CR CH7

Chapter 7: Simulated Combat

Federation Command Center.

“Captain Ling.”

“Captain Ling…”

Ling Kongmiao strode purposefully toward Headquarters.

Along the corridor, many personnel paused to greet him. He acknowledged each with a nod, though the grim look on his face clearly betrayed his less-than-relaxed mood.

At a corner ahead, a capable, composed woman stepped out.

She wore the crisp uniform of a senior Command officer, with short hair and a tall, poised silhouette. An aura of unshakeable calm enveloped her as she furrowed her brows, murmuring instructions to her adjutant.

Catching sight of Ling Kongmiao, she halted.

“Captain Ling, you’re here.”

The adjutant nodded politely to both of them before turning and hurrying toward the conference room.

Ling Kongmiao reached out a hand to shake hers. “Commander Jiang, thank you for your hard work.”

His gaze swept over the briskly moving staff around them as he inquired in a low voice, “How is the situation?”

“It has stabilized. The mutant energy core has been neutralized. Fortunately, Captain Jiang arrived in time; if not for his extensive field experience, things could have gone very differently this time.”

“Were there any anomalies at the site?”

Jiang Yan knew what he was really asking. After a brief pause, she gave a slight shake of her head.

“None.”

Following the annihilation of the Zerg race, the galaxy had enjoyed a fleeting period of tranquility. But good times were short-lived; mutated variants and psychic spiritual domains began cropping up across various planets in rapid succession. People had long suspected this was a lingering retaliatory measure left behind by the Zerg, but it remained unproven.

When these novel entities first emerged, they triggered widespread panic. Fortunately, the Federation quickly brought the situation under control, establishing Special Support divisions to counter the threat.

Everything had initially been well within grasp. However, a few years ago, an accident occurred during an experiment codenamed “E-07.” Originally founded to study Psychic Turbulence Syndrome, the research evolved in its later stages into an outright catastrophe.

Mutant Specimen “E-07” broke containment. Its combat prowess far exceeded ordinary mutants, and it possessed an innate spiritual domain. Even the Federation’s Special Support forces were unable to completely eradicate it at the time. “E-07” breached successive interstellar bastions until its energy reserves depleted, ultimately fleeing to an energy-rich planet where it became the colossal master “Core.”

From that turning point onward, mutants and spiritual domains began evolving continuously.

Silence fell between them before Jiang Yan broke it first.

“However, the escalation process from A-rank to S-rank this time was remarkably identical to the ‘Blood Pod Project.’ All baseline metrics read completely normal, but in a single split second, the energy surged exponentially. The transition took merely seconds. Under our current operational protocols, there is simply no way to counter it.”

Ling Kongmiao lowered his eyes, saying nothing more, only nodding. “I understand.”

“Good.” Jiang Yan tapped her fingers lightly against her folded arm, inquiring casually, “Tianji… hasn’t caused Captain Ling too much trouble, has he?”

“The boy is used to slacking off. Don’t go easy on him.”

Ling Kongmiao’s eyes flickered slightly, but his face remained impassive. “Not at all. He’s quite well-behaved.”

Hearing this, Jiang Yan suddenly chuckled, raising an eyebrow with an inscrutable smirk. “Is that so?”

Ling Kongmiao smiled as well, offering no reply.

“Jiang Ziming was injured pretty badly this time. I’ll go check on him,” he said, waving to Jiang Yan. “Commander Jiang, I won’t keep you from your duties.”

“Take care.”

He had taken only two steps when a voice called out behind him.

“Captain Ling.”

Ling Kongmiao turned back, meeting Jiang Yan’s rather complicated gaze.

“Tianji has good potential. If possible, please mentor him. Perhaps by following you, he can find his true bearings,” she said gravely. “This isn’t merely a request from a mother.”

Ling Kongmiao’s gaze lingered for a second on the insignia on her shoulder before he nodded.

“Understood.”

The heaviness in his head gradually receded, as if a gentle stream were nourishing his senses. The soreness and fatigue vanished, replaced by a light, energized sensation throughout his body.

Jiang Tianji stretched lazily, letting out a satisfied yawn.

Drip, drop.

“Growl…”

Suddenly, a bizarre sound stirred.

It sounded like liquid pattering onto the ground, accompanied by a raspy, guttural snarl.

Jiang Tianji opened his eyes in confusion. The very first sight that greeted him—expanding rapidly right in front of his face—was a gaping, bloody maw dripping with thick drool and dark crimson fluids.

His pupils dilated sharply. As his expression froze in horror, he dodged to the side on pure animal instinct.

Only then did he catch a full view of the monstrosity. It was a deformed mutant beast resembling a colossal wolf. Its eyeballs were swollen and protruding, webbed with sickly red veins, and its bulk was twice that of an ordinary wolf.

Its strike having met empty air, the monster slowly shifted its massive frame, fixing its eyes squarely on Jiang Tianji.

Back pressed against a massive tree, Jiang Tianji had no time to ponder why on earth he had materialized here. He locked eyes with that bloody maw across from him, catching the faint, nauseating stench of rotten decay.

Cold sweat gradually drenched his entire spine, his heart hammering against his ribs like a mad snare drum. Jiang Tianji took an agonizingly slow step backward behind the trunk.

The mutant direwolf coiled and sprang into the air, lunging violently toward his spot.

Spotting the takeoff trajectory, Jiang Tianji ducked sharply and rolled sideways, immediately scrambling up the tree with the fastest speed he had ever mustered in his entire life.

Keeping his eyes glued to the wolf’s movements, he hastily patted down his clothes, his heart sinking further with every frantic swipe.

Not a single weapon on him.

What was going on? Just moments ago, he had been in the training grounds!

Before he could piece it together, the direwolf pinpointed his location and began violently battering the tree trunk.

The canopy shook violently. A sense of desperation welled up inside Jiang Tianji. Knitting his brows, he scanned the surroundings for anywhere to take cover, but the dense foliage obscured any clear path…

Seeing the trunk begin to list, Jiang Tianji gritted his teeth, leaped down from the branches, and took off in a dead sprint for his life.

The direwolf’s running speed was vastly superior to his, but its intellect seemed pitifully lacking. Whenever Jiang Tianji scaled a tree, it would prioritize attacking the trunk, completely oblivious to whether Jiang Tianji was still perched on it.

This discovery allowed him a brief breath of relief, but dragging this out was not a sustainable strategy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jiang Tianji spotted a narrow cave opening ahead. Without a second thought, he bolted straight for it. Behind him, the direwolf gave relentless chase, its approaching snarls making Jiang Tianji’s scalp prickle with dread.

Reaching the mouth of the cave, he dropped sideways into a slide and slipped inside, pressing his back against the stone wall while gasping violently for air.

The direwolf could only claw uselessly at the opening, letting out an enraged howl.

“ROAAAR—!”

The ferocious roar rattled the cave so hard that dust cascaded from the ceiling. Jiang Tianji hunched warily into a defensive coil. Fortunately, after a few tense moments, the sound of the direwolf padding away echoed from outside.

Silence settled over the cavern. Jiang Tianji clutched his chest, taking rapid, shallow breaths.

A stray breeze swept across his sweat-drenched back, sending a violent shiver through him.

The light filtering into the cave suddenly vanished, plunging everything into pitch-black darkness.

Realization dawned on him. Jiang Tianji’s face turned pale at a rate visible to the naked eye. He lifted his head with excruciating slowness.

BOOM—!

A tremendous crash accompanied a shower of crushed stone as the cave entrance was pulverized into rubble by sheer, monstrous brute force.

A colossal bear head thrust inside out of nowhere. Its eyes gleamed with terrifying malice in the dark, barging right up into Jiang Tianji’s face. Its bared fangs hovered less than five centimeters from his skull, releasing a roar loud enough to rupture human eardrums.

“ROAAAR—!!”

“…”

Jiang Tianji felt the blood in his entire body run in reverse. A wave of numbing prickles surged through his limbs, his ears ringing in a deafening drone.

To the giant bear, the youth appeared eerily calm.

However, in the very next second—

He suddenly went completely limp, sliding down the rock wall. His head tilted to the side, knocked out cold.

“…Huh?”

The bear’s ferocious expression faltered, looking downright startled. A perplexed syllable slipped from its maw—sounding unmistakably like human speech.

“Wait, I didn’t even do anything! How did he just pass out?”

“Combat simulation concluded.”

Before the sentence fully left his mouth, an automated synthetic voice chimed, and the simulated scenery dissolved into thin air.

Zhao Hengyi flipped open the pod hatch and climbed out, his face a portrait of sheer incredulity.

“That drooling wolf was ugly as sin and didn’t scare him unconscious, yet I come in looking that dashing and heroic, and he just blacks out on the spot?”

“What’s his problem?!”

Zhao Hengyi: member of Special Support Unit One. Ability: Monstrous Strength. Beast Form Awakening: Mutant, Giant Bear.

A technician nearby couldn’t help chiming in with a dose of reality.

“Officer Zhao, I already told you earlier: for a rookie, his reaction speed is well above passing. I checked his file—the kid was just plucked out of school the day before yesterday! The only way students like him ever see mutants is on the internet.”

Zhao Hengyi felt a twinge of guilt. “…Didn’t I see how calm he was being? I just jumped in to test his overall readiness. How was I supposed to know he handled stress this poorly?”

The technician rolled his eyes. “You went in there to test him?”

Zhao Hengyi: “Why else?!”

“I thought you had a personal vendetta against him. Watch the playback yourself—anyone would be scared half to death seeing a giant bear face like that in the dark! Does that look remotely human to you?”

“Hey, Technician Jiang, are you looking for a fight?”

“Me, looking for a fight? You just wait till Captain Ling gets back! What you did completely broke protocol. If you traumatize this kid, you’re a dead man!”

“I—”

Just as the two were on the verge of coming to blows, a voice cut in from the doorway.

“What’s the noise about?”

Ling Kongmiao walked into the training facility. He had just hung up a comm call, his brows still knit tight.

He had just dropped by Special Support Headquarters to check on Jiang Ziming’s condition, only for that man to immediately whine and complain the second they met—badgering him about when he’d return to take back this mess, sobbing about how much weight he’d lost and how injured he was, claiming that this kind of bitter suffering belonged strictly to Ling Kongmiao, whereas he himself couldn’t stomach a single bite of it.

Even the finest, elite-Alpha-studded baseline forces of Z01 were far below the tier that required Ling Kongmiao’s personal command; everyone knew full well why he had been temporarily reassigned here.

Upon exiting, comm calls had flooded in one after another, all those old foxes probing and prying to feel out his stance. The atmosphere above had been taut ever since the “Blood Pod” incident. Feeling thoroughly annoyed, he had thought to stop by to verify if Jiang Tianji had met his training quota—only to walk through the door and find his own subordinate brawling with the staff again.