Chapter 3: The General’s Audit

Continuation……

"Your vocabulary is just as atrocious as it was before you cracked your skull, Miss Li," Commander Lin said, his voice dropping into a deep, strict, disapproving rumble. "You are inside a restricted military facility, under the direct orders of your grandfather. Sneaking out of the barracks at midnight just because you couldn't endure the morning physical drills... you have brought great shame to your family's name."

Zai narrowed her eyes, keeping her face serious and defiant, but internally, she was smirking.

Oh, Commander Lin, you have no idea, she thought. The old Li Qiao might have run away from a little morning jog. But the person sitting in this bed now? I eat military training for breakfast. Just wait until I get out of these bandages.

Before she could form a suitably bratty retort aloud to match her body's teenage reflexes, the heavy automated doors to the medical ward hissed open. An elderly but towering, broad-chested man stepped into the room, his uniform immaculate, his face a terrifying portrait of old-school discipline. Commander Lin instantly snapped to attention, saluting perfectly.

"General Li," the commander announced, greeting the legend himself.

Even though her grandfather was technically an ex-general who had officially retired from active public service, he still lived right here at the outpost, pulling the strings and working completely behind the scenes. Because of his massive legacy, everyone on the base—from the lowest recruit to Commander Lin—still respectfully called him 'General.'

The old General didn't even look at his adjutant. He marched straight to the foot of Zai’s bed, his thick white eyebrows furrowing as he glared at his granddaughter.

"Still alive, I see," General Lin rumbled, his voice thick with exasperation. "Do you have any idea how much paperwork your midnight stunt caused me, Qiao-Qiao? Scaling a security fence in the dark because you couldn't handle three kilometers of running? You are my granddaughter! Your father is a high-ranking bureaucrat, and I ran this entire district for forty years! If the media in the capital finds out you are face-planting into concrete while trying to desert a mandatory behavioral camp—"

The General was just getting warmed up, his lungs expanding for a legendary scolding, when a young lieutenant suddenly stepped through the doorway, looking panicked.

"General Lin, forgive the intrusion," the lieutenant gasped, saluting frantically. "High Command is on the encrypted terminal in the briefing room. A Class-3 smuggling caravan was just spotted breaching the northern valley border. They require your off-the-record tactical advice immediately."

The General’s tirade snapped to a screeching halt. The fiery anger in his eyes vanished, instantly replaced by the cold, razor-sharp focus of a veteran warlord who still ran things behind the scenes. He checked his watch, then glared back down at Zai.

"Now that you are awake, you will stay in this bed, you will behave, and you will not cause a single ounce of trouble," General Lin ordered, his finger pointing directly between her eyes. "The doctors say you need two weeks of strict rest to clear that concussion. If I hear so much as a whisper about you stepping out of line before those fourteen days are up, I am personally assigning you to the heavy artillery cleaning crew. Do I make myself clear, young lady?"

Externally, Zai gave a dramatic, deeply annoyed teenage eye-roll that the original Li Qiao's muscles practically forced her to do. Internally, her assassin brain was giving a polite nod of approval. Class-3 border breach. Nice. Sounds like a fun Tuesday.

"Crystal clear, Grandfather," Zai said, forcing a flat, reluctant tone.

"Good. Commander Lin, come with me," the General barked, turning on his heel and sweeping out of the room like a hurricane, the Commander close behind him.

Two Weeks Later.

The thick gauze wrapping was gone, replaced by a tiny, flesh-colored medical patch over her left temple. Zai had spent the last fourteen days doing subtle, micro-movements under the hospital sheets, forcing Li Qiao’s unconditioned 15-year-old muscle fibers to sync with her advanced neural combat memory. It was tedious, like trying to run military-grade espionage software on a cheap, lagging smartphone.

Calf muscles: ninety percent calibrated. Reaction speed: acceptable. Let's see how this thing handles in the wild, Zai thought as she walked down the long, high ceiling concrete corridor of the base's youth training wing.

This place wasn't a literal, academic school—it was a specialized military compound designed to whip the troublesome, elite children of high-ranking officers into shape through physical conditioning, tactical theory, and weapon handling.

As Zai turned a corner toward the recreational lounge, the loud, boisterous sound of teenage cheering and laughing echoed down the hallway.

A crowd of older students in physical training uniforms were gathered around a thick, heavy dartboard mounted on a brick pillar.

Standing in the center of the circle was a tall, smug seventeen-year-old named Zhang Wei, the son of a prominent garrison commander. He was casually flipping a sleek, high-grade military tactical knife in his hand, balancing the weighted tip on his index finger to show off.

"Watch this," Zhang Wei smirked to his sycophants, spinning the knife into a flashy reverse grip. "No-look throw, three meters out. Bullseye."

Zai walked past the crowd, her face completely serious, expressionless, and deadpan. She didn't have time for teenage peacocking; she was currently trying to locate the mess hall to see if this base possessed any actual chili oil to save her from the bland military diet.

Wrist action is completely exaggerated. His center of gravity is leaning too far right, Zai’s assassin brain analyzed automatically in a split second as she passed them. If he releases at that trajectory—

(Thwack! Clang!)

Zhang Wei’s flashy no-look throw went horribly wrong. The blade didn't hit the board; it struck the reinforced steel bracket holding the board up. The metal-on-metal impact caused the tactical knife to ricochet violently, spinning through the air at a chaotic, lethal velocity.

"Look out!" someone screamed.

The knife was flying sideways at bullet-like speed—aimed directly at the side of Zai’s head.

In an instant, the world seemed to drop into extreme slow-motion. Zai didn't blink. Her terrifying assassin reflexes, forged through a thousand life-or-death missions, took total control of Li Qiao's body.

She didn't duck. She didn't scream like a normal fifteen-year-old girl.

With a fluid, cinematic grace, Zai simply tilted her upper body backward by a mere two inches, executing a flawless, low-profile slip. The spinning silver blade whistled past her eyelashes, missing her nose by millimeters. But she wasn't done. As the knife passed her face, Zai’s right hand shot out like a lightning bolt, her small fingers snapping shut around the hilt of the flying weapon mid-air.

(Snap.)

She caught it in a perfect, ice-cold reverse grip, the momentum of the throw causing her braided hair to whip around her shoulder.

The entire hallway went dead, suffocatingly silent. The teenagers froze, their jaws literally dropping. Zhang Wei’s face turned completely pale, his breath catching in his throat.

Oh, damn! Zai’s inner voice cheered cheerfully, thoroughly impressed with her new body's output. That was incredibly cool. It looked like a cinematic masterpiece. Ten out of ten for style points.

However, the original Li Qiao's hot-tempered, expressive reflexes immediately bubbled to the surface. Zai’s serious face instantly morphed into a fiercely irritated, dangerous scowl. She flipped the knife effortlessly in her hand, catching it by the tip, her eyes locking onto Zhang Wei with a freezing, ruthless glare.

"Are you completely brain-dead?!" Zai barked out, her voice sharp and dripping with utter annoyance. "Who handles live steel in a high-traffic transit corridor? If you want to accidentally lobotomize yourself, go do it on the live-fire range, you are an absolute amateur!"

Zhang Wei swallowed hard, trying desperately to salvage his tough-guy reputation in front of his friends. He took a hesitant step forward. "Hey... Li Qiao, right? General Lin's grandkid. Look, it was a slip. My bad. But... how the hell did you just catch a ricocheted combat blade with your bare hand?"

Zai walked straight up to him. Even though she was shorter, the silent, blood-chilling aura radiating from her made the older boy instinctively step back until his spine hit the brick pillar.

With a sudden, lightning-fast motion, Zai threw the knife. It didn't hit him—it embedded itself four inches deep into the wooden dartboard right next to his left ear, the vibration humming against his skin.

"Next time your toy flies toward my face," Zai whispered in a cold, deadly monotone that made every hair on the boy's arms stand up, "I won't return it handle-first. Maintain your weapon discipline, boy, or I'll show you what a real accident looks like."

She turned around and strolled away, her face returning to its calm, serious expression.

Well, that felt great, her inner voice hummed happily as she continued down the corridor. Traumatized a high schooler, secured a backup weapon, and didn't even pop my stitches. Now, seriously, where is the cafeteria?

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