The early summer air in West Mountain was thick with a stifling, humid heat.

At five in the afternoon, the sun was already hanging at a slant along the ridgeline on the western side.

The orange-red fireball was slowly sinking behind the mountains.

Sunlight hit the outer rings of barbed wire, casting long and short twisted shadows.

The sun might have shifted west, but all the heat baked up through the afternoon was still firmly locked onto the uneven concrete drill ground of the B3 Defense Zone.

A few rows of dark green military trucks were parked along the edge of the field.

Fang Cheng bent his legs and sat on a concrete bollard beside one of the trucks.

He leaned his back against a twenty-kilo army-green field tactical rucksack, his hands resting casually on his knees.

His gaze passed over the crowd surging in front and fell on the deep mountains in the distance, sealed off by an iron curtain.

The crowns of the towering ancient trees intertwined under the dim sky, merging into a bottomless tide of dark green.

Like a giant beast lurking in the dusk, silently opening its maw, waiting for prey to walk in.

From the nearby dense forest, the cicadas shrilled in an unbroken chorus, noisy enough to drive people crazy.

"Tch! Are they gonna start this damn exam or not?"

A loud complaint suddenly came from beside him.

Ma Donghe yanked open the collar of his field Combat Suit and fanned himself hard twice.

His big head was drenched in sweat, his face flushed red from being stewed in the early summer heat and humidity.

He reached down, grabbed the military canteen on the ground, unscrewed the cap, and gulped down half of it in a few loud "glug-glug" swallows.

Then he lifted his thick arm and roughly wiped the water off his chin, cursing under his breath:

"They herded everyone onto this shitty drill ground like ducks at two in the afternoon, and just checking gear, verifying ID, and signing waivers took a full three hours."

"It’s five o’clock already, and the examiners haven’t even farted. They just gonna let us sit here and feed the mosquitoes?"

He lowered his head and glanced at the few swollen red welts on his legs from the poisonous mosquitoes at the foot of the mountain, scratching them irritably a couple of times.

"What’s the rush."

Fang Cheng pulled back his distant gaze and turned to look at Ma Donghe:

"Since they issued tactical flashlights and two cold flares in our kit, that alone tells you the Special Search Team planned from the start to hold the exam at night."

"Brother Fang, that’s some real Penetration!"

A thin figure slipped out from the blind spot behind Ma Donghe’s back and dropped into a squat in the open space between the two of them.

It was the man with the protruding ears they’d met at yesterday’s interview, Hou Peng.

Ever since they got to know each other, this guy had glued himself to Fang Cheng and Ma Donghe.

With his knack for getting along with everyone, it took him less than two hours to be calling both of them "brother."

Hou Peng rubbed his sweat-slicked hands together and glanced around.

Once he confirmed that the armed guards nearby were at a fair distance, he lowered his voice and leaned in conspiratorially:

"Brothers, while I was ’taking a leak’ at the temporary toilets just now, I slipped the examiner in charge of headcount up front a fancy cigarette and pumped a bit of inside info out of him."

"Guess what? The route these examiners set for us ends at Black Wind Gully deep in West Mountain. All told, the total distance is just a bit over five kilometers."

"Five kilometers?"

Ma Donghe froze for a moment, then let out a snort of laughter.

His palm, as big as a fan, smacked down hard on his thigh with a dull thump:

"I thought we were heading into some dragon’s den or tiger’s lair. Five kilometers of cross-country, even with a twenty-kilo pack and mountain trails— I could do that in an hour with my eyes closed."

"The Special Search Team went to all this trouble to drag us into a military forbidden zone, just to throw this kiddie crap at us?"

"Brother Ma, don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions."

Hou Peng waved his hands repeatedly, those protruding ears shaking twice along with the motion.

He held up two fingers and made a little gesture in the air, deliberately lowering his voice for emphasis:

"The distance isn’t long, sure, but you know what cutoff time the examiners set for us?"

"It’s six o’clock tomorrow morning! As long as you make it to the finish before dawn, you pass!"

The moment he said that, the contempt on Ma Donghe’s face froze.

He might look rough around the edges most of the time, but he came up from the underworld and had spent years in the fighting scene; his sense for physical numbers was razor sharp.

It was now five in the evening; from now until six tomorrow morning, there were a full thirteen hours.

Thirteen hours to walk five kilometers?

At that pace, even some old man on the street with a cane could crawl there.

For people like them—solid builds, specialized skills, a bunch of fighters, plus retired soldiers and police academy students—

this time allowance was so generous it was downright creepy.

"This time window..."

Ma Donghe’s brows knotted into a lump, the impatience on his face fading.

He replaced it with a grave expression and turned to look at Fang Cheng:

"Ah Cheng, what do you think?"

Fang Cheng didn’t answer right away.

His calm gaze swept over the other candidates on the field, all whispering amongst themselves with the same puzzled looks on their faces.

Then he reached over, dragged his rucksack closer, deftly undid the nylon buckles, and flipped open the waterproof lid on top.

Inside, besides high-calorie compressed biscuits, water-purification tablets, a tactical flashlight, and a medical kit, there was also a standard-issue short blade, already sharpened.

Fang Cheng pulled out the short knife, his thumb slowly running along the spine of the blade, feeling the cold, metallic chill.

"The focus isn’t ’cross-country running’ at all. It’s ’wilderness survival.’"

He lifted his eyes again, gaze thrown once more toward the deep mountain forest in the distance, where a thin miasma was slowly rising with the setting sun.

"Thirteen hours for a five-kilometer route."

"The examiners are spelling it out for everyone: once it gets dark, there is absolutely something on that five-kilometer stretch that’s going to slow us down."