Chapter 9: You Still Have a Home in Jiangzhou?
"I'm a guy who works with a scalpel..."
The words weren't even out of his mouth.
Gu Ye pressed the pad of his index finger against the trigger.
"Bang!"
Propellant gas burst inside the chamber.
The brass bullet tore through the rifling and shot out of the muzzle.
Massive recoil traveled up the stock and slammed hard into Gu Ye's right shoulder.
Gu Ye didn't flinch.
The deltoid and pectoral muscles in his shoulder tightened instinctively.
Like a slab of cast iron.
Pressing dead against the wooden stock.
The muzzle kicked upward from the force.
It rose less than half an inch.
Gu Ye's left hand—the web between thumb and index—bore down.
This hand had once hovered under surgical lights, gripping a needle holder, suturing coronary arteries thinner than a hair.
Hovering like that for four hours straight.
Not a single millimeter of tremor.
Now it was being used to press down on the handguard of a Type 95 rifle.
Talk about overkill.
His wrist sank slightly.
His knuckles locked.
The kicked-up muzzle was forced back into position by a brutal yet precise pressure.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The remaining four rounds—Gu Ye didn't even bother re-aiming through the aperture sight.
In the view of [Eagle-Eye Dynamic Vision].
That chest target a hundred meters away might as well have been pressed against the tip of his nose.
The crosswind.
The trajectory of swirling dust.
Even the faintest effect air humidity might have on ballistics.
All of it was sliced apart and analyzed by these freakish eyes, fed straight back to the brain.
The rhythm of his trigger pulls.
Was like the beeping of an ECG monitor in an operating room.
Uniform, cold, precise to the fraction.
Less than three seconds.
All five rounds left the chamber.
Hot brass casings scrambled out of the ejection port.
Tumbling through the air, clinking against each other with crisp metallic rings.
The last two casings hadn't even hit the ground.
Gu Ye's finger had already left the trigger.
His left thumb pressed the magazine catch.
Dropped the empty mag in one motion.
Tossed it casually onto the moisture-proof mat.
The polymer magazine hit the canvas surface and bounced once.
A hundred meters out.
In the target pit.
The target spotter was a senior private who'd served three years.
He was hunched against the concrete pit wall, neck tucked, gripping a long wooden pole.
Hearing the gunfire stop, he poked half his head out and looked up at the target sheet overhead.
Wind rustled the paper noisily.
The senior private gave it a glance.
The outer rings were spotless.
The eight-ring and nine-ring areas—not even a paper fuzz was disturbed.
"Missed? Off target?"
The senior private muttered, reaching up to yank the target frame down.
He brought his face close to look.
The moment he did, his breath caught in his throat.
In the white center circle of the ten-ring.
Where a single bullet hole should have been, a coin-sized tear had been ripped open.
The paper edges curled backward in irregular radial spikes.
Five bullet holes.
All smashed into that one hole.
Five rounds had punched through the bullseye on nearly the same trajectory.
The senior private's hand on the wooden pole started shaking.
His palm was slick with cold sweat.
What kind of psycho could produce a shot grouping like this?
On the range, there was only the rustle of wind through dry grass.
Over a hundred recruits stood with their mouths hanging open, like a flock of ducks with their necks wrung.
Dead silence across the field.
They'd just watched Gu Ye stand there casually.
Raised the rifle, "bang bang bang," and done.
Compared to the Company Commander's textbook prone aiming, this looked like he was just goofing off.
Chen Dabai swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing twice.
"Ye—Brother Ye's done?"
The lanky recruit next to him scratched his scalp, digging a chunk of yellow mud out from under his nail.
"Must be done. At that speed... definitely all misses."
"No shit. The Company Commander aimed forever. He didn't even use three seconds—if he hit the target, I'll eat this moisture-proof mat!"
By the firing line.
Qian Qiang stood behind and to the side of Gu Ye.
He wasn't looking at the distant target—he was staring dead at Gu Ye's shoulder.
Those five shots just now.
The stacked recoil from rapid fire was enough to knock an inexperienced recruit back two steps.
But Gu Ye's shoulder hadn't budged.
Like he was holding a toy water gun instead of the real thing.
Qian Qiang pulled a crushed pack of Honghe cigarettes from his camo pants pocket.
Took one out, bit it between his lips.
Fumbled in his pocket for a lighter.
Found the lighter.
Just pressed the flint wheel—"click."
A yellow flame shot up.
"Mark the target!" Qian Qiang shouted around the cigarette, voice booming.
Above the target pit.
The long wooden pole finally rose, slow and deliberate.
The red-and-white circular marker wobbled violently twice in the air.
Then it dropped straight onto the ten-ring bullseye.
Tapped hard. Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four times.
Five times.
The marker jabbed dead center on the bullseye and went still.
The spotter's voice came through the loudspeaker.
With an obvious tremor, like he'd been soaked in ice water.
"Five—fifty points! Perfect score!"
"All hits in the ten-ring center!"
The voice from the speaker exploded across the empty range.
The windsock flapped noisily.
The recruit formation sank into an even deeper silence.
The lanky guy who'd said he'd eat the moisture-proof mat had his mouth open wide enough to stuff an apple in.
Chen Dabai slapped his own thigh, hissing from the sting.
"Fi—fifty points? Standing position? Unsported?"
Nobody answered him.
Everyone felt like they hadn't slept well last night and were hearing things.
The lighter flame in Qian Qiang's hand burned down to his thumbnail.
He didn't feel the pain.
His jaw dropped on its own.
The unlit Honghe cigarette slipped from between his lips.
Landed on his dirt-caked leather boot, then rolled into the mud.
"Impossible."
Qian Qiang released the hot lighter.
Strode over, shoving aside the stunned recruits beside him.
Rushed to the firing line, grabbed a high-power monocular scope.
Jammed it straight against his right eye.
In the magnified field of view.
The tear in the ten-ring bullseye was crystal clear.
Qian Qiang had spent eight years as a recon soldier.
He could tell at a glance—that was absolutely not the mark of a single bullet.
Which meant Gu Ye hadn't just shot a perfect score.
His shot dispersion was even tighter than firing a Type 88 sniper rifle from prone.
Qian Qiang lowered the scope.
His chest heaved violently, breathing like a broken bellows.
He turned his head, staring at Gu Ye like he was looking at a monster.
Gu Ye was wiping the back of his hand against his camo pant leg.
This cheap gun oil smelled awful.
Greasy and sticky, made his whole body uncomfortable.
Meeting Qian Qiang's ghost-seeing gaze, he flipped the rifle around and held it out by the barrel.
"Company Commander, still want to compete?" Gu Ye asked.
His voice was as flat as ever.
Like he was asking whether the company was adding a meal tonight.
"You—have you ever touched a gun before, you little bastard?" Qian Qiang snatched the rifle, his knuckles white.
"Never." Gu Ye told the truth.
"Bullshit! Never touched one and you shoot like that?!" Qian Qiang's voice cracked, jumping an octave.
Gu Ye looked at the veins bulging on Qian Qiang's neck.
Figured the Company Commander had too much internal heat—should drink some honeysuckle tea to cool down.
"I told you."
Gu Ye raised his right hand, fingers spread.
It was a pair of long, clean, well-proportioned hands.
Steady as a rock in the wind.
"Surgery requires peeling apart nerves under a microscope. Incision error can't exceed zero point five millimeters."
His fingers flexed slightly, forming the posture of holding a needle holder.
"One slip of the hand, nick the major artery, and the patient dies on the table."
Gu Ye lowered his hand, looking at Qian Qiang.
"The recoil on this gun is predictable. You just press down along its force—a few millimeters of muscle contraction cancels it out."
He shrugged, tone sincere.
"I'm a scalpel guy. Steady hands, precise muscle control."
"That's pretty reasonable, right?"
That's pretty reasonable, right?
The words hit Qian Qiang's ears like a sledgehammer.
Reasonable my ass!
By your logic, every sniper in the army should go get a medical degree?
Qian Qiang stared dead at Gu Ye.
His originally shocked eyes began to change.
The doubt, the disbelief—burned away like they'd been set on fire.
What replaced them was pure, extreme fanaticism.
Like a wolf that hadn't eaten for three days spotting a chunk of bloody meat.
His eyeballs even took on a frightening red glow.
Qian Qiang whipped around.
Facing the hundred-plus recruits still frozen in stone.
He sucked in a huge breath of cold air tinged with gunpowder.
Then let out a roar that shook the entire hillside.
"Did you motherfuckers see that?!"
"A Combat Medic! Ran five kilometers with a thirty-jin pack and came in first! Shot a fifty-point perfect score!"
Qian Qiang's spit flew in the wind.
"You bunch of trash still have the nerve to breathe?"
The recruits shrank their necks, not daring to make a sound.
Qian Qiang turned, pointing at Gu Ye.
"Starting tomorrow!"
"Gu Ye is your tactical auxiliary Instructor!"
Qian Qiang's voice exploded over the range, ringing painfully in everyone's ears.
"All recruits in the company—handed over to him for training!"
"Anyone who says one word against it, I'll skin him alive!"
The wind suddenly stopped.
Gu Ye stood there with those rock-steady hands.
The calm on his face cracked open.
He looked at Qian Qiang, then at the ashen-faced recruits.
Completely dumbfounded.