Chapter Eighty-Four: An Ambush on the Road

In an instant, a burst of white glare exploded outward like a flashbang, reverberating with a shrill, tearing crack.

"My eyes!"

"My head—ah, it hurts!"

In that split second, the eyes and ears of many nearby recruits were struck by the blast of blinding white light.

Du Huaishan was just as scorched, his pupils tightening to their limit, but unlike the others, he had already broken through the first stage and could release his attributes outward, a plague-black mist coiling around him.

The moment the white light appeared, the black vapor instinctively covered his eyes. At the same time, the military saber in his hand erupted with a shockwave that shattered the sound barrier, fully blocking the tremor rushing at him, even hurling it back.

But what truly astonished him was not the other side's awakening skill, which was comparable to a flashbang, but their reaction speed.

Yet in a life-or-death struggle, there was no room for hesitation.

After unleashing his first-stage technique, the thin, dark man immediately spun back with a rising slash, the short blade in his hand coming at him like a sickle, carrying the reek of blood!

So swift was the man's strike, so sharp his response, that he was no ordinary person.

Any ordinary recruit, caught in sequence and then blinded by the white flare, would already have lost all sense.

But Du Huaishan snapped his arm up at once. His iron-blooded physique surged and turned, every muscle on his body twisting into a single braided cord, as though struck by a great bell.

With a clang that rang like thunder, blade met blade, steel met steel.

The thin man's wrist seemed struck by lightning; he reeled backward, stumbling repeatedly. The web between his thumb and forefinger had already split open, blood seeping out in thin threads.

"Perfect force control?!"

The words burst from him in involuntary shock.

Whoosh.

Du Huaishan gave him no reply at all. His body vanished once more into the void.

The thin, dark man immediately widened his eyes and pressed the mechanism at the hilt of his short blade with both hands, sending out a grappling line in an attempt to flee, but just as his scheme was set in motion—

A hook line suddenly shot in from the side and buried itself in his ribs.

It was Xu Yuan!

When the thin man charged earlier, she had been the only soldier to dodge at the same time as Du Huaishan. After evading the shockwave of white light, she took advantage of the moment he landed to raise her arm guard and fire at the dark, lean man as he tried to escape.

Buzz. Buzz.

Both sides triggered their mechanisms at once. High-pressure gas drove the turbines into a frenzy, like two cars locked in a tug-of-war.

The thin man cried out in pain; half his side ribs were nearly ripped away by the grappling line.

The next second, a black shadow suddenly appeared before him.

In midair, a streak of cold brilliance flashed faster than sound itself—whoosh, then a dull impact!

"No..."

His neck was severed in an instant by the military saber, and his head flew off at an angle. Even his expression remained frozen in the moment of desperate pleading. The blade did not stop, but continued on, stirring the blood into a scarlet fan that sprayed through the air.

His corpse lost all control at once and was dragged to Xu Yuan's side by the grappling line.

She twisted her hips to gather force, swung her right arm, and used the saber once more in a horizontal cut. With a wet tearing sound, the blade, like a spear, suddenly pierced straight through his heart, and pulped flesh burst like a flower, splattering across her face.

Plop.

The head fell to the ground. The thin man's frightened eyes instantly lost their light, and a red glow blossomed from his chest as his body began to scatter into the wind and fade with the world.

"Haa..."

Du Huaishan landed steadily in the truck bed and turned to scan his surroundings.

The battle had seemed complicated, but in truth it had lasted only a few seconds.

Even now, many of the recruits were still clutching their eyes and shouting in confusion. Tan Hai's padded armor at the shoulder had been slashed open, the stuffing exposed, while Li Anqi and Lin Sizhi were drenched in blood.

But when he looked closer, the blood was not theirs at all; it had spurted from Li Mingcheng's neck as he lay on the ground.

"Li Mingcheng!"

Du Huaishan sprang over and clamped a hand over his neck.

Li Mingcheng's wound beneath the throat was far too large. Blood kept streaming through the gaps between his fingers. "Th-thank you... you have to live... you have to..." He could not even finish the sentence before blood surged from his mouth, his pupils dispersed, and he died.

The dark, lean man's first target had been Du Huaishan.

Li Mingcheng and Tan Hai had been the closest to him at the time, so they naturally suffered the earliest impact.

Fortunately, Tan Hai had greater talent and practiced diligently in peacetime, so he had entered his ghost-man state at the first instant. Li Mingcheng had not been so lucky.

There was no time for grief.

Du Huaishan lowered his eyelids over the dead man's face and looked toward the front left. Beside the rolling veteran transport vehicle, Wang Zhenglin, Pei Qingfeng, and the others were locked in battle with three more gang members.

It was impossible to tell what background these people had, but their skills were astonishingly sharp.

Especially the rough-faced man with braided hair, whose broad blade danced so tightly that not even air could pass through. At his feet already lay two veteran corpses, not to mention those machine-gun troopers who had not completed their spirit transformations.

But even they could only exploit the brief opening of a sudden ambush.

In a clash of numbers and equipment, the soldiers held an overwhelming advantage. A man covered from head to toe in stone-like scales had just blocked Pei Qingfeng's attack when, in the blink of an eye, four grappling lines hooked into him from behind at once.

The veterans charged in with brutal force. One thrust, one slash, then another cleave and a pounce, and in the span of barely half a breath, the man was beaten to pieces, his arms and flesh flying everywhere.

His companion fared no better.

A machine-gun veteran reacted in time, lifted his Madsen light machine gun, and swept it across in rattling bursts.

Flames spat out. The rough-faced man's left leg was severed on the spot, and before he could even hit the ground, Wang Zhenglin's longsword had already stabbed through his heart with a shuddering hum.

With the final gunshot fading away, less than a minute had passed before the battle ended.

Bang!

In his ghost-man state, Wang Zhenglin brutally tore open the truck door with one claw and dragged out a middle-aged merchant dressed in a purple mink coat and a black satin cap, along with the merchant's son.

"W-w-we surrender, sir! They forced me to do it! I knew nothing, nothing at all..."

With a thud, the middle-aged merchant dropped to his knees at once, pressing his son's head down as he repeatedly bowed to Wang Zhenglin.

At the sight, Guo Tingyu's eyes sharpened, and he unconsciously clenched his fists.

Pei Qingfeng quickly led the others to kick the remaining ordinary gang members from the transport truck one by one and pin them to the ground, military sabers pressed to their throats.

"Sir, we really know nothing! These people aren't with us, it's completely..."

The gang lackeys cried out one after another.

But Wang Zhenglin paid them no mind whatsoever. Not even blinking, he waved his hand. "Load them all up! Clear the battlefield immediately! Move out at once!"

"Yes!"

The soldiers did not have time to grieve for their fallen comrades; they loaded the corpses, machine guns, and equipment back onto the caravan's old transport trucks.

Among the passing crowds, Wang Zhenglin's eyes kept sweeping over the elite recruits with a faint, watchful glimmer.

After he met Du Huaishan's gaze, the taut string in his chest finally loosened somewhat.

Both of them understood that this attack was by no means accidental, or rather, it should be called an interception and slaughter along the road.

Under Wang Zhenglin and Pei Qingfeng's urging, the soldiers were fully reorganized in just five minutes.

The sun sank, and night fell.

The convoy drove on through the pitch-black wasteland with lantern-like headlights.

Combat was the fastest way to grow.

If the first fierce clash with the demon spirits had left the new recruits bewildered and muddle-headed, then after the second assault by the gang, everyone had tightened their nerves, each pair of eyes open as wide as an eagle's.

All for the sake of surviving.

Du Huaishan had also gained much from the two battles. After taking the red marrow tablets, he had broken through once again and reached fourteen percent fusion.

At this pace, in another month or so, he would be able to touch the relative threshold of the second stage.

The place where they had fought the gang members was actually not far from White Camp. The convoy had driven less than twenty minutes before searchlights on the city walls came into view in the distance.

After Wang Zhenglin identified himself, the gates opened wide.

The convoy had barely entered the city when, along the edge of the watchtower beneath the tungsten streetlamps, two soldiers in green cloaks rode over on horseback, as though they had been waiting here for a long time.

One square-faced middle-aged squad leader tucked away his pocket watch and raised a hand to stop the reconnaissance second platoon.

Wang Zhenglin had been thoroughly frightened by all the assassinations and attacks. He did not dismount; he even deliberately increased the fusion level of his ghost-man state and said coldly, "And you are..."

"What, you didn't receive the message?" The square-faced squad leader arched a brow. Few units would dare speak to their intelligence platoon with such an attitude.

"Identification."

Wang Zhenglin did not bother with further words.

Seeing how tough the other's stance was, how his right hand never left the hilt of his sword, and how several civilians were being guarded on the truck, the square-faced squad leader realized that something may have happened. He reached into his coat and took out a sheet of rough paper.

Under the light, Wang Zhenglin studied the red seal carefully, and only then did he nod.

On the transport trucks, veterans and recruits began whispering to one another, unable to understand why people from the intelligence platoon had shown up.

Yet this only made some of them brighten with joy.

"With the intelligence platoon here, this must be something big. Looks like we've stumbled into a great merit this time!"

"Shh! Keep your voice down, don't let them hear you."

...

"I am Zhang Shihan, squad leader of First Squad of the Fifty-Seventh Brigade Intelligence Platoon. I was ordered under military secrecy to come to White Camp to meet you. What is going on here, and why are there ordinary civilians on the trucks?"

After confirming identities, the square-faced squad leader led Wang Zhenglin to the side.

"We were attacked midway by an unidentified gang. It's very possible our intelligence was leaked by someone!"

"What?!"

Zhang Shihan and his men changed color and hurriedly asked, "Where is the key intelligence carrier?"

"Du Huaishan!"

Wang Zhenglin turned back and shouted.

The recruits, who had been discussing the matter in a low hum, instantly fell silent. They watched as Du Huaishan jumped down from the truck and walked over.

"Will Du Huaishan be all right?" After two team members had died in quick succession, Lin Sizhi began to worry.

"Probably not a problem."

Tan Hai's eyes moved rapidly. Looking at the shadows of the two intelligence platoon men, he glanced down at the opening in his shoulder armor. "But the next mission may be extremely dangerous."

"Just him?"

Seeing that it was such a young boy, Zhang Shihan asked subconsciously.

"Just him."

Du Huaishan's eyelid twitched. Because the battlefield had been so chaotic and the night so dark, he had not noticed all along that the brown-haired veteran was missing.

He instinctively touched the belt of his armor.

Inside it was still the long whistle the brown-haired veteran had given him.

Zhang Shihan also sensed the seriousness of the matter, but he could not understand it. "After Captain Tang finished the meeting, he personally ordered me to head to White Camp for the rendezvous. There was no way anyone could have leaked information during that process."

Du Huaishan lowered his hand.

"The traitor is on the truck."

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