Chapter 128.2: Peaceful Days? Part 2
In the far-end vehicle, a figure disappeared without a word.
As if turning invisible, camouflage rippled across his body, constantly shifting with the surroundings. Like a lizard, he moved deftly through the forest, using both hands and feet, not even disturbing a single bird or blade of grass. Circling from the side and using vegetation and rocks for cover, he silently closed in on the sniper’s position.
But as he crawled forward, his movements suddenly paused. Frowning, he glanced to the side, reached out, and pushed aside the foliage.
He finally saw it, that blinking red dot...
An infrared camera?!
Boom!
Along with a thunderclap that seemed to announce death itself, a blood-soaked figure suddenly appeared out of thin air.
The man was sent flying backward, his shrill scream piercing everyone’s eardrums. He didn’t die on the spot, but one of his arms had been blasted into a mangled pulp by the high-explosive round. Wailing and rolling across the ground, he staggered toward the convoy and begged for help.
In the dense forest, no one dared to move. They instinctively held their breath.
An Ran, acting as the spotter, lowered his binoculars. “Ah, missed the mark. The wind speed was a bit off.”
Ji Jue sighed, somewhat unfamiliar with handling the heavy anti-materiel sniper rifle in his hands. He couldn’t help reminiscing about the Thunder lever-action rifle. The residual spirit matter left behind by a lifelong sharpshooter, once activated through Deus Ex Machina, was far more responsive than this recently manufactured weapon. When it locked on, it locked on. When it pierced, it pierced clean through!
Too bad the caliber couldn’t be changed. At extreme distances, the loss of kinetic energy was too great, limiting the destructive power. He’d need to get a weapon suited for ultra-long-range shooting sooner or later.
But after searching all over Cliff City through the Retired Soldiers’ Mutual Aid Association, they’d only managed to find one Thunder rifle. The chances of finding another weren’t great.
Ji Jue suddenly had a realization. Wait, if I’m already striking from ultra-long range, why do I even need a gun?
It seemed like in the military garrison’s warehouse, there were still a few howitzers that had been retired over ninety years ago. Supposedly they’d even been used in wars back in the Central Lands. Every now and then, during festivals, they’d get hauled out for display, and they were apparently still kept in pretty good condition.
Maybe someday he should get in touch with Lu Feng, pick a quiet night, and the two of them could just swipe one?
He pulled the trigger.
Boom!
With a thunderous blast, the Chosen One writhing on the ground was launched into the air again before crashing down, his screams growing even more shrill. This time, his other arm was gone too.
An Ran paused for a moment and looked over. “Is there still wind speed deviation?”
“I lost focus. Didn’t shoot well,” Ji Jue said awkwardly, almost blurting out something embarrassing like “knocked him down in one shot” or “left him barely alive.” He steadied himself, held his breath, and pulled the trigger again.
With the final deafening shot, the Chosen One rolling on the ground finally met his end. His head burst apart.
Blood splattered across Zhong Naohai’s car window, making his expression twitch for a moment as he swallowed dryly.
A trembling voice came through the comms. “B-b-boss, how about we—”
Zhong Naohai slapped his thigh, finally snapping to his senses. “Mr. Liu’s right! Go, go, go! This one’s too tough!”
No one bothered correcting him that Mr. Liu had already died. Before he even finished speaking, everyone in the convoy started frantically reversing, fleeing back the way they came.
Only now, at the fork in the road where they’d originally split off, several large pits had mysteriously appeared.
Beside them, a man leaned on a shovel as he smoked. Watching the dust cloud draw closer, he planted the shovel into the ground with one hand, then grinned widely at the oncoming off-road vehicles, revealing teeth etched with Thousand Island-style totemic markings.
The wind roared head-on as the vehicles sped forward. The driver at the forefront didn’t even bother about the man blocking the road, slamming the accelerator as if some invisible demon were chasing from behind, not realizing the man in front was the real reaper.
The long sword at Tom’s waist was revealed, unsheathed. As it swung, a streak of dazzling metallic brilliance flowed through the air.
The oncoming off-road vehicle was split cleanly in two. Then a second blade was drawn from his waist, sweeping across and cutting the second vehicle in half. Next came a third blade, drawn by a hand that had grown from his back, cleaving downward!
Then came the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth blade. From his six sinewy arms, blades and swords of all kinds reflected the fading sunlight, gleaming brightly, before erupting into a storm of death. Blood sprayed forth, staining even the sunset crimson.
Smoke, flames, explosions, screams, and wails filled the scene, but soon, everything fell silent.
One by one, the bodies were tossed into the pits. Each time, Tom patiently lifted the corpse’s face and snapped a photo with his phone.
Heads counted for money, alright?! If he’d known it was just a bunch of trash like this, he would’ve handled it himself! Instead, Ji Jue had cut in halfway and cost him forty-five thousand!
“One, two, three, four... eleven, twelve!” Counting the photos, he broke into a wide grin. “It’s a big haul...”
“Tom, don’t bury that Chosen One. Bring him back for me,” came the voice over the radio. “I have use for the body.”
Tom froze, dumbfounded. “Not even sparing the corpse? You Ember guys are seriously the creepiest bunch!”
“This one’s counted in your payment.”
“Got it, boss!”
If you’d said so earlier, my service attitude would’ve kicked in instantly, alright?!
He dragged a torn tarp from the wreckage of the convoy, wrapped up the Chosen One’s corpse with satisfaction, and tied it up carefully while already thinking about whether to charge a packaging fee later. After all, dine-in and takeout had different prices.
Meanwhile, on the rooftop on the other side, after fending off a wave of attackers, Ji Jue lowered his head to look at his phone, showing no sign of joy. Based on An Ran’s understanding and experience, Ji Jue actually seemed to be growing more and more gloomy.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Ji?” An Ran asked in confusion.
“Let’s just say... the worst-case scenario has been confirmed.” Ji Jue sighed, looking at the messages coming in from the signal tower on his screen. “Lei Yaoxing has set his sights on us.”
Through the relay from the signal tower, photos and videos of the scene appeared one after another, along with written reports and detailed observations of the villa and Tom.
From the shooting angle, the observer was likely hiding somewhere on the opposite mountain, outside the signal tower’s range. If not for a brief fluctuation in another signal that caused Ji Jue’s phone to automatically connect, he might not have even found out. Judging by this, the observer had probably been watching from the shadows from the very beginning.
An Ran glanced at the photos, his gaze accurately landing on a spot in the mountain hollow.
“Should we take him out?”
Ji Jue thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No need. It’d alert him. For now, it's better to keep things as they are.”
When a hidden observer was forced into the open, most of their threat was gone. Ji Jue could even use that surveillance line in reverse, misleading the other side into forming the wrong assumptions.
To avoid backfiring, he wasn’t planning to act on it yet. Lei Yaoxing was already trouble enough.
Chen Xingzhou’s barely-hanging-on condition in the hospital didn’t even rank high on the list, let alone his useless younger brother who couldn’t accomplish anything. Chen Yubo couldn’t even fail properly at what he did. Even if he had a mountain of money in his hands, as long as Chen Xingzhou still drew breath, he couldn’t cash it out. But if Chen Xingzhou died, then he could smoothly withdraw from this blood-soaked struggle among the White Deer followers.
As long as Ji Jue and the others didn’t show enough of a threat, Lei Yaoxing wouldn’t bother paying attention, yet the current situation was so oddly perfect that Ji Jue couldn’t help suspecting something else was hidden behind it.
Otherwise, how could everything align so neatly?
From the escalating internal chaos in the Wasteland Assembly, Chen Xingzhou and Chen Yubo had, through an enormous fortune, formed a buffer zone that just happened to allow them to step away from the center of the storm.
Chen Yubo had the protection of his brother’s remaining forces and was temporarily safe, but due to his own incompetence, he wasn’t seen as a threat.
Chen Xingzhou, on the other hand, because of his younger brother’s existence, had his pressure dispersed. Even that four billion inheritance had, in a sense, become a life-preserving talisman. If anyone wanted to move against him, they would have to consider the aftermath: once Chen Xingzhou died, the desperate Chen Yubo could throw that entire fund of over four billion, along with his immeasurable shares, straight onto the Wasteland Assembly and put a bounty on the killer’s head.
From the moment Chen Yubo was attacked, all the tangled threads Ji Jue knew of had spread out in every direction. In the end, they all, in one way or another, passed through a single, inevitable hub.
Chen Xingzhou was Chen Yubo’s older brother, someone Ji Jue had never even seen. What role did he play in all this?
Ji Jue unlocked his phone and reviewed the messages Ye Chun and Tong Hua had sent over the past few days. Ye Chun mostly forwarded street rumors and various leaked compilations of videos and images circulating on messaging apps. Tong Hua’s messages, on the other hand, were mostly internal intelligence from the Security Bureau.
In short, everything was going awry. Everyone was damn near losing their minds.
Lei Yaoxing was losing it. Spitter Kun was losing it. That Lei fella was losing it. Xu Yan was losing it. The entire dark underground scene of Cliff City, not just the Wasteland Assembly, everyone involved from big shots to small-time thugs, was on the verge of collapse.
With the possibility of a peaceful transition and consolidation gone, the last remnants of Lei Wuye’s rule had completely crumbled. Everyone was now wielding machetes as heads rolled, eyes bloodshot.
Alongside brutal annexation and conquest, aside from a few fools who still couldn’t read the situation and tried to play both sides, almost everyone else had settled into opposing camps.
Faced with Lei Yaoxing’s ruthless methods, those seeking survival or harboring ambition had also begun counterattacking at any cost, pushing the conflict into further escalation.
At this point, the most useful and highest-priority option was outside assistance, or more bluntly, finding a patron.
The decision-makers in Tide City, Ship City, and even other cities beyond Haizhou would never miss such a precious opportunity to expand their influence. Who wouldn’t want to stick a foot into Cliff City, the Federation’s largest maritime transport hub?
Thus, over the past few days, various White Deer Chosen Ones from the Federation, the Empire, and even between the Central Lands and the Thousand Islands had been drawn into the vortex and arrived in Cliff City one after another through all kinds of channels.
Among them were wanted criminals, madmen, and lunatics. This uncontrollable force stirred the already fragile balance inside and outside the city, turning it into a ticking bomb ready to explode at any moment.
And what made the situation even more tense was the steel monstrosity that appeared in the leaked footage that afternoon. It was a powered exosuit, brazenly walking the streets! It was impossible to imagine how deep the governor’s psychological trauma had been upon receiving that report.
With its serial number ground off, the exosuit wasn’t recorded in any military registry, possessing a Federation engine paired with an Empire core. It had a pirated control system written by some unknown programmer, homemade weapons from who-knew-where, and a fully improvised but functional set of riveted and welded armor plating. It was a nearly complete killing machine assembled from mismatched parts.
If paired with the right operator and sufficient firepower, it would be more than enough to storm the Governor’s mansion and assassinate the Governor himself.
What the hell? What exactly are you Wasteland Assembly people trying to do? Have you all gone insane?! Are you trying to recreate the Origin and White Deer War from two hundred years ago?!
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