Chapter 588: Range

"Brother Rui, take me with you~~~ You promised before..." Feng Wen's cutesy voice drifted out from a third-floor window, heard clearly by the hearing-evolved Xia Qing.

She hadn't expected her to still be living here; from the sound of it, she was on the phone with Tang Rui.

For Feng Wen to stay by the side of Tang Rui—who changes girlfriends faster than he changes clothes—for this long, she must have some skills. But not too many, otherwise she would have moved out of the evolved-person dormitory long ago.

This ordinary evolved-person dormitory, located in the outer city, had conditions a notch better than the surrounding civilian housing, cheap rent, and some security measures—a perimeter wall—but those living inside were ordinary evolved persons with poorer conditions or poorer abilities.

Evolved persons with families would choose to live with their families; Xia Qing only moved into the dormitory after her father passed away.

Those without families, ordinary evolved persons with stronger abilities, even if they couldn't find well-paying formal jobs in the safe zone, would join combat squads and live in the better-conditioned squad dormitories.

When Feng Wen's brother Feng Teng was still alive, he lived on his own in the Sufeng Squad's dormitory and arranged for his sister to stay in an ordinary evolved-person dormitory.

The patrol car passed through the area Xia Qing knew well, continued on, and finally crossed the tall wall between the inner and outer cities, entering the inner city.

The streets of the inner city were also hung with the same red lanterns as the outer city, playing the same festive songs. But here the streets were wide and clean, and groups of three or five pedestrians walked with heads held high, dressed neatly and cleanly, chatting happily about which vegetables could be bought at the supermarket, what to eat for the New Year's Eve dinner, and what New Year goods the departments their family members worked in had distributed.

A wall less than half a meter wide divided two utterly different worlds during the Calamity years.

After the patrol car returned to the military camp, Xia Qing got out with her squadmates and went to the cafeteria for lunch.

Like everyone else, Xia Qing got one meat dish, two vegetable dishes, three dishes and a bowl of soup, plus two coarse-grain steamed buns, found an empty corner, took off her protective mask, and buried herself in her food.

The menu board showed all these dishes were yellow-light food, but the cooks' skills were excellent—the meals made from yellow-light ingredients tasted better than the ones Xia Qing made from green-light ingredients.

However, the nutritional content was far worse than Xia Qing's daily diet.

Even so, Xia Qing, like everyone else, ate every last bit of the food she'd gotten. Wasting food during the Calamity years was shameful.

After lunch, Xia Qing returned to the dormitory to rest. Yan Ning also had a dormitory here; Xia Qing suspected that Yan Ning's recent intensive training had been specially arranged by someone to "swap people in."

Could it be that Yang Jin had already counted her into tonight's operation plan?

This dormitory had four bunk beds; Yan Ning's was the upper bunk by the window.

When Xia Qing pushed the door open and went in, two people were already in the room. These two were also female soldiers from the Special Third Company; Yang Jin's briefing materials had their files. Xia Qing nodded a greeting to them, walked to her own bed, took off her coat and shoes, and climbed up to the upper bunk with her protective mask on to lie down and rest.

According to the files, Yan Ning had always been a very alert person; apart from eating and bathing, she rarely took off her protective mask. So Xia Qing sleeping with her mask on didn't strike her roommates as odd at all—they kept on quietly gossiping about the drama between Zheng Chen, Tang Lu, and Yang Jin, excitedly debating whether there would be a big show tonight.

"If only our squad could be assigned to stand guard at the banquet venue." A female soldier with a Lancheng accent said quietly.

"Luo Pei is Hui Three's top sharpshooter. If I could see him, I'd definitely challenge him!" The other female soldier's focus was on Luo Pei, who hadn't returned to the safe zone in a long time; her voice was low, on par with Yan Ning's.

The Lancheng-accented female soldier quietly advised, "Sister, I'd urge you not to. Do you know what gun Luo Pei uses?"

Xia Qing pricked up her ears to listen too.

"Same as Yan Ning's, CM82." The female soldier who wanted to challenge Luo Pei finished speaking, then added indignantly, "If I could use a CM82, I definitely wouldn't be worse than Yan Ning."

Sniper rifles and snipers complement each other; a good sniper must be paired with a high-performance sniper rifle to bring lethality to its utmost.

Xia Qing silently asked herself: Then why haven't you been issued one?

The Lancheng-accented female soldier continued, "The CM82's maximum range is 2,500 meters. Do you know what its effective range is?"

Effective range and maximum range are two important indicators for judging a sniper rifle's performance.

Effective range is the maximum distance at which a sniper rifle can both hit accurately and cause sufficient damage; maximum range, also called extreme range, refers to the farthest distance at which a bullet fired from a sniper rifle can cause sufficient damage. Beyond the effective range, the bullet's flight becomes difficult to control.

Luo Pei had told Xia Qing that beyond the effective range, the reason a bullet's flight direction and point of impact become hard to control is that the bullet is affected by many factors—besides the well-known ones like bullet powder charge, bullet shape, wind speed, and Blue Star's gravity, there are also Blue Star's rotation, air humidity, terrain, and so on.

In short, the farther the sniping target, the more interference factors the sniper has to consider; the sniper must quickly perform a comprehensive analysis of all kinds of factors before pulling the trigger on the target.

The low-voiced girl answered, "1,800 meters."

"The CM82 is the best sniper rifle in our country. For Yan Ning and you, its effective range is 1,800 meters, but for Luo Pei it's 2,100 meters. Do you understand what that means?" The Lancheng Miss got herself worked up as she spoke, "You don't even have the qualifications to challenge Luo Pei! When I was in Red Eleven, I heard the instructors talk about Luo Pei's famous saying..."

Xia Qing quietly spoke up, saying the same words as that Lancheng girl: "Effective range is the sniper's limit, not the rifle's."

"Holy crap!" The low-voiced girl was excited too, but since Yan Ning was resting, she could only keep her voice down, "I'm going to lug a howitzer over and challenge Luo Pei!"

"Forget lugging a howitzer—even if you flew a bomber over, you still wouldn't be Luo Pei's match! Luo Pei, like Nie Hong, is next, next, next level to people like us."

The more the two discussed, the more worked up they got. Lying on her bed with her eyes closed, Xia Qing was also roused by their talk. After Luo Pei told her that famous saying, he had also said very sternly to Xia Qing: "If you want to become a top sniper, you have to work hard to push your effective range up to the rifle's maximum range."

At the time, Xia Qing had asked Luo Pei, "Brother Luo, what's your effective range now?"

"Everyone thinks my effective range is 2,100 meters, but it's actually 2,200 meters." Luo Pei, the poison not yet fully purged from his body, turned his head and smiled gently as he gazed at the rolling mountains in the distance. "Lucky I was cautious enough before. Now my body's broken down, my eyesight's taken a hit too—effective range around 2,000 meters. Under normal circumstances, that's enough."

At that time, Xia Qing had only been out of the safe zone for two months; her mouth couldn't yet keep up with the speed of her brain, and she couldn't quickly come up with words to comfort people.