These actions drew strong opposition from the purely academic faction within the scout academy. They felt that these measures by the military was obviously making light of the wellbeing of their students. Although the Federation declared that hypnosis was harmless to the human body, and the general public believed that, the experienced teachers in the scout academy knew that hypnosis was actually a form of spiritual attack. It would cause some cracks and holes to appear in the spiritual self of the one being hypnotised. This would affect the children's future development, especially those who wanted to become mecha operators or starship navigators. Spiritual damage was especially taboo for those two career pathways.
From the start, the Central Scout Academy had been the gathering grounds of almost all the top 3 tiers of exceptional children. All of these children were very likely to become excellent soldiers in the future — the loss of any single one of them would be a loss to the Federation. Thus, the pure-academic faction, with Dean Ye Yifan at its head, made the decision to chase out the monitoring military staff currently within the campus. They needed to protect their students! Moreover, Ling Xiao's legacy space was gone; it was unnecessary for these monitoring staff to remain in the Central Scout Academy.
The upper ranks of the military were naturally unwilling to just give up on Ling Xiao's legacy, but there was a pure-academic faction within the military upper ranks as well which supported the Central Scout Academy's decision. On top of that, the Grand Marshal also seemed to be on the side of the Central Scout Academy, so the military had no choice but to agree to withdraw the monitoring team trying to reclaim Ling Xiao's legacy.
In fact, this intense backlash from the Central Scout Academy was in large part due to the sudden unfounded suspicion towards Ling Lan by one of the senior officers in the monitoring team. The team had then requested the right to interrogate Ling Lan from the academy. This caused Mu Shui-qing, who had been watching over Ling Lan all this time, to become livid, and also spurred the dean of the academy, Ye Yifan, into an explosive rage.
Mind you, for this past month or so, Ling Lan had been calmly lying within a recovery pod, with no way of logging onto the virtual world. Without any shred of evidence whatsoever, the military had actually dared to submit such a preposterous request — this made the instructors of the pure-academic faction of the academy unbelievably mad.Especially once the academy found out that the fake teachers who tried to assassinate Ling Lan had come about due to the negligence of the monitoring team ... one of their teams had been secretly killed and replaced while returning from the outside and the monitoring team had not noticed the problem, which had allowed the opponents to successfully infiltrate the Central Scout Academy and obtain the chance for an assassination.
Their negligence had already caused their student to receive such severe injuries, and they still wanted to take things one step further to destroy their student's future? Did they really take the Central Scout Academy to be pussycats? Here for them to push around as they liked? Enraged, the Central Scout Academy no longer gave any face to the military. They immediately threw an eviction notice at the monitoring team. This forceful measure let the monitoring team know that the matter was thoroughly out of their control now — although they tried their best to negotiate, it was all useless.
It should be said that the monitoring team had done a very stupid thing. Not only did this suggestion enrage the Central Scout Academy beyond reason, even the pure-academic faction within the upper ranks of the internal military itself was extremely angry. Even the Federation's Grand Marshal expressed extreme displeasure with their actions.
In the end, with no way of salvaging the situation, the monitoring team could only slip away from the Central Scout Academy with their tails between their legs. Meanwhile, Ye Yifan had taken this opportunity to fire almost all of the teachers within the academy who were not focused purely on academics. Only a small portion, with true skills but not much influence, managed to remain at the end of this great spring cleaning ...
Of course, this series of events was generally unknown to the scout students. They only knew that some of the teachers they were familiar with were gone, while some new unfamiliar teachers had emerged. However, there would always be new teachers appearing every year anyway, so the students did not find it strange.
Still, the military needed to come to a final verdict for the disappearance of Ling Xiao's legacy space. In the end, the military chose the final possibility as proposed by Lieutenant Colonel J. Ling Xiao must have set a final deadline when he had first created his legacy space. Whether or not his legacy was inherited, when the time came, the space would self-destruct.
This deduction made perfect sense and was accepted by a majority of the upper ranks. Although an extremely small portion of the upper ranks still insisted on believing that someone had obtained Ling Xiao's legacy — they believed they just had not found the inheritor yet. However, when they heard that the Grand Marshal had approved the military's submitted verdict, they knew the tide had passed. They could only regretfully give up on their investigations — no one would dare to question the Grand Marshal's decision. And so, the disappearance of Ling Xiao's legacy space ended without any great trouble, becoming one of the military's unsolved mysteries.The furore over the disappearance of Ling Xiao's legacy space faded into tranquillity with the passage of time. Meanwhile, after resting for a full month and more, the condition of Ling Lan's body was getting much better. When Lan Luofeng found out that Ling Lan was able to come out from the recovery pod, she decided that it was time to pack up. Three days later, they would return to the Ling family mansion.
In these 3 days, Lan Luofeng was extremely busy. She submitted a request for the academy to process Ling Lan's withdrawal from the school; this was undoubtedly against Federation regulations. However, considering the special circumstances — Ling Lan's body still needed time to recover, and Mu Shui-qing was exerting pressure on Ye Yifan — the academy compromised. Ling Lan would have to return to the school in three years time to take the academy's final exam and apply for further enrolment at a military school or some other specialised academy then. After obtaining this promise from Lan Luofeng, the scout academy agreed to Ling Lan's withdrawal request.
News of the assassination attempt against Ling Lan during the grand armed melee had spread across the whole academy after the grand armed melee. The 7th grade, in particular, found out that Ling Lan had only been attacked by enemy nation assassins after successfully dispatching the top student of the 10th grade. If academy teachers had not arrived at the scene in time, Ling Lan might very well have been killed. This aggravated the entire 7th grade as a whole, because they knew very well that if Ling Lan had not dispatched the top rank of the 10th grade before he had been taken out, the winners of the grand armed melee was likely to have been the 10th grade ...
Considering what might have been, the 7th grade was filled with hatred for those enemy nations of the Federation 1 . Qi Long and the others of Ling Lan's group of friends, were especially livid. They wished they could personally find those killers and tear them into pieces.
Lan Luofeng knew what the truth of the matter was, but also knew that this was politics. For unity, security, and to fan the patriotism of the students, some lies needed to exist, while some truths needed to be buried. Lan Luofeng did not want to be at odds with the country's political machinations — as long as they could give her a satisfactory accounting, she would not concern herself with these trivial things. Thus, she chose to look the other way.
Qi Long and the others were extremely worried about Ling Lan's condition. While Ling Lan was still unconscious, they kept coming to visit him, and so they knew that the damage to Ling Lan's body was severe enough to require a long stay at home. Ling Lan could no longer continue to attend school with them at the academy. This news saddened them, especially Qi Long. After finding out the news, he ran off on his own to a combat room for a punishing round of training. In the end, it was still Han Jijyun who managed to coax him back out.
Even so, the other members of Ling Lan's team could clearly sense the change in Qi Long. Although he seemed as outgoing and straightforward as ever, it was as if there was a rumbling volcano inside him. Though everything looked normal on the outside, no one could tell when he would explode ...
Han Jijyun was half pleased and half worried at this condition of Qi Long's. He was pleased because Qi Long had become much more proactive over matters involving Boss Lan, displaying much more initiative. But he was also worried because he was afraid Qi Long would be unable to bear the pressure he put on himself, and crumble under it in the end ...
Han Jijyun clenched his fists silently, telling himself that he must work hard. He must not let Qi Long walk down the path of self-destruction. Whenever Qi Long lost his way, he would step up to show him the way ...
********
When official news of Ling Lan's withdrawal from school came out, Qi Long's group, including Han Xuya and Luo Chao, as well as the original members of group 072, all came to make their final farewells with Ling Lan.
Filled with reluctance, the group came to stand before Ling Lan. Right then, Ling Lan was seated in a technologically-advanced wheelchair. Seeing the group here to say goodbye to her, Ling Lan's heart was filled with happiness.
However, when Ling Lan saw Qi Long's appearance, her brows twitched into a slight frown. Observant as ever, she had noticed something off about Qi Long.
"Qi Long, come here." Seeing Qi Long's state, Ling Lan was instantly in a bad mood. She coldly ordered Qi Long to come and stand beside her.
Qi Long excitedly walked over to wait for his boss's instructions, but Ling Lan did not say anything. With a flick of her finger, Ling Lan sent an ice bead smacking into Qi Long's forehead, causing Qi Long's head to bend back involuntarily.
Qi Long grimaced at the pain, his right hand flying up to press and rub at his forehead. He shouted, "Boss, why did you hit me?"
Ling Lan's ice bead had left a dark red mark on Qi Long's forehead. It was clear that Ling Lan had not wanted to be soft on Qi Long. "Seeing your current state, I just feel annoyed and really want to hit you."
Confused, Qi Long asked, "Why, Boss? Aren't I doing quite well?"
"Quite well? What's up with your angry-at-the-world attitude?" sniffed Ling Lan. Ling Lan could clearly sense the bottled rage Qi Long had stoppered up inside him.
Qi Long was silent. His hanging arms curled into fists, the veins on the backs of his hands becoming obvious. He did not even seem to notice even when his nails left deep marks on his palms. Should he tell Boss Lan how much he hated his own helplessness? ... If he had just been a little stronger, Boss Lan would not have had to fight on his own.
Qi Long knew that despite the all-around lock on the communicative functions on their communicators during the grand armed melee, Boss Lan could bypass those restrictions. So, Boss Lan could easily have notified them when he was being attacked. But even when Boss Lan's life had been hanging in the balance, he had still chosen not to contact them, fighting on his own instead. Qi Long knew that this was because Ling Lan did not want to bring them into danger. But from another perspective, this proved that they were just too weak to help Ling Lan ...
"Smack!" A cold staff-shaped weapon rapped the backs of Qi Long's hands, leaving behind a red line. "What are you doing? Self-mutilating? I don't have such a wimpy follower," said Ling Lan coldly, an ice-staff in her hands.
Ling Lan's words caused Qi Long's feelings to become unbalanced, his breathing becoming ragged as his chest rose and fell noticeably. He blurted out, "Boss, I want to become strong!"
Ling Lan's brow quirked. "Why?"
"I don't want to just stand behind you anymore. I don't want to see Boss hurt but be helpless to do anything about it. This feeling sucks ..." Qi Long mumbled lowly. His fists clenched tight once again, and he lifted his head to shout abruptly, "So, I want to become strong enough! I want to be able to fight by your side, Boss, and become your left and right arms, true sworn brothers that can brave life and death together ..."
