Xia Yuanfang said angrily, "This is another matter! Do you think you can just do what you like? Do you know that soldiers have to fight wars! This isn't like your little Bounty Hunter escapades! You're just a little girl, you don't need to worry about fighting wars!"
It seemed Xia Yuanfang didn't want her to stay in the Special Security Bureau and insisted she quit.
Xia Chujian bit her lip and decided to be frank with Xia Yuanfang: "Aunt, I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm eighteen years old, an adult. I've not only killed people, but also Exotic Beasts, and Remnant Species Infected. And I kill them a lot, and very quickly."
"I like the atmosphere here, I like what I'm learning here, I feel like I belong here."
Xia Yuanfang said unhappily, "You've only been there for a few days, and you already know you belong there? Isn't that too rash! And you don't even know what it means to be a soldier!"
"You don't realize that killing people as a Bounty Hunter and fighting as a soldier are two completely different things!"
"Have you seen what a battle of hundreds of thousands, millions of people looks like?! Have you thought about what it's like to have no way to go to heaven and no way to enter the earth?! Do you know what it feels like to have mountains of bones, lives like grass, and everyone around you dead?!—You don't know anything, and you say you belong there! Is what Aunt has taught you for so many years not as good as four or five days of training there?!"
Xia Yuanfang became more and more agitated. She waved her arms and stood up, her face flushed, and veins popping out on her forehead.
Xia Chujian blinked and said in confusion, "...That's why I want to be a soldier, to protect Aunt and my family from encountering such situations... Aunt, do you think that if we encounter such a situation, I should hide and wait for someone to save me?"
Xia Yuanfang: "..."
Xia Chujian's words left her speechless for a moment.
After a long while, Xia Yuanfang said in a low voice, "...Isn't that okay? Your identity... you should hide, someone will come to save you..."
For the first time in her life, Xia Chujian directly refused Xia Yuanfang.
She said seriously, "No, Aunt, it's not okay. Even if, as you said, someone will come to save me, that doesn't mean I should completely put my fate in the hands of others. If the situation you described really comes, I'd rather be in the army, protecting myself with weapons, saving others, instead of waiting to be saved!"
Xia Yuanfang glared at her, her lips trembling, tears about to fall.
She covered her mouth with her hand, suppressed the sobs, took a few deep breaths, and after calming down, she said, "Chujian, you don't understand. When that kind of situation comes, the army is useless. Because they will be the first to die..."
Xia Chujian raised her eyebrows and said lightly, "With me here, it won't."
Xia Yuanfang: "..."
She was powerless to stop Xia Chujian's blind confidence.
Xia Yuanfang closed her eyes and said, "Chujian, whatever I say now, you'll have a rebellious attitude. Train well, and we'll talk again when you come back."
With that, she proactively ended the video call.
After ending the call, Xia Yuanfang poured herself a glass of red wine and took a sip.
The taste, a bit bitter, a bit sour, but also a bit sweet, left her with mixed feelings.
She stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in the bedroom, looking at the clear night sky outside the window, and the white jade-like crescent moon, her face lost in thought.
She had spent eighteen years forgetting, but she didn't expect that as long as there was a chance, those scenes hidden deep in her memory would roll up like waves in the ocean tide, drying on the beach.
Xia Yuanfang took another sip of red wine and murmured, "Dad, Mom, I miss you... Dear colleagues, am I embarrassing you?"
...
Xia Chujian sat in the dormitory in a daze.
She originally wanted to take this opportunity to have Xia Yuanfang help her summarize the knowledge in the books, but she never expected that Xia Yuanfang would so vehemently oppose her joining the army.
But she really felt that being a soldier, especially with the rank of Second Lieutenant, was really cool! As for what Aunt said about wars with hundreds of thousands, millions of people, she just thought it was Aunt's fantasy.
The largest interstellar war she had learned about in school, the two sides combined, was only a hundred thousand people.
And thinking about the scene Aunt described of mountains of bones and lives like grass, she wasn't afraid at all.
Lives like grass, they were already living lives like grass, didn't Aunt realize that?
At school, more than three hundred students died just like that, and the leaders of Mulan City No. 1 High School still haven't taken responsibility.
The old building they used to live in collapsed, killing more than five hundred people at once, and so far, no investigation has shown that the collapse was not an accident, but man-made.
Before that, at Plaza Garden, more than a thousand people died.
And, she herself had personally experienced that the Nobles could hit them, these commoners, whenever they wanted, kill them if they could, and they even had criminal immunity! Weren't these things terrifying enough?
Thinking of these things, Xia Chujian made up her mind that she would decide everything herself.
Thinking this, she immediately sent a message to Meng Guanghui.
[Xia Chujian]: Chief, my Aunt just found out I joined the military and is very angry. She might come to you and ask you to let me quit. I hope you can help me smooth things over. I don't want to quit, but I don't want to make my Aunt angry either.
Meng Guanghui was currently on vacation in his apartment in an upscale community on Beichen Star.
He saw the message and replied with a smile.
[Meng Guanghui]: Don't worry, you are already eighteen years old. No one can make decisions for you, not even your parents.
The implication was that even her parents couldn't help her resign, let alone her Aunt.
Xia Chujian was relieved. To avoid making Xia Yuanfang too sad, Xia Chujian thought for a moment and sent her a message as well.
[Xia Chujian]: Aunt, don't scare yourself. Actually, although I joined the military, I'm not in a front-line combat unit. It's not dangerous at all. And my abilities can only be fully utilized here.
[Xia Chujian]: By the way, when did those battles with hundreds of thousands or millions of people that you mentioned happen? Why haven't I seen such wars in history books? Xia Yuanfang looked at the message notification popping up on the Quantum Optical Brain, thought for a moment, and replied.
[Xia Yuanfang]: Sorry for scaring you. I just tend to overthink and I like to read war literature, so I'm quite anti-war. What I said wasn't real, just hypothetical questions.
[Xia Yuanfang]: In any case, you must be careful. It's good to learn some self-defense skills in the military. I agree with you that we can't put our fate in the hands of others. But we also can't take our lives lightly and sacrifice them casually.
Xia Chujian breathed a sigh of relief.
That's more like it.
Xia Yuanfang's expression when she spoke earlier had really frightened her.
[Xia Chujian]: Don't worry, Aunt! I will definitely protect my little life! I know that even if I don't cherish it, Aunt will cherish it for me!
Then came a cute cat kneeling emoticon.
Xia Yuanfang was amused by Xia Chujian's words.
She sent a head-patting emoticon, ending the conversation.
...
Because the conversation didn't go very well, Xia Chujian performed poorly on the book knowledge test the next day.
She already had a hard time learning from books, and Xia Yuanfang's words had made her uneasy.
After a whole day of testing, she thought she would be lucky to pass.
After the exam, she checked the materials for several major questions and found that she had answered them all wrong.
And her three roommates seemed to have done well on the test.
Xia Chujian wasn't unhappy, after all, she was used to being treated like a loser.
For more than two and a half years in high school, her physics was always at the bottom, and her chemistry hovered around the passing mark.
The so-called "self-esteem of a top student" didn't exist for her.
Seeing her so happy, her roommates thought she had done well on the test. Plus, her flight training and maintenance practice were excellent, so they all figured that Xia Chujian would undoubtedly be ranked first in this week's exams.
So when the rankings were released on Saturday morning and they found that Xia Chujian was only tenth, they were all shocked.
"Chujian, your flight training broke the record, and the instructor is keeping your maintenance practice as a textbook. How could you only be tenth?! Could there be a mistake?" Mao Yonggui looked at the name at the top of the list, her eyes almost popping out.
First place: Lin Xiaoxiao.
Behind them, the other students were also in an uproar.
"Lin Xiaoxiao?! How could it be Lin Xiaoxiao in first place?! -- That's impossible!"
"It's just impossible! Lin Xiaoxiao... Lin Xiaoxiao... How could she have done better than Xia Chujian?!"
The students knew that Xia Chujian had repeatedly broken warplane speed records and had been commended by the Military.
Her maintenance grades were also very good, and the instructor had personally stamped them as excellent.
But Lin Xiaoxiao seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, suddenly parachuting into first place?! "Recheck! We demand a recheck!"
While these people were making a fuss, Xia Chujian carefully looked at the ranking list and quietly noticed that all four of them in their dormitory were in the top ten! She was tenth, Mao Yonggui was fifth, Chu Qingjuan was seventh, and Sang Yadi was eighth.
Their dormitory accounted for four of the top ten! Xia Chujian proudly took her roommate's hand and said, "See, even if we're not Gene Evolvers, we're no worse than them!"
Mao Yonggui, Chu Qingjuan, and Sang Yadi exchanged glances, all feeling incredulous.
"Chujian, we all know that your flight training and maintenance practice scores are very good, much higher than ours. How come your ranking..."
Xia Chujian said, not caring at all, "Of course it's because my book knowledge test was very poor. I was mentally prepared for it. I said a long time ago that my grades weren't good. I'm sure I'd be at a loss if I was tested on book knowledge."
She had indeed said before that her grades weren't good, but she was okay at learning techniques.
There were many people like this, who didn't care for book knowledge, but could learn hands-on techniques at a glance.
Mao Yonggui said, "Even if it's bad, it can't be that much worse. You're still tenth!"
Xia Chujian was very satisfied with this ranking.
She only needed to stay in the top twenty. Tenth place was in the middle, just right, not attracting attention.
It was just that she was still a little surprised that Lin Xiaoxiao could get first place.
Not only was she surprised, but probably all the trainees were surprised.
They strongly demanded that Lin Xiaoxiao's scores be announced, refusing any shady dealings!
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