Chapter Sixteen: The First Battle Ends, and Iron and Blood Descend

Chapter Sixteen: The First Battle Ends, and the Iron-Blooded Assault Begins

Three small thugs formed a triangular ambush and hid themselves, then sprang on every guerrilla soldier who wandered unwittingly into their trap.

The thug king was positively thrilled, eyes burning with bloodlust. With a series of wet cracks, he riddled one guerrilla soldier full of holes. He flashed a savage grin at the other two lackeys, clearly meaning they should come with him and avenge him against the man who had cost him his hand.

Then the three punks spotted Schuster as he moved in to ambush a machine-gunner. Without hesitation, the thug king yanked the pin from a grenade and was about to hurl it at Schuster and blow him apart. But ideals are beautiful and reality is cruel: a bullet severed his wrist. The grenade dropped with his mangled hand and hit the ground, and then—

Boom.

The three thugs were dead beyond any doubt. They had carried the most grenades, and the chain detonation was powerful enough to leave none of them whole.

In the jungle, Lolita looked at the spot where the three thugs she had just gotten killed had died, then reloaded her Paradise Spark in her hands. After that, she continued hunting down lone guerrillas by surprise.

The frenzied rattle of machine-gun fire, the blasts of grenade launchers and explosives, the interwoven bursts of fire, the explosions, the blood, the ruin—this was a man’s battlefield. Dutch’s team was carrying out a textbook special-operations ambush, and their efficient slaughter was like a razor-sharp knife: when it slid across your throat, you might still be dazed, but two seconds later you would realize there was no saving you.

In less than half an hour, the battle ended, and the Reincarnation Team and Dutch’s Team emerged victorious. There are no tears on the battlefield. The only truth there is: either you die, or I do.

“Count the casualties,” Schuster said, leaning against a car that was still more or less intact, while he and Lolita each took out a bottle of water.

“Mm. Eight of the rookies are dead. The office workers, the two middle-aged men, and the three thugs are all dead too,” Zero said after glancing around.

After hearing that, Zheng Zha fell silent. After all, they had traveled this road together, and he did not want to see death.

“Tch. Those three punks deserved to die. Who told them to try to kill my brother?” Lolita said angrily.

At that, Zheng Zha stood up and asked, “You mean you killed them?”

“That’s right. They got what they deserved. Even if I hadn’t blasted the grenade that was about to blow up my brother’s hand, they still wouldn’t have survived.”

Zheng Zha stared at her in astonishment.

“Before this, we tested them three times. The first two were intimidation through force. The third was to see whether they had given up on revenge against us. Didn’t Li Xiaoyi already notice their ill intentions earlier?” Lolita continued casually, as though killing one of their own was as easy as eating or drinking.

“That’s right. They really did want revenge on us, especially Schuster, but they underestimated me and got beaten for it,” Li Xiaoyi said from the side.

“I gave them one last chance. As long as they stopped trying to get back at us, we had no intention of attacking them,” Lolita said. Then—

Bang.

Zheng Zha threw a punch, but it struck the car behind him instead, sending it flying two meters.

“I knew you were thinking of hitting me, so you could never have landed a blow,” Lolita said then, now sitting on a tree branch high above them. If not for Dutch’s team having gone off to capture a prisoner, they would have surely been shocked by this inhuman group.

Zero and Tyrant also raised their guns and aimed at Zheng Zha. He could only shout in anger, “So from the very beginning you abandoned them? You planned to kill them all along, didn’t you? Why did you two help him? If we work with people like them, we won’t even know when we’ve been sold out! How can that still count as comrades?”

“We never intended to abandon him from the start. I even treated his wounds and told them how to fight with cover and support. I never expected they would still want to use the methods I taught them to attack me. Do you think people like that can be trusted? So I had Lolita keep an eye on the three of them,” Schuster said as he slowly walked to stand behind Zero.

Zheng Zha’s voice turned even colder. “You two planned from the beginning to let them be blown to pieces, didn’t you? You deliberately let them carry extra grenades. Am I right?”

“No, you’re wrong,” said Chu Xuan, who had also appeared behind Zero and Tyrant. “According to my analysis, the two of them only carried extra grenades to deal with the Predator that would appear later. Schuster and Lolita merely kept a reserve plan in hand.”

Zero remained as taciturn as ever, gun trained on Zheng Zha. Tyrant stood there and said earnestly, “Among us mercenaries, unity is everything. In battle, you entrust your back to your comrades. That is the most basic trust, the most basic rule. But to achieve those two things, the other side must be a companion you acknowledge, not a useless burden. I think Zero feels the same. We are different from people who live in ordinary surroundings. We are better suited to surviving in this world of horror. To me, these horror stories are nothing more than one mercenary mission after another. Schuster and Lolita did the right thing. They chose the method that would let the greatest number of people survive and complete the mission smoothly. Those three thugs never gave me any reason to trust them with my back, and in the end their final test was self-destruction...”

In the end, Zero, Tyrant, Chu Xuan, and Schuster gathered together, leaving the others standing apart.

Zheng Zha stood there dumbly until Zhang Jie and Zhan Lan pulled him over to the weapons that Li Xiaoyi had been guarding and said, “Is it really necessary to be this cruel? Must we abandon others just so we can survive? Or, once a trace of resentment appears, do we have to drag everyone down with us and die together...”

“In fact, there’s no need for you to be indignant over the indirect deaths of those three people. They were never good to begin with,” Li Xiaoyi said from the side.

“Why?” Zheng Zha and the others all asked in confusion.

“People like that—didn’t you yourselves never fully trust them enough to leave your backs in their hands? If that’s the case, why worry about those three entirely unreliable guys? We still don’t have enough strength to suppress them completely. Even the version of you here couldn’t withstand the force of a grenade,” Zhang Jie said, lighting a cigarette.

“...Sorry. I wasn’t calm enough. I was only thinking about the others and forgot about all of you. I’m going to apologize right now,” Zheng Zha said after a stunned pause, then walked toward Schuster’s side.

Unfortunately, that apology would have to wait; Dutch’s Team had issued the signal to regroup.

Schuster patted Zheng Zha on the shoulder. “We don’t have time to feel sad for the people who wanted to kill us. Truthfully, they were the lucky ones. Their deaths were swift and painless. You should know that it is not the dead who are unlucky, only that we were fortunate enough to survive. We still have to face endless terror.”

After destroying the guerrilla base, everyone hurriedly prepared to withdraw. The noise and smoke from the explosions would draw the guerrillas in the area. Major Dutch, just like in the film, had captured Anna, a female guerrilla fighter.

Returning from the surrounding jungle to rejoin the team, little black Mike, during their passage past Dutch’s Team, stabbed a scorpion to death on the body of another black man, Dillon, and crushed it underfoot.

As they passed the entrance to the camp, everyone heard the eyeglasses-wearing Hawkins tell Billy a dirty joke. After a moment of silence, Billy, that Indian fool with a hidden streak, finally burst out into a ghastly cackle.

“...Laugh, laugh all you want! Might as well enjoy it while you can. Before long, that thing will have your peeled skull laughing too,” Zhang Jie muttered from the side.

At 3:26 in the afternoon, the whole group had been leaving the ruined guerrilla camp for more than two hours on the way to the helicopter rendezvous point. After taking out one guerrilla base and then continuing a long march, everyone was already somewhat fatigued.

The team was moving through the jungle when Billy suddenly stopped and stared warily into the distant forest. He had an extremely ominous feeling, as though some carnivorous beast had locked onto him as prey.

Schuster and the other members of the Reincarnation Team who knew the plot tensed at once.

Li Xiaoyi murmured to himself, “Here it comes?”

Zhang Jie nodded in acknowledgment.

Schuster turned back and said, “This time, don’t try to save anyone. As long as we don’t scatter, we’ll be fine.”

Meanwhile, Dutch’s Team had been advancing with the prisoner in tow when, unexpectedly, the prisoner suddenly erupted into violence, injuring the guard and escaping! The prisoner’s flight threw Dutch’s Team into turmoil, and the squad rapidly spread out to pursue her.

“Aaaah...!” A scream suddenly echoed through the forest. Hawkins, the eyeglasses-wearing man, had hurried after the prisoner and was about to subdue her when he was attacked by a transparent figure in the woods. All that remained where he stood was a pool of steaming blood, and then even the corpse was dragged away by the shadow and vanished.

Dutch’s Team quickly converged on the scene...

Brain, carrying the minigun, was still searching when he suddenly noticed movement in the leaves ahead. He clicked off the safety and approached cautiously, only to discover it was merely a hedgehog passing through. He could not help sighing in relief at his false alarm.

Then, suddenly, a heavy blow of unknown origin struck the side of his face, spraying blood everywhere. Immediately afterward, a blue bolt of plasma fired from the dense forest and hit his back.

Poof.

The ion projectile that pierced his body burned and vaporized most of his chest cavity. Scalding fragments of internal organs and red blood burst out in a spray...

As the plot unfolded as expected, Mike was the first to arrive at the scene and discovered a patch of invisible foliage. In the ensuing standoff, Mike was shocked to see that the unknown creature had a pair of eyes glowing green. Recovering quickly, he immediately swept the jungle phantom with gunfire and hit the Predator. The others rushed over one after another, and upon seeing it, opened fire into the jungle as well.