Chapter Sixty: Engaging the Enemy

Fortunately, within a few seconds—before Lei Dong’s fingers had even left Shuiyao Immortal’s meridian—her pulse began to throb violently, her breath grew noticeably more forceful, and a faint flush bloomed across her cheeks.

Held in Lei Dong’s arms, Shuiyao Immortal felt her strength utterly spent, her body soft as water, yet her heart pounded furiously against her chest. Only after several deep breaths did she regain a measure of composure and softly said, “This is my sect’s secret art, ‘Darkness Ward.’ This mist… it’s actually a maze formation, able to keep outsiders at bay, and also weaken any external attacks…”

“And these people…” Lei Dong glanced around at the dozens sprawled haphazardly across the ground. “Will they be all right?”

Shuiyao Immortal managed a weak smile. “They’ve simply been caught by my Black Slumber spell, they won’t be harmed. In six hours, they’ll awaken, remembering nothing but that they slept. I had hoped that, now my powers have grown, I could do better—protect a wider area… but this is my limit for now…” She sighed, clearly dissatisfied with her own performance.

As she spoke, her lips were right beside Lei Dong’s ear, her moist, warm breath teasing his skin and making him itch. Yet Lei Dong showed no sign of discomfort or impatience; on the contrary, he was filled with excitement.

He trusted her words implicitly—if she said it could be done, then it could be done! The Darkness Ward and Black Slumber had not only resolved the immediate crisis, but also spared them the trouble of explaining everything to countless others. It was both timely and brilliant.

Suppressing his excitement, Lei Dong pulled a waterproof mat from his pack and gently set Shuiyao Immortal upon it. “Are you all right? Focus on recovering your strength!”

She drew in several long breaths of fresh air and slowly shook her head, her expression complex. “Now, let me teach you the mnemonic for discerning things within the formation…” She hesitated, surprised at herself for revealing her sect’s most guarded secret to him. Was this truly necessity, or was he perhaps the one destined to restore the Wu Sect’s glory? Could it all be foreordained?

She glanced at those eyes, shining like black jewels in the darkness, and quickly steadied her thoughts, proceeding to explain the most urgent secrets to Lei Dong.

At first, she worried he might struggle to grasp the fundamentals she’d skipped over, but to her astonishment, Lei Dong’s comprehension was extraordinary. Whether it was the arrangement of the formation or the flow of the mist, he seemed already deeply familiar, and a few brief explanations were enough for him to master everything.

What a prodigy! Shuiyao Immortal bit her lip, shocked, a little jealous, yet also faintly exhilarated.

She had no way of knowing that, thanks to his spiritual perception, Lei Dong had already observed every shift in the thick mist, start to finish. He sensed that, for all its strangeness, the core of this formation lay in the manipulation of the world’s spiritual energy. He just hadn’t yet worked out exactly how such transformations took place.

Seeing the surprise in Shuiyao Immortal’s eyes, Lei Dong couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with himself. “After all, I am a cultivation genius…”

He gently propped Shuiyao Immortal against a tree and softly reminded her, “Don’t get distracted—focus on refining the remaining medicinal power. Leave the rest to me!” He nodded at her, then turned and slipped into the dense, black mist.

Watching him vanish into the darkness, Shuiyao Immortal’s mind was again seized by that thought: Could he truly be the one?

…

Once Lei Dong had plunged into the jungle, his face quickly grew grave. He checked the luminous watch on his wrist. Nearly two hours had passed. By now, the others must have made contact—what was the situation?

A series of thunderous explosions from anti-personnel mines echoed faintly from behind. In the next moment, the sharp staccato of Minia-made Model 32 automatic rifles burst out, crackling like popcorn. Through his earpiece, the sounds of running, shouting, and the screams of the wounded all tumbled together in chaos.

Combat Zone One! Lei Dong’s heart tightened. Bei Shiliang and Lang Tianyu’s team had engaged the enemy!

Right then, a muffled “pfft” sounded through the earpiece, followed by two more suppressed gunshots, and then the deeper, silenced bursts of “pfft, pfft, pfft.” That was the signature of Song Jingang’s “Gun King”—the dock team in the second combat zone had opened fire!

According to their battle plan, the squad had split into four teams. Lei Dong’s own group was responsible for moving and protecting the hostage, awaiting the right moment to strike at the dock. The other teams were to minimize gunfire at first, relying on melee weapons or even hand-to-hand ambushes as they advanced. With their skills, this shouldn’t have been difficult. Only when facing overwhelming enemy numbers or an uncontrollable situation were they to use firearms as their main weapons.

Given how little time had passed since the teams made contact, this meant their opponents were highly adaptable and skilled—his comrades had been forced to open fire early!

Lei Dong hesitated no longer. He pressed the “Polaris” communicator, connecting to Huang Xiwen’s channel.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

While Shuiyao Immortal was still meditating on Lei Dong’s back, over on the abandoned dock’s left hillside, Song Jingang lay prone in a freshly dug foxhole. The “Gun King,” built on an assault rifle chassis, was braced against his shoulder as he scanned the distant shoreline, every sense alert to the slightest sound.

Five hundred meters away stood a row of buildings. Once customs and offices for the tourist dock, they had weathered years of wind and rain, their sturdy walls now battered and derelict. Fifty meters further ahead, a line of shabby prefab huts—once the temporary quarters for dock workers—stood crumbling, their faded blue roofs and whitewashed walls barely recognizable. Many windows and doors were broken, and every gust of sea wind sent them rattling.

In the westernmost of these huts, Wu Yun lounged in a dark corner, his manner casual, even a little lazy. The night-vision goggles on his boonie hat were flipped down over his eyes as he watched the dock through a window with half its glass missing, waiting for the coming battle.

He did not have to wait long.

Just over half an hour later, the sound of the waves subtly changed. Wu Yun tensed instantly, dropping into a crouch.

“They’re here!”

Three hundred meters away, beneath the high-piled dock, a figure emerged from the surf, clambering up from the worn tires lashed to the dock’s edge, and quickly hiding behind a mooring post.

Wu Yun checked his night-vision goggles. The figure’s outline was faint, almost invisible—thanks to a stealth suit soaked in cold seawater, its infrared signature was greatly reduced.

He switched off his goggles—he hardly needed them anyway. As a cultivator who had already broken through to the Foundation Establishment stage, his spiritual sense, though not as vast or powerful as Lei Dong’s monstrous abilities, still covered everything within three hundred meters. Nothing escaped him.

Through his spiritual perception, he saw the figure behind the mooring post scanning the area with a rifle. After about three minutes, the person cupped a hand to his mouth and let out three long, one short “quack quack” calls like a seabird.

“Idiot bird,” Wu Yun muttered. “What bird sings at this hour? Even if there were an ambush, you’d have scared them off!”

While Wu Yun was scoffing, the water splashed quietly three more times. Three more shadowy figures in identical gear emerged from beneath the dock, each hiding behind a separate mooring post.

The air was deathly still, the only sounds the ceaseless rush of the tide. Wu Yun held his breath, watching the newcomers intently. The more he observed, the more serious he became: these men were too steady, too cautious.

In his spiritual sense, the four figures remained motionless, like statues merging with the night. After a long while, the first one to arrive signaled with a hand gesture. Instantly, the two on either side darted forward in a half-crouch, covering dozens of meters in seconds before splitting and hiding behind two stone piers over a hundred meters apart, each taking aim down their assigned angle.

“In position,” they reported softly.

Almost simultaneously, the third man dashed across, sheltered by his comrades’ overlapping fields of fire, and set up a thermal imager, scanning every direction.

Wu Yun shivered. “Damn, that was close!” If he hadn’t switched off his goggles, he might have been discovered—he recognized the device at once as Minia’s latest -1s model, with both passive infrared imaging and signal detection.

He glanced at his own stealth suit and the anti-infrared ointment slathered on his exposed skin, breathing a little easier.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, when the scout on the pier reported no enemy sightings, he signaled again, this time with three short, one long seabird calls.

At once, the steady splash of water announced the arrival of more soldiers. One by one, men in dark combat gear from Minia climbed onto the dock, rapidly forming two double-arrow formations and advancing swiftly toward Wu Yun’s hut.

With his spiritual sense still sweeping the area, Wu Yun quickly counted their numbers.

“Twenty of them!” Wu Yun sucked in a sharp breath…