Chapter 102: Boasting

Independent Regiment.

Kong Jie had packed his belongings and reached the village entrance. Behind him stood a large group of soldiers, their eyes red with emotion.

"Hey, where are you off to?" Li Yunlong approached from another path and asked, eyeing him.

Kong Jie looked down, ignoring him completely, and turned to walk away without a word.

"Still holding a grudge?" Li Yunlong laughed and scolded, "It took me a hell of a lot of effort to build the New First Regiment from scratch, guns and artillery included, only for it to fall into Ding Wei's hands. I didn't say a word, so what the hell are you giving me that look for!"

"Li Yunlong, cut the sarcastic talk!" Kong Jie stopped and glared back at him.

"Let's go. The latest order from headquarters is for you to be the deputy regimental commander," Li Yunlong said with a grin.

Kong Jie stopped abruptly, his expression shifting: "I don't need you playing the good guy for me!"

Seeing his reaction, Li Yunlong couldn't help but think of what Wang Lang had told him earlier. He shook his head and said, "Don't you dare talk about chopping off a finger to pay me back for a favor. I don't want that!"

Kong Jie's face flushed red. He had indeed been considering exactly that, guessing that Li Yunlong had put in a good word for him.

"If you really want to pay me back, then go and hit those damn Japanese devils hard!" Li Yunlong commanded coldly.

Kong Jie’s expression flickered, but he remained silent. Seeing him standing there motionless, Li Yunlong chuckled, stepped up, and threw an arm around his shoulder: "Come on, with our friendship, I’ll show you a treasure."

Kong Jie was extremely reluctant, feeling it was beneath his dignity, but he didn't want to miss the opportunity. Being half-pulled, he followed Li Yunlong toward the regimental headquarters. The soldiers around them began to smile.

Inside the room, Kong Jie kept a cold, silent face. He was usually thick-skinned, but in this situation, he truly didn't know what to say.

"Close your eyes, I'm going to perform a magic trick for you," Li Yunlong said cheerily.

"Childish," Kong Jie retorted coldly.

"Damn it, don't be ungrateful. Aside from the division commander, I haven't told anyone about this!" Li Yunlong replied.

Kong Jie glanced at him with a look of disdain. Earlier, when consulting with the division commander, Li Yunlong had mentioned telling Kong Jie the truth. The division commander hadn't objected; after all, they would be working together in the Independent Regiment, and it was impossible to keep such things hidden forever—besides, Kong Jie was someone who could be trusted implicitly.

"If you don't close your eyes, don't blame me if you get scared!" Li Yunlong said.

Kong Jie snorted, and then... he shot up from his chair with a bang, causing it to clatter loudly. Zhang Dabiao, who had been guarding the door, pushed it open and rushed in, thinking the two were fighting. But upon seeing the scene inside, he froze.

"Where is our commander?" Zhang Dabiao asked, his eyes wide with bewilderment.

Kong Jie, looking as if he had seen a ghost, turned and asked, "Has Li Yunlong turned into a spirit?"

As soon as he finished speaking, a voice came from beside his ear.

"You're the one who turned into a spirit, damn it!"

Zhang Dabiao's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. *Did the commander really turn into a ghost? How did he suddenly appear out of thin air?* However, upon seeing the massive, waist-high crate on the other side, he became even more confused.

Kong Jie quietly swallowed hard, his hand hovering over the holster at his waist.

"What are you doing!" Li Yunlong snapped at the two of them. "You ignorant bumpkins, you don't know a damn thing!"

Zhang Dabiao gave a dry laugh, warily watching Kong Jie until he saw him remove his hand from the holster, at which point he let out a sigh of relief.

Li Yunlong shouted at him, "Close the door. No one is allowed in."

Zhang Dabiao acknowledged the order, but a moment later, he ran back in.

"What are you coming back for?" Li Yunlong asked.

"What exactly is in this crate?" Zhang Dabiao asked with a grin. Kong Jie watched curiously.

Li Yunlong crossed his arms and said smugly, "None of you are allowed to leak a word of this!"

"Yes, sir!" Zhang Dabiao replied. Kong Jie frowned.

"This is also an order from the division commander," Li Yunlong added.

"What on earth are you hiding?" Kong Jie finally asked.

Li Yunlong reached out and opened the crate. Zhang Dabiao leaned in. Seeing the ten automatic rifles neatly arranged on the first level, he exclaimed in shock, "Commander, where did you get these?"

Kong Jie couldn't hold back anymore. He stepped forward, grabbed an automatic rifle, ejected the magazine, and dry-fired a few times. "Good stuff!" he couldn't help but praise.

Li Yunlong took a sip from his tea mug and said nonchalantly, "The real good stuff is underneath."

Kong Jie and Zhang Dabiao exchanged glances, then both reached for the crate simultaneously.

On the second level, looking at the gleaming individual rocket launchers and the rows of shells beside them, Kong Jie couldn't help but swallow hard. "This artillery looks pretty impressive," he remarked.

"This is called an individual rocket launcher!" Li Yunlong said, picking one up and hoisting it onto his shoulder. "See clearly? This is how it's used!"

"Where did the commander get such treasures?" Zhang Dabiao asked.

"I'm an immortal!" Li Yunlong said, holding his head high.

"Stop showing off!" Kong Jie said sourly.

"The commander really is an immortal," Zhang Dabiao muttered.

After taking out the rocket launchers, Kong Jie looked at the third level. There lay five camouflaged rifles. The barrels were long, and each had a single-rod "telescope" mounted on top.

"What is this?" Kong Jie took one out, assumed a aiming posture, and said in surprise, "Hey, this thing sees very clearly."

"Be careful," Li Yunlong cautioned. "This is a real treasure. We only have a few of them this time."

"Commander, what is this thing?" Zhang Dabiao asked.

"This is called a sniper rifle. Its effective range exceeds two thousand meters," Li Yunlong said, looking at the two of them.

Both men were left in a state of utter shock. The Japanese Arisaka rifles had a range of less than five hundred meters.

There was one more layer containing several pistols and five small reconnaissance drones. Li Yunlong introduced them to the pair and performed a brief test flight of a drone inside the room.

"Commander, are you really an immortal descended to earth?" Zhang Dabiao asked, his eyes burning with fervor.

Kong Jie didn't speak, but the look he gave Li Yunlong was filled with awe. Thinking of the man's mysterious, ghostly behavior, he began to share Zhang Dabiao's thought: *What kind of incredible luck did this guy stumble upon?*

Li Yunlong cleared his throat, looked at Kong Jie, and then shifted his gaze to Zhang Dabiao.

"It's a long story," Li Yunlong said. "To put it simply, there's an immortal who saw that I, Li Yunlong, am handsome, good at fighting, and know how to lead, so he let me be the manager of the shooting range in his park."

"What kind of nonsense is that?" Kong Jie frowned, thinking the guy was spouting gibberish.

"Why would I lie to you!" Li Yunlong cursed. "You two bumpkins, you've never seen the world!"

"You're just an old farmer from the Dabie Mountains yourself, don't go acting like a city slicker with me!" Kong Jie couldn't stand his smug attitude.

"Heh, you say that," Li Yunlong said proudly, "but I've actually been to the city. The buildings there are hundreds of meters tall, you have to take elevators to get up, and the outer walls are made of glass that even a bullet can't break."

"The roads on the ground are over a dozen meters wide, paved with something called asphalt concrete. They use cranes hundreds of meters tall to build houses. Do you two even know what a tower crane is?"

Zhang Dabiao shook his head in a daze. Kong Jie looked at him skeptically.

"People there drive cars everywhere, airplanes fill the sky, they eat one meat-stuffed pancake and throw away another, they drink one bowl of mutton soup and pour out the next..." Li Yunlong boasted loudly.

"You're full of it!" Kong Jie said.

"Believe it or not," Li Yunlong hesitated for a moment, then said, "I'll take you two to see it for yourselves!"

He had checked with Qiao Jian earlier; these recruitment contracts could be short-term. Since he hadn't met Wei Hesheng yet, he could let the man shadow him this month to get familiar with things, and take him over next month. It would be perfect to let Kong Jie and Zhao Gang keep an eye on the shooting range while he continued to fight the Japanese.