164: Chapter 164: Old Su, you look so handsome in your military uniform!

At this solemn and dignified moment, a sudden commotion broke out at the village entrance.

Several panting figures squeezed through the crowd, led by none other than Su Han's best friend, Zhao Xiaodao.

"Old Su! Old Su!" Zhao Xiaodao shouted while gasping for air, "We're here!"

Behind him were several other sweat-drenched young people, Su Han's junior high classmates and teachers. Teacher Liu and Teacher Wang were being supported by two boys, their faces flushed red, clearly exhausted from the run.

"Xiaodao?" Su Han turned around in surprise. "Why are you only arriving now?"

"Don't even mention it!" Zhao Xiaodao wiped the sweat from his face and complained indignantly, "The road was full of damn cars! The ten-plus kilometers from the city to your village was jammed like a parking lot! We ran the last five kilometers!"

He took a breath and added proudly, "But luckily we made it! How could we miss such an important occasion?"

Teacher Liu clutched his waist and said out of breath, "Su Han... these old bones of mine... almost gave out on the road..."

Teacher Wang adjusted her crooked reading glasses and looked at the grand scene before her, sighing, "It was worth it... this run was worth it..."

Su Han quickly stepped forward to support the two teachers, caught between laughter and tears. "You two are at such an age, why did you run? You could have called, and I would have picked you up!"

"How could we do that!" Teacher Liu glared. "Our own student has achieved such great merit; if we as teachers didn't show up, what would that look like?"

The live stream camera captured this touching scene, and the bullet comments began to flood the screen:

"Tears in my eyes! The bond between teachers and students is so moving!"

"These classmates are so loyal! They actually ran five kilometers just like that!"

"The teachers are so cute! Su Han is so lucky to have such mentors!"

...

"I say, why aren't you watching the lion dance and instead staring at me?"

Su Han asked Zhao Xiaodao irritably.

Zhao Xiaodao stared at Su Han's major's service uniform and clicked his tongue in admiration. "It's true what they say: clothes make the man!"

"Old Su, you look so handsome in your military uniform!"

In their memory, Su Han was still that boy wearing a faded school uniform, sweating profusely on the basketball court.

During the high school entrance exams, he had once grabbed a mop handle and chased someone across three streets to stand up for a bullied classmate; during evening self-study, he had secretly climbed over the wall to buy popsicles, and when caught by the Dean, he had even grinningly stuffed one into the Dean's hand...

But the person before them, with gold stars on his shoulders and a tall, straight posture, had a steadiness and sharpness in his brow that completely shed his youthful innocence, leaving only the unique iron-blooded aura of a soldier.

Teacher Wang's reading glasses slipped to the tip of her nose, her voice trembling, "This child... has truly become a success!"

"Teacher Liu, Teacher Wang, please sit here." Su Wu, being sharp-eyed, quickly brought over two chairs. "Third Grandpa specifically instructed that you two are honored guests."

"Thank you!"

On-site, eight golden lions leapt into the ancestral hall square to the beat of earth-shaking drums, their gilded heads reflecting brilliant light in the midday sun.

The lead "Awakened Lion" suddenly threw its head back and roared, spitting out a red silk scroll that read "Peace for the Nation and Prosperity for the People" as its mouth opened and closed. Then, it leapt three meters high, accurately catching the colorful ball hanging under the ancestral hall's plaque—

That colorful ball was decorated with the Big Dipper pattern; it was a "Hero's Knot" specially commissioned by the Armed Forces Department from an intangible cultural heritage artisan.

"Good!" The surrounding crowd erupted into a tsunami of cheers.

The lion dance team suddenly changed formation. Four golden lions formed a square, while four red lions wove between them, stepping out the four powerful characters for "Loyalty and Bravery Passed Down Through Generations."

The moment the final character for "Family" was formed, a hundred salutes fired simultaneously, and tens of thousands of firecrackers danced like golden snakes, the red paper scraps covering the bluestone road like a sky full of red clouds.

Three hundred thousand rounds of colored smoke rose into the air at once, the seven-colored smoke columns of red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple forming a rainbow over Su Family Village, complementing the golden manes of the lion team.

"My god! This spectacle could go straight to the Spring Festival Gala!" Spectators in the front row took photos frantically with their phones, the anti-shake function unable to suppress the shaking of the images.

A streamer's camera from a certain platform swept across the crowd; dense arms formed a forest with countless small national flags waving among them, and someone had even set up professional cameras on the distant hillside.

The live stream bullet comments refreshed at a rate of over a thousand per second:

"This lion dance team is definitely at the national team level! That triple-and-a-half backflip just now—I replayed it five times and still couldn't see where they landed!"

"The rainbow made of colored smoke is amazing! Did the Su Family bring out all their New Year's pomp?"

"Look at the lion heads! Every scale is embedded with reflective pieces; they look like they're flowing when the sun hits them!"

"Just checked, this is the 'Awakened Lion King' team from Yuezhou, an intangible cultural heritage group. Their appearance fee starts at six figures!!"

Xiao Budian sat on Su Wu's shoulders, waving a glow stick to the beat of the drums. "Dad, look! The lion is blinking!"

Black Panther crouched at her feet, his tail swaying left and right to the rhythm of the lion drums. Suddenly, he let out a "Woof" at the leaping lion head, as if responding to the lion team's roar.

The members of the War Eagle Squad watched without blinking.

Monkey held up his phone to record a panorama, clicking his tongue in wonder. "This is way more shocking than the smoke grenades during our drills! I'll suggest the brigade get a set too—we can do a dance to boost our courage before a mission!"

Wang Yuanchao glared at him and snorted irritably, "Why don't we find a group of beautiful women to do a pole dance for you to freshen you up while we're at it?"

Hearing this, Monkey quickly waved his hands with a dry laugh. "No need, no need! My constitution is weak, I can't handle it, haha..."

"Hahaha..."

Hearing this, the members of the War Eagle Squad and the Womens Special Operations Team on the scene couldn't help but burst into laughter.