The Invasion Day – Chapter 24

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 24

Fu Shiwu had one strength: being a serious man; Fu Shiwu had one weakness: being a serious man!

In short, he was a simple guy who sincerely took other people’s words to his heart.

As his instructor, Tang Xuhai taught him all sorts of knowledge, which Fu Shiwu solemnly regarded as the supreme doctrine and nailed it firmly into his mind.

Tang Xuhai’s shooting school lasted an afternoon. After dinner, Tang Xuhai was free so he took over the job of taking care of Wen Zhaoming. Fu Shiwu sat beside Wen Zhaoming’s wheelchair and began to seriously practise removing the magazine and putting it back, repeating the steps hundreds of times.

Then, he began to practise setting the safety, releasing the safety, loading the bullets and unloading the bullets.

Then everything all over again.

Tang Xuhai, who was biting on his cigarette, couldn’t help but glance at him. All these movements were making his head spin! Fu Shiwu can actually be so passionate?!

Fu Shiwu’s lips stayed flat, his eyes looked downwards and the expression on his face was remarkably calm. In his whole life, he had never been this focused on studying something.

Although he had no idea if he had any talent for this, working hard was always right.

Nothing beat a resolute mind, and hard work always paid off.

Tang Xuhai was amazed because even when he was a soldier, he never saw anyone practise loading the magazine and setting the safety more seriously than Fu Shiwu.

That night, Tang Xuhai had a nightmare of being stuck in the battlefield all night, making it a very restless sleep. After getting up, he looked at Fu Shiwu sullenly and Fu Shiwu returned him a puzzled look.

Looking at his blurred gaze without glasses on, Tang Xuhai silently turned the other way. How can I complain? It was Fu Shiwu playing with the gun last night that gave him a nightmare of the battlefield. He hadn’t dreamt of such things for a very long time.

If Tang Xuhai learnt about Fu Shiwu’s seriousness the night before, then what Fu Shiwu was going to do in the morning would teach him that he needed to weigh his words carefully whenever he told Fu Shiwu anything in the future!

Standing motionlessly in the center of the bomb shelter, Fu Shiwu held the gun with both hands, aiming at the target that Tang Xuhai had put on the wall using band-aids.

The target was very simple, made of the label torn from the water jug and a basic cross created with two band-aids placed on top of each other.

But even with such a low-quality target, Fu Shiwu stood there unmoved for one full hour.

If Tang Xuhai hadn’t seen that Fu Shiwu was still breathing and his eyes were still blinking, Tang Xuhai would have thought it was a wax figure standing in front of him.

Fu Shiwu placed a finger on the trigger to give a certain amount of pressure, but during the entire period, his finger didn’t move even one bit, and neither did it loosen.

Tang Xuhai hugged his arms and watched from the side. He was laughing at first, then it turned into a solemn expression, and by the end, he had to admit that this was admirable.

Fu Shiwu had a terrifying ability to concentrate. With this ability, no matter what he did, there was no reason for him to not succeed.

Tang Xuhai knew for certain that in the future, Fu Shiwu’s marksmanship would be stellar.

A while later, Fu Shiwu still didn’t pull the trigger. Now Tang Xuhai began to worry. He wouldn’t really aim until he lost consciousness, right?! This wasn’t something a newbie should practice.

Fu Shiwu had just started to practise shooting. It was already challenging enough to achieve this state, not to mention that the pressure on both his body and his mind would be exceptionally heavy.

However, with this being a rare occasion in life that Fu Shiwu let himself go through such a brutal effort, Tang Xuhai wouldn’t want to interrupt him.

Fu Shiwu didn’t know that this would be an enormous burden of both the body and the mind, but he did know that it would be very difficult to aim until his consciousness of everything else vanished and left only the target in his eyes.

He didn’t just do this all blindly, because he actually had experienced this mysterious state not too long ago!

This was an incredulous feeling where even the awareness of his own self disappeared, leaving behind only the state of absolute concentration. He had felt it back in the residential area where he was under the threat of the alien.

Fu Shiwu had no idea how he did it back then, but now that he thought carefully about his feeling of that time, he seemed to get nearer to awakening.

I forgot everything around me, gave up the other senses of the body, and just focused on hearing.

Now he was doing the very same thing: forget the bomb shelter, forget Tang Xuhai and Wen Zhaoming, give up the senses of sound, touch and smell, focus only on his sight and the target in front.

Fu Shiwu had no idea, at the moment, how incredibly solemn his expression was, or how extraordinarily sharp his eyes had become. He just straightened his arms and stared at the little band-aid target through the gun’s crosshair.

Slowly, he couldn’t see anything except the band-aids in his eyes. He couldn’t feel his sore and heavy arms, his stiff neck or his aching legs. All these feelings had disappeared. In the end, even his vision disappeared completely.

But the band-aid cross was striking his senses. It was a sense that surpassed all other five senses.

At this moment, he pulled the trigger.

“Crunch!!!” It was the sound of the firing pin that ruptured the silent bomb shelter, but Tang Xuhai almost thought he heard a loud bang of something explode.

In the split second that the trigger was pulled, an indestructible pressure suddenly rose from Fu Shiwu’s body. Unconsciously, Tang Xuhai’s whole body became stiff, his muscles toughening into a fighting state. When Fu Shiwu pulled the trigger, it was obviously just an empty gun, but he could feel a bullet flying out and shattering everything in its path.

As all the hairs on his body started to loosen, layers of sweat poured down.

It was incredible.

Tang Xuhai looked at Fu Shiwu in utter shock. Even the sniper in his team didn’t have the same aura of Fu Shiwu just now. If they were at a battlefield, this aura alone would be enough to overwhelm most of the soldiers.

After Fu Shiwu pulled the trigger, his vision regained its clarity and a sensation of weakness suddenly surged from within. He desperately gasped for breath and started to sweat profusely, his hands feeling so sore and mushy that he couldn’t even hold the gun anymore.

Fu Shiwu staggered and fell to one side.

Tang Xuhai reacted quickly and strode over to support him.

With a spinning head, Fu Shiwu looked at him and said feebly: “Why do I suddenly feel so weak?”

“You’ve just exhausted all your power.” Tang Xuhai said firmly.

“How come?” Fu Shiwu struggled weakly but could only flop in Tang Xuhai’s arms: “I’m just doing an aiming exercise.”

“You’ve used up too much energy!” Tang Xuhai finally could blurt it all out: “The kind of training just now consumes a lot of physical and mental energy. Is that something you can do at this stage? Although I did say that it’s the ultimate state you should be in to shoot correctly, it’s for gunners who’ve practised thousands of real shots. You haven’t even fired a real bullet before yet have the nerves to try it? Reckless!”

“Oh……” Fu Shiwu’s expression changed. He lowered his head in frustration and his shoulders drooped: “It’s my bad.”

Fu Shiwu admitting his mistake so readily really made Tang Xuhai, who was at the verge of exploding, unable to scold him anymore.

He licked his lips, coughed dryly and said: “But you’re likely to have a talent at this, you succeed in just one shot. This state is extremely difficult to achieve. So after this first successful practice, let’s not go easy on yourself. Always try to maintain this state.”

Fu Shiwu’s eyes lit up. Before he could show a smiling face, Tang Xuhai said grimly: “But, I don’t encourage that you try it continuously! Do not attempt this again today. Be it tomorrow or some other day, you can only do this again after both your physical and mental strengths have fully recovered.”

“I understand.” Fu Shiwu nodded obediently.

“Can you stand up?” Finishing his lecture, Tang Xuhai began to worry about Fu Shiwu’s current state.

“I’m totally drained, can’t mutter any strength at all, and feel a little dizzy.” Fu Shiwu was supported by Tang Xuhai’s arms and knees. He raised his head to look at Tang Xuhai.

Right now, his expression was cold and his eyes were frosty. If it were not for his improved understanding of the brat after these past few days, Tang Xuhai would definitely not be able to tell that Fu Shiwu was seeking help with his words.

“Let’s give you some chocolate to add some sugar.” After Tang Xuhai finished speaking, he partially hugged him and partially carried him to the wheelchair.

After settling him down, Tang Xuhai trotted to Fu Shiwu’s backpack and opened the small box of chocolates.

The box was only two-third full.

Tang Xuhai was at a loss for words.

He had watched Fu Shiwu bring this box of chocolates home, and it had only been a week since they left! Fu Shiwu had already wiped out one-third of the box. How much of a sweet tooth is he?

He really had to praise Fu Shiwu’s mouth!

Wasn’t it great that Fu Shiwu had another skill that made Tang Xuhai ‘admire’ him even further?

These chocolates of Jian brand were packed in individual bars. They were not big, only about the size of an index finger, and there were ten bars in each box. Tang Xuhai opened one box, poured out half of it and walked over to give them to Fu Shiwu.

If this was for himself, he probably would die from sweetness.

The air inside the bomb shelter was cool and the chocolate hadn’t melted into a mess. Fu Shiwu clutched his favourite milk chocolate and munched on it satisfactorily.

But eating five bars in one go made even Fu Shiwu feel an overwhelming sweetness, so Tang Xuhai helped him pour a cup of water, to which he gulped down the entire cup in one go.

“You really…” Tang Xuhai rolled his eyes. How could the brat whom he thought to be a stern professional elite turned out to be this innocent?!

Fu Shiwu needed to recover his strength, so Tang Xuhai was responsible for making lunch.

Fu Shiwu actually thought that Tang Xuhai would be clumsy, but it turned out that Tang Xuhai’s cooking skills were better than him!

He often ate dried noodles cooked with vegetables bars and seasoning sauces at home, but Tang Xuhai occasionally made his own stir-fry vegetables and even his own soup. Really, one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

If it weren’t for the absence of cooking oil, Tang Xuhai, who was itchy to cook, could fry the dried vegetables to the standard of a restaurant chef.

After eating and taking a short nap, Fu Shiwu had a look at Wen Zhaoming to find that his condition had stabilised. Fu Shiwu didn’t feel so tired anymore and got ready to practise aiming again. It was just that this time, he didn’t try to get to the ultimate state anymore, rather, he stuck to the standard exercise of hand-eye coordination.

He held the gun up with one hand, his right eye a straight line with the band-aid target through the gun’s crosshair. Aiming until he could feel that there was no issue, Fu Shiwu pulled the trigger.

Seeing him firing a ‘bullet’ every two or three minutes and seemingly doing it with complete ease, Tang Xuhai was secretly kept in a speechless state.

Monster!

He finally understood how his comrade-in-arms must have felt when they told him the same thing with their faces full of envy.