Chapter 228

For Qin Yun, this award was essentially a talisman.

He could ignore the open spears and hidden arrows back home—as long as he made no mistakes, no one could touch him. His confidence was more than sufficient.

Moreover, his future livestreams would come with far more privileges. As long as a place wasn't highly classified, he could basically walk in whenever he wanted—his clearance was extremely high. For instance, when he used to visit the Forbidden City, closed-off areas required an escort and approval. Now that was no longer necessary; he could come and go freely.

Places like Prince Gong's Mansion, the Temple of Heaven's inner areas—many places were now fully opened to him.

Put plainly, in this China "instance," he had already met the requirements for certain places; the restrictions were gone.

After a few days playing around in Beijing and trying out his new privileges, before he knew it the date had rolled around to May 13.

"Manager Ye's side is about to set off. She's asking when we'll head over."

Qin Yun looked at the email materials Catherine had sent over without lifting his head: "So early? Doesn't the competition start on the 18th?"

"She says they want to go early to get used to the venue, get a feel for it."

"Alright then." Qin Yun nodded. "We'll stick to our plan and head over on the 16th."

Su Huan naturally had no objections. These past few days the two of them had been in Beijing, sweet as honey, unable to get enough of each other no matter how clingy they were. Once they went to France, things would get busy again—when would they have time for intimacy?

Seeing Qin Yun looking at the materials, she felt a bit hot and decided to take a cool shower. Casually she asked, "The thing you discussed with Catherine—what did she say? Did she agree?"

"She said she'd give me an answer today, but she thinks it should be fine. It's just routing the signals from a few cameras to my drone—technically there shouldn't be any difficulty. Even if there's an issue, it's probably that they're worried my livestream will affect the overall viewership."

"It wouldn't." Su Huan shook her head. "All you want is the shots related to you; it won't affect the overall picture."

He shrugged, glanced back—and his eyes instantly went wide.

The woman behind him had, at some unknown point, stripped down to nothing but her underwear.

Her perfect figure, flawless jade-white skin, dewy and luminous—he'd looked at her countless times and still couldn't get enough. Every time the sage interval passed, the sight could still send his blood boiling.

"It's a bit hot, I'm going to take a shower." Seeing Qin Yun's scorching gaze, Su Huan felt a little shy.

"Now that you mention it, yeah—I feel a bit hot too."

Qin Yun let out a cheeky grin, stripped himself bare in a few quick motions, then scooped Su Huan up in his arms and charged into the bathroom.

"Ah… you beast!"

……Ten thousand words omitted here……

An hour later, the lingering aftertaste still hung in the air. Su Huan, cheeks flushed, traced little circles on Qin Yun's chest with her finger, her gaze still dazed.

"Hubby, aren't we doing this too often?"

Qin Yun stroked the beauty's jade-smooth back and thought for a moment. Two or three times a day—didn't seem that bad, right? In any case, his body didn't feel anything.

"Can't keep up?" Still, he was actually a little worried Su Huan's body couldn't take it. "If you feel tired, then let's cut back a bit."

"No way." Su Huan wasn't about to agree. She didn't know what was going on either, but she was somewhat gifted in this area—her stamina and energy were astonishingly good. No matter how vigorously a man drove her, once she recovered she was full of vigor again. A second, third, or fourth round was no problem.

It was just that she'd read online that men doing it too many times had a big impact on the body, so she had some reservations.

"Hehe, if you're fine then don't worry about me." Qin Yun's body was basically a bug right now—various skills meant that whether it was stamina, energy, or recovery, he was far beyond what an ordinary person could compare to.

Think about when he was with Song Ya—they might not even manage once in a whole week.

The year before the divorce, he had to beg and plead for a whole month just to get one. Her enthusiasm for the act was basically zero, and every time she went through the motions perfunctorily, wrapping it up hastily, which killed his interest entirely.

But with Su Huan, she was half-reluctant, half-addicted—the physical and psychological pleasure was enough to immerse him completely, unable to pull himself away.

May weather was already starting to get hot. This year's El Niño was getting more and more severe; the high temperatures had come on so fast.

It was only mid-month, yet the maximum temperature was already approaching 35 degrees—and this was in Beijing; further south it would be even hotter.

Soon the date rolled around to May 16. The two of them took a plane for over ten hours, landed in Paris, then took a train passing through Saint-Lazare and Caen, and finally arrived at their destination at around 18:00 local time.

Saint-Amand was a temperate maritime climate—mild and humid year-round, with strong winds; summers weren't scorching.

The felt temperature was under twenty degrees—very pleasant.

The moment they entered the town, they found people everywhere, banners fluttering, colorful balloons drifting in the air—a festival-like atmosphere had already spread through the town. Looking around, Red Bull logos and event promotional posters were everywhere.

Travelers and competitors from all over the world would gather in this town, undoubtedly providing a huge boost to the local economy.

French buildings were mostly beige and pale-gray stone walls, paired with dark-gray or reddish-brown roof tiles—they looked very old. Ancient churches carried a mix of Romanesque and Gothic styles, with thick stone walls, narrow stained-glass windows, and clear, ringing bells.

At the edge on the other side of the town was a vast stretch of open grassland, now closed off for the competition's landing zone. From a distance the grass looked vividly green.

"Black Throat Sinkhole is in a valley northwest of the town." Qin Yun and Su Huan sat in a cold drinks shop, in no rush to meet up with the Changkong Club people, leisurely like ordinary tourists.

"Ten thousand meters up—you're going to break the record." Although Su Huan was a little worried, she wouldn't show it in advance, afraid of affecting Qin Yun.

"Mm." Qin Yun gave her hand a squeeze and smiled. "At ten thousand meters, the temperature is around -50°C. Have all those suppliers we contacted arrived?"

Su Huan pulled out her phone and checked her notes: "The appointment is for nine tomorrow morning. They'll probably have objections to the price—after all, this is gear for an exhibition event, not for the actual competition. Just one exhibition at this price, they think it's too high."

Qin Yun gave a cold smile: "The price is what it is now. Once I actually make the top three, it won't be this price anymore."

"That's what I told them too." Su Huan smiled. "So far PD, Cypres, and Cookie have no objections. The ones objecting are Air Liquide and Salomon."

Qin Yun gave a slight nod and put away the map: "Let's go. First to the hotel to meet up with Zeng Luo and the others."

The Changkong Club had sent over a dozen people.

Besides the seven competitors, plus Nie Jun, Jiang Shuangxing, Ye Ran, and Zeng Luo, there was also a service team.

If Changkong hadn't booked the hotel in advance, they probably wouldn't have been able to get a room on short notice and would have had to stay in tents.

Look at the edges of the town—tents were pitched densely everywhere. Those were all competitors or travelers who couldn't book a hotel. Of course, for a big team, even if they couldn't book in town, they could always go farther out; the drive back and forth was convenient enough.

Before long, Qin Yun and Su Huan met up with the Changkong Club people.

But seeing these people, their expressions didn't look all that relaxed. Moreover, Lu Hao, Ding Shuo, and Sun Ang were nowhere to be seen.

After greeting everyone and dropping their things off in the room first, Qin Yun then found a café with Zeng Luo, Ye Ran, Nie Jun, and Jiang Shuangxing to sit down.

"Why does everyone look so Grave?"

Ye Ran gave a wry smile: "It's nothing, really. We just had a bit of a conflict with a foreign club and held a private match."

"Lost?"

Zeng Luo's expression darkened: "Not just lost—lost badly."

"Tell me the details." Qin Yun exchanged a glance with Su Huan, instantly intrigued.

As Zeng Luo narrated, the full story quickly unfolded before the two of them.

It turned out that on the 13th, after the club arrived at Saint-Amand, they discovered they weren't the only club to have come here early—many top foreign clubs had also arrived well in advance, having long since started scouting the area, preparing, acclimating, and training.

Lu Hao had a foul mouth. That night, while strolling with a companion, upon seeing a foreign Black woman, he muttered softly: "Goddamn, she's ugly!"

And as it happened, the companion beside that Black woman happened to understand Chinese, and the conflict arose on the spot. Coincidentally, those two were also skydivers. In a fit of agitation, Lu Hao agreed to their wager for a private match.

The stakes were: whoever lost would forfeit this Red Bull Cup.

By the time Zeng Luo and Ye Ran found out, Lu Hao had already been pulled into a car by Ding Shuo and Sun Ang. In fact, if they had simply been shameless at the time and chosen to back out and ignore it, at worst they'd just lose a little face.

But Lu Hao stubbornly insisted on competing with them, making Zeng Luo and Ye Ran so angry they nearly beat him up.

The next day, before Ye Ran and the others could take the initiative to go apologize, those two Black people arrived at their door first, bringing people with them. They came wearing gear, with a logo on their clothing extremely prominent, reading: cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk in normal times just means ordinary cyberpunk, but in the skydiving circle, it represents Australia's top-tier skydiving club.

Lu Hao immediately went pale as ashes.

In the end, cyberpunk invited official personnel to serve as witnesses and held a KOF-rules accuracy skydiving competition against Lu Hao, Ding Shuo, and Sun Ang. The altitude was manageable—3,000 meters.

The result was that cyberpunk only sent out that Black woman—Kalal—and she took on all three, wiping them out single-handedly.

Then she left behind a line: "Chinese people can't skydive," and swaggered off.

As for the stakes of the match, they didn't mention them at all, but word of it had somehow spread throughout the entire town.

Unless Zeng Luo wanted to throw away all his face, he had to accept this wager whether he wanted to or not.

But without Lu Hao, Ding Shuo, and Sun Ang, the formation skydiving team had to swap people out. For the freestyle skydiving, they either had to replace the people or give up. And with three fewer people in the accuracy skydiving event, their chances of advancing to the finals looked slimmer again.

"So what do we do now? Swap people in to fill the formation skydiving and freestyle skydiving slots?"

Zeng Luo said helplessly: "Right now You Jundu and Tang Zhou will fill in for formation skydiving. Freestyle skydiving—we're giving it up."

What could Qin Yun say? This kind of thing could only be blamed on Lu Hao himself for not keeping his mouth shut. Now look—didn't even need to compete. Absolutely speechless.

He didn't ask Zeng Luo how he'd dealt with the three of them either; it wasn't his business.

"Master Qin, there's still one day tomorrow. The official plane takes off fully loaded. Tomorrow you can acclimate to the climate and the venue here."

"Alright, got it."

The next day, Su Huan went to negotiate with sponsors, while he went to acclimate to the venue.

The takeoff point for the preliminary competition was a large helipad outside the town, where dozens of large helicopters were parked—looking over, it was a dense mass of them.

When the time came for the competition, it would start from here. Each helicopter corresponded to a target point. Competitors had to land on their designated target; otherwise, even if they landed at the center of the wrong target, it would count as an invalid score.

The preliminary round was at an altitude of 2,000 meters, which for some regular standard events was already quite outrageous. You should know that in international standard skydiving competitions, the preliminary round is basically kept around 800 meters—no helicopter transport needed at all; they just jump from a high-altitude venue directly.

Red Bull truly lived up to its reputation as a sponsor that loves to push the envelope—the preliminary round's exit altitude reached 2,000 meters.

As for the targets, they were actually just like shooting targets, except the center was zero, the first ring was one centimeter, the second ring was two centimeters, expanding outward from there, all the way to ten centimeters. If the landing point was outside ten centimeters, that was a miss. Missing the target in the preliminary round basically meant game over.

This preliminary round was divided into ten groups. They would only find out which group each competitor was in tonight.

"Hope we don't run into those monsters."

Nie Jun muttered prayers under his breath, which struck Qin Yun as rather amusing.

On the other hand, after a night had passed, Zeng Luo's mood had improved considerably—perhaps because he felt that with Qin Yun there, getting into the finals was definitely no problem.