Chapter 24 Mysterious Sneak Attack

The scene of the explosion was extremely terrifying. A large, fiery red cloud was released into the night sky and the flames shot very high. Many things were thrown into the air and sparks flew everywhere.

“It’s gasoline. The generator was blown up,” Fatty said. “Now they’re screwed.”

“How could it explode?” Leather Bag was holding a shovel. “It’s not like these big cats can bite the generator and cause it to explode.”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than another explosion went off. This time, the momentum was slightly smaller, but the foreigners’ camp was blown to pieces.

Fatty looked pale and glanced in the other direction where the forest sat to the left of the foreigners’ camp, “No, fuck me, that’s—”

“What is it?”

“Impossible. It sounds like mortars,” Fatty said.

“Mortars?” I was surprised. “Someone is using mortars to hit them?” Was there really an army coming? But that was impossible. Even an armed police force only needed guns to deal with us. They were thinking too highly of us if they were using mortars.

Fatty also had a look of disbelief on his face but kept his ears open in hopes of hearing the next sound.

I looked over at Qiu Dekao’s camp. There weren’t any further explosions and the attack on the other side also seemed to be over. The only thing that remained was the fire pit left from the explosion. Everything was suddenly silent, as if they had all been killed by the explosion.

Fatty listened for a moment and suddenly started cursing. He turned to look at the campfire behind him and shouted, “Bag, put out the bonfire!”

Before he finished speaking, there was a small flash in the dark woods and the sound of a small cannon going off. Fatty immediately shouted, “Get down!”

I pulled Mute Sister and Xiuxiu down on the ground as everything exploded behind me. My ears buzzed, my body was lifted several feet into the air, and a wave of hot air came directly from the soles of my feet. The whole beach was blown up and rubble rained down upon us.

Fatty swore as all the pebbles fell, “Son of a bitch.” I looked back and saw that our bonfire had been blown up and there were only scattered coals left around it.

“Guerrilla fighters use wild animals to drive people to the campfire first and then use mortars to strike accurately,” Fatty explained.

“You even know this kind of thing?” I asked him.

“Master Three, you don’t know how to analyze.” Fatty said. “How did you become like your nephew? You can see clearly with your eyes what’s going on.”

As I secretly scolded him in my heart, he continued talking, “But there’s only one person.”

“Why do you think so?” Xiuxiu asked with an ashen face.

“The fact that we’re still alive is enough to illustrate this point. With this tactic, we’d be dead if someone sniped at us before the mortar fire. This man is an expert who has a strong intuition when it comes to calculating distance. The shots are flawless, so we can’t expose our heads or we’ll be shot at again.”

“Then we’ll escape under the cover of darkness,” Leather Bag said. 

I shook my head, “The foreigners must be in the same situation as us. If they also try to escape this way, our two sides might meet and there will definitely be an accident. For now, we have to wait and see.”

Just as I finished speaking, we suddenly saw bursts of light and heard the muffled sound of gunfire in the woods.

All of us instinctively bowed our heads. Shit, where’s it going to hit next? I thought to myself. I heard a slight whistle in the air, which turned out to be a shell coming right towards us.

Is he aiming for the same position? I cursed in my heart. The explosion wasn’t around us, but in the forest about several hundred meters away.

It was still a long way off and the impact wasn’t strong, but the area immediately burst into flames.

Fatty and I glanced over and Fatty asked me, “What’s over there?”

As I watched, another mortar instantly shot out and landed in the same place.

I immediately knew where the other party was attacking. We’re fucked!

“Crevice!” I shouted, “He’s bombing that crevice!”

“Which one?”

“The one we pulled you out of!” I hurled abuse at him as I stumbled my way over to the bushes. As I rushed into the woods and came to the edge of the mountain, I knew it was all over. The whole mountainside had been blown up and the crevice was buried underneath all the rubble. Not only were the people who had been guarding it in danger and likely trapped underneath, but Xiao Hua and Pan Zi might never come out of there again.

I rushed forward and tried to move the rubble, but Fatty pulled me back. Almost at the same time, another shell landed on the cliff, blasting out a heavy rain of gravel.

In the firelight, I saw a man standing on the ridge in the distance.

I couldn’t see him clearly, but I recognized the shadow. He didn’t have any shoulders.

Leather Bag and Fatty were about to go forward to encircle and suppress him, but I stopped them. The shadow quickly turned around and disappeared into the woods.

This night attack had caused heavy losses to everyone. I could do nothing but watch as dozens of shells landed on the cliff and completely destroyed the crevice.

The shells weren’t fired from the same direction, which made it obvious that the shooter was moving the entire time. But he was too familiar with the layout here and could accurately hit the crevice on such a dark night.

Fatty wasn’t interested in hearing my theory about the strange, shoulderless man from Banai. Instead, he was looking at his stomach, completely furious.

At first, I only vaguely thought that this man was the one who had started the fire at that time, but now it seemed that he was putting his foot down. He probably knew a lot of inside information, so I knew I had to find a way to catch him if I had the time.

After daybreak, we cleaned up our camp. When I sent a few people to visit Qiu Dekao’s camp to check on their situation, we learned that they were worse off than we were. Seven were dead—most indiscriminately shot by their own people—and countless others were severely injured. Almost all of them had minor injuries.

Those lynx had obviously come from the lake. Both ours and Qiu Dekao’s sentries were located near the woods and weren’t expecting a sneak attack from that direction. After that, the attacking power was so heavy that no one could come out unscathed.

Not only did these lynx appear to have been trained, but the one who attacked us could actually control their behavior. But I couldn’t think deeply about it right now. What made me lose all hope was that the crevice had been blocked. Not to mention saving the others’ lives, even Xiao Hua and Pan Zi couldn’t come back now.

What should I do? It was all I could think about. Moreover, since everyone was looking to me, I had to give an answer; otherwise, I could only say, “Let’s go back to our homes.”

But we couldn’t go home! I got back Fatty and lost Pan Zi and Xiao Hua. The deal wasn’t worthwhile and I still lost money.

Fatty was very depressed because the map he had carved on his stomach had suddenly lost its value. We sat on the rubble, silently eating food that still smelled of gunpowder.

“Master Three,” Xiuxiu said, “you have to come up with an idea.”

I sighed, knowing that I had only one choice. “The plan remains unchanged,” I said to them. “We can only change the path now. The crevices here extend in all directions, so maybe we can find other entrances.”

Fatty shook his head, “Impossible, we don’t have that much time. The only way now is to return to the original junction and go back to that unfathomable corridor.”

We could only go to the original intersection. Although I didn’t know what would happen, it would definitely save time compared to digging through the rubble here.

<Chapter 23> <Table of Contents><Chapter 25>

****

Updated 2/4/2021