Page 21

Watch out for the trap!

Watch out for the trap!

The forest was still dewy in the early morning, and Gu Xiaoxi, agile and swift, fled through it, soaking her clothes.

She climbed up a large tree with a sullen mood to survey the terrain.

Damn it, the mountain range stretched on endlessly, where the hell had she run off to?

Could anyone tell her if she was even on Earth anymore?

Why was there not a single soul in sight?

Gu Xiaoxi leaned against a tree branch to rest, having run for an hour and a half.

She was hungry, tired, thirsty, and had not even found a single fruit.

This little forest was even poorer than she was.

Gu Xiaoxi thought, she had run so far that even the instructor who was so fierce just now couldn’t catch up with her even if he had wings!

And that was indeed the case!

Gu Xiaoxi planned to rest for a moment before deciding what to do next.

She had just closed her eyes.

The buzzing sound of planes came from above!

Gu Xiaoxi abruptly sat up, alert, gripping the tree branch tightly and hiding under the layers of leaves.

Peeping through the gaps in the leaves, she stared at the five helicopters overhead.

From the helicopters, soldiers in camouflage, fully armed, were parachuting down and landing in the forest around her.

Gu Xiaoxi craned her neck, watching in shock.

She counted roughly fifty men.

What were these people doing here?

Chasing her?

She immediately shook her head in denial.

She was just a soldier who hadn’t even made a name for herself in the new recruits squad, was she worth such a massive mobilization?

“Everyone, pay attention, conduct a thorough carpet search.

It’s said to be a girl, and the orders from above are to go easy when you catch her,” Zhong Ming, the captain of the Special Forces, a man nimble and fierce as a tiger.

“…” When Gu Xiaoxi heard this, she was utterly dumbfounded.

Weren’t they here to chase her?

In this godforsaken place, she was the only girl.

The orders from above!

It was probably Quan Shaoqing.

Damn!

Who else could have the authority, except for him, to deploy the Special Forces to catch her, a newbie?

“Quan Shaoqing, you’re really ruthless!” Gu Xiaoxi ground her teeth as she lay motionless at the top of the tree, ready to take a nap.

She refused to believe that they could find her hidden amidst the dense leaves.

She completely overlooked the fact that there’s a detector called the infrared thermal imager.

After ten minutes, fifty men as fierce as tigers, holding N98 rifles, surrounded the twenty-meter radius around where Gu Xiaoxi was.

“Bang!” A blank round was fired directly at the branch where Gu Xiaoxi was lying.

Gu Xiaoxi, who had just drifted into sleep, sprung up only to find nothing beneath her feet, and she plummeted from the top of the tree.

“Hahaha!”

The men behind Zhong Ming couldn’t stop laughing.

They thought they were chasing someone formidable, but in the end…

A simple blank round had scared her off the tree.

Gu Xiaoxi, rubbing her sore butt, grimaced as she crawled out of the bushes with a few strands of grass sticking to her head.

She glared at the group of men in front of her, her gaze full of mischief as she said, “Guys, it’s not nice to be so rough with a beauty!”

“Beauty!”

Zhong Ming smiled, looked carefully, and sure enough, wasn’t she a beauty?

Her features were exquisite and her skin was pale; her large eyes shone brightly, more captivating than even the twinkling stars in the sky.

“Beautiful lady, where do you come from, and why are you deserting?” Zhong Ming asked with a smile.

Gu Xiaoxi rolled up her sleeves with all seriousness, hands on her hips, “Who told you I’m a soldier?”

Zhong Ming pointed at her camouflage outfit, “This says it all!”

Gu Xiaoxi’s mouth twitched, and she hurriedly explained, “I sleepwalked last night and accidentally entered the barracks of new recruits.

When I couldn’t find any clothes, I put on this.

Let me emphasize one more time, I’m not a soldier!”

Her vivid expressions instantly amused the group of men bored with training.

Her absurd excuse for deserting made her look both spoiled and adorable.

“Beautiful lady, no more excuses, let’s go!

Where you came from, that’s where you’ll return,” another Special Forces soldier said with a grin.

Gu Xiaoxi narrowed her eyes, a sly glint passing through them.

She rubbed her sore, twisted waist and stepped forward, sizing up Zhong Ming, “Did Quan Shaoqing send you?”

“Sorry, but we can’t say,” Zhong Ming replied with a smile, feeling the name Quan Shaoqing sounded familiar but couldn’t quite remember who it was.

After all, that man high above was often mentioned, but nobody would call him by his name directly.

“Stop pretending!

Take me to him,” Gu Xiaoxi demanded angrily.

“Our mission is to take you to the new recruits’ squad,” Zhong Ming said firmly, gripping the gun in his hand.

Gu Xiaoxi looked around at the circle of burly men and immediately felt a headache coming on.

None of them reacted when she mentioned Quan Shaoqing, which meant they didn’t know him.

Being sent by someone but not knowing who that person is?

Pathetic!

With a good-natured lift of her head, Gu Xiaoxi looked up at Zhong Ming, her dark eyes filled with a pleasing smile, “I was just sleeping in a tree when you guys caught me, which is a big loss for me.

So, give me a ten-second head start to run; if you can catch me, I’ll listen obediently to you.”

That ingratiating smile was dazzling.

Anyone familiar with her knew she was up to no good again.

“Girl, are you challenging us?” a Special Forces soldier burst into laughter, “You really don’t know how high the sky is or how deep the earth is.”

“Yes, I’m challenging you.

If you catch me, not only will I follow you back obediently, but I’ll also call you ‘brother’ whenever we meet,” Gu Xiaoxi said, her smile as bright as a flower, making her seem cute, foolish, and pretentious all at once—an undeniably unruly spoilt young lady.

Zhong Ming snorted coldly, eyeing Gu Xiaoxi with pride curling his lips, “You run first, I’ll count to ten.

Start…

one, two…”

He couldn’t believe this girl could stand it.

Even if he gave her a minute, he was sure to catch up with her.

If he didn’t subdue her thoroughly, it looked like his task for the day wouldn’t be easy to accomplish, especially since the person was a girl, and he had been instructed from above to be cautious.

A foxy brilliance flashed in Gu Xiaoxi’s eyes as she turned on her heels and ran.

Ten seconds were more than enough for her.

The men saw the petite figure dart into the bushes like a rabbit.

Her desperate and inelegant flight amused them all, who then burst into hearty laughter.

However, after ten seconds, the laughter died.

The girl who had dashed into the underbrush had vanished in the blink of an eye.

What the hell!

A group of men, mouths agape in laughter, froze in place, a gust of mountain wind passing through, lifting a few fallen leaves, leaving an air of desolation.

“Use the thermal imager!”

“Report, Captain!

We can’t find her!”

Zhong Ming clenched his fists, suddenly dropping his rifle and sprinting after Gu Xiaoxi’s escape route.

But just as he leaped into the air and landed in the underbrush, he fell flat on his face into a pit.

The fall was utterly inexplicable!

Just moments ago, he saw Gu Xiaoxi flee through here without stumbling, yet he fell face-first into the mud.

Meanwhile, Gu Xiaoxi, already 600 meters away, looked back at the man climbing out of the bushes and stuck out her tongue at him from a distance, “Buddy!

Watch out for holes!

I’m escaping, come and catch me if you can!”

The men were fuming, their faces changing colors in unison.

How could she run so fast?

In barely twenty seconds, she had sprinted so far in the forest?