Why Do All the Villains Look at Me Like This? - Chapter 8

The moment he was dropped into the training room, the unique indoor temperature vanished, replaced by violent gales and sweeping sandstorms. Meng Xuexiao sat inside the mecha, separated from the wind and dust outside by a layer of transparent metal, yet he could still feel the icy air rushing towards him.

The material of the low-grade mecha was poor. His breath left a faint layer of condensation on the inside of the metal shell, blurring his vision. Meng Xuexiao didn’t dare waste time and quickly reached out to wipe it away.

They were using the same terrain as the first and second groups, bombs still buried somewhere unknown beneath their feet, and the massive, cannon-equipped aircraft still circled above, like dark clouds that refused to scatter.

Just as his fingers touched the metal, the mecha suddenly jolted. His elbow slipped and slammed into the control panel, instantly leaving behind a terrible bruise.

What happened?

He had just counted—those flying machines only launched attacks every ten seconds.

When he looked up again, he saw a massive dent in the fogged-up transparent metal, spiderweb-like cracks radiating from its center. At the heart of those cracks was a metal weapon—part blade, part gun. The blade-like sharp shell pierced easily through Meng Xuexiao’s mecha armor, as effortlessly as a knife cutting into an eggshell.

Then the trigger was pulled, and the beam unique to an energy gun fired, skimming past the tip of Meng Xuexiao’s ear, slicing off a few strands of hair, and leaving a crimson scratch on the boy’s pale skin.

Meng Xuexiao had no time to care about the sting of that shallow wound, because he saw a shadow drawing close on the other side of the transparent metal. The high-tech weapon that had just attacked him had extended from that shadow.

It was Xu Gao’s mecha.

Xu Gao’s face was nearly pressed against the outer shell of his cockpit, his features grotesquely enlarged. Distorted slightly by the curvature of the transparent metal, his expression twisted as he sneered, “Oops, my bad—didn’t see you there. Thought you were one of the simulated enemies!”

Meng Xuexiao couldn’t be bothered to listen to his excuses. Expressionless, he maneuvered his own mecha’s energy gun directly to Xu Gao’s chest and pressed the attack button without hesitation.

“Pfft…”

A dry, deflated thud rang out, like the sound of air leaking from a balloon.

Xu Gao remained perfectly still, standing right where he was.

Meng Xuexiao immediately lowered his gaze to look at his own fingers, they were still pressed against the attack button, hadn’t even lifted.

He raised his pale, slender fingers and pressed it again, refusing to believe it.

Once more, the same muted “pfft.”

Xu Gao curled his lips into a smirk right in front of him. “Looks like your mecha’s really aged, can’t even fire its weapon. That’s dangerous.“

But Meng Xuexiao knew, the school would never assign mechas that had degraded to this extent. The Federation Military Academy’s training might be harsh, but its core purpose was to train soldiers, not murder students.

He carefully checked around the control panel, this time, he was meticulous, not missing even the tiniest gap. Then, on one of the screws, he found extremely faint signs that it had been tampered with.

This mecha wasn’t just old—it had been sabotaged.

The moment Meng Xuexiao touched it, the pre-programmed sequence was instantly triggered. The entire control panel lit up with a warning red glow: “Self-destruct mode activated.”

A brand-new progress bar appeared on the display, the numbers climbing at alarming speed.

[Self-destruct mode: 2%]

Meng Xuexiao immediately turned his attention to the “Cancel” button beside it—but it had already been locked out, turned a lifeless gray. No matter how hard he pressed, it wouldn’t respond at all.

This was a full-on death trap.

As if he knew Meng Xuexiao had figured it out, Xu Gao’s grin widened. He pointed toward the aircraft in the sky, which was ready to fire again.

“No one can control what happens in combat training. Good luck surviving.”

The ten-second mark hit, the flying machine overhead began raining down shells once more.

Meng Xuexiao finally lost his composure and slammed a fist onto the control panel. The control panel gave the slightest shudder, but it did nothing to slow the progress of the self-destruct sequence.

“Clink!”

The screw that he had worked so hard to reattach earlier fell out once again. The joints in the mecha’s leg began to loosen, and its components started to disassemble themselves one by one,
just as the self-destruct mode demanded, like a person slowly being stripped of their armor.

If this continued, it wouldn’t be long before Meng Xuexiao was completely exposed to the bombs.

Images of the two students who’d been carried into the treatment room flashed through his mind—they were C-grade, still inside their mechas, and yet they had been reduced to a bloodied mess. If those same bombs landed on him, it was questionable whether there’d even be anything left to save.

He had to find cover.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, a bomb fell right next to his feet.

The ground beneath him exploded into a deep crater. Black, earthy-smelling mud splattered upward, spraying through the mecha’s damaged plating, hitting his face and soaking his body. His school uniform was instantly drenched, turning dark as the liquid seeped in and clung to him.

The moment the mud splashed upward, Meng Xuexiao had already shut his eyes. The wet, clinging filth soaked through his eyelashes, then trailed down in hot droplets, gathering briefly in the hollows of his eyes, then winding down his face.

The pitch-black sludge contrasted starkly with his sickly pale skin, like a jade-white statue in an ancestral hall weeping tears.

It burned.

The heat carried by the earth, driven by the blast, reddened his skin. A faint flush spread to the corners of his eyes, making that face all the more striking, like a dew-kissed lily dragged into the mud. Its white petals sullied, evoking both heartache, and an irresistible urge to trample it underfoot.

The young man’s brows furrowed slightly as he wiped the grime from his face with the back of his hand. His movements weren’t exactly gentle, they rubbed his already flushed cheeks an even deeper red. Especially his slightly parted lips, now looking like rose petals steeped in strong liquor.

A few classmates nearby couldn’t help but glance at Meng Xuexiao for a few extra seconds, quietly sighing to themselves.

This person really is good-looking. Even covered in mud, he still looks good.

What a shame…

But this is the training room of that demon instructor, we can barely take care of ourselves, let alone worry about anyone else.

Noticing the attention being cast his way, Meng Xuexiao’s expression didn’t change. He took a step forward, only to feel a sharp pain. His calf trembled involuntarily, and his toes curled slightly in response.

He quickly steadied himself, took another step as if nothing had happened, then glanced at the control panel:

[Self-destruct mode: 65%]

When the bomb exploded beside him earlier, a portion of his mecha’s leg components had already fallen off, that’s when his foot had been injured.

Meng Xuexiao didn’t know how bad the injury was, and he didn’t have the chance to check. He was certain Xu Gao was watching him from somewhere in the shadows, and the moment he showed even a hint of weakness, the other boy would pounce, like a hyena smelling blood.

So he walked with as much subtlety as possible, limping in a way that was barely noticeable. He kept weight off his injured foot, quietly dragging it behind him. Meng Xuexiao’s gaze remained firmly fixed on a partially collapsed building not far away. His objective had never changed, he was looking for cover.

The instructor had set the training duration at ten minutes. A sturdy shelter could protect him for just long enough, even after his mecha completely broke down, and that would be enough. The building was tattered, but most of its structure was still intact. When it collapsed, one wall had folded inward to cover the top, and thick steel bars—thick enough that several people couldn’t wrap their arms around them—jutted out visibly, clearly solid.

It was the ideal shelter.

Enduring the pain in his foot, Meng Xuexiao instead quickened his pace. The components of his mecha continued to fall away piece by piece, like silk being pulled from a cocoon, the final unraveling before the butterfly breaks free.

[Self-destruct mode: 95%]

Meng Xuexiao practically crossed that red line just as he dove beneath the building. The structure completely enveloped him, and the cold, damp air inside quickly cooled the heat in the mud caked on his face, causing it to harden into crusted patches.

He made it. He finally made it.

Leaning against the wall, Meng Xuexiao gasped for breath, then slowly slid down to sit on the ground. The overwhelming relief of surviving pulled his taut nerves slack, even his injured foot didn’t seem to hurt as much.

But in the very next moment…

A cold, solid weapon pressed against his spine.

“Don’t move.”

That shape, that silhouette, Meng Xuexiao recognized it instantly. It was the same weapon that had sliced through his mecha like it was an eggshell, a weapon shaped like a blade, but with the core of a gun. This weapon had clearly been fired several times recently, the muzzle was still hot.

Pressed abruptly against the middle of Meng Xuexiao’s back, it made him involuntarily flinch, as if he’d been burned.

The boy slowly turned his head and met the face of the person standing behind him. The inside of the building was oppressively dim. Jagged steel rods and irregular broken walls formed the shape of a gaping, man-eating mouth, casting deep shadows across Xu Gao’s face, making it appear even darker and more twisted.

“Should I say… what a coincidence? Or are you just incredibly lucky? To make it all the way here, still in one piece?”

The muzzle jabbed forward again, and Meng Xuexiao had no choice but to stumble back a step.

His swaying, unsteady silhouette was cast onto the broken walls, like a wounded animal, a small creature caught in a steel trap, struggling in vain.

Xu Gao felt blood rush to his head, a rare surge of exhilaration. He was an E-grade, always stuck at the bottom of the pyramid in the Federation Military Academy. But now, right in front of him stood someone utterly at his mercy, unable to fight back. It was like dangling a fresh slab of meat in front of someone who had been starving for decades.

Xu Gao couldn’t help but lick his lips and slowly moved in closer. “Back up—go on, keep backing up!”

He no longer looked like he was in a rush to kill Meng Xuexiao, nor did his expression carry the same rage as before, but to Meng Xuexiao, this version of Xu Gao felt even more dangerous. Like a cat toying with a mouse it had already caught, squeezing it and rolling it around in its paw.

Meng Xuexiao was forced to the very edge of the shelter, his injured foot already outside the cover’s protection.

He stepped onto a piece of broken debris from the building. Trying to steady himself, he glanced back, and his pupils instantly contracted. The once pitch-black sky had now been dyed mostly red. One after another, massive mushroom clouds rose into the air, and waves of heat lashed the ground like whips.

Looking around, there was no trace of any students left in the training room, only a few pairs of eyes peeking from hidden corners. After meeting Meng Xuexiao’s gaze, those eyes quickly and inconspicuously looked away.

The shadow of a bomb loomed above him—dark, heavy, and grotesquely misshapen, like some kind of monster descending from the sky. The extreme contrast of light and shadow sliced Meng Xuexiao’s face into fragmented pieces.

All that remained before his eyes was a field of burning red.

[Self-destruct mode: 100%]

It was over. Flames consumed the broken-down mecha. The still-burning fire danced in Xu Gao’s eyes. There were no surveillance cameras in the training room, but Xu Gao still carefully stayed hidden in a blind spot
though his expression showed little trace of nervousness.

Outside the training room, a teacher who had come by to deliver documents to the mecha operations instructor looked inside casually, his face equally unbothered.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk… which student is using class time to settle personal grudges again? Looks like there’ll be a lot of people heading to the treatment room today.”

The mecha operation class had always been one of the highest-risk courses not only because of how dangerous the training environment was, but also because students often took advantage of it to settle scores. The instructors generally turned a blind eye, believing that this kind of internal conflict could better ignite the students’ fighting spirit.

The teacher who had come to deliver the documents spoke with a hint of amusement, “There are still four minutes left in the training. I’m curious to see how many more students will be eliminated!”

The stopwatch timing the session ticked away with a steady ‘click, click, click’, but in the next instant, it stopped.

The room immediately fell silent. The flying machines and bombs in the training chamber vanished without a trace, leaving only a smooth, empty floor behind.

The impatient voice of the mecha operations instructor echoed through the classroom, “How many people are in the treatment room right now? Tell them to get over here immediately, a student’s in trouble.”

When Meng Xuexiao’s mecha began disassembling halfway, the instructor had already realized something was wrong, but shutting down the training room took time.

The teacher delivering the documents blinked, taking a moment to register, “You ended the training session?”

“Yeah,” the mecha instructor replied flatly. “If we don’t get to him quickly, that student probably won’t make it.”

“Isn’t that a bit exaggerated? Just one bomb, right? Shouldn’t take more than a few hours of recovery before he’s bouncing around again.”

“He’s an F-grade.”

“Huh? F-grade? That kind of classification still exists?”

The teacher looked surprised, but what surprised him even more was, “You actually allowed an F-grade into your class?! I thought you would’ve kicked out a student who couldn’t possibly contribute anything!”

The mecha instructor furrowed his brows and moved his lips slightly. “He should’ve been kicked out.”

He recalled the boy’s back, walking toward the mecha without a trace of hesitation, despite knowing the danger, like the last handful of snow in the morning light of spring.

The mecha operations instructor furrowed his brows and moved his lips. “He should’ve been kicked out.”

But the heart that had witnessed countless battles and deaths on the battlefield gave a rare tremble. He just didn’t want that boy to die here so carelessly.

What a… waste.

Just then, the door was flung open. Both the mecha instructor and the teacher delivering the documents turned toward it. The instructor’s face darkened. He’d always disdained the prim and proper doctors from the medical unit.

“Is that how you people treat injured students?”

But the first person he saw wasn’t one of those white-coated physicians, it was a slightly anxious young man. The mecha instructor narrowed his eyes. This was the son of a colonel—a young man bathed in prestige from every circle.

“I heard Meng Xuexiao was injured. Is it true?” Shen Zekai’s academic and training workload was usually extremely heavy, yet he had rushed over in the middle of training. Sweat dotted his arms and face, but he didn’t seem to care.

“He’s still in the training room. I can’t confirm his condition yet. I’ve already called for the medical team,” the instructor explained, saying a few more words than usual, because of Shen Zekai’s identity.

Even as he spoke, he couldn’t help but glance repeatedly at Shen Zekai.

Meng Xuexiao… actually knows someone like Shen Zekai?

He had clearly underestimated that F-grade student.

A while later, the doors opened again. The first to enter was a tall, sharply dressed man wearing gold-rimmed glasses. Though clad in a plain white coat and bearing a gentle demeanor, he was no shorter than the mecha operations instructor. The instructor, who had just been fuming moments ago, was momentarily stunned. His anger immediately dissipated.

“Director Chu, what brings you here?”

Director Chu’s full name was Chu Sinian, and his physical classification was 2S-grade. Even if you compared him against every historic figure in the Federation,
he’d still be considered at the very top of the pyramid.

He specialized in medicine and had built his empire from scratch. In recent years, he had practically monopolized the Federation’s pharmaceutical supply, becoming the only person who could stand on equal footing with the military. Because Chu Sinian was an outstanding graduate of the Federation Military Academy, he would occasionally return to his alma mater to check in.

“No need to call me ‘Director Chu’ at school. Just call me Professor Chu,” Chu Sinian said as he adjusted his glasses.

Right behind him, two medics entered, pushing carts loaded with various medical devices. “I heard someone was injured? Since I was here, I figured I’d take a look.”

“His name is… Meng Xuexiao, right?”

Chu Sinian read out Meng Xuexiao’s name, and though it was supposedly his first time saying it, there was an oddly familiar tone in his voice.

Shen Zekai couldn’t shake the strange feeling that something was off, but his attention was quickly drawn to the emergency equipment the medics were pushing.

His expression darkened.

He had been told that Meng Xuexiao was injured, but the equipment in front of him was clearly for emergency resuscitation.

Without hesitation, he immediately followed after Chu Sinian and the mecha instructor. “I’m coming too!”

The towering flames had begun to fade, and dark gray smoke spread across the entire field, like a curtain being shaken open.

Those far away couldn’t see what was happening inside, but Xu Gao—who was closest to Meng Xuexiao—could see everything clearly.

Meng Xuexiao’s mecha was kneeling on one knee, its arms crossed protectively in front of the cockpit, shielding Meng Xuexiao within its embrace. The young man inside was completely unharmed, not even a single fold in his clothing had changed from before the bomb had fallen. A mecha that reached 100% self-destruct mode was supposed to be either scrapped or fully dismantled.
There was no other outcome.

But at this moment, faint currents of electricity danced across the mecha’s outer shell, almost like human nerves, flexibly connecting all the parts that should’ve fallen apart, reassembling them into the shape of an eye.

Within the eye-like pattern, a non-mechanical light flickered briefly, logging the current timestamp:

[Life-threatening event detected again? Time since last kidnapping: 6 hours, 21 minutes, 32 seconds.]

The frequency was far too high.

Fortunately, it had left a monitoring device on Meng Xuexiao the last time they parted.