Beyond the Zenith

Claiming credit falsely was a crime. The greater the merit, the greater the crime. Recklessly reporting merit for a subordinate was naturally also a fault, with a corresponding responsibility to bear.

The lives of sixty-three Azure Coalition soldiers, all the source energy and material reserves at Supply Depot 700, and the survival of all twenty-two related non-combat staff had all been saved.

This was a great merit, and thus had to be handled with great care.

Li Wangqiang had actually felt rather conflicted inside after hearing Lao Jian’s recounting of the situation last night.

The last remaining unsolved question in the Supply Depot 700 incident finally had a lead, with all signs pointing toward a recruit named Han Qingyu.

This was an undeniably good thing. A man from his own Regiment 425 was responsible.

At the same time, however, it was hard to immediately believe and accept that an ordinary kid had done it. It really was rather unbelievable for a veteran rich in real combat experience.

It was precisely for this reason that Regiment Commander Li had taken it upon himself to surprise interrogate Han Qingyu and get a proper read on the situation.

What else could he do? He could hardly say, “Come, young comrade Han! There’s great merit lying here on the ground. Is it yours?”

That guy was the ringleader of last night’s lights-out meat-grabbing affair. He had the guts to snatch the beef last night; how could he lack the guts to pick up this merit?

“So, you’re saying you killed those two people? Are you sure?” the female officer asked, pressing on with the interrogation with as stern an expression as she could muster.

“Right. Two of them I killed, the other one I didn’t. The other one died first; he was killed by those two.”

This statement was a little hard to follow, but fortunately, everyone present had a grasp of the sequence of events and could understand it.

“Okay, then here is a point you can’t explain.” The male officer jabbed his finger hard against the tabletop. “There’s no reason you wouldn’t have told the platoon leader of District 752, Lao Jian, who took you there at the time.”

“There is,” Han Qingyu said. “I was afraid he’d kill me.”

“What?!” The male officer, the female officer, and even Li Wangqiang all exclaimed at once, though with varying degrees of loudness.

In the adjoining room, Lao Jian stood up, wanting to speak, but was pressed back down.

“Am—am I that kind of person?” Lao Jian complained with a bitter, aggrieved smile at the staff officer.

“He’s the kind of person who would bite the hand that feeds him,” Han Qingyu said bluntly.

Lao Jian shot to his feet again, but luckily, the staff officer was prepared. He immediately wrapped one arm around him and clamped the other hand over his mouth, pinning the man down firmly.

“This Platoon Leader Lao... Maybe he’s under a lot of stress, so his mood swings can get... unpredictable,” Han Qingyu continued earnestly. “I once saved his life. After he came to, he first thanked me, then immediately turned on me. He pressed a knife to my throat and asked whether I wanted to kneel and beg for mercy. I said I’d beg, and he said it was no use.”

This was a completely faithful reconstruction, plainly recounted by Han Qingyu.

Wasn’t this deliberate humiliation? Bullying? Cruelty? By this point, the two officers were already finding it hard to keep listening and were forcefully holding themselves back from interrupting.

Regiment Commander Li Wangqiang frowned, expression turning somewhat ugly.

Inside the adjoining room, the staff officer looked at Lao Jian with different eyes.

“I was just... messing with him a bit at the time,” Lao Jian explained feebly, unable to deny Han Qingyu’s words. “Testing him too. I really did appreciate him, and my gut told me this kid’s a good seedling.”

The Azure Coalition’s actual policy was, of course, not as Lao Jian had claimed back then, that any outsider who witnessed it would be killed on sight. Moreover, beyond enlisting in the army, there were, in fact, several other options too.

Otherwise, what if a grandma had seen it? Force her to enlist as well?

That obviously wouldn’t do. An old granny likely couldn’t even move with the source energy maneuvering device in the first place, let alone fight.

It was just that in most actual situations, when platoon leaders ran into someone they were satisfied with—or found interesting or suitable—they often liked to deliberately bring up the path of enlisting, even making it out to be the only path, and those above tacitly allowed them to do so.

Nevertheless, Lao Jian’s approach really did sound quite excessive when laid out in such a way.

Li Wangqiang considered this for a moment, reined himself in, and decided to set the matter aside for now.

Meanwhile, Han Qingyu was preoccupied with his own thoughts. He knew these people would not be swayed so easily. They wouldn’t be fully convinced if he only offered this one worry as his rationale.

“But the most important reason I didn’t dare say it at the time wasn’t Platoon Leader Lao.” Han Qingyu paused. “It’s that I simply couldn’t be sure I’d killed correctly. I was afraid that I might have gotten the identities of each side mixed up.”

The two officers exchanged a blank glance. This held up, but came with it a new question of its own.

“You mean, you killed those two people without even knowing whether they were friend or foe?” the pair asked in near unison.

“Not exactly. I was at least sixty or seventy percent certain that they were enemies,” Han Qingyu honestly admitted. “Mostly because the person they killed was wearing the same clothes and equipment as Platoon Leader Lao and the others.”

“And you decided to kill them because of this sixty or seventy percent certainty that they were enemies?” asked the female officer.

Han Qingyu shook his head. “No. If it were up to me, I’d have kept on hiding and not dealt with any of it.”

That was very real. This was an honest kid.

After thinking it over, the female officer’s gaze turned somewhat coaxing. “But in the end, you still killed them. Was it because you heard them say something? Or you sensed what they were about to do?”

This question already carried a leading tendency, showing that the officer was actually no professional. The male officer hurriedly gave his partner a secret reminder that she couldn’t do that.

Fortunately, Han Qingyu was still honest to a fault. “No.”

At this point, Li Wangqiang finally could not help but step in personally. He stood up and walked over, face stern. “Then why did you kill them?”

“Because the body of the person they killed fell not far in front of me.”

“So?”

“The body fell right by me. They would’ve seen me when they came round to loot it if I didn’t flee. At that point, all I could do was gamble that they’d be kind enough to let me go.”

“You felt that wasn’t too likely?”

“Mm.”

“So why didn’t you flee then? Why did you choose to kill?”

“Because to flee I’d have had to crawl several dozen meters, maybe several hundred, gambling that they wouldn’t hear me the whole way. Whereas to kill, I only had to lunge forward once.”

Li Wangqiang wanted to cheer for the kid’s decisiveness and had to pause to compose himself briefly before going on. “But how did you know you could kill them? You have to understand, they were both wearing devices, and before that, you must have already seen—”

“Their devices weren’t lit at the time,” Han Qingyu said.

Li Wangqiang was surprised. “Oh?”

“It just so happened that during the idle chat in the vehicle earlier, Platoon Leader Lao had mentioned that someone like him would die all the same from a single stab if he didn’t activate his device. I figured those two probably weren’t all that much stronger than Platoon Leader Lao.”

In the adjoining room, Lao Jian was offended. What do you mean, not much stronger than me? I could’ve easily killed them both alone, all right?

Platoon Leader Lao was all worked up. For the sake of his pride as a platoon leader, he had rushed into combat, casually waving off his injuries the whole time. He had even waited until he had descended the mountain before coughing up blood.

In the office, Regiment Commander Li fell into deep thought. He looked up. “So you just lunged and killed those two people?”

“Mm.”

“So you really didn’t know anything else?”

“Nope.”

“And there wasn’t any element of wanting to avenge your Coalition comrades either?”

“No, I didn’t think of that. I didn’t have the ability to.”

“You—”

“I just wanted to survive.”

Up to this point, every word Han Qingyu had said was true. He had merely left out a portion of the story and tried hard to keep the questions from heading in that direction.

Regiment Commander Li suddenly burst into hearty laughter and leaned in to give Han Qingyu a hard slap on his shoulder. “Good lad. What guts. Your luck wasn’t bad either. It seems one of their source energy blocks was depleted in their fight with our soldier, while the other had a little remaining. That’s how you got an opportunity like that, you know?”

Oh, right. It’s abnormal for an energy core to fly, land, and run dry exactly at the moment it touches down, but a blue crystal block running dry from combat consumption is actually the norm, Han Qingyu thought, outwardly nodding in agreement.

“So I killed two enemies?” he asked after a couple of seconds.

“That’s right.” Li Wangqiang chuckled.

“How much money will you reward me? Will my pay go up after the recruit period?”

“You’re... very fond of money. Did you remember to sweep the battlefield at the time?”

“Mm, I deliberately messed it up at first, but afterward I tidied it up neatly again,” Han Qingyu answered in the same tone as before, trying to obscure the fact that this was the question he actually feared most.

Li Wangqiang pressed, “What I mean is, did you take anything away with you?”

“I did. At first, I took the knife and the cone-shaped dagger, but then I got scared, so I put them back.”

Another burst of laughter from the Regiment Commander. “And then?”

“And then I found a new ditch and lay face down.”

Li Wangqiang laughed heartily again. The two officers in charge of interrogating and recording couldn’t hold it back either.

The interrogation ended here. For them, it seemed everything had already been laid out clearly.

As for Han Qingyu, he still didn’t understand what exactly he had done. He just thought he’d passed another test, and that there even seemed to be a little sweet reward to taste.

Regiment Commander Li didn’t spell it out for him either, only seeing him out the door with an arm draped over his shoulder and urging him to hurry back before training began.

Afterward, he immediately signed the interrogation record and said excitedly, “Send it up. Report the merit.”

“Report everything truthfully? Including the fact that he actually didn’t know?” The female officer looked a little hesitant.

Li Wangqiang nodded firmly. “Of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two officers saluted, then left.

When Lao Jian came out of the adjoining room, Regiment Commander Li was muttering to himself, smug and pleased, “Supply Depot 700 belongs to Regiment 423, right? Hahaha... Chen Mazi, this time you owe my Regiment 425 a big favor, hahahaha.”

Lao Jian happily shared the glory. Of course, he was happy for Han Qingyu, but he also couldn’t help but think, You little brat... that’s a separate score.

“What the hell are you smiling at?” Li Wangqiang turned to him with righteous indignation. “Get ready to salute him. And I’m telling you, don’t forget that you’re counted among the sixty-three Azure soldiers saved at 700. Twice. That kid has saved you twice now. If you had a daughter, you ought to promise her to him... Though of course he might not even want her.”

This head-on barrage left Lao Jian dumbfounded. It took him a long while before he protested, unconvinced, “Hold on. Don’t I share the merit too?”

“Merit, my ass. As a district platoon leader, you violated regulations by privately bringing a non-enlisted, non-combat civilian onto the battlefield. You’d better await your punishment.” Li Wangqiang chewed him out.

Lao Jian didn’t understand this sudden switch. The former platoon leader had been so warm with him just yesterday!

Of course, he wasn’t truly worried. He knew he had violated the rules. Still, if one were to take into consideration his willingness to rescue 700 and the merit for it, the two would normally cancel out, leaving neither merit nor fault.

“Platoon Leader—No wait, Regiment Commander,” Lao Jian corrected. “Why do I suddenly get this feeling that you’re targeting me?”

“Eh, targeting you? You’re right, I am. So what?” Li Wangqiang asked brazenly. “Do you want to beg for mercy? It’ll be useless even if you do.”