The call was from Li Gaoliang.
A few days earlier, Lu Zhou had thought about finding a chance to call and thank him. But since that cargo ship might still be out at sea, he had put it aside for the time being.
He hadn't expected him to be back after just a week.
As soon as the call connected, Lu Zhou asked,
"You're back in the country already?"
"The cargo ship only just passed through the Bering Sea, but the navy has taken over and is towing it toward our port. They don't need us to handle the ship anymore, so we came back ahead of it."
"Glad you made it back safely." Lu Zhou smiled and nodded. "Thanks for last time."
"Hey, don't thank me. I'm just a soldier. Besides, if we're talking about thanks, you're the one who found a way to fix both my legs. Without your Neural Bridging Technology, I'd have been discharged ages ago. How many times do you think I'd have to thank you to make up for that?"
"All right, I won't keep thanking you, then. I'll treat you to a few drinks sometime. Anyway, is everyone all right? There weren't any casualties, were there?"
Hearing that, Li Gaoliang burst out laughing and waved a hand.
"What casualties could a bunch of walking first-class merit awards possibly cause us? If they could, all this gear would be wasted on us!"
"Besides, the soldiers in our brigade had already run more than a thousand drills in the Virtual Reality System. The moment we landed, we hit them so hard they didn't know what was happening. They couldn't fight back at all."
As he spoke, Li Gaoliang gave Lu Zhou a vivid account of the operation.
Although a real battlefield felt very different from