Chapter 588: Edges of the Safe Zone

“Rui, take me with you! You promised, remember?” Feng Wen’s high-pitched voice echoed from a third-floor window—Xia Qing, with her evolved hearing, caught every word.

Turns out she’s still living here. Judging by the sound, she was calling Tang Rui.

Feng Wen managing to stick around playboy Tang Rui this long was pretty impressive. Still, her skills seemed limited—otherwise she’d have moved out of the ordinary evolvers’ dorm ages ago.

The dorm in the Outer City looked better than the rundown houses around, with cheap rent and a tall wall for security, but everyone here was either low on cash or low on ability.

Evolvers with families usually lived at home. Xia Qing only moved in after her dad passed away.

The stronger evolvers without family might not find steady work in the Safe Zone, but they’d join combat teams and move into better dorms.

When Feng Wen’s brother, Feng Teng, was alive, he stayed at the Sufeng Squad dorm and arranged for his sister to live here with the ordinary evolvers.

The patrol car rolled past familiar streets before pushing through the towering wall between Inner and Outer City, finally entering the Inner City.

Red lanterns lined both sides of the street here, just like outside. The same festive songs drifted through the air. But here, the roads were wide and spotless, with clusters of well-dressed people chatting gleefully about what groceries to pick up, what to have for New Year’s Eve dinner, and which department handed out the best holiday gifts.

A wall, not even half a meter thick, split the world in two—two completely different realities in this era of disasters.

Once they returned to base, Xia Qing hopped out with her squad and made her way to the canteen for lunch.

Just like everyone else, Xia Qing grabbed one meat and two veggie dishes, a bowl of soup, and two coarse mantou. She picked a quiet corner, took off her protective mask, and dug in.

The menu said these were Yellow Lantern ingredients, but the kitchen crew had real talent. Their food tasted better than the meals Xia Qing could muster with Green Lantern supplies.

Too bad the nutrients in these can’t compare to what Xia Qing usually eats at home.

Still, Xia Qing, like everyone else, cleaned her tray spotless. In these harsh years, wasting food was simply shameful.

After eating, Xia Qing went back to the dorm for some rest. Yan Ning had a bed here too, and Xia Qing suspected her recent training had been arranged for a reason—maybe to swap people ahead of tonight’s operation.

Had Yang Jin already penciled her name onto the mission list for tonight?

The room had four sets of bunks. Yan Ning’s spot was the upper bed next to the window.

When Xia Qing came in, two women were already inside—their faces matched the files Yang Jin had given her: both were women from the Special Third Company. Xia Qing nodded hello, dropped her coat and shoes by her own bed, then climbed to her bunk with her protective mask still on.

According to the files, Yan Ning was always on alert. Aside from meals or showers, she rarely took off her mask. So, Xia Qing sleeping with hers on didn’t raise any eyebrows; her roommates just kept whispering about the latest gossip between Zheng Chen, Tang Lu, and Yang Jin, buzzing about whether tonight would bring any real drama.

“If only our squad got the assignment for the gala tonight,” one woman said quietly, her accent pinning her as a Lan City native.

“Luo Pei is Hui Three’s top sharpshooter! If I see him tonight, I’m challenging him for sure!” The other had a deep voice—every bit as husky as Yan Ning’s—and her attention was all on Luo Pei, who hadn’t been back to the Safe Zone in ages.

The Lan City-accented woman tried to talk her down. “Girl, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Do you even know what kind of gun Luo Pei uses?”

Xia Qing pricked up her ears.

“Same as Yan Ning—CM82.” The challenger answered, then grumbled, “If I could use a CM82, I’d be just as good as Yan Ning.”

Gun and shooter go hand in hand. A great sniper needs a great rifle—for maximum impact.

Xia Qing couldn’t help thinking, So why haven’t you got one, then?

The Lan City-accented woman kept going. “The CM82’s max range is 2,500 meters. But do you know what its effective range is?”

Effective range and max range—those are the two big numbers when judging a sniper rifle.

The effective range is the farthest you can rely on a sniper rifle to hit accurately and deal real damage. Max range, also called extreme range, is how far the bullet can go and still do harm at all. Beyond effective range, bullets are tough to control.

Luo Pei once explained to Xia Qing—the reason bullets get harder to direct past effective range is all the factors at play. Sure, there’s gunpowder, shape, and wind, but there’s also Blue Star’s gravity, its rotation, humidity, terrain—you name it.

Bottom line, the farther the target, the more a sniper has to juggle every variable at once, analyzing on the fly before squeezing the trigger.

The deep-voiced woman answered, “Eighteen hundred meters.”

“The CM82’s the best sniper rifle we have. For you and Yan Ning, its effective range is 1,800 meters. For Luo Pei, it’s 2,100. Know what that means?” The Lan City woman was practically giddy now. “You don’t even qualify to challenge him! When I was at Red Eleven, our instructor used to quote Luo Pei’s motto…”

Xia Qing couldn’t help joining in, reciting the same line along with the Lan City girl: “The sniper’s effective range is their own limit—not the gun’s.”

“No way!” even the deep-voiced woman got excited, though she kept her voice low for Yan Ning’s sake. “Guess I’ll bring a grenade launcher if I want to face Luo Pei!”

“Even if you had a grenade launcher or a bomber jet, you still wouldn’t be a match for Luo Pei! He’s in a league of his own—just like Nie Hong. They’re next level, and then some.”

Their chat grew more animated, and Xia Qing, lying with her eyes closed, couldn’t help feeling their excitement too. After Luo Pei had shared that motto, he’d delivered another piece of advice, deadly serious: “If you want to be a top sniper, you have to push your effective range to match your gun’s max range.”

At the time, Xia Qing had asked, “Luo, what’s your effective range these days?”

“Everyone thinks mine’s twenty-one hundred meters, but it’s really twenty-two.” At the time, Luo Pei was still recovering, turning to gaze at the rolling mountains outside with a warm smile. “Luckily I played it safe when I could. Now my body’s failing, my eyesight’s slipping—so it’s around two thousand meters. For most fights, that’s still enough.”

Back then, Xia Qing had only been in the Safe Zone for two months. She still struggled to keep up in conversations—her words were always running a step behind her thoughts, and she never knew how to comfort someone.