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Long Zhan had successfully escaped from the water prison and vanished without a trace, breaking the record that had stood since Green Team was founded—no one had ever passed the SERE assessment before.
This news swept through the entire Green Team like a tornado.
The moment the special training instructor Adam, and the top boss of Green Team, Head Instructor Malcolm, got wind of the news, they rushed to the assessment site.
Something that had always been believed impossible—how did Long Zhan manage to do it?
Everyone in Green Team was dying to know.
And just as dozens of members across all ranks of Green Team, shocked by Long Zhan's record-breaking feat, gathered at the assessment site to review surveillance footage and find out what had happened—
The man at the center of it all, Long Zhan, was leisurely sitting in the first-floor cafeteria of the DEVGRU headquarters.
In front of him were two trays piled high with food, enough to form small mountains on each plate. Next to them were several bowls filled with different kinds of soup and drinks.
The sheer quantity was astonishing.
Even for laborers doing hard physical work on a construction site, it would take at least four or five men to finish it all.
Long Zhan had already made a name for himself within DEVGRU. His monstrous appetite was well known, and the others in the cafeteria weren't surprised in the least.
The only puzzling thing was—this was still the Green Team's SERE assessment period. How could a rookie like Long Zhan be here?
Everyone in the cafeteria was confused.
All training matters for new recruits were handled by Green Team, and unless Green Team took the initiative to share updates, members of other teams had no way of knowing anything about the rookies.
At this point, the news that Long Zhan had successfully escaped still hadn't reached anyone outside Green Team.
He could hear the murmurs and hushed conversations from the "old-timers" around him, talking about him.
But Long Zhan showed no panic. He didn't explain anything either.
Because he had used his own methods to take the initiative and escape from the "cell," and the entire process fully complied with every assessment regulation.
This meant he had officially passed the final SERE test—both feet had already stepped into DEVGRU.
Having succeeded, what was there to worry about?
All Long Zhan had to do now was eat and drink his fill in the cafeteria, and wait for the Green Team instructors to trace the surveillance footage back to him and come fetch him.
Long Zhan hadn't made any effort to avoid the cameras; it wouldn't be hard for the Green Team instructors to follow the trail and find him.
That was also his way of giving the instructors a little dignity!
Otherwise, having lived here for nine months and relying on his powerful memory, Long Zhan knew every single camera's location inside and out.
Forget escaping from the assessment area to the cafeteria—
Even if he wanted to completely avoid all surveillance and sneak out of the base to go sleep in Stella's arms, it wouldn't be a problem.
Calm and composed, Long Zhan devoured the long-lost delicious food. In the blink of an eye, ten minutes had passed, and he had already eaten more than half the food on the table.
After being tormented and starved in the prison for so many days, it was only natural that his table manners looked a little wild.
Just then—
Three tall, muscular men entered from outside. Long Zhan was sitting facing the entrance and was momentarily stunned when he saw them.
"Big Bear? Buddha? Yama?"
The sudden appearance of the major figures from the *SEAL Team Six* TV series genuinely surprised Long Zhan.
After all, he had been here for nine months already and hadn't encountered any of the SEAL Team Six members before. For three of them to show up all at once was rather abrupt.
But he quickly figured it out.
DEVGRU members didn't have fixed work hours. As long as they weren't assigned a mission, they could stay home and do whatever they wanted.
However, it wasn't always that relaxed. Uncle Sam's money didn't come without a price.
The price was an annual "duty"—**overseas stationing**.
And every four years, they had to do a longer **deployment**—a full overseas posting.
Overseas stationing typically lasted four months and occurred once a year. When that time came, formal team members had to leave their families and report to a designated base.
The location of the stationing varied.
One year it could be a base in Africa, the next in the Middle East, and the year after that somewhere in the Pacific.
Deployment was an upgraded version of stationing. Each deployment lasted 9 to 12 months and followed a four-year cycle.
Once a member entered their deployment year, it automatically replaced their annual stationing.
Although being away from family for a year—with contact limited to video calls—was a deal-breaker for many, the pay was simply too good to pass up.
During stationing or deployment, the base salary doubled at the very least. An annual income during this period would be 2 to 4 times the normal pay—meaning one year could be worth two or even four years of regular work.
Whether the pay ended up being double or quadruple depended on whether war broke out in the deployment region.
The more combat action they saw, the higher the pay.
DEVGRU had a total of four operational squadrons, perfectly suited for one squadron rotating each year.
Perhaps the four-year deployment cycle was designed around that squadron count in the first place.
That's likely why, after nine months of training at the base, Long Zhan had only just seen Big Bear and the others. He figured they had just returned from a deployment.
Yama, Big Bear, and Buddha had only just gotten back to base, and had perfectly missed the current Green Team rookie training session.
Which meant they had no idea a monster like Long Zhan had appeared in this batch. So when they walked past him, they didn't think much of it.
What made them glance at him at all was his massive physique and the two full trays on the table—definitely unusual and eye-catching in the cafeteria.
"The old dogs from SEAL Team Six are back. No idea which squad they belong to, but this just got a whole lot more interesting."
DEVGRU members were all arrogant when facing outsiders—Long Zhan was long used to it. Watching the trio head off to get their food, he found himself looking forward to his future in DEVGRU even more.
A few minutes later—
Long Zhan, having devoured his meal with the ferocity of a wolf, was finishing up just as Instructor Adam arrived at the cafeteria entrance.
"If we're going by office hours, it's been just a little over ten minutes since they noticed I was gone. Not bad—pretty fast, actually."
Looking at Adam walking steadily toward him, Long Zhan wiped his mouth and hands with a napkin, leaned back in his chair, and smiled calmly and confidently.
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