CH 192

In the Hummer, Zhang Long was driving the vehicle at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour on the potholed road in the Dana Rainforest. The primeval forests on both sides regressed, and even the chimpanzees with cubs came out to make trouble. Of course, he didn’t know that he thought there was a slight flaw in his very arrogant and perfect action, but he couldn’t be blamed for this incident.

Comrade Ye Zhu was sitting next to him. He had just crawled out of the chassis and was dozing off at the moment, with no intention of helping him be vigilant.

Except for the intimidating name, Ye Zhu* looked like an ordinary college student next door who was cultured and harmless. Only a few people knew his true nature. Zhang Long dared to have Zaratul’s subordinates call him “dad”, but he didn’t dare wake up the person sitting next to him.

*His name translated is Wild Boar.

At this moment, the communicator sounded.

Ye Zhu opened his eyes gently with a clear expression as if he had never fallen asleep. “Boss.”

“Ship?”

“There are still 50 minutes until it docks.”

“Where are the goods?”

Ye Zhu glanced at the towering forest in front of him and said solemnly, “It’ll be delivered soon.”

He didn’t know what Xing Conglian said at the other end, but Ye Zhu looked like usual, and at the end he said, “Roger that.”

Zhang Long said nervously, “How did Zaratul anger the Boss? This is simply a dragon’s wrath!”

Ye Zhu only said two words, “Shut up.”

……

Xing Conglian released the fingers pressing the headset and stood on the highest point of the whole building with a stiff waist.

In the alleyway of the dilapidated factory building outside the window, Zaratul’s soldiers started a new day of aimless vigilance. The soldiers behind the bunker began to smoke habitually. The curling smoke rose with the wind, mixed with the laughter and discussion about the dead woman yesterday.

Bullets could fall from the sky at any moment and hit their foreheads, but these soldiers didn’t seem aware of it at all. This was also normal. In the area controlled by Zaratul, no one would dare to snipe.

Xing Conglian’s cold gaze swept across the main warehouse, and finally landed on the power plant of the mine.

Behind him, Zhao Hu was installing a military sniper rifle with a gentle touch that felt like he was caressing a woman. The sniper took out a 12x scope from his backpack and carefully wiped the gun barrel with a lavender-embroidered silk scarf from his pocket before quickly installing the scope with a decisive hand. Then he continued to wipe the gun barrel with the same silk scarf.

Xing Conglian frowned but didn’t say much.

In the underground space under the mine, where he couldn’t even see his fingers, Kang An, with a bruised nose and a swollen face, was sneaking towards the designated location carrying C4 plastic explosives “smuggled” in by Comrade Zhao Hu. How to escort hundreds of people to migrate with a 7-member team may be a headache for ordinary commanders, but similar actions weren’t unfamiliar to him. In the depths of the rainforest, where there was little interference from external armed forces, directly destroying the target force was obviously the most straightforward way.

He bit the flashlight, unscrewed the screws at the mouth of the lower pipe with a light technique, quickly climbed out, took out a hand-drawn sketch from his pocket, and installed it on the marked load-bearing wall according to the instructions of the explosives expert who was currently on the way.

At this moment, there was a slight commotion in the communication channel.

……

The sniper was still wiping the body of the gun as Xing Conglian held down the headset. He heard Xiao Wu’s voice coming from it, and the background sound was filled with the low-pitched yells of the Gaomeng people.

“Boss, I think the people of the rainforest haven’t seen the sun all year round, so their brains are really muddled.” The sniper looked up at him.

Xing Conglian retracted his gaze, turned around, and left.

In the factory space covered with colorful clothes, Xiao Wu and Xiao Liu, who were distributing weapons, had a dispute with the Gaomeng people.

The sturdy and muscular rainforest warriors glared at them, trying to ask Xiao Wu for an M16 rifle with a C-MORE light shotgun system. Comrade Xiao Wu, who had established friendship with the rainforest people, didn’t know how to solve this problem.

After seeing Xing Conglian’s figure appear, Xiao Wu snatched the gun and aimed it at the muscular man who had taken the gun. Behind that man stood seven or eight of the most combat-effective Gaomeng people; tall rainforest warriors standing in a row like stout trees.

“They killed our people!”

“We are going to take revenge!”

“Please let us charge in!”

The Gaomeng people were all talking at once, and because they had been exposed to the wind and rain for several days, their voices weren’t as loud as they had shouted.

Xing Conglian’s calm gaze swept across the faces of those who were carried away by hatred.

“Oh, here,” Xing Conglian said.

“Boss!”

“The M16 rifle without the shotgun system is worth $5,000 USD. Counting the complete set of accessories, you’ll be charged $30,000 USD, which is a cheap price. Do you have the money?” Xing Conglian asked lightly.

“We can repay with our lives!” the Gaomeng people said.

Xing Conglian thought it was funny, so he laughed. His thin lips curled a little. “Is your rotten life worth so much money?”

The Gaomeng people became enraged again. They clenched their fists as if they were going to fight their opponents with their bare hands.

The next moment, a Gaomeng man with an ivory pendant that was covered in blood fell to his knees. He raised his head and said to Xing Conglian, “My wife was raped and killed by them downstairs in this building yesterday. Please allow me to avenge my wife.”

Another Gaomeng man raised his pendant to his chest, revealing the photo of a little boy embedded in the pendant. “My child too. Please allow me to avenge him.”

Xing Conglian’s gaze was still cold and hard. He glanced at the riled-up Gaomeng people and said, “After walking out of this building, it will be a combat zone. If you don’t listen to my command, you will be killed.” Speaking in Gaomengnese, Xing Conglian said to the rainforest warriors, “I don’t think there’s any point in reasoning with you. If you believe that killing a few Zaratul people is more important than protecting your own people and leaving safely, then I respect your choice.”

……

The long, gentle wind blew through the primeval forest, causing the tips of every leaf to tremble.

The commotion started suddenly without warning. The shockwave caused by the explosion made the entire land tremble.

At that time, Duan Yang was pretending to pack up the laboratory while the masked man—ah, no—the Chinese named Lu Jia had just transferred a helicopter through security to send them off. Through Lu Jia’s example, Duan Yang deeply understood the importance of eloquence and acting skills.

He inserted the last test tube into the test tube holder and looked at the laboratory floor worriedly.

Lin Chen was curled up in the most sheltered corner of the entire laboratory. The turquoise blood vessels under his neck were vaguely visible. He was so weak that it seemed he could be crushed by just a pinch of snow.

Earlier, Lin Chen suddenly fell to the ground. After Duan Yang checked, he found that the high fever had finally put Lin Chen in a semi-comatose state. He was burning up like a soldering iron. Given Lin Chen’s situation, Duan Yang forced Lu Jia to change to a vehicle that could leave as soon as possible and demanded that Lu Jia find a helicopter. For this, they waited another forty minutes. While Lu Jia made a phone call in Gaomengnese that they didn’t understand, Duan Yang couldn’t help but admire Lin Chen’s meticulous thinking. If they hadn’t grasped Lu Jia’s weakness, just a simple phone call in Gaomengnese might have pushed them into hell.

However, just after Lu Jia hung up the phone, an explosion sounded. Duan Yang squatted down and pushed Lin Chen into the space under the experimental table. Just as he followed in, an incandescent lamp brushed past his back and crashed into the floor. The broken lamp tubes and powder made the floor a mess.

Not far away, the masked man hid under the table in distress.

In a short period of two or three seconds, there was only the stern roars of the rhesus monkeys in the entire space.

……

The people in the laboratory weren’t the only ones who were at a loss due to the explosion.

The Zaratul army, which was guarding the gate of the mining area from afar, was also subconsciously looking for a bunker to hide in. Then they started looking for the source of the explosion. When they turned on the communication channel, there was a chaotic buzzing sound, making it impossible for them to contact each other.

Even though Zaratul’s subordinates fought against primitive tribes in the rainforest year-round, it took a while to realize the problem of electromagnetic interference. In the area visible to the naked eye, the power plant building of the mine had been razed to the ground, and the broken bricks and soot rising into the sky had created a perfect smoke bomb. Beside the power plant building, two unprepared barracks were also riddled with holes.

Soldiers with blood on their faces crawled out of the barracks while more people were buried in them.

At this moment, a plume of smoke and dust also appeared on the road facing the door. The soldiers on the watchtower had just been stunned. Before they could accurately report the target, they were hit precisely by eight sniper bullets. The silver bullets made a beautiful arc mixed with red and white plasma as the soldier fell straight down while pulling the tarpaulin covering the machine gun down with him.

At a certain window on the upper floor, the sniper took out a lilac silk scarf from his pocket and kissed the scarf, signifying the successful completion of his first kill.

The modified Hummer crashed straight into the gate of the mines. Zaratul’s subordinates raised their rifles and began to fire back. No one expected that the driver of the Hummer wouldn’t slow down but would blatantly slam against the gate, moving at a fearless speed.

The iron gate suddenly opened, and at the same time the roof of the Hummer opened as well. A most primitive and reliable M2 machine gun poked out its life-harvesting head.

The man who manipulated the machine gun wasn’t one of those beefy machine gunners but a slim, svelte young man. His face was pale and wooden, but he didn’t hesitate to pull the heavy trigger of the M2 machine gun. As a classic weapon used for robbery during World War I, the M2 machine gun was commonly used to attack lightly armored targets and low-altitude air defense, and its killing power was evident.

Accompanied by deafening gunfire, a long steel whip quickly swept out from the muzzle of the machine gun, and flames and bullets hit all the surrounding moving targets. The M16 rifle was utterly useless under such heavy firepower suppression, and even the dilapidated factory building that was swept by the machine gun’s tail was instantly missing a corner and had a tendency to collapse.

Soon, the soldiers at the gate were cleaned up. The remaining soldiers hiding in the bunker looked up at the sky and prayed that the follow-up force wouldn’t be too terrifying.

No one expected that there would only be two men in a Hummer that brazenly challenged the Zaratul drug factory.

What was even more unexpected was that a light ferry with an Angodo Republic tourist company license plate and a capacity of 1,000 people quietly entered the mining area like a ghost.

On the light screen that displayed the location, the ferry entered the designated area. Ye Zhu released the trigger and, taking advantage of the gap, whispered into the communicator, “Area A1 cleared.”

……

The Gaomeng tribe, which had been besieged for many days, finally stepped out of the crumbling machine repair factory.

The rainforest warriors, armed with shotguns, rushed to the front. Zaratul’s subordinates hiding behind the sandbag bunker never dreamed that those Gaomeng people, whom they had been teasing like mice for many days, really dared to rush out of the factory and fight them to the death.

The fierce firepower collided with each other. Two rainforest warriors instantly fell. At the same time, ghostly sniper bullets shot from the sky again, and two Zaratul machine gunners with heavy weapons were instantly killed.

The Hummer had already rushed to the gate of the factory. The suppressed firepower of the M2 made Zaratul soldiers behind the sandbag bunker extremely suffocated. What was even more unexpected was that the bullets of the M2 machine gun easily penetrated the fragile bunker. Flowers of blood splashed on the sandbag.

More Gaomeng people poured out of the factory building. In the chaos, someone picked up an ivory pendant on the ground and gently closed the eyes of a dead warrior.

……

A second explosion sounded, and the earliest gravel factory in the mine fell, instantly blocking the remnants of Zaratul’s troops who wanted to pursue the Gaomeng people.

In the laboratory, where the power supply had been cut off, the successive explosions and deafening bullets caused everyone to fall into an extreme panic.

Duan Yang hid under the laboratory table and shivered slightly. He couldn’t see Lin Chen’s face clearly, but a hot hand kept holding his wrist tightly, as if relieved, causing Duan Yang to calm down.

This area wasn’t within the range of the electromagnetic interference. In the dark space, suddenly there was the passionate sound of a phone beeping. Lu Jia hurriedly connected the phone. On the other end of the line, a helicopter operator was roaring. The saying “where there’s a will, there’s a way” probably referred to such a situation. The C4 explosives installed by Kang An were gradually leveling the entire mining area, but miraculously, the helicopter landing site was preserved and intact.

What was even more fortunate was that Xing Conglian didn’t immediately order the launch of two smart bombs to destroy it since he saw through his binoculars that it wasn’t equipped with any ammunition compartment.

The light ferry docked at the pier.

Most of the soldiers stationed at the pier had already rushed to the front line to provide support, and the remaining sporadic soldiers who tried to attack the ferry with rocket launchers were mysteriously killed by a machine gun out of nowhere.

The heavy-firepower Hummer had cleared the way ahead, and the first batch of Gaomeng people ran frantically, arriving at the pier.

The captain of the ferry, named Bao Feng, had a full beard. He gently tidied up his suit and bowtie and walked politely to the deck to greet his guests.

The hatch opened.

……

In the laboratory, Lu Jia hung up the phone. The ceramic mask on his face had at some point fallen off. He hid under the laboratory table and shouted, “The helicopter is coming! Let’s go!”

The tooth-aching sound of bullets outside the window finally stopped temporarily.

Lin Chen’s slightly calm voice sounded. “Duan Yang, will I still have 12 hours if there’s no medicine?”

The young doctor looked stiff and said angrily, “What are you worrying about? Of course you do. Am I the doctor or you?”

“I understand.” Lin Chen smiled slightly, nodded, and released his hand from his wrist. “Go and assess the situation first.”

Duan Yang nodded. He plucked up the courage, crawled out from under the experiment table, and cautiously opened the door to the monkey room. The monkey cages had collapsed everywhere, and the screams of the rhesus monkeys almost pierced his eardrums.

Duan Yang stumbled and used a little glimmer of light from behind the curtains to figure out a way to the outside. His hands were constantly scratched by the monkeys’ sharp claws that were sticking out of the cages, but he didn’t make any cries of pain.

……

In the alleyway, a small group of Zaratul soldiers cut in from the rear, and bursts of machine gun fire quickly hit them at the end.

“Go ahead and leave me alone.”

Xing Conglian stood at the end of the migrating crowd. He said something briefly into the communicator, left the end of the team, and flashed into the factory building.

The police captain, armed with a gun, quickly climbed up to the fourth floor. Looking through a scope, a large number of Gaomeng people were still gritting their teeth as they ran hard. The depression in the middle of the group came from a pair of pure white stretchers. On the stretcher, Duan Wanshan’s eyes were closed, completely unaware of his surroundings.

Xing Conglian retracted the muzzle of the gun and pointed it at the Zaratul soldiers, who were gradually approaching the large group.

……

Duan Yang pulled down the curtains hanging horizontally on the wall of the monkey room letting the sunlight spill in, causing him to cover his eyes.

He looked back at the laboratory. Lu Jia had already followed him out of the innermost room, but Lin Chen’s figure didn’t appear.

Duan Yang rushed back again.

The sunlight from the monkey room caused a faint light to appear in the innermost part of the lab. Lin Chen was leaning against an experimental bench as the dim light cast a layer of blue-gray on his face.

Duan Yang tried to pull him up, but Lin Chen put his hand on his wrist and shook his head.

Although Lin Chen didn’t say a word, Duan Yang instantly understood what the consultant meant.

“No. Impossible!”

Lin Chen’s gaze was still clear and firm. There was a trace of tenderness in his eyes that made him immediately relax, as if agreeing to his request.

Duan Yang stopped talking nonsense. He carried Lin Chen on his back and was about to run outside.

Lin Chen suddenly said, “Are you asking me to be a target on your back?”

Duan Yang stood in place, panicking, as Lin Chen slipped off him.

Mr. Consultant supported himself on a lab bench and couldn’t even stand, but still said, “Help me walk out.”

Regarding Lin Chen’s sudden and willful request, Duan Yang didn’t doubt him. He could only hug Lin Chen’s armpit and drag him out.

When he was about to step through the door, Lin Chen suddenly coughed violently, bending his body. He said in pain, “Wait a minute. You pressed my wound.”

Duan Yang hurriedly let go. At the moment he let go of his hand, Lin Chen somehow mustered up enough strength to push him outside and quickly slammed the wooden door of the lab as quick as lightning.

Duan Yang fell heavily to the ground as the rhesus monkey near him screamed.

He climbed up desperately. He didn’t know what was wrong with Lin Chen, but he clenched his fist without hesitation, trying to punch and shatter the glass upper part of the wooden door.

Lin Chen’s weak figure was crumbling at the door. Looking at the calm face of this young man who wasn’t even a few years older than him, Duan Yang couldn’t help shouting, “Motherfucker. Don’t say you’ll drag me down. Let’s go together!”

Lin Chen had already calculated Duan Yang’s thoughts. He stood with difficulty, holding the wooden door. In his other hand, a cold glint from a scalpel appeared at some point. He easily pressed the scalpel to his neck.

“What are you doing?!”

Duan Yang’s tears flowed instantly.

With a second punch, the glass suddenly shattered. Lin Chen took a half step back and fell to the ground, but still held the scalpel firmly in place. He calmly said, “First, if you take me with you, you won’t reach the helicopter smoothly under the hail of bullets.”

“Second, I just discovered that the sound of the explosion from the factory is gradually coming towards the building we’re in. I briefly estimated the detonation time, and the building where we are will be blown up in about five minutes. With me, you’ll never be able to escape the explosion range in such a short period of time. There’s even a greater possibility you’ll be killed by someone. Be mature. Live and avenge me.” He blinked as he said solemnly, “I’ll count to three. Get out, now.”

……

Xing Conglian, who was in charge of covering the retreat, stood tall on the fourth floor of the factory building. He killed the last soldier in sight and prepared to evacuate.

He pulled the wooden table away and used the scope to lightly draw an arc, trying to confirm that all the targets had been cleared. It was this tiny arc that made his heart beat to its highest speed in an instant. All his blood rushed to his heart in such a short time that his limbs fell into extreme cold numbness, which made him feel as if his soul had popped out of his body.

He saw Lin Chen. Why the hell did he see Lin Chen?

Lin Chen was bent over and coughing. He had pushed away the man next to him and was leaning against the wooden door as he held a blade at his neck, as if he were talking to the person outside the door…

Xing Conglian thought it was an illusion after thinking about him day and night, so he bit the tip of his tongue hard to wake himself up. Lin Chen’s figure was gone. The young man gritted his teeth, turned his head, and left with tears streaming down his face, leaving only broken glass behind.

Xing Conglian felt that he was trembling all over. He pulled his collar and pointed the microphone at him as he tremblingly said, “Stop the detonation. Stop all the detonations. Stop the fucking detonation. Do you hear me!!!”