After half a day passed, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, a total of 16 veterans including Xu Cheng got off the truck and began entering the jungle.

Wei Yuan wiped mud on his face, while other veterans began using leaves and branches as cover. Some people took a bite of their compressed biscuits and then gestured to ask if Xu Cheng wanted any.

Xu Cheng shook his head.

Wei Yuan looked at him and said, “Xu Cheng, now that you are the captain, how do you want to do them?”

Xu Cheng leaned against the tree, and he didn’t push the captain position around. He said, “One can’t eat hot tofu fast. With Hu Bing’s temper, he probably wants to show off his skills in front of me and would want to break away from formation to solo us. So, we don’t have to be afraid of the rest of their team, and it will give us a bigger chance.”

Wei Yuan: “Xu Cheng, you are still as cunning as ever haha, this guy indeed likes to get all the credit, and he does like to solo to prove how strong he is.”

Xu Cheng: “That’s not wrong either, because only when soloing can the soldier demonstrate his worth as the ace. It would help the team a lot if a soldier could go 1v10 in a team fight.”

Liao Shuhang: “Say, Xu Cheng, after your injury, you aren’t even worse than me now, right?”

Xu Cheng smiled. “Why do you feel that way?”

Liao Shuhang: “In the past, you were even more arrogant than Hu Bing, how come you are so cautious now? It’s not your style at all.”

Xu Cheng just grinned. “In the past, that kind of behavior would only lead to abandoning team for self-glory, and that’s immature. Since we are all a team, we should act like one. Even if I’m the ace, I will only act when necessary and solve the immediate situation as it comes up, but on the grand scheme of things, we should work together. Now, I finally know why the three of us in the past leading a team of veterans still couldn’t achieve a better rank at the competition. I think we didn’t have enough trust in each other, and if we believed in our comrades, then maybe we could have fought for higher scores.”

Wei Yuan: “Tsk tsk, I’m not really used to you being so modest, I still like the arrogant you haha! If you don’t go berserk, the other military regions might think that we are all sick cats.”

Xu Cheng smiled. “Alright, hurry up and replenish your energy. After you are done eating, we will go into the forest.”

– Command HQ, Monitoring Center –

The head instructors and tactical analysts were all gathered here, and there was a simulated terrain projected onto a desk. There was video surveillance of everywhere in the forest, and there were people responsible for monitoring the live-stream to analyze each soldiers’ critical qualities and problem-solving abilities. Then, there were also another batch of analysts that recorded down the mistakes that the soldiers made for them to pay attention and improve on in the future.

“Head Instructor, which side should we look at first?”

The head instructor stroked the beard on his chin and said, “Put up all the footage of the defending side. There’s no point watching the attacking side, just focus on the defending team.”

The technician nodded and immediately switched to the defense side.

In the videos, within half of the day, Hu Bing and the others on the defending side made a lot of traps. They already deployed their soldiers at ambushing positions. They had vision on the high ground, a sniper, fire cover, as well as a trapped route they could use to retreat all planned out ahead of time.

The head instructor looked at the defending team all staying in their locations, unmoving, as if a big war was about to erupt, and he immediately laughed, “Now there’s a bit of a gap between the veterans and rookies. If you don’t believe me, just look at Xu Cheng’s side. They are actually eating and drinking right now, and it’s just the defending side’s rookies’ brains that had been tense the whole time. This won’t work at all. If Xu Cheng’s team chooses to drag this out, then the rookies will for sure collapse if they try to be mentally focused for 24 hours.”

Indeed, when the footage capturing Xu Cheng and his team was brought up, it was just like what the head instructor said. Those guys weren’t in a hurry at all, they were all on the ground and chewing, trying to preserve energy.

The head instructor connected a mic to the speaker above Xu Cheng’s head. “You old fritters, be serious.”

Xu Cheng smiled, stood up, and gestured. “Let’s move!”

The 14 veterans immediately switched from the relaxed expression to a dignified face as they began to explore the deep forest.

“Sniper cover from behind.” Xu Cheng said to the three snipers, and they nodded as they slowed down their steps to fall to the back of the team.

“Wei Yuan, get on the tree and scout ahead,” Xu Cheng said to Old Wei.

Wei Yuan nodded, and he agilely climbed up the tree like a monkey. He picked a thicker branch so the dense leaves could cover him. After getting to the top, he pushed some leaves to the side and looked around with his telescope.

“Fifty meters ahead, seems normal,” Wei said through the mic.

Xu Cheng waved and the team advanced. In fact, without Wei Yuan’s telescope, Xu Cheng’s eyes could see anything ahead, like he had wall-hacks enabled.

For instance, when they were about a hundred meters into the forest, Liao Shuhang was too focused on the path ahead and didn’t check his foot. Suddenly, Xu Cheng whispered to him, “Shuhang, stop!”

Liao Shuhang paused and looked back at Xu Cheng, not know what instruction he had for him next.

But Xu Cheng just said, “Look below your foot, the leaves shows signs of being moved recently.”

Liao Shuhang only looked down then and checked. Usually, no one visited this place, and the leaves on the ground would wither together in a gradual pattern, but the leaves below his foot, although yellowish, after he looked closely, had obviously been rearranged, with some of the older leaves being on top of the fresh ones. He swallowed, holy crap, he was that close to becoming the first one to be eliminated. There was definitely a mine underneath.

He gave Xu Cheng a big thumbs up to indicate that he received his reminder.

“Xu Cheng’s detection ability is still excellent.” Looking at the monitor screen, the head instructor smiled gratifyingly.

“But Head Instructor, you should know, among the participants of the 36 Army Competition, the most important skill that every soldier should have is real combat experience, and right now, we lack powerful individual soldiers. Because once camouflage and ambush are exposed, a good soldier could destroy a whole team. Every year, the competition is a big chaotic battle. Within one week, 36 teams will enter the jungle to see who can be the last ones left standing. At this moment, it’s still individual aces that are more reliable.”

After participating in the competition so many times, how could the head instructor not know that?

Every year, it had always been the three Swordsmen from their military region that would stay alive until the end, but the other military regions all had over a dozen people. And that was because along with being smart, they would try to pick on the smaller teams to attack and eliminate them to boost their own scores. In here, there also existed private agreements between regions to have temporary truces first to gain an advantage. For instance, every year, the top military regions would all avoid fighting each other first so the weaker teams wouldn’t take advantage of them, and they would always team up or go out on their own to find weak teams to get lots of points first. Under such tacit cooperation, it would indeed be a bit difficult for the Three Swordsmen to break through the siege of the other teams. Every year, they wouldn’t be able to last for 2 more days before getting completely eliminated. It was quite obvious how advantageous it would be to have more aces on one team. With each additional ace soldier, they would add another layer of safety for the team’s survival and deterrence. Usually, if you were a soft tomato with a few hard spots, everyone would try to pick on you and ambush you first to get you out.