Chapter 555: Miss Huang, Enlisting for Her Father

"Let's go, get in."

"Deputy Battalion Commander, that kid clearly suggested we share breakfast, so why are we the ones paying?"

"You forgot how he messed things up before and what he left us with."

"They should be the ones footing the bill for this meal!"

Huang Honghui drove the car and said lightly, "Just think of it as spending money for a bit of peace of mind; after all, what we did before wasn't exactly righteous."

Someone said, "Actually, I find Company Commander Lu rather interesting; if he weren't from the third brigade, if he weren't part of the opposing side in the exercises, maybe we could even be friends."

Huang Honghui replied, "Friends aren't impossible, but we have to subdue them first."

"That's also true."

"Actually, I think they're quite similar to us."

"Similar how? I didn't see it."

"I mean, the way they were during the meal earlier looked a lot like us; all grimy, oily‑faced, like they hadn't slept all night and went out to be thieves."

Screech!

The car suddenly slammed on the brakes and stopped by the roadside.

Everyone was jolted, looking bewildered at Huang Honghui's sudden stop.

"What's up, Deputy Battalion Commander, did you forget something at the stall?"

"What did you just say? Say it again."

"Huh?"

"I said repeat what you just said!"

"They, and us, are still quite similar?"

The person recalled tentatively.

Huang Honghui shook his head: "No, further back!"

"Grimy, dusty faces?"

"Anything else?"

"Like going out to be thieves without sleeping all night?"

"Yes, that's it!"

The others looked skeptical: "You don't actually think they, like us, went to cause sabotage, do you?"

Huang Honghui recalled the two previous encounters, the other side scrambling to pay, and the words they said before leaving, and the more he thought, the more something felt off!

Without a word, he immediately turned the car around and sped toward the red side's shoreline, toward the sole beachhead position.

What should have taken half an hour took under twenty minutes, since it was early and the road was almost empty.

But when they arrived and got out of the car, everyone was stunned by the scene before them.

"Is this it?"

"We didn't come to the wrong place, right?"

"Did we take the wrong road?"

Even Huang Honghui froze in place, thinking he'd taken the wrong turn.

Logically, there should have been a maze of trenches and ridged defensive works ahead.

But now it was a bare, flat, featureless beach, with no capacity to repel an attack.

Moreover, Huang Honghui remembered clearly that when they came before, the low‑lying area had a carefully camouflaged temporary front, even a company‑level command post.

"We must have taken the wrong road, right?"

"I think it's still ahead, we haven't arrived yet."

"Deputy Battalion Commander, we took a wrong turn, get back in, it's still ahead."

Huang Honghui was also half‑believing, feeling something was off; especially the tire tracks on the ground and the neat lines as if a bulldozer had passed over.

Suddenly, he stopped, turned his head toward a wooden sign tied to a tree on the right.

On the sign, in clear red paint, were the eight characters "Military Restricted Area, No Entry."

At that moment, Huang Honghui's mind exploded with a boom, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

He turned his head to the neatly laid‑out shallow beach and the tire marks on the ground, his scalp instantly tingling.

An indescribable absurdity surged in his mind, and he almost lost his balance, but someone behind him caught him.

"Deputy Battalion Commander, what's wrong with you, why aren't you getting in?"

"It's, it's this…"

"What is this?"

"Our beachhead position is right here!"

The others stared blankly, thinking Huang Honghui had eaten too many fried dough sticks and was spouting nonsense.

Only when Huang Honghui brandished the warning sign in front of them, thrusting it at their faces, did everyone's scalp tingle with shock.

Whoa!

What the hell is this!

Where are our red side's beachhead defenses?

I checked it a couple of days ago; I recall there were two machine‑gun nests there, and an S‑shaped trench here, but they're all gone.

Where's the forward command post? Where did our company's command post go? I even pre‑packed several boxes of instant noodles, compressed biscuits, and bottled water—where did they disappear to?

Everyone acted as if they'd gone mad, pointing at the empty ground where those things should have been, jumping around like they'd lost their minds.

"It's Lu Yang, it must be him! We only added a bit of earth to their communication trench, and they flattened our beachhead position!"

"No way, how could this be possible?!"

How could that be impossible!

Huang Honghui's eyes blazed, his teeth clenched: "We ran into them last night, and before that as well; it's definitely not a coincidence! That group that thought along with us is also out to cause sabotage!"

Someone asked in shock: "But that's just impossible! How could those few people, in one night, flatten the position that took us days to dig out?"

"You can't even see a speck of shadow; that's simply unscientific. For a project this massive, you'd need at least a Platoon's worth of people to get it roughly done, right?"

Huang Honghui clenched his fist, scooped up a handful of sand: "That's the part I can't figure out—how those few people actually managed it?"

Just then, a van rolled up, and a man wearing a safety helmet and looking like a foreman stepped out.

The man immediately offered a cigarette, smiling as he asked, "Excuse me, you are Huang Honghui, Mr. Huang, right?"

Huang Honghui declined the offered cigarette, watching him warily: "That's me. What do you want?"

"It's like this."

The foreman pulled out a sheet of paper, smiling: "We worked overtime as you requested and finished the job; one excavator, one bulldozer, plus wages for three laborers. Let's settle the final payment."

Huang Honghui nearly spat out a mouthful of old blood: "You pushed this earth?"

The foreman replied earnestly: "Yes, we pulled an all‑night overtime and managed to finish before dawn; your friend already paid the deposit, the remaining amount is the final payment. He said he'll collect it after the inspection is done."

"Normally we wouldn't take such urgent jobs for fear we couldn't collect payment after finishing; but since you're soldiers, we figured there wouldn't be that problem."

"Your friend just called, told me to come here; to have you inspect the construction results, and still owes the final payment."

Huang Honghui stared at the handed‑over note and the amount on it, his brain feeling like it was about to explode.

The others, after learning the situation, were also fuming.

They wished they could seize Lu Yang right now and tie him up there for a beating.

When they did the misdeed last night, each of them felt at least a slight burden in their hearts; they hadn't played like this before and wondered if it was a bit shameless, immoral.

But now, compared to that, they were like nine‑generation saints—what they did was as trivial as a child's pee, never coming to light!

In terms of shamelessness, lack of virtue, scheming, and ruthlessness, they aren't even as bad as Lu Yang's toenail cover!

No wonder they earlier offered to treat us to breakfast; they just couldn't clear their conscience and wanted to buy peace of mind with money!

"That's too much, absolutely too much, shameless, there's no way to play like this!"

"A soldier can endure, but who cannot endure!"

"Report him to the directing department; this is a distortion of humanity, a moral decay!"

The angry clamor around, plus the foreman's incessant questioning, made Huang Honghui feel the world spin and his ears ring.

His face turned from a deep red to a bruised purple, veins bulged on his neck, his expression like someone constipated.

"Shut up!!"

With a loud roar, the noisy chatter vanished.

Everyone stared at him, daring not to speak.

Even the foreman was startled by his shout, thinking his price‑inflation had been uncovered, and he voluntarily offered to lower the price.

But the others could feel Huang Honghui's anger burning fiercely in the silence; if the previous incidents were just prankish skirmishes, this time he was truly provoked.

"Deputy Battalion Commander! Your… your butt is bleeding again!"

The foreman glanced over, his eyes momentarily stunned.

He then understood why the other had been so angry earlier.

It turned out that the burly figure before him, with an Adam's apple larger than a bottle cap, was a woman.

No wonder Mulan could join the army for her father and her comrades couldn't tell; who could distinguish male from female?

Realizing he had called her Mr. Huang, the foreman quickly corrected his wording, apologetically saying, "Miss Huang, if there are no issues with the work, could you settle the final payment?"

Huang Honghui's eyes went black, he nearly lunged: "I'm a man, a pure man!"

"I understand, I understand, you joined the army for your father."

"Hahaha......."

Huang Honghui was so infuriated his defenses broke, laughing uglier than crying.

A damn phrase got stuck in his throat, hanging there.