The data model in his hand kept rotating, its three-dimensional light projecting onto his lenses and reflecting streaks of cold light.
Within the model, variables fluctuated wildly. Every parameter was triggering an alarm, but the reason for those alarms...
He couldn't calculate it.
He couldn't calculate anything...
Early the next morning, Cao Xianming walked out of his tent with dark circles under both eyes.
They were so dark he looked as though someone had punched him twice, and his eyes were bloodshot.
He had spent the entire night running models, processing the data seven times, and arrived at only one conclusion:
By any data model, the terms those women had offered were reasonable.
So reasonable it was abnormal.
"Look!"
A woman shrieked in the camp.
Her voice carried irrepressible excitement and a certain malice.
"Did that vixen take Captain Cao's first time last night?"
"Why else would he look so drained?"
Cao Xianming's steps faltered.
He looked up and saw the eyes of the women in the convoy.
Pair after pair, like wolves' eyes lighting up on the grassland at night.
Some were stifling laughter, their lips pressed together while their eyes raked over him;
Some harbored ill intent, their gazes sliding from his neck to below his waist with a naked appraisal;
Others had blatant jealousy and regret in their eyes, as though asking...
Why hadn't they been the one to take his first time?
These women stared at him.
As though staring at a piece of meat.
A chill shot up Cao Xianming's back, but he kept grinning, greeting everyone one by one.
His smile was exactly the same as usual, perhaps even...
A little brighter.
But he was counting in his head.
Seventeen.
In that brief instant, at least seventeen women had looked at him that way.