Liang Qiuchi hurried to the assembly point. When Xiang Bei ran over panting, he couldn’t help but complain to him in a low voice, “Attacks every day, not a single night of peaceful sleep.”

Liang Qiuchi glanced at his nest-like hair and whispered, “You should cut your hair. Be careful not to get called out by the instructor.”

“Cut it for me tomorrow, I don’t mind your clumsy hands,” Xiang Bei pushed down his tousled hair to make himself less conspicuous.

A loud whistle sounded, and all the special training team members assembled within three minutes.

“According to the superior’s instructions, an illegal armed force has hijacked 20 hostages in the Lugo area. The Special Forces have already set off half an hour ago. Now the higher-ups require our team’s special training members to rush to the scene to assist in this rescue operation,” the instructor said sternly, “After disbanding, immediately go to receive weapons and equipment. Depart in five minutes!”

With another whistle, all the members immediately disbanded and ran towards the nearby equipment depot.

In addition to basic bulletproof helmets and vests, each person was equipped with two pistols, eight magazines, and an automatic rifle. In addition, there were smoke grenades, hand grenades, multipurpose bayonets, and so on.

“All live ammunition,” Xiang Bei, seeing such a complete setup, couldn’t help but feel a bit dazed, “Isn’t this just a drill?”

“It should be real combat,” Liang Qiuchi fastened the bulletproof helmet on Xiang Bei’s head and helped him strap it on, his expression somewhat serious, “Be careful.”

Xiang Bei cursed softly, realizing that the teacher’s words before training, “there may be a chance to participate in real combat missions,” weren’t just talk.

Five minutes later, nearly a hundred special training team members selected from various states of the Federation, fully armed, assembled on time and boarded three military trucks heading towards the mountains.

On the way, the training instructor briefly explained the current situation.

The hostages were taken by a civilian armed group in the Lugo area, with nearly fifty thousand members. It’s worth noting that Lugo was not even as large as a county on the Federation’s map, yet the military power of these fifty thousand people exceeded that of most counties’ police forces.

This showed how influential this illegal armed group was in the local area, far from ordinary.

This was precisely why the high-level officials of the Federation attached great importance to this sudden hostage-taking incident.

And the training camp where Liang Qiuchi was stationed was not far from Lugo, which was one of the main reasons why the higher-ups requested them to go and support the operation.

An hour later, the trucks they were riding in stopped at the foot of a mountain.

The temporary command camp of the rescue team was set up here.

Seeing that the reinforcements were a group of rookies with no combat experience, the temporary commander was very angry, “Do you think this is child’s play? Why did you send so many kids to me? They’ll just cause trouble!”

“We’re the closest ones here, the others are still on their way,” the training instructor could only persuade him to accept reality, “Weren’t we just like these kids back then, charging into battle with gritted teeth?”

“Can it be the same?” The commander pulled him aside and whispered, “On the other side is the Lugo armed group, a longtime opponent of the Federation for over a decade. Do you know that in just these two hours, I’ve already lost five brothers!”

The instructor glanced back at the row of green faces under the lights, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Xiang Bei stood at the end of the line, quietly asking Liang Qiuchi, “What are they saying? Can you hear?”

Liang Qiuchi shook his head. He only saw two people not far away carrying a stretcher and running towards a tent. Someone must be injured.

“Buddy, I’m a bit nervous,” Xiang Bei secretly hooked his hand, “As rookies like us, we shouldn’t be rushing to the front line, right?”

“No, we won’t,” Liang Qiuchi quietly held his hand and shook it as if to encourage him, “Just follow me when the time comes, don’t run around.”

“Okay, with your words, I feel relieved,” Xiang Bei grinned at him, “Remember to shield me from bullets.”

Liang Qiuchi smiled and tightened his grip on his hand, nodding, “No problem.”

With a whistle, the commander began to deploy the rescue forces.

The small team of hostage-takers was initially estimated to have around a hundred people, and they had been forced to retreat into the mountains. They threatened to kill one hostage every hour, so the rescue team could not afford to delay and wait for other support forces. They could only arrange the existing personnel to sneak into the mountains and find out the enemy’s movements.

Otherwise, if the reinforcements of the Lugo armed group arrived first, they would be even more passive.

The commander divided them into groups of eight people, each group consisting of four experienced soldiers leading four trainees. They were to infiltrate the mountains in batches and directions to carry out reconnaissance tasks.

Before entering the mountains, each group was given two photos to identify their key rescue targets for this operation—Roy Reinis and Godwin Reinis.

“It’s these two!” Xiang Bei immediately recognized the two, “How did they end up in Lugo?”

He handed the photos to Liang Qiuchi and said, “These are the old man Reinis’ son and nephew, the two troublemakers who used to race cars and chase girls near our place, remember?”

“Yeah,” Liang Qiuchi passed the photo to a comrade nearby, “We almost got into a fight with them two years ago.”

Upon hearing this, everyone looked at Xiang Bei and Liang Qiuchi in unison. The team leader, holding a gun on the side, couldn’t help but feel puzzled, “Where do you two come from? How do you know the two young masters from the Reinis family?”

“Those two are just scum,” Xiang Bei sneered, “Do we really have to save them?”

The teammate next to him shrugged and glanced at the commander not far away, whispering, “Orders from above, these two can’t even lose a single hair.”

Xiang Bei cursed.

“Alright, let’s do one final check before departure.” The team leader had everyone check their ammunition and equipment, then handed out paper and pens to the team members, saying, “Depart in three minutes.”

The four rookies looked at each other with the paper and pen in their hands.

The group leader slapped his forehead and chuckled, “I forgot you guys are on your first mission,” he took the pen cap off and put it in his mouth, explaining vaguely as he wrote, “Write a will, consider it a kind of weird departure ritual.”

“Ah…” Xiang Bei hesitated, looking around. Most of the other team members who hadn’t departed yet were busy writing something. “Can we finish in three minutes?”

“Trust me, you’ll get tired of this thing after writing it a few times,” an experienced old soldier put down his pen first, patted Xiang Bei’s shoulder jokingly, “Back in the day, my first time writing, I cried and wrote for half an hour. Now even three minutes feels too long, just write a few lines casually.”

“Yeah, let’s hope we don’t have to use these every time.” The group leader finished writing, checked the time, and reminded, “One more minute before departure.”

With time so tight, Xiang Bei handed the paper and pen back to the team leader after writing a few sentences casually. He looked at the blank paper in Liang Qiuchi’s hand and asked, “Why didn’t you write anything?”

“We’ll come back safely.”

Actually, Liang Qiuchi wanted to use these three minutes to call his family and Mo Xin, but the signal in the mountains was too weak to communicate with the outside world.

Moreover, he thought it was a bit ominous to write “I love you” on a farewell letter.

“Time’s up! Depart!”

At ten past midnight, Liang Qiuchi, Xiang Bei, and six comrades, fully armed, entered the dark and terrifying forest in a T-shaped formation, carrying out search tasks.

But at that time, Liang Qiuchi never thought that this night would drag him into darkness for the rest of his life.