“What? That alpha's an expert invited by the Association?! Him?”
“Good thing we didn't fight him! If the Association invited him personally, there's no way we could beat him!”
“…”
Ke Ji watched thoughtfully as the man was led away by the Association. Compared with the Association alpha beside him, the alpha who had just challenged all the hunters looked even more slender.
Throughout the war, the Bounty Hunters' Association had supplied reinforcements to Ke Ji's mobile unit.
Ke Ji narrowed his eyes, intrigued.
“Hey, Ke Ji, why are you staring at that alpha? Don't tell me you've taken a fancy to him?” one hunter demanded unpleasantly.
“He's ugly and scrawny. He doesn't even look as strong as a beta. I can't imagine why the Association would want him,” another chimed in.
A stern look flashed through Ke Ji's eyes. He replied slowly, “As far as I know, the Association doesn't judge people on their appearance. Perhaps you'd understand why they chose him if you fought him.”
Several hunters snorted. One of them glared at Ke Ji in displeasure. He was nothing more than a rich kid, yet he dared mock them on their own territory? These wealthy people really had no idea of their place.
The man gave him a smile full of ill intent and suddenly said, “We're leaving now. Didn't you want a ride? Ten thousand star coins.”
Ke Ji raised an eyebrow slightly, but didn't expose the man's painfully obvious act.
He had no desire to announce to the people of this planet that the Federation's First Commander had arrived in plain sight. A handful of bounty hunters would be easy to handle, but provoking the other factions on this planet could lead to another round of internal conflict.
He nodded and transferred the money as though he suspected nothing.
“Then get aboard.” The hunter grinned as soon as the payment arrived.
A dozen or so minutes after Ke Ji boarded the airship, the hunter suddenly opened the cabin door. A fierce wind swept great pellets of snow into the cabin.
The man seized Ke Ji and dragged him toward the open hatch. Ke Ji glanced outside. They hadn't flown far from the camp at all.
Cooperatively, he put on a frightened expression and flailed his hands in a few thoroughly useless, showy moves. “What are you doing?”
“Maybe rich omegas all love outdoor adventures! Let that alpha you've got your eye on come rescue you. See you later! Ha!” The man laughed unpleasantly, caught Ke Ji by the collar, and threw him straight out of the airship.
“Hahaha! Nicely done! See if that omega landed in the snow crying for his mommy and daddy!” The other men aboard clapped, laughed, and jeered.
Someone peered out through a cabin window, but couldn't see a thing.
It was as though the omega had simply vanished.
“That's strange…” the hunters muttered, baffled.
///
Elsewhere, Lu Liran and the Association representative had arrived at the designated meeting point.
His expression was dark, and his pheromones were surging without restraint or control. The other alphas in the party couldn't help frowning and murmuring to one another.
“Mr. Lu?” A familiar voice reached Lu Liran's ears.
He raised his head and saw An Ke standing among the team members.
The tall captain waved at him, looking a little surprised. “You're here too?”
“Good pay,” Lu Liran replied succinctly.
An Ke smiled. “True enough.”
“All right, every member of the search party is now present,” said the middle-aged Association representative. “Your assignment is to locate the target as quickly as possible and get him out of danger.”
“There are ten of us. Why don't we split into two groups?” someone suggested. “Separate teams would be more efficient and stand a better chance of finding him. With five people to a team, we'd also be able to look after one another more easily.”
“Agreed. Besides, team members need to work well together. It's better to group people who already know each other or whose temperaments are compatible,” another person added, glancing toward Lu Liran with a frown.
The middle-aged man nodded slightly. “All right. Divide yourselves into groups. You have one minute.”
The alpha who had proposed the idea had clearly already chosen his team. He promptly gathered four others around him.
The remaining five, including An Ke and Lu Liran, naturally formed the second group.
“Move out.”
The party left the mountainside camp and officially entered the Alrock Glaciers.
“My name's Yuan Ding. These two are Yuan Long and Yuan Xiao. We're brothers, and the three of us graduated at the top of the Special Skills Training Camp on Desolate Star,” a young alpha assigned to Lu Liran's group announced, his eyes brimming with youthful pride and self-satisfaction.
The other two were betas, and they looked considerably more modest than Yuan Ding. They spoke much less as well.
Yuan Ding turned to An Ke. “What about you?”
“I'm a retired special-operations soldier,” An Ke said with a smile.
Yuan Ding looked at him with some admiration. “That's impressive! It's a pity the war's over. Otherwise I'd have wanted to head to the front myself. I bet I could've made private first class, maybe even lieutenant.”
An Ke merely smiled good-naturedly without saying anything.
Lu Liran's eyelid twitched. He turned a cold gaze on Yuan Ding. “A pity?”
“I don't have a stage to show off my abilities anymore,” Yuan Ding replied with a laugh.
“Anyone who treats war as a stage for showing off would be carried out horizontally in the first round of fighting,” Lu Liran said with a cold laugh.
Yuan Ding's face contorted with anger and embarrassment. He'd always been an outstanding student at the training camp. Even his instructors had declared that he would become an indispensable asset on the battlefield. No one had ever humiliated him like that.
He turned a dark look on Lu Liran, his pheromones rising in direct challenge. “You talk as though you've actually fought in a war. An Ke, have you met this guy before? You two were chatting earlier. Do you know each other?”
An Ke hesitated. The interstellar war had stretched across such a vast front. He'd only served during its latter half, in an area that was comparatively safe. There had been tens of thousands of special-operations soldiers like him, let alone front-line troops and soldiers in the even more dangerous mobile units. How could he possibly recognize every one of them?
His mouth twitched helplessly. This young man seemed to think war was nothing more than a game of make-believe.
He was just about to answer when Yuan Ding took his silence for a denial and sneered. “And what's your background? I don't remember seeing you on the training camp's honors board. With a face as… distinctive as yours, I'd definitely remember if I'd seen you.”
Lu Liran gave a contemptuous snort and walked around him, not bothering to respond.
Refusing to let the matter drop, Yuan Ding opened his optical computer and searched the background records of the search-party members.
Everyone had an impressive, extensive résumé. But when he finally found Lu Liran, the background field contained only a single, simple entry: “Bounty Hunter.”
Yuan Ding burst out laughing. “I thought you were somebody important! You're just a bounty hunter?!”
An Ke frowned in displeasure and stopped him. “We're on the same team. Don't start trouble.”
“Was I the one who started it?!” Yuan Ding raised his voice and pointed toward Lu Liran, who was already walking ahead by himself. “He started it!”
An Ke looked at the pair with a headache, then strode after Lu Liran. “Mr. Lu, forget it. Don't argue with a child. We have to cooperate as a team to finish this mission safely. If you go off alone, you're very likely to get lost among the glaciers.”
“Ha! Exactly! Just look at him. One gust from those glaciers and he'd probably blow away! He might even need us to come rescue him. Quit dragging the team down and get back here! Apologize, and I'll forgive you!” Yuan Ding lifted his chin arrogantly.
Yuan Long and Yuan Xiao caught their brother by the arms and tried to signal that he'd gone far enough.
Lu Liran chuckled derisively and cast An Ke a flat glance. “I don't like accommodating other people. And I don't like splitting my commission.”
He strode off without looking back, giving An Ke a warning as he went. “Don't follow me.”
An Ke stopped short, then finally had no choice but to return to the group.
“Ha! He's gone? Good riddance. He wouldn't have been any use anyway. Just a bounty hunter—what could he possibly know about surviving among glaciers?” Yuan Ding scoffed.
An Ke frowned at him and asked coldly, “And you? Have you ever actually survived in the wilderness under conditions like these?”
Yuan Ding was stumped. They'd encountered simulations of environments like this in training, but simulations meant props and scenarios deliberately set up by instructors. They were nothing like an entirely untamed wilderness.
Unwilling to be looked down upon, Yuan Ding turned on An Ke with an indignant expression. “If you admire that guy so much, why don't you go join his team?”
“Because I know that if he's determined to act alone, it means he has the ability to do so. He doesn't need me telling him what to do.”
An Ke's gaze grew heavy as he took a step forward and warned them in a low voice, “As for you three boys fresh out of training camp, it's only because of my duty as a soldier that I don't want to watch you blunder onto a glacier tongue and freeze into three statues.”
Yuan Ding was stunned by the anger in An Ke's restrained expression, and for once he had nothing to say.
When someone who was usually a mild-mannered, agreeable good fellow finally got angry, the contrast was bound to make an impression. This little team was excellent proof of the theory.
Having finally parted company with the others, Lu Liran switched on his livestream.
The interstellar livestreaming platform generally provided streamers with a free camera sphere. Its picture quality was only standard definition, and it supported the most basic broadcasting functions.
But for the demanding outdoor content Lu Liran had planned, such a camera sphere would be nowhere near adequate.
Fortunately, the System panel had its own sophisticated device: powerful autofocus, resistance to extreme temperatures, ultra-sensitive tracking of moving subjects, day-and-night modes, 360-degree intelligent sensors, and much more. A single camera sphere like this was probably worth more than Lu Liran's entire commission for the mission.
A small golden camera sphere floated into the air, and the livestream began.
Lu Liran titled his channel: [Wilderness Survival: The Giant at Thirty Below—Alrock's Glaciers in Extreme Cold]
A small, clear, transparent window appeared within his field of vision, displaying real-time activity in the livestream room. Viewers' comments would show up there as they arrived. At the same moment, an entirely new livestream appeared in the outdoor section of the interstellar platform.
It was daytime, the opposite of peak viewing hours, and traffic across the entire livestreaming platform was fairly sparse.
There weren't many streamers in the outdoor section to begin with, and few broadcasts worth watching. Several minutes passed after Lu Liran went live before a pitiful handful of visitors finally wandered in.
[I'm here to see who's talking such big talk! Someone actually dares claim they're doing wilderness survival in Alrock???]
[Probably another rich kid taking an airship sightseeing tour.]
[6666! The picture quality is just as good as that rich kid's stream next door. Thumbs up!]
[Whoa, is that the streamer from behind? He looks so frail…]
[Damn, he's really in the Alrock Glaciers! On foot, too? Sending some 666s just for having the guts!]
Lu Liran noticed that a few viewers had entered his livestream.
He paused, recalling the patter he'd hurriedly studied beforehand, then slowly began to speak:
“Hello, everyone. I'm a wilderness survival expert as well as a bounty hunter. Right now, I'm on the mountainside above the Alrock Glaciers. I'll show you how to survive in these harsh conditions with nothing but an outdoor hunting knife, a water bottle, a fire striker, and a coil of rope. I'll also attempt to locate and rescue a traveler who has become lost here.”
[Hahaha, this streamer is so cocky! He thinks he can survive Alrock with just that little gear?]
[The Glacier Giant says: Ignorant human, how dare you underestimate me!]
[You can do it, Young Master! You've got this!]
[The moment I entered, the streamer started showing off. Now I want to see just how good he really is.]
[Why do we only see his back? What about his face?]
Lu Liran noticed a comment among the others that was unmistakably written in Jin Fei's voice. A small smile touched his lips. His own little cub was watching him, after all.
A Note from the Author:
Little Lu Ziqian: Cubby wants to see Papa~
Jin Fei: (Studying hard; loading the fan-club skill of fighting back against haters.)
