Inside the highland redoubt, Fang Dawei's gang of thirteen sat or sprawled about. Aside from a doctor who required protection, nine of them still possessed fighting strength, while the remaining three were severely injured from earlier clashes, lying there barely conscious.
Originally, there had been sixteen of them. Those unaccounted for had either become separated along the way or been gunned down.
Fang Dawei looked quite fair and clean-cut, dressed in a white shirt with rolled-up cuffs, his hair parted to the side, and wearing a pair of spectacles. Though solidly built, he did not look like a ruthless bandit at all, but rather like an ordinary office worker.
Yet across his exposed skin ran a layer of scale-like membrane, covering even his face.
Not far from him sat Tong Baitao, a towering, burly brute. Through the tears in his clothes peeked grayish-black carapace plating scarred with bullet grazes. High on his back behind the shoulder blades was a pronounced bulge, suggesting something hidden beneath his clothing, though its exact nature could not be discerned.
Before them sat a compact radio transceiver. A short man wearing headphones crouched beside it, listening to the incoming signals and steadily jotting down cipher codes. Once he finished recording, he pulled off his headphones, opened a booklet, and quickly decoded the message against it. Finally, he looked up and said, "It's decoded."
"What did they say?" Everyone looked over with eager concern.
The short man said, "They told us to hold out a little longer. Molan Company's security team is en route and will be here in about forty minutes. Once they arrive, our lives will at least be saved. Molan Company won't let us die."
"Molan Company, dammit!"
A look of hatred flashed across Tong Baitao's eyes. Their fall to such a dire state was inextricably tied to Molan Company from start to finish. Yet he knew full well that right now, Molan Company was the only thing capable of keeping them alive.
Fang Dawei, however, remained calm. "Actually, we're not entirely out of options. The resistance organization supplied us with so much before, but they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They definitely want to stir up chaos in the city.
"Once mayhem breaks out in the city, could those gray dogs afford to stay here? When that happens, we'll have our chance. Molan Company's path is only our last resort. If we don't have to take it, we won't."
"The boss is right!"
Hearing his words, the bandits' spirits lifted. It made undeniable sense—the city was what the constabulary was truly meant to guard. Once something happened there, how could those gray dogs out in the wild spare any thought for this place?
Just then, a rustling noise came from above. A figure crawled along the wall, clinging to the surface like a spider, his limbs shaped like arthropod walking legs.
Fang Dawei looked up. Sunlight poured down through a massive breach in the ceiling, forcing him to squint. "Lao Qi, I told you, don't crawl around over my head."
Lao Qi let out an "oh" and scurried down the wall like a spider, crouching on the ground. "Boss, I checked every corner. There's a hidden passage down below, looks like it was dug by villagers in the past. Should we block it up?"
Fang Dawei pondered for a moment. "No, leave it. Have one of the brothers keep watch over it. We might end up needing it later."
He then turned to the doctor tending to the wounded. "Doctor Lin, can the brothers still be saved?"
Doctor Lin was a gaunt man in his forties with a head of white hair. Wearing a stethoscope, he was examining the bandits lying on the ground. "The wound medicine from the resistance organization can keep them hanging on, but don't expect miracles. Even in a proper hospital, they wouldn't recover anytime soon."
He paused, then added, "Actually, as long as they don't die now, severed limbs don't matter. Once you reach Molan Company, they'll replace them with better ones."
Hearing him mention this, Fang Dawei's face twitched slightly, as if stirred by an unpleasant memory.
At that moment, his pupils suddenly dilated. Veins bulged across his face and forehead, bloodshot threads spiderwebbed through his eyes, and he began gasping for air and clawing violently at himself. The scaly membrane over his body seemed to harden and stiffen as well.
Seeing his state, Tong Baitao cried out in alarm, "Not good, the boss's condition is flaring up! Quick, Doctor Lin, a Xingqing capsule!"
Doctor Lin moved with practiced ease, pulling out a medicine case, popping out a capsule, and tossing it over.
Tong Baitao caught it in midair, rushed to Fang Dawei's side, and braced his body. "Here, Boss."
Fang Dawei snatched it frantically, shoved it into his mouth, and strained to swallow it down. Only after a while did his breathing slowly settle, and the strange manifestations across his body gradually receded.
Doctor Lin glanced at him, then at the men around them. "One capsule lasts three days, but that's assuming no strenuous exertion. If you activate your implants to fight, you might need one every half day. These meds will only keep you going for three days."
Tong Baitao cursed bitterly, "Dammit, we should have secured the medicine before hitting that detonator."
One of the lackeys spoke up. "Brother Tong, that kid wasn't even in our hands to begin with. The moment we met face-to-face, the ruse would've collapsed. Better to wipe out a few more people from that commissioned company. The rest are just gray dogs who only know how to shoot guns—they're way less of a threat to us."
Tong Baitao glared at him. "Easy to talk. In the end, how many of them did you actually take down?"
The lackey shrank back sheepishly. He had been in a rush to pull out, saw that the timing seemed about right, and pressed it. Besides, those people had suddenly retreated—he could hardly be blamed for that.
Just then, Tong Qianjiang, who was perched on the redoubt's upper tier, scrambled to his feet. Peering downward, he called back, "Big Brother, Brother Fang, seems like there's movement down below!"
"What are those gray dogs up to now?"
The gang instantly went on high alert, crowding toward the breaches and pre-existing slits to look down. They saw the constabulary officers below leveling their rifles upward, and a youth in a student uniform stood beneath, holding a long saber, his clear, cold gaze directed straight up at them.
"Boss, that looks like a student from Wuyi College."
Tong Qianjiang said, "I've seen him before! Yeah, that night when I went to make the deal with Tian Yaozu's minion, I saw him. Felt something off back then, so I slipped away early."
Tong Baitao peered down, bewildered. "Am I seeing things? Just one guy?" He turned around to face everyone and roared with laughter. "Just one guy? Huh? Did everyone with any balls get scared off? They sent a kid?"
The bandits inside the redoubt broke into wild, arrogant laughter. It wasn't that they looked down on Wuyi students, but their opponent was a single person armed with nothing more than a saber. No matter how capable he was, what could he possibly do to them?
Yet in that very breath, everyone's vision blurred. The youth vanished from where he stood.
Only Lao Qi, with his spider-like senses, caught the motion immediately. "He's coming up! So fast!"
At the same moment, a deafening volley of gunfire erupted from below. A relentless spray of bullets slammed against the redoubt, forcing the bandits to yank their heads back.
Earlier, they had tried trading fire with the constabulary, only to realize how disadvantageous it was. At such long range, accuracy was nonexistent. The constabulary had plenty of men, so picking off a few did nothing, while their own ammunition dwindled with every shot. In the end, they chose to rely on what remained of the redoubt's defensive walls and hunker inside, staying put as long as nobody charged the slope.
The constabulary also knew they couldn't pierce the fortifications, which was why they had remained quiet for so long. Opening fire so suddenly now was unmistakably meant to provide cover for that youth.
Having swallowed the medicine, Fang Dawei had been sitting still to recover. He took several deep breaths, and the scaly membrane across his skin seemed to ease and relax along with them. Looking up, he said, "Lao Si, go keep an eye on him."
A hulking brute drew a pistol and stepped outside without a word.
He wore a hood with only a slit for his eyes. Stepping out of the redoubt brought him onto a relatively broad platform. He advanced a few paces and aimed his barrel down at the figure hurtling up the path.
Just then, stray rounds from below struck him, but whether hitting his torso or limbs, every bullet ricocheted harmlessly away. One struck his forehead, merely tilting his head back slightly, tearing open a tear in the hood to expose the dark black carapace plating underneath.
Chen Chuan fixed his eyes ahead. From the base to the redoubt above was roughly a hundred meters in a straight line, but the path was broken up by three narrow bends.
This meant that no matter how fast someone charged up, they would be forced to decelerate at each turn, exposing their flank to the gunman holding the redoubt above for a significant stretch.
Yet as he took the bends, his speed never faltered. The instant he reached a corner, he stomped down violently, gouging a deep pit into the dirt, and his body whipped across laterally to the other side.
Because his speed was simply too blistering, the brute couldn't draw a clean bead on him. Shot after shot from the pistol kicked up dirt behind him.
After Chen Chuan cleared two bends in succession, the brute drew a second pistol from his waist, leveling both weapons toward the final bend. The two guns parted slightly, bracketing the forward and rear angles. If Chen Chuan came through below, there was no way he could evade the crossfire.
Yet just before reaching that third bend, Chen Chuan made an unexpected maneuver. Instead of continuing along the path, he twisted mid-stride, stomped down with tremendous force, and leaped skyward—soaring clean over the five-to-six-meter-wide chasm to land squarely on the final straightaway. When he looked up, the brute stood directly before him.
The brute reacted with shocking speed, his parted pistols snapping inward to fire—*bang, bang!*
The moment Chen Chuan hit the ground, he dipped low and lunged forward, weaving from side to side in the blink of an eye. The bullets merely erupted in bursts of dirt behind him.
Moving with blinding speed, he closed nearly ten meters in a heartbeat. His long saber slashed upward on a diagonal—a severed forearm spun into midair! Taking a lateral step, he slipped past the brute's side, his blade sweeping through a seamless horizontal cleave!
*Tap.*
With a deep footprint stamped into the ground beneath him, his momentum snapped to a halt. When he looked up, the entrance to the redoubt lay five paces ahead.
With a flick of his wrist, he vibrated the blade clear, then walked steadily forward.
Behind him, the brute stood frozen for a second before his severed upper torso tumbled down, dragging his lower half to the dirt along with it.
Implant armor, modified skeleton, protective suit—all of it had been sheared cleanly in two by a single slash!
Chapter 87