Australia 1671

Chapter 16: Enlisting in the Army

“Hey! You’re such a rude person!”

Seeing the other side not wanting to talk, Di Yilu stamped her foot in anger.

At that moment, under the neighboring umbrella, Han Yuan had finished writing the Chemical Industry Bureau’s recruitment criteria on a piece of cardboard.

Hearing the noise, he strode over and asked, “…Yilu? What’s wrong? What do you mean by rude?”

“Nothing! Just got unlucky and met an annoying guy!”

Di Yilu, not one to stir trouble, turned back under the next umbrella when her partner arrived.

Seeing the paper board in shy Zhou Qi’s hand, she grabbed it, hung it under the western umbrella, and used it as a shield.

Han Yuan awkwardly scratched his head, then thought for a moment and walked over to Zhou Jixin, who hadn’t opened his eyes the whole time.

He tentatively murmured, “…Brother, sorry, was there some misunderstanding just now?”

Zhou Jixin finally opened his eyes.

Seeing Han Yuan in work clothes, he gave a faint smile and shook his head slightly: “It’s nothing. I need to rest now, so I don’t want to waste energy talking.” Then he closed his eyes again.

Upon hearing that, Han Yuan sighed relief.

He had already seen the characters “Security Bureau” on the board.

Although he believed that even the Security Bureau wouldn’t mistreat someone lightly, it was better not to provoke trouble.

“…Oh! That’s good! Then I won’t bother you anymore. If you need help, just say so!” he said politely.

Seeing the other nod lightly, he returned to the neighboring spot.

Hearing his departure, Zhou Jixin finally relaxed completely.

He hadn’t lied before—he truly was physically and mentally exhausted and really didn’t want to entertain the young girl’s attempts to chat.

If it were before he transmigrated, he might have responded politely, even used his handsome appearance and understanding of female psychology to spark a brief romantic affair…but now, he truly didn’t have the mood, because he had barely slept last night!

Whenever he thought back to last night’s test tasks set by Major Qiao Kecheng, Director of the Security Bureau, he couldn’t help but sigh.

He had just wanted a job in the Security Bureau that interested him, but he hadn’t expected the poker-faced director to have such strict requirements for an intelligence officer!

Physical fitness, reaction speed, memory ability, combat and shooting skills, insight, and logical thinking…everything had to meet the standard!

Fortunately, Zhou Jixin was young—the peak of both body and mind—and had mastered psychology skills.

Aside from combat and shooting, he had barely passed the other tests…at the cost that now both his body and mind were exhausted to death, and he was in a foul mood.

That he hadn’t cursed before was wholly due to his usual personal cultivation.

But Qiao Kecheng’s strict demands made Zhou Jixin, despite the headache, also look forward to future work at the Security Bureau with a previously unimagined expectation.

He had always enjoyed adrenaline-inducing work—especially building and directing intelligence networks, dispatching spies around the world, developing informants and inside sources, vanquishing enemies without fighting…just the thought of it made him excited!

…

At nine in the morning, the “dual-selection fair” officially began, and nearly fifteen to sixteen hundred applicants had gathered on the middle school playground for interviews.

As expected, among more than twenty departments, the most applicants applied to the Shipbuilding Bureau, Machinery Bureau, and Science and Technology Bureau—together, they accounted for more than nine hundred registrants!

The reason was easy to guess: news had spread yesterday that Li Yingchun intended to transfer ninety percent of the shipyard workers to other departments and enterprises.

But if shipyard workers didn’t build ships, what else could they do?

Were they going to log trees or do hard manual labor for reclamation teams?

Thus, those shipyard workers who didn’t want to lose steady jobs pinned their hopes on this dual-selection fair.

Many even got up early, arriving at the playground just at dawn to line up.

“…Ha! These guys really don’t give up!”

In the registration line for the Army Officer School, a medium-build, bronzed-skinned young man in camo short sleeves, aged twenty-five or twenty-six, stood on tiptoe to look at the long queue at the Shipbuilding Bureau registration tent.

He spoke mockingly to his companion behind him.

His companion and classmate was a tall, square-faced young man named Wang Zongyao, a local of Huludao, also about twenty-five or twenty-six, but with a steadier demeanor.

Hearing the camo short-sleeved young man, Wang Zongyao shrugged and said, “…Anyway, there are three slots available, why not give it a try? If they manage to stay at the shipyard, they can keep doing what they know.”

“If I were them, I wouldn’t bank on luck like that!”

The camo-shirt youth shook his head immediately: “Even though there are three slots, each department only enrolls a set number, on a first-come-first-serve basis!

If they go to the Shipbuilding Bureau to take a gamble, good spots in the other departments might not be left for them!”

Wang Zongyao was taken aback, then looked at the long queue and nodded.

“…Makes sense! Shengzi, you really are smarter than me!”

Gan Sheng grinned and said, “Heh! That’s just my little wit—in fact, the truly smart people are over there! And over there too!”

Wang Zongyao followed Gan Sheng’s finger to look—those were the crowds registering at the Finance Bureau, Judicial Bureau, and Cabinet Secretariat.

“Indeed! Those people are the smart ones!”

Wang Zongyao turned to Gan Sheng and asked in puzzlement, “Shengzi, why do you insist on us applying to the military academy with me, instead of taking our chances at good departments like the Science and Technology Bureau?”

Gan Sheng shrugged both hands and said frankly, “I can’t stand office work! I can’t handle dealing with documents and reports every day. What I really want is to command thousands of troops and become a general!

If my parents hadn’t stopped me from applying to the military academy back then, I might already have become an officer…now that there’s this opportunity, I have to give it a shot!”

Hearing this, Wang Zongyao secretly laughed in his heart—this guy really dares to dream!

He wants to be a general?

With only these 4,500 modern people, it’d be hard enough to pull together a thousand‑man infantry regiment, let alone dream of becoming a general!

Wang Zongyao’s father had once served as a volunteer soldier, so he understood a bit about the army.

For an ordinary soldier, not only is the chance of becoming a general slim—achieving even a battalion commander rank is one in a thousand, one in ten thousand!

But he thought that this era wasn’t the old one, and if later this Republic of Nanhua really developed and started grabbing territory globally, their cohort—the first batch entering military academy—surely would be promoted first.

Gan Sheng’s dream of being a general might actually have a chance!

Thinking this, he glanced at the seventy or eighty people lined up in front and behind him, also beginning to look forward to military life.