Ambush

Central Africa's Black Forest was a wild, ancient land that had never been developed.

In only a day and a half, the Hell Angels Mercenary Group had assembled a third of its elite forces and infiltrated Africa. Thousands of elite soldiers and their accompanying war machines lay scattered and hidden throughout the vast jungle, silently waiting for the time to strike.

Gu Xiechen sat cross-legged amid the densest branches and leaves of a giant tree, quietly circulating the Hanyuan Zhen Dian.

Foundation Establishment, Acupoint Nourishment, Meridian Transformation, Marrow Cleansing, Blood Augmentation, Body Solidification, Spirit Gestation, Hanyuan, Three Flowers Five Energies. These were the nine major realms recorded in the nine chapters of the Hanyuan Zhen Dian. Gu Xiechen had already broken through to the innate realm, and his True Qi had reached ninety-nine percent refinement, yet he had only just completed Foundation Establishment. A towering building began from level ground; Gu Xiechen had only just dug its foundation.

True Qi surged through his meridians, his heart beat faster and faster, and streams of incomparably pure energy rushed out from the Dao Embryo. Innate Qi wrapped around that energy and washed through the 108 major acupoints across his body. Driven by Gu Xiechen's will, tiny vortices formed within every acupoint, constantly absorbing threads of extremely minute energy. Viewed with spiritual awareness, the acupoints across Gu Xiechen's body glowed faintly. Measured with high-precision instruments, the temperature around his acupoints would also have been found to be about one degree higher than his body temperature.

When the Qi within him swelled to the point of bursting and his body felt light, as if he might rise into the sky at any moment, the Qi had completed eighty-one great cycles through his body, while the tiny vortices in every acupoint had spun through three hundred and sixty cycles. Gu Xiechen inhaled deeply, flexed his gluteal muscles nine times, and his body drifted three feet upward before silently floating back down. The Qi within him flowed back into his dantian like a hundred rivers returning to the sea. His lower abdomen felt pleasantly warm, his muscles and bones were soft as cotton, and he could twist his limbs and joints at will without making the slightest sound.

When the last wisp of Qi returned to his dantian, all the muscles in his body suddenly contracted. Copious sweat seeped from his pores, mixed with a faint trace of murky black vapor.

The Stalker III combat suit he wore, standard issue for the Federation regular army's special forces, promptly expelled the sweat. A strong, rank smell of sweat spread through the jungle, startling a giant python hanging above Gu Xiechen's head. The snake slowly lowered its brilliantly patterned body and stretched toward him.

Gu Xiechen slid gently down the trunk. Within a few breaths, he had reached another giant tree several hundred meters away.

As an innate-level fighter and a fighter entering battle for the first time, Gu Xiechen had relatively broad freedom of movement. His main task this time was to support the operation, so he was alone outside the main ambush perimeter.

The Bearded Commander's voice came through the miniature earpiece in his ear. "Evil Dragon, what happened?"

Gu Xiechen lightly pressed a finger against his throat and clearly reported in a guttural voice, "A jungle strangler. I avoided it."

The Bearded Commander let out a long breath. "Damn it, your luck is terrible. Be careful. There are thirty minutes until their scheduled transaction. Don't alert them."

"Understood!" Gu Xiechen ended the call. Inside the combat suit's fully enclosed helmet, streams of data scrolled across the tiny display before his left eye. The Hell Angels Mercenary Group's elite forces were all prepared. Vast amounts of feedback data were transmitted through an encrypted satellite owned by the Hell Angels Mercenary Group to everyone in the group.

Time passed. As the moment of the transaction described in Porphyris's intelligence approached, a sudden change occurred beside a deep-blue lake in the heart of the Black Forest.

A signal tower one hundred meters tall rose straight up from the center of the lake. Invisible signals shot into the sky. As the tower continued to rise, the trees around the lake fell one after another, neat cracks opened across the ground, giant trees were swallowed by the earth, and smooth steel plates silently emerged from underground. Before long, a landing field one kilometer long and one kilometer wide appeared in the dense forest.

A tunnel entrance large enough for heavy armored vehicles to pass through rose from beneath the ground. Two heavy cranes slowly drove out first. Accompanied by dull rumbling, specially made flatbed trucks carrying heavy containers continuously emerged from the tunnel. Every vehicle lined up neatly along the edge of the landing field.

Clouds churned in the sky as a warship with the same design as Porphyris's small spacecraft, but at least three hundred meters long, descended vertically from high above with a dull hissing sound. A dark-blue light screen over a meter thick covered the entire ship. This screen could not only withstand attacks from all manner of heavy weapons, but also absorb every radar wave currently possessed by the Earth Federation Army. Roam spacecraft relied on such energy shields to enter and leave Earth's atmosphere with impunity, smuggling all kinds of contraband on a massive scale.

The spacecraft hovered more than a hundred meters above the ground. Powerful scanning waves swept across an area of nearly one hundred square kilometers in an instant. Only after confirming that everything was normal did it slowly descend.

Whooshing sounds came from inside the spacecraft. The plasma thrusters at its rear gradually went out, and the energy shield around its surface slowly dissipated amid crackling discharges. Two jets of white vapor blasted from the middle of the ship, kicking up huge amounts of dust from the ground. A fifty-meter-wide hatch slowly opened, and around two hundred Roam warriors in Energy Armor with their energy shields fully activated emerged, each carrying a five-meter-long poleaxe. The upper half of each poleaxe was covered in a purple glow, with arcs of electricity constantly spraying from their spear tips.

Several mercenaries in white uniforms emerged from the tunnel entrance. The middle-aged man leading them approached the Roam warriors with a broad smile.

"Welcome, welcome, honored guests of the Holsom family. Look at what we have prepared for you: the rare-earth metal ingots you urgently need, all top-quality goods with eight nines purity!"

Standing atop a large branch and watching the spacecraft's landing site from afar, Gu Xiechen suddenly heard the Bearded Commander's order.

"Brothers, move!"

Gu Xiechen pulled out the individual missile launcher strapped to his back and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

A heavy single-soldier anti-ship missile with a twenty-centimeter caliber howled into the sky. A military satellite controlled by the African Military District of the Earth Federation Army headquarters happened to pass overhead, promptly providing Gu Xiechen's missile with precise target guidance.

A total of one hundred missiles of the same type launched simultaneously from all corners of the forest. Their long flaming trails left striking marks in the sky, all converging on the same point.

The Roam warship, its energy shield deactivated, was instantly engulfed in flames. Special armor-piercing warheads shattered the ship's two-meter-thick outer armor, while several missiles carrying high-explosive warheads accurately drilled into its rear. The thick armor around the ship's engines was pulverized in the violent explosions. A chain of secondary detonations instantly erased half the spacecraft along with everything on the landing field. The Roam warriors, their Energy Armor shields fully activated, screamed as the shockwave hurled them away, while the other mercenaries were directly reduced to fragments.

A huge mushroom cloud rose into the sky, and the remaining half of the warship was shoved more than three hundred meters forward by the terrifying force of the explosion.

Gu Xiechen watched the smoke and fire clouds rising twenty kilometers away. Excitedly whistling, he loaded another missile into the launcher. After roughly aiming at the rising smoke, Gu Xiechen fired again. Another long flaming trail ripped through the air, and thirty seconds later, a second wave of one hundred missiles blanketed the entire landing field once more.

"Now this is fun!" Gu Xiechen shouted excitedly toward the sky.

The Hell Angels Mercenary Group's elite soldiers hidden in the jungle began advancing toward Sacred Unicorn's secret base. The Bearded Commander's order came again. "All fighters, attention! All fighters, attention! You will launch the first wave of attacks! You will launch the first wave of attacks!"

Gu Xiechen had just replied, "Understood," when the Bearded Commander suddenly shouted, "Evil Dragon, Evil Dragon! A Roam is heading your way. Stop him! Reinforcements will arrive immediately!"

Before Gu Xiechen could ask what had happened, a blinding blue light came rushing out of the forest ahead.

Charging almost directly at Gu Xiechen was a three-meter-tall middle-aged Roam man, his entire body rolling with blue flames over a meter thick! He spotted Gu Xiechen immediately and, almost at the same instant, unleashed a storm of attacks on him!

With only a soft snort, hundreds of sharp ice blades condensed from water vapor appeared out of thin air before Gu Xiechen. The two-foot-long, bone-chilling blades had barely formed before shooting toward him like lightning.

The Bearded Commander's shrill cry came through the earpiece. Gu Xiechen swung both claws and launched himself toward the oncoming ice blades.

The instant they made contact, Gu Xiechen was shocked.

His indestructible claws struck the gleaming, icy, paper-thin blades with metallic clangs. Sparks flew where his fingertips collided with them. His claws, which could normally tear through steel plates an inch thick with ease, were actually jolted painfully by these thin ice blades. The blades came too fast for Gu Xiechen to knock them aside. Waves of freezing wind swept across him, and hundreds of ice blades had already enveloped his lean body from every direction.

"Hmph!"

The charging middle-aged Roam man gave a disdainful sneer. The blue flames around his body contracted, and his speed abruptly increased. In a single flicker, he overtook the rapidly flying ice blades despite moving later, brushing past Gu Xiechen like a phantom.

The capillaries in Gu Xiechen's eyes swelled at once, turning his eyes blood-red. His heartbeat surged to more than four hundred and fifty beats per minute in an instant. Gu Xiechen had never pushed the energy in his Dao Embryo so hard before. An invisible blast of Qi erupted from within him, and the ice blades that were about to pierce his body suddenly froze in midair.

A stream of pure, tenacious energy, like a heavenly river pouring down, burst from his heart. Wisps of Innate Qi swept out from his dantian. Under Gu Xiechen's mental control, the Qi wrapped around the rampant energy surging from the Dao Embryo, pouring through his meridians and into both arms like a locomotive pulling a long train.

The highly elastic Stalker III combat suit covering his arms, capable of withstanding close-range bombardment from artillery below fifty-millimeter caliber, burst apart. Beneath the skin of Gu Xiechen's arms, crimson magma seemed to roar. The air around his skin rubbed violently and let out sharp crackling sounds, as if flames had wrapped around his arms. His fingers strangely lengthened by about an inch, while their skin grew even fairer, so pale it was almost bluish.

Streams of Qi shot from his fingertips with piercing shrieks. Explosive energy brewed between his fingers as Gu Xiechen's claws spun like windmills. Hundreds of ice blades, compressed to several times the hardness of alloy steel, exploded into fragments amid piercing detonations. The scattered chill concealed Gu Xiechen's body. While glittering white ice fragments still drifted through the air, two enormous claws burst from the veil of cold and ice shards, and dozens of sharp claw-force strikes tore through the air toward the middle-aged Roam man's body.

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