon already had an old injury. This time, it's pierced through the same muscle group again—if you want your right hand to still be able to hold a gun normally before you're forty, you'd better take this seriously."

Li Mo was rendered speechless by Wen Yan's rapid-fire words.

Just then, a figure darted out from the side.

"That won't do!" Lu Xiao's voice was firm and righteous. "Dr. Wen, please stitch Lao Li up again! Our captain's face is already scary enough. If he gets another scar, people will be scared off just by looking at his arm when he goes out to negotiate—not by him as a person, but by that scar. It's too ugly and will ruin Po Kong's image!"

Li Mo turned to look at Lu Xiao: "Say it again."

"I said you're handsome," Lu Xiao changed his tune without batting an eye, "handsome to the point of being earth-shattering, so you absolutely can't have any scars. Dr. Wen, please, please, redo the stitches, make them look nice, and keep stitching them until there are no scars. I'll get any instruments you need from the infirmary, I'll get any medicine you need from the pharmacy, and I can even hold him down—though I might not be able to, I can try."

Wen Yan's smile deepened even more after hearing Lu Xiao's words.

He turned to look at Li Mo, his tone returning to its previous gentleness: "Since the vice-captain has said so—come on, let's redo it. It won't take long; we'll remove the stitches, re-stitch it, and give you an anti-inflammatory injection. You're not afraid of the pain, are you?"

That last question was asked intentionally. Everyone present knew that Li Mo hadn't been given anesthesia when he was getting nearly forty stitches. Wen Yan knew that too, of course.

Li Mo glanced at Wen Yan, then at Lu Xiao.

Li Mo sighed and extended his right arm to Wen Yan: "Hurry up."

"That's right." Wen Yan patted his shoulder, turned and walked towards the infirmary. After taking a couple of steps, she stopped, looked back at the group on the training field, and said, "Xie Ran, Shen Zhuo, let me take a look at your injuries at the infirmary later. And the vice-captain—you wrote in your last mission report about a leg abrasion that you treated yourself without disinfecting it, right?"

Lu Xiao's smile froze for a moment.

Xie Ran and Shen Zhuo both took half a step back.

Wen Yan adjusted his glasses, his smile unchanged: "One at a time. The infirmary won't close this afternoon, and nobody's getting away."

Then he turned and walked towards the infirmary. Li Mo followed behind him, and after a few steps, he turned back to look at Bai Ye. Bai Ye nodded to him, meaning "Go ahead." Only then did Li Mo turn back and continue walking.

Lu Xiao, clutching his chest, said to Xie Huai'an in a relieved tone, "Huai'an, did he go to study mind reading? How does he know everything?"

Xie Huai'an kept writing in his journal with his head down, without looking up: "Because he is Wen Yan."

Lu Xiao thought about it and felt that the answer was impeccable.