Why Do All the Villains Look at Me Like This? - Chapter 9

Meng Xuexiao stared blankly at everything before him. His slender fingers hadn’t reacted yet, still tightly gripping the gap in the control panel. He had used so much force that his knuckles were turning bluish. It was in this very spot that he had discovered signs of tampering from an outsider.

After being forced out of the safe zone by Xu Gao, he knew there was no way he could dodge the incoming bomb. So instead, he shifted his focus to the control panel.

Meng Xuexiao used every sharp object he could find around him to forcibly chip away at the gap, creating an opening. Following the clear traces of sabotage inside, he tried to restore the original configuration of the mecha, hoping he might still be able to salvage something.

He hadn’t expected that by the time he reached the third restoration segment, the mecha wouldn’t just stop disassembling, it actually began to move on its own.

Inside the cockpit, Meng Xuexiao had no way of seeing the eye-shaped pattern glowing on the outside.
He simply assumed that, by sheer luck, he had hit the right sequence by accident.

“Clang!”

The sound of something falling.

Meng Xuexiao’s heart clenched instinctively. He quickly craned his neck toward the source of the sound, tense and alert—like a newborn kitten just wriggling out from under its mother’s belly.

This mecha had a history of shedding parts, had something else fallen off this time?

But what entered his field of vision was an all-too-familiar weapon—part blade, part gun. It was Xu Gao’s weapon. This weapon was clearly no ordinary thing, who knew what price Xu Gao had paid to get his hands on it.

But now, it lay there on the ground all alone, carrying a sense of desolation. Following the weapon upward with his gaze, Meng Xuexiao met Xu Gao’s eyes. Xu Gao’s face was pale, his lips trembled, but no words came out, he looked like someone who had just been dragged up out of deep water.

Meng Xuexiao had no idea what he looked like right now.

The massive eye-shaped symbol had appeared across his mecha—resembling some kind of solemn, sacred totem. Cool-toned electric currents wove together across its surface, and the arcs of jumping electricity gave the boy’s eyes a faint metallic sheen.

Not quite human.

What the hell… is this thing?!

Xu Gao didn’t have much knowledge, so he didn’t recognize the eye symbol as the emblem of the Enforcer. But even so, he could instinctively feel the overwhelming pressure the figure before him exuded. It was as if his brain had been forcibly wiped—blank, frozen, unable to react.

By the time he finally did come back to his senses, he was already drenched in cold sweat. His hand reflexively reached into his pocket, grabbing at the one thing that still gave him a sense of security…

A remote detonator.

He had planned ahead—planting an explosive device in Meng Xuexiao’s mecha earlier as a backup. Now, that device was his only lifeline in the face of this unknown threat. His frantic, unhidden movement immediately caught Meng Xuexiao’s attention.

The boy’s body tensed in an instant, the curve of his bent calf so sharp and tight that even the Enforcer embedded within the mecha could feel it.

He looked like a cat with its fur fully bristled, ears flattened into aircraft mode, ready to pounce or defend at any moment. The Enforcer didn’t like cats. Too small, too fragile, too much trouble to care for, a complete waste of its already limited time. And now, three minutes had already been wasted.

The Enforcer’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. On the other side, there were still several criminals waiting to be dealt with.

As its mood shifted, the eye-shaped symbol rippled subtly. The pupil rotated slightly, and Xu Gao’s heart instantly began to pound wildly. Trembling all over, he pressed the detonator’s button. His clothes were drenched in sweat.

The Enforcer’s loathing deepened.

To waste even one more second in a place like this, on garbage like him, was infuriating.

A thread of current stretched out from the eye symbol, extending like a tendril and latching onto the remote in Xu Gao’s hand. In that instant, the entire device was taken over.

Xu Gao, and the human species, were a form of pollution to this world.

With a flick of its will, a deafening blast echoed all around. Xu Gao was violently thrown into the air, crashing into the ground and leaving a deep crater behind. His mecha’s outer shell had been blasted open,
a huge gap torn through it, the metal along the edges had melted from the intense heat, dripping down in heavy droplets.

Xu Gao himself had slammed his head against the control panel. Blood gushed down his forehead. He lost consciousness instantly.

Even those nearby, who couldn’t clearly see what had happened, involuntarily shrank back in fear.

Moderate cerebral hemorrhage, internal organs punctured by fractured ribs, and comminuted fracture of the left leg.

The Enforcer scanned him with indifference and immediately grasped his condition.

But—this wasn’t the Enforcer’s doing.

Someone had acted before it.

It narrowed its eyes and looked toward Meng Xuexiao.

The boy was seated beside the control panel, his finger firmly pressed on the attack button. His fingers were slender, and in contrast to the dust-covered console, they appeared almost shockingly pale—like a delicate snowflake resting on concrete.

But his aim was steady.

Who would’ve thought that someone as fragile as an F-grade like Meng Xuexiao would actually fight back at such a critical moment?

Interesting.

The Enforcer no longer felt like leaving in a hurry.

Meng Xuexiao’s gaze was locked firmly on Xu Gao. The blood pouring out of Xu Gao’s body was alarmingly vivid. Meng Xuexiao wrinkled his nose slightly but forced himself not to look away. The energy gun that had just blasted through Xu Gao’s mecha was still raised, aimed directly at him.

Fortunately, he had accidentally managed to restore the mecha’s configuration in time. Not only had it not self-destructed, even the weapons system had come back online.

Meng Xuexiao licked his slightly chapped lips. They were a pale pink, like a newly budding rose.

If Xu Gao stood up again, and tried anything, he would fire a second shot.

His nerves were stretched taut, so much so that even the smallest sound could set him off. That’s why, the moment he heard unfamiliar footsteps approaching, he immediately turned to look toward the source. Meng Xuexiao pressed his lips together.

The electric currents forming the eye-shaped pattern crackled and hissed around him, occasionally sparking in cool tones.

Combined with the faint flush on the boy’s cheeks caused by his emotional tension, the scene was strangely stunning—like a rose blooming from a bed of thorns.

When the mecha operations instructor, Chu Sinian, and Shen Zekai arrived in a rush and saw Meng Xuexiao like this, all three were momentarily stunned.

The footsteps just now had come from them.

Seeing these familiar faces, Meng Xuexiao also froze for a moment. The finger he had pressed against the attack button, he didn’t know whether to lift it or leave it there. He hadn’t expected to be caught in the act.

Maliciously attacking another student…

Even expulsion would be considered a light punishment.

But he didn’t want to leave the Federation Military Academy—and he couldn’t.

If he were forced out of here, how would he ever survive to the end?

His body reacted faster than his brain. Meng Xuexiao stepped forward with one leg, positioning himself directly in front of Xu Gao. He even subconsciously shifted his stance, trying to shield both Xu Gao and Xu Gao’s mecha behind his body.

Like a cat that had knocked over a vase, now trying to cover the shards with its tail before the owner came home.

Meng Xuexiao and the two instructors, one student—fell into a silent standoff. They stood face to face, like opposing camps locked in a tense confrontation. It reminded Meng Xuexiao of a debate match he’d once participated in, where both sides clashed with words, ruthlessly presenting their evidence without giving the other an inch.

Unfortunately, this time, he had no evidence, and the leverage was still in someone else’s hands.

Rather than exhausting himself trying to argue, it was more practical to think about where he could go after being expelled from the school…

Ever since the caretaker aunt passed away, he had been surviving in the cracks of society, and being wronged had become as routine as eating. Meng Xuexiao had tried to speak up for himself before, but the cost of doing so had always been too steep.

Eventually, he stopped bothering with such meaningless efforts.

The one who broke the standoff was Shen Zekai.

He stepped forward, crossing the unspoken boundary between the two sides.

His tone carried undisguised urgency, as if he couldn’t wait to drag Meng Xuexiao out of the mecha on the spot to check him over from head to toe, “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”