Chapter 138: Familiarity and Strangeness

Lin Yan looked around. Everything here felt completely unfamiliar to her. She had not returned to the MG County seat in many years, and it had changed so much that it bore no resemblance to the place in her memories.

Li Gang drove the military jeep slowly through the city, carefully maneuvering around the cars blocking the streets.

By the time they had entered the county seat, the only "Chosen One" who had originally been stationed there had already left in a hurry an hour earlier. The place was now nothing more than a ghost town.

Lin Yan took out a map and said to Li Gang, who was beside her, "My home isn't here, but in a small village under the jurisdiction of this county. It’s still some distance away."

Li Gang nodded at her words.

After winding through various roads for half an hour, he steered the jeep out of the urban area from a different direction. The vehicles abandoned along the roadside grew sparse, the road opened up, and naturally, their speed increased.

After another few dozen minutes, they arrived at the entrance of a small, picturesque mountain village. They parked the military jeep and got out.

Lin Yan looked around for a long time before she could find anything in her distant memories that felt familiar. She had left home as a child and grown up in the military; this was her first time returning, but almost everything was transformed.

Of course, the changes were for the better, leaning toward prosperity.

When she left as a child, there were no paved roads; only a winding dirt path connected the village to the town. There hadn't been a single brick house taller than one story—only single-story mud huts—and the village entrance hadn't been this formal; it was just a dilapidated mess.

Only when a nation grows stronger and more prosperous do the lives of its people improve. That was Lin Yan's original motivation for joining the military. It was because of this that she could resolutely execute dangerous missions and kill without mercy. She believed that the more missions she completed and the more enemies she eliminated, the more peaceful the country would be, preventing foreign invasion and allowing ordinary people to live better lives.

Lin Yan stepped past the village entrance. She had never blinked or felt a shred of fear in a hail of bullets, yet now, for some reason, she felt a sense of nervousness—a strange, inexplicable dread.

Why was she afraid? She asked herself, but could not find a logical reason. Perhaps it was the anxiety of returning home, the fear that the place she once lived no longer existed, or perhaps it was the resurfacing of painful childhood memories.

Back then, she was an orphan rescued from a pool of blood by Lin Hua. From that moment on, her life had been inextricably linked to the military.

Li Gang followed behind her, silently observing her every move. He caught every subtle shift in her expression.

They passed house after house. Looking around, the village had at least a hundred households. Lin Yan walked slowly toward the deeper parts of the village, eventually arriving at a secluded grove where a mud hut had stood abandoned for who knows how many years.

Only half of the mud wall remained, and it was overgrown with nameless weeds. Without a careful look, one wouldn't even realize a house had once stood there, mistaking it for just another small mound of earth.

*Could this be where Sister Lin’s home used to be?* Li Gang wondered as he watched her stop and stare at the spot.

He had been following her, and since entering the village, he had seen her pause three times, but this was the longest she had stayed still. He wanted to step forward and say something, but he took a step and then retreated. A voice in his heart told him this was not the time to disturb her. If Lin Yan wanted to share something, she would break the silence herself.

A moment later, without turning around, Lin Yan spoke, breaking the quiet. "If I haven't found the wrong place and my memory serves me, this used to be my home. I remember playing in this little grove nearby all the time."

"It's been nearly twenty years in the blink of an eye. Returning here now, everything has changed. Beyond this abandoned hut, there is nothing left. Aside from a flicker of familiarity, everything feels like a stranger."

A breeze blew; it was already evening, and the mountain air carried a hint of autumn. Lin Yan’s long ponytail swayed in the wind, a sight that seemed to etch itself into Li Gang's heart.

Li Gang thought for a moment and said, "In this world, nothing is meant to last forever. Time often smooths over everything."

*The flowers may look the same year after year, but the people change with the seasons.* What was in the past was gone and would never return.

"True," Lin Yan replied.

Nothing was left. She didn't even know which of the wild graves held her ancestors. Her childhood memories were hazy; being able to find this place at all was, in her eyes, a stroke of luck.

That night, Lin Yan and Li Gang did not leave the mountain village; they stayed. They were in no rush.

Four days passed. They found a house in the village with a courtyard, tidied it up, and settled in. They interacted occasionally, but apart from sparring and cooking, they spent most of their time cultivating, enjoying a sense of seclusion akin to living as hermits in the deep mountains.

During these four days, the hunting and fighting between the "Chosen Ones" across the globe hit a true low point, with fewer than twenty people eliminated in total. It was as if everyone had reached a silent consensus to lay low, with only occasional casualties.

It was the morning of the 45th day since the game began. To date, the total number of people eliminated had exceeded 620.

Li Gang finished practicing the second stage of the mental portion of the *Basic Guidance Manual* (Fragmentary). When he opened his eyes, rays of sunlight were visible outside; the sky had fully brightened. He remembered that when he had started this session, it was still pitch dark.

He stood up and stretched his stiff body. Checking the time, it was already past 6:00 AM. It was time to join Lin Yan to prepare breakfast.

Because their physical stamina increased day by day and they had exhausted all their reinforcement opportunities, their stats—specifically physical stamina—were many times higher than those of an average person. Consequently, they had switched from three meals a day to two: morning and evening. A single meal for them was equivalent to what an average person would eat in a day. If it weren't for the fact that they were constantly training, sparring, and consuming energy, they could easily go two days without food or drink.

However, before meeting Lin Yan, Li Gang decided to check his personal status window as usual.

A virtual projection appeared, showing a human anatomical structure, followed by his name, his "Chosen" serial number, and his four base stats:

Physical Stamina: 500
Mental Power: 305
Strength: 363
Speed: 258

Overall Combat Power: 504

Remaining Reinforcement Opportunities: 0 (cannot be stored)
Full Repair/Healing Opportunities: 27

Since the last check, he had gained four more opportunities to choose between reinforcement and full repair. He had opted for two reinforcements, applying both to Strength, and used the other two for full repairs. He chose Strength because it was the only stat for which he lacked a dedicated cultivation manual fragment, and he estimated he wouldn't obtain one soon. The other three stats could be improved steadily through daily practice of their respective manual fragments.

Li Gang was satisfied with his current stats. He believed that among the remaining 9,000+ Chosen Ones, his strength was at least in the upper tier—if not the top hundred, certainly the top thousand.

*My current weakness is Speed,* Li Gang mused. *According to Sister Lin’s repeated advice, it’s best to keep all four stats balanced. I shouldn't have any obvious shortcomings. For the next period, I can pause Physical Stamina training and slow down on Mental Power, focusing primarily on Speed.*

He was still a bit puzzled. To him, anything over 200 in Speed was sufficient. His preferred style—whether it was the solid, straightforward, and powerful sword techniques for close combat, or the mid-range automatic machine gun fire—did not strictly require extreme speed.

Keeping all four stats balanced was not difficult for him since he possessed three manual fragments, but the drawback was clear: because he had to keep pace with the lowest stat, his overall power couldn't leap forward, making his growth slow. If he had focused on one stat alone, he suspected his Physical Stamina would have broken the 1,000 threshold long ago.

He was very curious about what would happen once a stat exceeded 1,000. He had an intuition that something special would occur. But he would follow Lin Yan’s advice to the end; despite his curiosity, he kept it buried in his heart.

After reviewing his stats, he stood up and headed outside to meet Lin Yan and prepare their first meal of the day.