Chapter 122: Storms Stir Anew

"You can tell it's nothing good just by the name." Sanders hauled a small object from not far away, handed it to Zhao Li, and said, "It seems only squad leaders carry this thing. It might have some use. If you're willing, you can take it back for the professionals to study."

What Sanders brought back was precisely the incapacitated-virus tracker that the commander had mentioned—the so-called electronic nose. Sanders was also a man who knew his wares and had instantly recognized its value.

Zhao Li took it, examined it for a moment, and casually tossed it into his backpack. His own pack had long since fallen apart; the one he now carried belonged to the enemies he had killed, and he had claimed their equipment and ammunition as well.

"Will anyone else come?" Zhao Li packed up his belongings, rearranged his weapons, and asked Sanders.

"Who knows? But given this lesson, I'm sure if they come back, it'll be on a much larger scale." Sanders looked up at the sky, seemingly searching for the positions of any aircraft, and casually answered Zhao Li.

This small-scale sneak attack had elevated Zhao Li's estimation of Sanders to a new level. Leaving aside the stealth and assassination skills required in the dense jungle, during the final shootout alone, Sanders had single-handedly eliminated at least fifteen men—and that was while the enemy was laying down a frantic barrage after discovering his position. Zhao Li, on the other hand, had only managed to pick off four or five with hidden precision shots; the gap between them was immense.

"You still need more practice with firearms. In an era like this, no matter how skilled a master you are, you can never stand against modern weapons." Sanders took the lead while offering a critique of Zhao Li's performance.

Zhao Li initially felt an urge to retort. An eighth-level master ought to be impervious to ordinary bullets. However, the moment he thought of the two laser-kinetic cannons back at his base, every reason to argue vanished. Under the bombardment of such weapons, even a ninth-level master would undoubtedly meet a bitter end.

They had inexplicably blundered into an inexplicable jungle, fought an inexplicable battle, and nearly been turned into hedgehogs by helical spikes. Yet it hadn't been entirely without rewards. He had witnessed a formidable monster and heard of a fascinating term: the incapacitated-virus.

Like Sanders, Zhao Li suspected that both of them might genuinely have been infected with this virus, but perhaps because they had consumed those mysterious sand grains, the virus had failed to take effect. Such blind luck, however, left him wondering if they would encounter it again.

"Pick up the pace. Let's finish what we came here to do as quickly as possible." Sanders also realized the gravity of the situation. "Your survival training comes later. All efforts go toward the mission."

On this point, Zhao Li entirely agreed. Carrying that tracker made Zhao Li eager to return to base and report immediately. If the incapacitated-virus was real, once deployed on the battlefield, no number of soldiers would be enough to save the enemy from slaughter.

"Are biological weapons permitted on the battlefield?" Zhao Li couldn't help asking. Pushing forward at a run, he no longer bothered to conceal his tracks. He had been mulling over this question the entire way; Sanders had seen combat and might know the answer.

"Under normal logic, no." Sanders was running just as breathlessly, but he answered without looking back.

"What do you mean?" Zhao Li asked, slightly confused by the conditional response as he shoved aside a blocking tree branch.

"It means if you use them secretly without getting caught, then you've used them. Who's to know?" Sanders was up ahead, using the compass set into his military dagger's hilt to check their bearing. Zhao Li nearly collided straight into his back.

"Have you ever seen or heard of anyone using them?" Zhao Li seemed determined to get to the bottom of it, firing off another question right away.

"Do you really want to know?" Having confirmed their direction, Sanders snapped the compass lid shut and turned his head to ask.

"Yeah!" Zhao Li nodded and looked at Sanders, waiting in silence.

"I have. I personally fired thirteen of the latest VS-7900 gas missiles with my own hands," Sanders answered with absolute clarity. "To wipe out a company of enemy troops entrenched in permanent fortifications. Including dozens of civilians within a five-hundred-meter radius of the entire stronghold—every single one of them perished."

Despite having mentally prepared himself, Zhao Li still hadn't expected Sanders to deliver such a shocking answer. Yet, shocking as it was, Zhao Li did not follow up with foolish questions of "why," nor did he accuse Sanders of cruelty. He simply reached back to tighten his backpack strap so it sat more comfortably, as the hurried run had loosened it slightly. "Where are we going next?"

"This way!" Sanders pointed in a direction, took the lead, and broke into a run once more.

There was nothing that could mature a soldier faster than taking a life with his own hands, and Zhao Li was experiencing that now. Having overcome the shock of his first kills, almost nothing seemed capable of troubling him anymore. Even hearing that Sanders had wiped out civilians along with enemy troops didn't evoke any particular emotion. In fact, it even crossed his mind that Sanders' imprisonment hadn't been caused by massacring civilians with poison gas. Strictly speaking, Zhao Li was still far too unfamiliar with the ways things were done within the military.

He believed that after this experience, even if one of the prisoners were to leap forward and claim to have killed ten thousand people, Zhao Li would never suspect them of lying. The incredible tales those fellows used to tell—which he had previously dismissed as bragging—now seemed very likely to be true. His understanding of those prisoners had deepened once more.

For a full day and night, no one disturbed them, and the sound of aircraft engines vanished from the sky. Whether the enemy had retreated or relocated, they encountered almost no unexpected incidents along the way.

Yet, life always worked this way: when you were anxiously guarding against accidents, none occurred; but the moment you let down your guard and assumed everything was safe, disaster struck precisely then.

"Whew, we've finally made it." Sanders sat down against a tree, let out a long breath, and motioned for Zhao Li to take a brief rest.

Zhao Li found a tree as well, though he kept a tight grip on his weapon. The trees they chose to lean against allowed each of them to watch the other's blind spot, serving as mutual cover. Even during rest, vigilance could not be dropped.

"Where are we?" Zhao Li unfolded his military map and began pinpointing their current coordinate. Rapidly determining one's position was a fundamental skill of wilderness survival.

*Swish.* A sharp whistling sound erupted directly above their heads—something hurtling past at low altitude at high speed, accompanied by the roar of an engine.

Trouble. Zhao Li and Sanders sprang up as if their bodies were fitted with springs. Scanning left and right, Sanders made a hand gesture signaling them to climb. Without a word, both men rapidly scrambled up into the trees.

The aircraft moved with terrifying speed, vanishing into the distance almost immediately. Absolute silence returned to the surroundings; apart from the rustling of leaves, not a sound remained.

"Damn it!" Zhao Li cursed inwardly. Did these people really treat the military as if it didn't exist? Flying high-speed aircraft so brazenly. At the same time, a wave of worry washed over him: if Christine and the others discovered the anomaly here, would they pilot a battleship to investigate? Could the military's crude, small vessels here possibly deal with these people?

Less than an hour after they resumed moving, faint gunfire reached their ears. Zhao Li and Sanders, possessing a tacit understanding, reacted instantly by diving into concealment.

Listening closely to the sound, the gunfire was a fair distance away, which meant it didn't concern them directly. Still, the ambush days ago had left their nerves taut, and hearing shots triggered an instinctive defensive reflex.

Tracing the origin of the gunfire, the two men emerged from behind their hiding spots and simultaneously looked in that direction, even though nothing could be seen through the dense, tangled jungle.

"Where are we heading?" Zhao Li asked again. This was the second time he had posed the question along the way. The first time, Sanders hadn't answered directly, merely saying they would know when they arrived. He wondered what Sanders would say this time, but he asked anyway.

"There!" Sanders jutted his chin toward the source of the gunfire, spat out a single word, and offered no further explanation.

Hearing this reply, Zhao Li truly didn't know what to say. Why was it that wherever he needed to go, trouble always followed? Previously, he had stumbled upon things he shouldn't have seen, nearly lost his life, and been forced to stain his hands with blood. Now, the moment they heard gunfire, it turned out to be their unavoidable destination.

Complaints aside, Zhao Li felt no fear. Perhaps having survived his recent trials in killing, he had truly matured into a qualified soldier.

"Judging by the gunfire over there, what can you make of it?" As they carefully crept closer to the site, Sanders seemed determined to test Zhao Li at every turn.

"The firing isn't continuous; it stops and starts," Zhao Li replied instantly, having listened from start to finish. "It doesn't sound like two opposing forces exchanging fire. It sounds much more like a group of people driving game on a hunt."

"And what else?" Sanders was quite pleased with Zhao Li's performance. After all, the young man's understanding of firearms had been drilled into him personally, and he felt a quiet sense of pride in it.

"When they do fire continuously, it's always a full magazine, never single shots or three-round bursts. Whatever they're hunting must be quite troublesome." In a mutual firefight, the shooting would never be so intermittent. Zhao Li based his judgment on this pattern. As for the frantic shooting, it could only mean they kept missing their target or scoring hits that failed to achieve the desired effect, forcing the soldiers to continuously empty their magazines.

What interested the two of them was whether these shooters were the same group as before. At least the sound of the aircraft engine bore a striking resemblance. Zhao Li desperately hoped it was them; perhaps he could squeeze some information about the incapacitated-virus out of their mouths. Last time, the fighting had been too brief, leaving no survivors, a fact he had regretted for days.

"Try not to draw attention!" As they drew close enough to the target area to sense the proximity, Sanders glanced back and whispered a warning to Zhao Li. "Damn it, I don't want to be hunted down again!"

Zhao Li nodded in agreement. Having lived through the previous ordeal, he had no desire for a second round. Neither killing nor being killed was a pleasant experience. After agreeing on a simple plan of action, the two split up and slipped into the jungle.

The position of the gunfire kept shifting, as if the prey they were chasing possessed considerable speed. The continued firing indicated that the target had not yet been subdued. Zhao Li approached slowly from the flank.

Finding a perch among the foliage of a ten-meter-tall tree, Zhao Li began to observe. Faint human silhouettes were now visible below. What made his heart leap into his throat was that their gear was identical to that of the men from a few days prior—meaning they were likely the very same faction.

This realization brought him both shock and elation. The shock was that making a move might trigger another relentless manhunt; the elation was that he finally had a chance to interrogate someone about the true nature of the incapacitated-virus.

Though gunfire raged around him, Zhao Li still hadn't figured out what they were attacking. However, he cared little about that now; his eyes remained fixed on the figures below, calculating when one might drop out of formation and how he should strike.

There were about twenty-odd men. Perhaps chastised by their previous loss, they didn't dare spread out too far. Distributed within a hundred-meter radius in the jungle, every single one of them gripped their weapons tightly, treating the situation like a mortal crisis.

A blur of motion caught his eye—a grayish-brown shadow flashed across his field of vision like a phantom and vanished instantly behind the dense tree trunks. Zhao Li gave a sudden start. Was it that monster again?

Before he could process it, someone below spotted the shadow, shouted out, and chased after the direction it had vanished. All twenty-odd men immediately surged in that direction to surround it.

An opportunity! Zhao Li watched as one fellow lagged behind, busy changing a magazine. As luck would have it, the soldier halted right under the tree where Zhao Li was concealed, lowering his head to fiddle with his gear without a glance upward, utterly convinced no enemy could be lurking overhead.

With a soft rustle, Zhao Li leaped down from the canopy. Falling from a height of over ten meters directly onto the man would have been enough to crush him to death, so Zhao Li deliberately adjusted his trajectory by a fraction.

Completely oblivious to the threat descending from above, the soldier had just finished reloading and was pulling the charging handle when a crushing blow landed on the back of his neck. His body went limp, and he collapsed onto the ground unconscious.

The first thing Zhao Li did upon landing was strip the communicator from the man's gear, crush it into pieces, and hurl them far away. He then scanned his surroundings, dragged the unconscious soldier aside behind a large tree trunk, shielding him from the view of the others.

The knocked-out soldier began to stir, groggily wondering why his body ached so terribly. Before he could even begin to check himself, a strange voice murmured right beside his ear: "Who are you people? What are you doing here?"