After one hundred and twenty selection matches, Ji Changqing, with 240 points, stood shoulder to shoulder with nearly ten thousand others, temporarily holding first place.

Her teammates had also all successfully advanced to the preliminaries.

But that was to be expected. As students of the Fourth Military, failing to even pass the preliminaries would have been too embarrassing.

As one of the top three military academies, if its students couldn’t even make it past the league’s selection round, wouldn’t the Fourth Military lose all face?

The second stage of the competition, the preliminaries, was easier to advance from than the selection round, at least in terms of format. After all, the selection round required 120 matches to determine the one million cadets who would enter the preliminaries. The preliminaries, however, would select ten thousand finalists from that million over the course of just ten matches, filtering them down through each stage.

The preliminaries featured both team-based and individual matches, and it was during these ten matches that revival invitations came into effect.

This was why everyone was so eager to find reliable teammates, and why some would rack their brains trying to eliminate opponents or their teammates during the selection round.

After all, having a group of brilliant teammates was like having several extra lives! If you were unlucky, you might have to eliminate someone ten times in the preliminaries before they were truly out. Just thinking about it was exhausting.

The first match of the preliminaries was team-based. The moment Ji Changqing and her team logged in, they saw a dilapidated city with decaying streets. They felt their bodies suddenly grow heavy and reached for their waists, only to find them empty. A sense of dread washed over them.

This match was a city battlefield.

The city battlefield scenario involved three factions: the invaders storming the city, the resistance fighting back fiercely, and the innocent civilians.

The most twisted part of the city battlefield setup was that the civilians were weak, pitiful, and helpless. They had no firearms, their physique levels were low, and they had almost no chance of killing enemies to points. But they did have a mandatory protection mechanism:

Among the three factions, whether you were an invader or a member of the resistance, killing a member of the opposing faction earned you 10 points. But if you mistakenly killed a civilian, you were penalized 100 points, no exceptions.

The unarmed civilians, on the other hand, would earn 10 points for killing either a resistance fighter or an invader. However, once they had blood on their hands, they could be killed by the other two factions without the killer losing any points—though the killer wouldn’t gain any points either.

In previous years, for the poor souls who drew this ridiculous scenario and were assigned to the civilian faction, the only way to turn the tables and earn points was to see which of the other two factions won—the winning side would receive a collective point bonus.

Ji Changqing and her team, dragging their suddenly heavy and clumsy bodies, felt as if they had aged in an instant. They wore dumbfounded expressions and fell into collective thought.

The city battlefield was a notorious slaughterhouse.

For every faction.

This was because the scenario wasn’t just populated by the competing military cadets; it also included a massive number of NPCs.

The league claimed to have added this scenario to let cadets experience firsthand that “only by revering war can one protect peace.”

But the Alliance’s peanut gallery didn’t buy such a high-minded explanation. Their summary was that it was designed to give these cadets a harsh dose of reality ahead of time. “We just love the way you hate us but can’t do a thing about it.”

More than three minutes had passed since they logged in, and everyone was still silent.

Ji Changqing tentatively asked, “What does everyone think?”

The other seven members turned to her in unison, their expressions earnest and righteous as they replied, “We’ll follow your lead!”

It seemed like a picture of perfect harmony and camaraderie.

Ji Changqing looked at them, speechless. Could they have passed the buck any more smoothly?!

The live stream chat was already going wild.

“Holy crap, this year’s league is really trying to stir things up, dropping a bombshell like this in the first preliminary match!”

“Hahaha, seeing their dumbfounded faces is so satisfying!”

“A masterclass in passing the buck!”

“The friendship-breaker scenario!”

…

After showing off their buck-passing skills in the league, the team was finally able to have a proper conversation.

This city could easily accommodate thirty to fifty million people. Due to the war setting, anyone with the means to leave had already done so. Those who remained were essentially the abandoned.

A conservative estimate placed the number of civilians still in this slaughterhouse of a city at ten to twenty million.

Their assigned mission, of course, was not to save the world, but:

“Protect the civilians of Cishu District. Ensure no fewer than one thousand survive for seven days. For every additional survivor, gain one point,” Du Zhong read the mission description aloud. “Current number of survivors: 6,209.”

Ji Changqing, now quite experienced with instance runs, asked, “A survival rate of less than 20%?”

A heavy silence fell over the group.

The brutality of war, expressed so starkly in numbers, was shocking.

“If killing civilians costs points, why is the survival rate so low?”

“Wake up. That’s a rule for the league students. It doesn’t apply to the NPCs.”

“Soldiers…”

“Don’t even think about it. A soldier’s basic duty is to obey orders.”

Ji Changqing couldn’t help but fall into deep thought. Each team had a specific mission, and they couldn’t switch factions, which meant forming alliances was not an option.

This was different from the entrance exam. Back then, even though the world was against them, they could unite to fight against the space pirates and the Imperial fleet.

This time, they were naturally divided into three factions. Points couldn’t be transferred, and money was useless.

“Tossing one million people into this slaughterhouse of nearly twenty million… how much of a ripple can we even make?” Du Zhong muttered as he studied the map of Cishu District.

Their strength was limited, and they had no weapons. Although civilians were the majority, their only advantage was their numbers.

Besides, even if the cadets from the other two factions couldn’t kill civilians, that didn’t mean the NPCs wouldn’t.

This was a tough one.

“I have a theory. The cadets in the other two factions face a severe point penalty for killing civilians. Can we assume that these individuals represent the soldiers who are willing to fight enemies on the battlefield but not turn their blades on civilians—the more compassionate ones?”

Everyone nodded in agreement with this speculation.

Du Zhong held his thumb and index finger slightly apart. “Probably just a tiny fraction. But in a city battlefield, street fights can break out at any moment. If a battle happens to start in Cishu District, besides praying for themselves, can the civilians really expect that small group of people to move the firefight elsewhere and spare them out of a sliver of compassion?”

Ji Changqing suddenly said, “Then let’s just make Cishu District a demilitarized zone.”

The other six stared at her, stunned.

Hey, wake up! With their strength severely reduced, they might have some confidence if the mission was just to survive on their own. But protecting nearly a thousand people in a warzone until the end? That sounded hopeless.

Only Du Zhong grew excited. He rubbed his hands together. “Quick, tell us! How are we gonna do it?”

He just knew that following Ji Changqing meant he could stir things up!

Knowing that none of the three factions could switch sides, Ji Changqing had a vague idea forming in her mind. She put herself in the shoes of a weak nation with no diplomatic power in an era of rampant foreign aggression, where the common people struggled to survive. Those who wanted to resist had joined the resistance. The opportunists who wanted to welcome a new master and a new regime for a stable life had probably sided with the invaders.

The remaining civilians belonged to neither side. They were powerless to resist and unwilling to submit to the invaders. Of course, they might not have had the connections to surrender, or perhaps they were unwilling to bow down from the bottom of their hearts. They just wanted to live their muddled, numb lives. One day at a time, one breath at a time.

They didn’t want to live with their heads on the line, but they didn’t realize that by not choosing a side, they were walking on a knife’s edge, and the blade could fall at any moment.

Ji Changqing considered the mentality of the common city folk. They didn’t care about politics or changes in power, nor did they want to get involved in any risky activities. They just wanted to close their doors and live their lives. As long as they could get by, they were passively unwilling to resist or change.

Under these circumstances, trying to incite them to band together and fight the two armies was a dead end.

The only feasible option might be to cobble together a team of local thugs and enforcers to take over the district by force. They might not have the guts to join the army and fight, but they were certainly brave enough to bully their neighbors and collect some protection money.

The eight of them tested their skills and estimated they had retained about sixty percent of their strength, equivalent to each of them dropping three levels.

“Alright. Not good enough to fight on the battlefield, but more than enough to be local thugs.”

As they swept through Cishu District following the map, the eight of them quietly discussed how to act like thugs.

Well, while they might have had their rebellious phases, they were, on the whole, a group of bright and sunny youths. They had never had such a novel experience before.

When they first started kicking down doors to demand protection money—either pay up or hand someone over—their technique was extremely unpracticed. They were so awkward they didn’t look like toughs collecting protection money, but more like destitute passersby shyly knocking on a door to beg for a cup of water.

It was Ji Changqing, with her past experience as a screenwriter, whose acting skills kicked in and got everyone into character.

She stuck out a long leg and kicked a door open with a loud crash, shouting in a thuggish manner, “Protection money!”

Inside, a family of seven or eight people—men, women, old, and young—were about to eat. They stared at her blankly, as if they didn’t understand what “protection money” meant.

“I’m taking over this district! Pay up for protection! Either give me money, or give me a person to work for me to cover the fee! Otherwise, I’ll beat you every time I see you, beat you until you can’t go on!”

She sounded incredibly imposing!

The middle-aged man sitting at the head of the table watched Ji Changqing’s theatrical performance, his eye twitching. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.

The middle-aged woman sitting next to him stared at Ji Changqing in shock. Her lips trembled, and after a long moment, she managed to squeeze out, “A-Qing, why did you kick down our family’s door…”

Ji Changqing steeled herself and continued the awkward performance. “So you don’t want to pay, huh? Brothers, smash the place!”

The middle-aged man at the head of the table shot to his feet, grabbing a long stick and swinging it at her head. “You little brat! You do nothing but fool around all day, and now you’re trying to collect protection money? Collect this! I’ll beat you to death! I’ve never seen a gang boss try to collect protection money from their own family!”

What?!

Ji Changqing froze for a second, not even dodging in time, and took several hard blows from the stick.

Her seven companions were already dumbfounded!

It turned out that in the civilian faction, not only was your strength drastically reduced and you had no weapons, but the system also forced a persona on you—and made you part of a family!

But the mission description hadn’t mentioned any of this. Or had they missed a key piece of information?

The eight of them exchanged panicked glances and were quickly beaten and chased out of the house.

After all, the ones hitting them were Ji Changqing’s current “family.” They were new to this whole thug business and not very skilled yet. A strategic retreat was the best option!

Ji Changqing was furious.

Trying to become a thug to complete the mission was one thing, but what was wrong with this system? Why did it have to assign her the persona of a real hooligan?!

She was clearly a model youth with a sterling record and a bright future!