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

Medical staff carried the stretcher and jogged away from the training field. The duck's pitiful cries grew fainter and fainter, eventually disappearing around the corner of the administration building. A pool of dark red blood remained on the gravel beside the track, gleaming unrealistically under the floodlights.

The crowd gradually dispersed at the command of the officer on duty, but everyone couldn't help but look back at Bai Ye as they left—the boy who had squatted on the ground and gouged out someone's eyes was now standing under a streetlamp, having another recruit wipe his hands, his expression as calm as if he were waiting for the canteen to open.

Li Mo walked up to Bai Ye.

His training uniform cuffs were still stained with duck's blood, and his knuckles were scraped, from the punches he had just received.

He looked down at Bai Ye and remained silent for a moment.

Just now, when Bai Ye brushed past him, squatted down, and drew his dagger, he admitted that he was also stunned—not because the distance was too far to stop him, but because he saw an extremely familiar calmness in Bai Ye at that moment.

He had seen this kind of calmness in another person countless times.

"Are you alright?" Li Mo asked, his voice lower than usual, the coldness in his tone replaced by a concern he wasn't good at expressing. "Don't let that beast affect your mood."

Bai Ye looked up at Li Mo, blinked, and then spoke in an extremely calm tone: "He's blind."

"Exactly!" Xie Ran immediately chimed in, waving his fist, his indignation still simmering on his face. His voice was so loud it sounded like he was giving a speech to the entire training ground, "That bastard spews filth the moment he opens his mouth! Our little cabbage is clearly—"

"I'm clearly a man," Bai Ye continued, his tone as flat as before, but each word was pronounced clearly, "not a little beauty. And nothing will happen between me and you."

A moment of silence fell over the training field. It wasn't the tense silence that had been when Li Mo had grabbed Fu Qiu by the neck, but a more subtle silence where everyone was unsure what expression to make at the same time.

Xie Ran's fist, raised in mid-air, stopped. His mouth was open, the word "right" stuck in his throat, and his expression switched smoothly from indignation to confusion to bewilderment.

He turned his head to look at Shen Zhuo and found that Shen Zhuo's expression was exactly the same as his—his mouth was open, he had forgotten what he wanted to say, and he was just staring blankly at Bai Ye, as if he was seeing this person for the first time.

Xie Huai'an raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, the helplessness in his voice almost tangible: "No one taught him. Although Bai Chen was strict with him back then, with his brother's temper—do you think Bai Chen would sit down and give his brother a sex education lesson? Bai Chen only taught him how to disassemble a gun."

"Sixteen years old," Lu Xiao held up two fingers to show a number, "He can get a perfect score with one hand, he can pierce someone's eye socket with one hand, and he can scare a veteran with over three hundred months of experience into silence on the training field. But he didn't know that men can also be like that—Bai Chen has taught him to be like this, he's quite a talent."

"You have the nerve to say that?" Xie Huai'an's tone rarely carried a hint of genuine reproach. "You spent three months in basic training and didn't you teach him anything about this?"

"I thought he knew!" Lu Xiao spread his hands, his expression innocent and extremely sincere. "Besides, how can this kind of thing be popularized? During training breaks, I'd say—'Little cabbage, come here, let me tell you about the basic common sense of same-sex sexual behavior'? Old Li would strangle me to death."

Li Mo did not participate in the hushed discussion.

He stood in front of Bai Ye, looking at Bai Ye's serious and calm face, and suddenly realized that he had been evaluating Bai Ye from the wrong perspective.

He protected Bai Ye as Bai Chen's younger brother and trained him as a new member of Group A, but he forgot one thing—Bai Ye was only ten years old when Bai Chen disappeared. After that, no one taught him the things that schools wouldn't teach, let alone the things that training grounds wouldn't teach.

Bai Ye's knowledge of human relationships was limited to things like "men and women get married and have children." His cold demeanor and extraordinary fighting prowess made everyone unconsciously overlook the gaps in his understanding.

Xuan Xiao stood next to Bai Ye, still clutching the wet wipe he was about to use for a second wipe. He was stunned for a moment after hearing Bai Ye's words.

He looked down at his hand, which he had just dried, then at Bai Ye's face, which was devoid of any impure thoughts. His Adam's apple bobbed, and he crumpled the wet tissue into a ball, stuffing it back into his pocket with a sigh. The sigh carried an extremely complex emotion; if one had to break it down, it would probably be half helplessness and half self-reproach—he had even felt embarrassed when Bai Ye fell asleep on his shoulder, while Bai Ye had always considered them ordinary partners who had gone through thick and thin together.

Bai Ye frowned slightly when he saw that everyone was silent.

He didn't understand why everyone was even more silent after he clarified his gender than when they saw the eyes being gouged out. He was simply stating a fact—the words the duck chirped were meant for women, and since he was male, those words were logically invalid.

As for why Fu Qiu would say those things to a male soldier, he could only understand it as Fu Qiu not only having a sharp tongue but also poor eyesight.

He thought for a moment, then added, "What he said isn't physiologically feasible. So what he said makes no sense." Bai Ye thought again, feeling she had grasped the crux of the problem. "You guys aren't blind too, are you?"

"Pfft—" Lu Xiao burst out laughing, bending over with his hands on his knees, his shoulders shaking like a leaf.

Xie Huai'an didn't laugh. He just looked at Bai Ye, the vertical line between his brows deepening. It wasn't anger; it was genuine concern, like wanting to take someone to get extra tutoring after getting to know them again.

Bai Ye looked at Lu Xiao's broad smile, then at the silent crowd, and finally realized that he might have said something that made everyone think it was strange. But he didn't intend to ask further—he had never been to school in his previous life, and all his knowledge came from the battlefield and training grounds.

The original owner of this body grew up with his older brother Bai Chen. Bai Chen was an extremely unreliable parent. Apart from teaching him how to hold a knife, how to hold a gun, and how to survive in the jungle for three days and three nights without supplies, he probably didn't teach him anything else.

"Alright, alright," Xie Ran broke the silence first. He waved his hand, his voice returning to its usual booming tone, but with an extremely obvious protectiveness in it. "Anyway, if anyone dares to say those kinds of things again, I'll smash their teeth and stuff them up their nose before the captain even lifts a finger. Little Cabbage, you don't need to worry about that. You—you're fine as you are."

"Don't worry about what others say," Li Mo said, his voice returning to its usual deep tone. "You did the right thing." He paused, his gaze sweeping over all the members of Group A behind him, finally settling on Bai Ye. "Everyone's here. Let's continue training."