Chapter 26

Dad: Real men never look back at explosions.jpg

Dad: Honey, don't I look cool?!

In the picture, flames filled the sky around a familiar-looking man, whose expression was bold and unrestrained. Behind him, flesh and blood flew amid the flames of battle, which had set half the sky ablaze.

...Dad???

Because he was in the classroom, Qin Su had no choice but to force himself to "remain calm." He stared at the man in the picture, checking him over and over and trying to find traces of Photoshop, while a storm raged in his heart.

The good news was that his sister's prediction had been right. From what Dad said, they had found a way out of a desperate situation, and they were safe now.

The bad news was that, judging by the "background" in the photo, wherever Mom and Dad were... no matter how he looked at it, it didn't look "safe."

Also...

Why did Dad look... so much younger than he did at home? Was something wrong with his eyes?

A second later, when Qin Su looked again, the group message showed that it had been recalled.

Qin Su: "?"

Had he slept so little that his eyes were playing tricks on him and he was hallucinating?

The next second, Qin Su saw that the family group had been dissolved.

Qin Su: "..."

Great. That guilty move confirmed that his eyes hadn't been playing tricks on him.

The second after that, Qin Su was pulled into a new family group.

Dad: .

Qin Su: "..."

Wasn't what Dad had done as good as putting up a sign saying there was no silver buried here?

"Phew..."

After that smooth little combo to save himself from sending a message to the wrong group, Si Fei pulled out a mint lollipop, tore off the wrapper, popped it into his mouth, and let out a huge sigh of relief.

It was all because the two group chats had exactly the same name, and lately everyone in them had been sending nothing but "." to show they were still alive.

As a result, the photo he'd carefully posed for and picked the perfect angle to take had gone to the wrong group. He'd meant to send it to the squad chat, mainly to show off his love, and secondarily to let the team members appreciate from every angle how mighty and imposing their boss looked after destroying the enemy in one fell swoop.

Fortunately, in keeping with their family's fine tradition of arriving at the last possible second,

at this hour, the older child would be arriving at the company just in time, while the younger one should be on his way to class just in time. There was a ninety-nine percent chance they hadn't seen anything that had just happened in the group.

To put the children's minds at ease and let them grow up safe, healthy, and positive, he'd worried himself sick. He couldn't even afford a careless slip of the hand! It was truly heartbreaking.

With that thought, Si Fei stood some distance from the flames shooting into the sky, a lollipop in his mouth, and hammered away at his screen with both hands as zombies were "blown up" again and again.

After sending his cool posed photo to the squad chat, followed by a location pin, Si Fei put away his phone and strode purposefully toward the water source he'd picked out before entering this base.

It would take them about another half hour to reach him. He needed to take a bath and tidy himself up, mainly to stay fresh and handsome in front of his wife, and secondarily to make that bunch of roughnecks feel ashamed of themselves, utterly humiliated, and bow down in admiration.

After waiting a while without seeing Dad send anything besides a ".", Qin Su could roughly guess what he was thinking.

Dad probably assumed he and his sister were both arriving just in time for class and work, but he hadn't expected Qin Su to get to class early today.

Qin Su: .

This time, the "." didn't mean he was still alive. It simply meant he was "speechless."

There were about thirty seconds left before class. After sending the ".", Qin Su was about to put his phone away when he saw a "." from his sister the next second.

Qin Dai: .

Qin Su: "..."

Great. He wasn't the only one who'd seen it. His sister had too.

Tap, tap, tap...

The class bell rang along with the sound of the teacher's footsteps. Qin Su could only silence his phone, turn it facedown on the desk, close the paper documents he'd brought back, and look up at the lectern.

The teacher, who was equally adept at arriving just in time, stepped into the center behind the lectern in the final second of the bell and began the day's lesson.

The students who entered the classroom were curious why Qin Su had suddenly fallen silent, staring at his phone with a blank expression, but when the bell rang, they turned their attention to the teacher and their other classmates.

Based on the recently updated comic, they could be certain that the Qin Su in the real world and the Qin Su in the Comic World weren't the same person.

Because...

How could there possibly be someone among them who knew how to use a gun, and so skillfully at that?

As for why details such as their names, heights, and even appearances were so similar and repeatedly matched exactly,

there was only one answer!

They suspected that someone who knew Qin Su very well had used him as a reference.

The comic's creator might be right there among them.

Having reached that conclusion, Qin Su's classmates now looked at one another with intense scrutiny. Everyone seemed like a "suspect."

They even included the teacher among their suspects, based on the online joke that "an artist who can't draw isn't a good teacher."

"President Qin, do you think there's anything else that needs revising...?"

In the spacious, gray-toned office, Qin Dai sat firmly at the head of the table, her expression icy.

After finishing his report, Director Lin heard no "response" from Qin Dai. He only saw her gaze resting on the document Assistant Jiang had opened in front of her earlier, her brows furrowing as he gave his report. His heart immediately leaped into his throat.

Director Lin's voice drew Qin Dai's gaze away from her phone.

Dad hadn't expected that she had a meeting early today and hadn't arrived at the last second, and that she'd been slacking off and looking at her phone.

The meeting came first.

Qin Dai quickly scanned the document. When she saw that it was open to familiar data from six months ago, she snapped it shut, her face cold, and looked up at Director Lin. "Director Lin, didn't I say before..."

Twenty-five minutes later, Si Fei had finished freshening up. He opened his phone to see whether his wife had seen how handsome he looked, and hopefully left a compliment or two.

Who would have thought that instead of compliments from his wife, he would see two brand-new messages in the family group?

Si Fei swallowed and stared at the "." messages the two children had sent one after the other, after he'd recalled the photo, dissolved the group, pulled everyone into a new one, and sent a "." himself. He felt as though the sky had fallen.

The thing was, after those "." messages, neither child had said a single word in over twenty minutes!

Tsk, could it be that they'd discovered the truth and found out that Mom and Dad's "life was a mad... no, a vast wilderness, so wild they didn't take the two of them along," and had passed out from anger?

Si Fei now felt that this wasn't a problem he could fix by taking traditional medicine. Maybe, perhaps, he ought to drink pesticide instead.

His fingers tapped at the screen for ages, but Si Fei didn't send a single word.

Special effects?

No, no, no. There wasn't even a trace of Photoshop, and the two little brats had been hard to fool since they were small.

For the first time in his life, Si Fei regretted not photoshopping a picture.

A few minutes later, Si Fei's ears twitched. He looked up from his phone and saw a helicopter flying toward him high in the distance.

Before long, a rope ladder dropped from above and hung in front of him.

Si Fei put away his phone.

Now that things had come to this, he'd first... get on the helicopter and ask his wife whether she'd been struck speechless by how handsome he looked in the photo.

"Wait, honey, why are you flying?" Once he'd made sure she was all right, Si Fei raised his voice.

Fate had played a cruel trick on him. His BKing photo hadn't been seen by his wife, the person who most should have seen it, but had been seen by the two children, the people who least should have.

The others on the helicopter didn't understand why Si Fei was speaking in that tone and didn't dare make a sound.

"If not me, then who, you?" Qin Ji had just come from the previous explosion site, and her ears hadn't recovered yet. His loud voice made them hurt.

"I think I can!" Si Fei immediately leaned over. "Look, here, you can land here. Let me take over..."

"Will you shut up!" Qin Ji spared Si Fei a glance and, seeing no gruesome wounds on him, felt her heart settle. "Sit down."

Si Fei: "...Oh."

He behaved for two seconds before leaning over again. "I smell nice, don't I? I went out of my way to..."

"Wait." Qin Ji interrupted him. Remembering the strange thing he'd said when he came aboard, she grew suspicious. "Darling, did you do something you feel guilty about?"

"...I'll tell you when we get back to our base."

Si Fei was afraid Qin Ji would get angry and charge straight into someone else's base up ahead. It wouldn't be good to scare them.

Especially since rushing into a new battle without any preparation would damage their base's "legendary reputation."

Qin Ji: "..."

She had a bad feeling about this.

Two hours later, back in their private quarters at the base, Qin Ji looked at the messages in the family group and hissed. She had just looked up and was about to say something when Si Fei presented his left cheek to her.

Then she heard Si Fei say in a "righteous" voice, "Come on, I'm ready!"

Qin Ji pressed her lips together speechlessly, the words still on her tongue, and mercilessly exposed him. "If you want a reward, just say so. Don't make it sound so noble."

"Tsk." Si Fei looked disappointed. "Honey, what do you think our kids mean by..."

Before Si Fei could finish, a new message popped up in the family group.

Qin Su:

It was a photo taken by Qin Su.

Si Fei's expression faded. He exchanged a glance with Qin Ji, and the two opened the photo Qin Su had sent to the group...

Their younger-looking dad, his battle-damaged Combat Suit, flames shooting into the sky from a powerful explosion, and severed limbs flying through the air, pale and bluish-white, clearly belonging to the dead.

Zom...bies?

Over the course of two classes, Qin Su had considered the contents of the photo along with his parents' strange behavior throughout his life and the way they treated their children, which was clearly different from how other children their age were treated. He had concluded that his parents might, perhaps, possibly, probably... if they weren't filming a movie, be in another... world?

And then there was his sister's "mystical" behavior.

Qin Su: "..."

It seemed their family had some kind of... "family tradition."

After thinking it over for a long time, Qin Su sat in a taxi on his way to the training site, opened the papers on his lap, and sent over a photo of a weapon schematic.

He had asked the system for "detailed weapon and mecha data," intending to get "weapon and mecha operating manuals."

But the data the system gave him included not only instructions on how to operate them, but also explanations of the weapons' construction in meticulous detail.

The system was so innocent... it really dared to give him this stuff.

If he hadn't been a nobody in the Comic World, with no money, power, or backing, he could have become an "interstellar arms dealer" with the data the system had given him.

But—

Who said he had to have those things in the Comic World to manufacture them?

The fact that his parents had people research all those things, which they hadn't explicitly told the children about but hadn't deliberately hidden from them either, showed that they could "take things over" too.

So why couldn't he develop them in the real world and "take them back" to the Comic World?

His parents, his sister, and he himself might all need them.

He had the schematics, and as for some of the special manufacturing materials he needed...

Qin Su had made up his mind. He would become a glorious battlefield cleaner.

In plain language... he'd pick up junk and bring it back to "support the family."

But then again...

A whole minute had passed. Why hadn't Mom and Dad replied yet?

After opening the picture and examining it carefully from top to bottom, Qin Ji and Si Fei looked at each other, seeing shock mixed with pleasant surprise in each other's eyes.

If this weapon were manufactured, it would be top-grade!

"It's just these materials, like this soft DX-9264H gold... wait." Some of the materials named on it didn't exist in the real world, or even in the world they were in now! Si Fei stopped mid-sentence and looked up at Qin Ji.

The same question was written in both their eyes: Where on earth had their child ended up?

Qin Ji looked down and typed a reply in the group: Sweetheart, your dad and I will be home in three days.

Qin Su: Okay, Mom.

Qin Su's heart settled.

After replying to his mother, Qin Su called his sister, but no one answered.

Qin Ji had also called Qin Dai after Qin Su sent the photo and she noticed that their eldest hadn't responded. Her call went unanswered as well.

Assistant Jiang received two messages almost simultaneously, one from Si Fei and one from Qin Su, asking where Qin Dai was.

Sitting in his own office, Assistant Jiang looked up through the one-way glass toward the president's office. "..."

An hour earlier, President Qin had ended the meeting with a grim face, entered her office radiating a gloomy aura, and instructed everyone not to go in and disturb her.

Jiang Cheng relayed Qin Dai's words to both of them and left the Qin family to decide whether he should knock and disturb President Qin.

He couldn't afford to offend any of them.

After training, Qin Su returned to the apartment and continued reading the paper documents he'd brought over. He finished them ahead of time and even got an extra hour of sleep.

Half an hour before midnight, Qin Su's alarm woke him.

Although he'd already bathed before bed, Qin Su still took a quick five-minute shower after waking, spent five minutes drying his hair, and twenty minutes getting himself ready from head to toe.

He made sure that, after the incident at the training ground, there wouldn't be the slightest "imperfect flaw" in his appearance now that he would draw even more attention from his classmates and the comic's readers.

Once he was done, Qin Su sent his sister Qin Dai a message, asking her to come to the apartment and open the safe to get the weapon schematics when she had time.

Then, accompanied by the familiar white light, he returned to the Comic World feeling refreshed.

This time, Qin Su landed in the dormitory.

There were still nearly two hours before class, so Qin Su picked up where he'd left off.

At two o'clock, Qin Su arrived on time at the location the teacher had posted in the class group for this lesson.

But the teacher hadn't arrived yet.

Because of what had happened at the training ground yesterday, most of the students in Class 6 looked at Qin Su with admiration.

[Ahhh, he's here! Baby 1, mwah!]

[Another brand-new solo runway show from Baby 1 today (satisfied)]

[There's an empty seat next to Mu Bao. Was it saved for Qin Su on purpose?]

[Aren't there still a few empty seats in the front row? Qin Su is interested in He Muzhi, but judging by his personality, I don't think he'd sit with him.]

"..."

They were right.

He Muzhi was the protagonist! Besides the fact that Qin Su disliked being too close to people, he also had to maintain his "unapproachable big shot" persona, so naturally he couldn't sit with the protagonist.

Under the "viewers'" gazes, Qin Su walked toward his chosen seat at an unhurried pace. All the while, his sidelong gaze swept over everything he could see around the classroom: weapons and mechas of every description.

In the end, Qin Su sat in the front row, never once looking at the seat beside He Muzhi.

At the same time, Qin Su saw the "favorability points from natives" notification keep popping up, while his health in the upper-right corner continued to rise.

Qin Su discovered another benefit of gaining his classmates' favorability: because he had once sat in the front row to the left of the classroom's center aisle, his classmates had now left that seat "empty" for him.

Though... the seat his classmates had specially left "empty" for him was surrounded by a group of Alphas spreading outward from the protagonist, He Muzhi.

There wasn't a single Beta or Omega.

In other words, Qin Su was now surrounded on all sides by a group of tall, burly Alphas in the weapons and mecha fundamentals class, except for the lectern in front of him.

The protagonist, He Muzhi, was sitting directly behind him.

Rounding things up, it was equivalent to the comic's camera capturing his every move from behind.

Qin Su: "..."

Devilish!

Fortunately, he had washed his hair, had no dandruff, wasn't going bald, and had carefully styled his hair before coming so that it looked perfect from every angle. Even an unflattering angle wouldn't shatter the "viewers'" illusions.

After looking around the classroom and behind him, it was time to look in front.

Once Qin Su sat down, his gaze naturally turned forward, toward the weapons and mechas around the lectern.

After looking them over, Qin Su silently breathed a sigh of relief.

Tap, tap, tap...

The next second after Qin Su withdrew his gaze from the mechas and weapons around him, he heard familiar footsteps coming from the classroom entrance at the front.

It wasn't the teacher. It was Raymond.

During yesterday's run at the training ground, as well as during the earlier classes, Qin Su had already discreetly memorized his classmates' names. Based on their builds and heights and their conversations, he had made a list on his Optical Brain, with recordings of each person's footsteps and voice after their names.

As everyone looked over, thinking it was the teacher, Raymond soon appeared before them.

His hair had been carefully styled and combed back to make him look mature. He wore a black shirt with gold trim, three buttons undone to reveal his prominent collarbones and chest, fitted dress pants and polished leather shoes...

Everything showed obvious signs of careful grooming.

Qin Su: "..."

Today's class... is weapons and mecha fundamentals, right? Why does Raymond look a little familiar like this?

The classmates who had been quietly observing Qin Su while the teacher was still absent stared in astonishment when they saw Raymond.

What... has gotten into Raymond?

The classmates couldn't make sense of Raymond's outfit today either. As far as they knew, they were here for class, not a banquet.

Raymond had taken a little longer to get ready. When he arrived at the classroom, fortunately the teacher hadn't come yet. He quickly sat down in the seat he had specifically asked He Muzhi to save for him after learning yesterday that Xuan Jingxi would be coming to assist the teacher—right beside He Muzhi.

[???]

[So Mu Bao wasn't saving it for Boss 1 after all. It was "specifically" for Raymond. See that? Stop shipping them randomly. My Boss 1 shines on his own]

[First Boss 1, then Raymond. This... the Plague God seems to have gotten the gender wrong (doge). Waiting for the Plague God to say, "For you, I'll become an Alpha~"]

Qin Su: "..."

Fortunately, he had only ever planned to "ride the hype" and had no intention of getting close. Only by resolutely maintaining his mysterious big shot persona of "remaining high above, never descending from the pedestal" could he make the "viewers" who couldn't get their fill of shipping him want him all the more because they couldn't have him.

Throwing himself at He Muzhi would only earn him disdain and disgust. If he broke character and sat beside He Muzhi to satisfy the viewers' momentary expectations, who knew how many viewers would come to dislike him—a character who would become cannon fodder if he lost his popularity points.

They would think he had "cheapened himself."

"Thank you," Raymond said to He Muzhi after sitting down.

He Muzhi: "...You're welcome."

After saying that, He Muzhi couldn't resist asking in a low voice, "Raymond, are you... a peacock showing off its feathers today?"

Fighting side by side yesterday had brought the two classmates closer. They no longer spoke as cautiously as they had when they first met, and were a little more casual.

Qin Su: "..."

Mystery solved. No wonder I thought it looked familiar too. I've done the same thing myself.

[...Pfft, hahaha, Mu Bao, you really dared to say it]

[These two... ooh, why do they look kind of shippable too? This Raymond is pretty easy on the eyes, if you ask me (doge)]

[@Boss 1, could you take a lesson from him? (wink) (take note) (unbuttoned down to the chest) (not enough collarbone) (did you hear me) (not enough collarbone)]

Qin Su: "..."

I saw it. I didn't hear it.

Even if I stretch things ten thousand steps, how could that not count as the same as nothing?

He Muzhi was telling the truth, and Raymond didn't feel embarrassed. Instead, he looked down and pondered for a moment, then undid another button. "That's right!" he said proudly.

As soon as Raymond finished speaking, two sets of unfamiliar footsteps came from outside the classroom door.

Under the classmates' curious gazes, Duan Lin, the teacher for weapons and mecha fundamentals, walked in.

Xuan Jingxi was behind her.

The moment Xuan Jingxi entered the classroom, she didn't need to search at all. Her gaze was immediately caught by the black-haired young man in the front row.

Black hair and black eyes should have been inconspicuous among the students with their striking hair and eye colors.

Yet on Qin Su, those black locks and eyes seemed unusually vivid, impossible to ignore.

Xuan Jingxi understood that this was because of Qin Su's aura.

Meeting Xuan Jingxi's gaze, Qin Su couldn't help recalling how, at the freshman entrance ceremony, he had watched her demonstrate a mecha on the platform in order to "act profound" under the probing gazes of the others.

"..." Qin Su felt guilty.

So... she noticed me looking at her back then?

Xuan Jingxi was known to be exceptionally gifted in weapons and mechas. Now she had appeared in a weapons and mecha class and looked straight at him the moment she entered. Did that mean... she had come prepared... to make things difficult for him?