Through this assessment, the Star Hidden Big Boss had a rough idea of which areas the two needed to work on.

Given their performance in the final interrogation, Ji Changqing had clearly held up, earning a perfect score. He Qingzhi fell just short; his deepest secret had been extracted.

He needed to train Ji Changqing to be more cold-blooded and ruthless, and He Qingzhi to be more resilient and unyielding.

The two of them still had a great deal to learn, but there wasn’t much time.

But the big boss didn’t think much of it.

A person’s will to survive was always unbelievably strong. When learning with one’s life on the line, their motivation and desire to win would leave others in the dust right from the start.

The people he’d trained could accomplish in one year what others took at least three to achieve!

Disguise, pharmacology, interrogation, reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, coded communication, intelligence decryption, and so on—they had to start learning all these fundamentals.

Ji Changqing began a frantic life of study that left her almost breathless.

The most suffocating part for her was interrogation.

“I will arrange the subjects for you. If you can’t get the information out of them, you will suffer the torture in their place,” the big boss said gently. He looked very much like a good teacher wholeheartedly cultivating his prized students.

If only his words weren’t so brutal.

This big boss never forgot his persona as a refined and gentle intellectual; he was never seen losing his composure or temper. Every time, he would calmly, gently, and good-naturedly inform them of the situation they were about to face.

Even when flaying someone alive, torturing them with poison until they were unrecognizable, or ordering a kill… he would speak of it lightly, conscientiously, as if completing a rather aesthetic piece of work.

Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi were developing a psychological trauma around the phrase “refined and gentle.” The moment they saw the big boss flash his business-like smile, their skin would crawl.

“I have high hopes for you. I trust you wouldn’t want to disappoint me, would you?” A faint smile played on his lips. He took off his glasses and elegantly wiped the lenses, which were so clean a fly would do the splits if it landed on them. After wiping them, he put them back on and watched Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi gently through the lenses.

Under his death glare, Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi obediently agreed.

Ji Changqing swore she had never been so well-behaved, except in front of her past girlfriends.

“Interrogation is an art of extreme beauty. You are performing, and so is the other party. You must use a variety of methods to extract truly useful information from a sea of useless messages. You must put your heart into it, understand?”

It’s not just our hearts we have to put into it, we have to perform with our lives on the line! Ji Changqing complained silently.

She recalled when they were learning pharmacology and had to test the drugs on people. She had simply and crudely stuffed the medicine in, only to receive a vicious beating and be accused of being coarse, uncultured, and an eyesore.

The big boss wanted to completely change their behavior and mannerisms, striving for them to be able to act any part convincingly and not expose their identities through minor details.

She strongly suspected that this never-breaking persona of his was either his true nature, or he had been playing the part for so long that he had become too immersed to pull himself out of it.

“How far can we go?” Ji Changqing asked tentatively, carefully using the word “can” instead of “should.”

The big boss very patiently answered what he considered a very foolish question.

“I only want answers. Nothing else matters.” He activated his “death glare” skill again and asked with a chill in his voice, “Are you kindergarteners? Do you need me to deliver all their files to you so you can judge whether they deserve to die? And based on that, decide what methods to use and whether to kill them or not?”

He Qingzhi had no choice but to try and smooth things over. “Understood. We will learn how to grasp the limits and handle the measures appropriately as quickly as possible.”

The big boss shot him a light glance, noncommittal.

He looked at Ji Changqing warningly. “Put away that useless sympathy and sense of justice. It will only lead you to your deaths, and you might even drag others down with you. The only thing you need to remember is to complete the mission. Only the result matters, not the process.”

Ji Changqing lowered her head, her expression blank.

Then, unexpectedly, she didn’t hear the pervert announce a punishment for their foolishness. Instead, for the first time ever, he began to counsel them.

His voice was gentle, but his words were irrefutable. “Do all the people of the Empire deserve to die? But when the Alliance and the Empire face each other in battle, the only thing to do is kill. Because protecting their home and people is their duty. This has nothing to do with whether the enemy is innocent or deserves to die. As members of Star Hidden, accepting a mission is no different from being a soldier fighting on the border. Do you understand?”

Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi were deeply shaken.

They had been passively accepting everything, but in their hearts, there was always hesitation, uncertainty, and doubt…

But now, these words from their guide were like parting the clouds to see the sun, sweeping away the haze in their hearts.

The two silently clenched their fists. As members of Star Hidden, they were really no different from soldiers. It was just that their battlefield was different.

Even if their hands were stained with blood, they were guilty yet innocent.

After finishing his lecture, the big boss let them go to practice freely on their own.

After they left, the big boss murmured to himself, “They’re really… so gullible.”

But this was also very good. He gave a wicked smile. As long as they accepted this reasoning, they would sink into darkness with a sense of righteousness in their hearts.

Sinking into darkness, would they persevere and make a pure white flower bloom from the gloom, or would they be slowly assimilated, coming to despise the light?

He couldn’t wait to see them assimilated by the darkness.

The two of them, emerging from the big boss’s deluxe prison office, were completely unaware of this.

The moment they stepped out, the two exchanged a silent glance.

Then, they simultaneously put on an appearance of being open, noble, and close, and coincidentally moved nearer to each other to quietly discuss how to enact the aesthetics of violence.

During the previous interrogation assessment, He Qingzhi’s deepest secret had been extracted: he had deliberately kicked someone in to disrupt the battle, which ultimately led to Ji Changqing being framed for manslaughter and imprisoned.

The big boss, who feared nothing more than a world at peace, naturally leaked this information to Ji Changqing. He didn’t even do it behind his back; with a face that clearly said he was enjoying the show, he told Ji Changqing right in front of He Qingzhi.

Ji Changqing flew into a rage on the spot and gave He Qingzhi a merciless beating.

Then, both of them were punished. They had to wear expressions of enjoyment while being beaten.

Simply perverse!

But the big boss justified it eloquently: “Joy and anger not shown on your face, likes and dislikes not revealed in your words; sorrow and happiness not overflowing in your expression, life and death not left to fate. This is something every member of Star Hidden must remember by heart and carve into their very bones.”

“You can act, but you cannot reveal your true emotions, understand?!”

Her bright future had been ruined in an instant, leaving her with no choice but to walk this path of no return. It was impossible to say that Ji Changqing held no resentment.

But reality taught them how to behave.

So many things needed to be learned, all crammed into their heads at once. If they didn’t digest it fast enough and their learning progress fell behind, the consequences would be more than they were willing to bear.

Under the pervert’s thumb, if they wanted their lives to be even a tiny bit easier, the two of them had no choice but to cooperate.

Learning from each other, complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, discussing matters, and progressing together.

Calling them fellow disciples, a senior sister and junior brother, felt a bit strange. It was probably more appropriate to call them fellow sufferers, a sister and brother in misfortune.

In the foreseeable future, they would likely have to stand shoulder to shoulder to complete this binding mission.

Once a person crosses their bottom line, their fall is exceptionally fast.

After the big boss’s mental massage and a large bowl of chicken soup for the soul, never mind He Qingzhi—even Ji Changqing could torture the people handed over to them in turns without batting an eye.

They even learned to flexibly apply their disguise skills, dressing up as different people, creating different personas, performing brilliantly, and relentlessly extracting information.

They became adept at using poisons and drugs as well.

With their psychological burdens completely gone, the two could even vividly imitate the big boss, smiling cheerfully as they beat the people in their hands black and blue. They could even ignore their victims’ wails and curses, slicing a prisoner’s palm into 208 pieces of flesh as thin as a cicada’s wing, leaving only the complete finger and palm bones behind.

The big boss was inwardly very satisfied with their sudden turn toward sadism, but on the surface, he maintained his disdainful “you trash” attitude. He began to frantically add more lessons, all while pretending it was a normal workload!

After being frantically force-fed all sorts of knowledge and subtly brainwashed, one year and three months into their imprisonment—that is, after eight months of a cram-style education where their lives were constantly in danger—the two had their eyes opened once again.

The fact that the big bosses of the first three sectors could run wild in the prison, even having their own private offices and research labs, had already been enough to shatter their worldview.

They never imagined there was something that would shatter it even more.

In prison, not only did the big bosses lord over their own territories, but they could also socialize happily and had their own circle of friends!

One day, the big boss rarely summoned them.

“Your foundation is more or less solid. Next, I’m arranging for you to study under four different people. You’ll spend five months with each of them. Learn as much as you can. This will be the foundation that determines whether you come back alive from future missions.”

At first, the two didn’t think much of it, assuming the big boss had designated four people on his own territory to teach them.

But the big boss’s next words mercilessly shattered their illusion.

“Someone will come to pick you up tomorrow.” He pointed at Ji Changqing. “You’re going to Ghost-Sees-Sorrow’s place.” Then he pointed at He Qingzhi. “You’re going to Madman Gu’s.”

The two of them immediately felt their scalps tingle with dread.

Just from hearing those two names, they could guess who the other two were.

The big boss’s social circle also consisted of big bosses.

Among these people, it was hard to say who was more perverse than the others.

But generally speaking, this one was at least part of Star Hidden. While making a living under him involved constantly dancing on the edge of life and death, they at least had some reassurance in their hearts that he would, nine times out of ten, keep them alive so they could go out and shine.

But under those four, even if it was a transaction of interests and the other party had promised to spare their lives… people make mistakes, and horses can stumble. If things got out of hand by accident and they lost their lives, it was obvious this big boss wouldn’t kill those four in retaliation.

Thinking this, how could Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi not tremble?

“Rest assured, in their respective fields of expertise, there are few in the entire Alliance who are better than them. Even if you only learn ten or twenty percent of what they know, it will be more than enough.”

According to the big boss’s briefing, of these four, one was a genius with firearms, one was No. 3 on the assassin’s list, one was a master in the study of drugs and viruses, and the last was a master of psychology, an ultimate pervert who killed with his words.

This ultimate pervert who killed with his words didn’t directly persuade people to die, but rather instigated, insinuated, provoked, and sowed discord, ultimately arousing others’ killing intent and luring them into eliminating their enemies.

Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi continued to tremble.

The big boss felt no pity for them at all, only lamenting inwardly that he had really taken a huge loss this time.

To get these four to agree to take on these fledglings for five months certainly wasn’t accomplished through mere talk, but by moving them with tangible benefits.

“Be on your guard. This is an opportunity I exchanged for a considerable price. They only promised to leave you breathing.”

As he spoke, his face turned cold, and he activated his “death glare” skill. “If you don’t learn properly and end up dead, count yourselves lucky. If by some fluke you don’t die, you know what the consequences will be.”

Ji Changqing and He Qingzhi put on their “bowing to the big boss” emoji faces.

Inwardly, they silently complained, Brother, you’re really so flashy and dramatic.

It’s one thing to package us up and send us to be trained by perverts, with our survival depending entirely on luck. But you also demand that we return with accomplishments to bring you a high rate of return!