On the rest day, Yang Yonghong ultimately couldn’t go back home.

A hundred or so miles would be nothing in the future, just an hour’s drive to settle it.

But now, without such good road conditions, those hundred-plus miles would take Yang Yonghong several hours round trip. She had only left home for Beijing half a month ago, so she wasn’t that homesick yet. There was a town market just a few miles from the Artillery Guidance Regiment, and after the bathhouse opened, having a thorough bath and then strolling through the market refreshed was truly wonderful.

On this rest day, the military camp’s store was stripped bare by everyone.

After emptying the camp store, the freshmen invaded the market a few miles away. They were like hungry wolves, buying whatever caught their fancy, their eyes turning green at the sight of food. At the braised chicken stall in the market, each chicken was snatched up as soon as it came out of the pot. Later, the stall owner hurriedly sent people home to buy and slaughter more chickens for braising, and even those that weren’t fully marinated were sold out instantly.

Xia Xiaolan didn’t need to fight for anything – she had Zhou Cheng.

The two met at the market like underground party members, with Zhou Cheng secretly passing things to her. Xia Xiaolan returned with braised chickens, wearing a happy smile.

Three chickens for four people?

Su Jing, faced with the delicacy, hadn’t lost her mind:

“How did you manage to get these?”

“Never mind that just say whether you’re eating or not?”

Su Jing immediately stopped the idle talk and grabbed a chicken leg, “Limin, Xiaoyan, hurry and eat, today we’re feasting like rich folks.”

The four of them devoured the food silently, easily finishing two chickens. When one remained, Su Jing suggested taking it back for Huang Weiwei and the others: “You bought too many, and in this weather, they’ll spoil. Why not let them have a taste too?”

Who would complain about having too much meat? People’s appetites were shocking these days, and they could finish the remaining braised chicken. Though Su Jing and Xia Xiaolan were close, they still maintained boundaries. The braised chickens were bought by Xia Xiaolan, so the three of them couldn’t eat everything. Sharing some with others would gradually dissolve those inexplicable rumors about Xia Xiaolan.

Anyway, these days, Xia Xiaolan has become quite familiar with the girls from the Architecture Department, and recently, everyone’s evaluation of her has been quite positive.

Then they should keep up the momentum and strive to thoroughly integrate with the masses, becoming one loving family with them!

Su Jing believed that Xia Xiaolan could afford to buy more than a dozen braised chickens if she wanted.

But why would she need to buy so many braised chickens to take back?

That kind-hearted treat would instead become showing off! Would Tsinghua’s female students become Xia Xiaolan’s lackeys just because she gave them some braised chicken? Such things were simply impossible at Tsinghua. If Xia Xiaolan tried this, it would likely backfire!

Young Miss Xia’s face reddened slightly. No matter how clever Su Jing was, she was still just a twenty-year-old girl. If Su Jing could understand this, Xia Xiaolan would have to learn it the hard way.

Xia Xiaolan wasn’t ignorant – in her previous life, she had been cautious many times. It was just that she had been making money hand over fist before, and feeling she could accomplish great things in the 80s, she became slightly overconfident and didn’t take matters with Zhou Cheng seriously enough!

“Alright, Su Jing, I know you’re looking out for me!”

Xia Xiaolan emotionally hugged Su Jing.

In her previous life, she had been awkward during her student years, lacking confidence in dealing with classmates, and had few close friends after graduation. It wasn’t until she encountered setbacks at work that she slowly learned some things. Breaking out of that rural circle was right – from Xia Xiaolan’s perspective, the Tsinghua platform and the people in this circle were truly exceptional. Though each person in the dormitory had their temperament, they were generally accommodating and tolerant of each other.

The braised chicken brought back to the unit indeed won universal praise.

It was just enough for everyone to have a bite, but the key was that food tasted better when shared among many!

Training time felt particularly slow, but rest days passed especially quickly, and in the blink of an eye, it was a new day. Perhaps feeling that the students had mastered some basic skills, today the unit arranged “crawling forward” training.

It really meant crawling on the ground, having to overcome various obstacles. Just learning the crawling posture took half a day, and when the instructor said they would test the training results, many faces turned green.

For safety reasons, there were no barbs on the wire ground net, but it was too close to the ground, requiring a low crawling posture, basically crawling under this wire net obstacle.

Crawling was one thing, but the ground was full of mud.

“Following the training principles, remember your movements from practice, everyone can get through this obstacle distance!”

Zhou Cheng stood by the wire ground net, having to supervise both the men’s and women’s training grounds, running over when it was Xia Xiaolan’s turn to train. Though these words seemed directed at all the female students, only Xia Xiaolan, the person concerned, could understand the hidden affection.

Since they had cleared things up between them, Zhou Cheng no longer avoided Xia Xiaolan during training.

They didn’t need to be in close contact; whenever their eyes met, they would share knowing smiles.

Anyway, outsiders could never tell there was anything between Zhou Cheng and Xia Xiaolan. In the girls’ eyes, Zhou Cheng was just the big devil king – no matter how handsome he was, he couldn’t compare to the most lovable Instructor Li. Xia Xiaolan was secretly dying of laughter, but she also felt secure about Zhou Cheng’s behavior.

This was the sense of security in male-female relationships!

Zhou Cheng certainly couldn’t control whether other women liked him, but he was trying his best to avoid excessive contact with young girls.

As the chief instructor, even if he saw a female student’s incorrect movements, he didn’t need to correct them personally… Though he wanted to give his future wife an intimate one-on-one lesson, after Xia Xiaolan set her mind on competing for “Outstanding Graduate,” her movements became quite standard. Zhou Cheng didn’t even have the chance to pretend to be suddenly inspired to correct Student Xia Xiaolan’s wrong movements.

Now he came to encourage Xia Xiaolan to crawl forward under the wire ground net obstacle.

Though Xia Xiaolan was sweet inside, she didn’t hesitate in her movements. Zhou Cheng had seen her covered in dirt and grime these past few days, so one more round of rolling in the mud wouldn’t matter.

Because she lay down cleanly and decisively, she even earned Instructor Li’s praise. The Tsinghua girls understood – what was a little dirt? What would they do when assigned to front-line production units in the future? Building the motherland could happen anywhere, and even as Tsinghua graduates, not everyone would work in government offices after graduation!

“Crawl!”

“It’s just washing clothes afterward, right?”

“It’s just a few dozen meters of wire net and mud pit…”

Some hesitated, but no one cried over crawling through the wire net. Finally, the female students completed their tasks!

The instructors carefully compared everyone’s performance, writing down scores – it turned out the selection for “Outstanding Graduate” had already begun, with scores given for each training session. The final accumulated scores would determine who had the chance to be selected as an “Outstanding Graduate” for this military training. Su Jing said that according to Tsinghua’s past practices, military training’s outstanding students would become “Three-Good Students” in their freshman year – one step ahead could mean staying ahead.

However, in previous years, military training hadn’t left campus and hadn’t included so many variations.

On the third day after the rest day, the instructors mixed the male and female students and took them for loaded field training!

Field, loaded, training – these three words read separately were both sweet and sorrowful.

The freshmen cheered, thinking it would be a picnic, an autumn outing.

The instructors smiled without speaking – let them think that, then.