Military Camp

A map of Labia's terrain quickly appeared in the minds of all five. Zhang Hao replied without hesitation, "Good! We'll deliver the money within a week!"

The other party was stunned. This was completely unexpected, but they weren't worried. The hostages were being held at the military camp.

They were just as direct. "Call this number when you get here!"

A point on the map began blinking, and the image quickly zoomed in. Zhang Hao couldn't help asking, "Where did this satellite image come from?"

"There's one of our Stealth Satellites up there," Mifeng said.

Zhang Hao couldn't help admiring Mifeng. He had so many powerful tricks up his sleeve—even satellites.

For people on this era's Blue Star, sending a satellite into space was no easy task. It required rockets and all sorts of other things, and cost a fortune. But for Mifeng, it was nothing. The satellites could fly into space on their own, solving the problem silently and without a fuss.

Zhang Hao used his access privileges and immediately discovered that three satellites were drifting through just this patch of sky. There were more than three hundred satellites of various kinds around the world.

"This is just the beginning of our preparations," Mifeng said. "This is enough for now. We'll add more later."

It was a large military camp, with an army of more than three thousand soldiers. It had seven tanks, forty-three armored personnel carriers, three hundred and twenty pickup trucks, seventeen heavy machine guns mounted on anti-aircraft platforms, and eleven old mountain guns.

After tallying up the camp's armaments, Zhang Hao found them rather terrifying. This wasn't some ordinary armed force. It had to be the country's army.

"That's normal. It is the army—or, to be precise, the rebels," Mifeng said. "There's also a military base nearby, with more than nine thousand soldiers!"

"No wonder they kidnapped people to extort money," Zhang Hao said. "The rebels need cash. Too bad! They picked a fight with us." What he thought was, Even Mifeng can't find an excuse to kill people just to get their souls. You're practically handing us your heads.

It wasn't that the hospital couldn't collect souls. It was just that those souls were too fragile, and their containers were poor. Too many souls dissipated. By the time patients were in the hospital, they were almost like flickering candles in the wind; the slightest disturbance could snuff them out. The best souls were always those belonging to people between eighteen and forty.

Once people passed that age, their souls naturally grew weaker. A cracked jar couldn't hold much water.

"Do you see this?" Mifeng asked.

There was a courtyard in the camp. The ground was covered with grates, and then Zhang Hao spotted people beneath them.

They'd found them!

They discovered a total of one hundred and thirty-two people, men and women, young and old. Quite a few were Caucasian, and Wu Renbao was among them, beneath the second grate. His vital signs were fine, which meant he was still alive.

There were three armored vehicles in the courtyard, with soldiers moving around inside them.

The camp was about a hundred kilometers away. Mifeng and the others could reach it after dark.

The unexpected always happened. Two pickup trucks broke down one after the other, and by then they were less than thirty kilometers from the camp.

Piece of junk!

They casually dismantled the machine guns and slung two belts of ammunition over their shoulders. Each person had a machine gun and plenty of ammo belts. The weapons were junk, but in the hands of robots, they could be put to their best use.

They put on the camouflage combat uniforms they'd prepared earlier, along with bulletproof vests.

Each person carried a shoulder bag packed with grenades and a rocket launcher. Besides a machine gun, each also had a submachine gun and one or two pistols. Everyone had prepared a knife, too, so they wouldn't have to smash someone's head in with their bare hands and give themselves away.

They were practically covered in weapons. An ordinary person—or even a special forces soldier—might be able to lift all that for a little while, but wouldn't be able to travel with it. The five robots didn't care in the slightest. Once they started running, they could move faster than the pickups.

By evening, the five of them had reached the outskirts of the camp.

"Zhang Yihu, come in with me to rescue the hostages," Zhang Hao said. "Great God, take the other two and draw their fire inside the camp. Just throw the place into chaos. Oh, and the most important thing is to take out the camp's power equipment and plunge everything into darkness. Heh."

The plan was simple: they would rely on their strength and force their way in. If it weren't for the five robots, even a hundred-man special forces team wouldn't be confident it could get the hostages out of a camp this size.

Zhang Hao suddenly remembered something. "By the way, where's the money?"

"Reporting: the money case was hit by a rocket. It's all in pieces," Zhang Yihu said.

"Forget it. We'll say we burned paper money in advance!" It was a Blue Star custom to burn paper money for the dead. The price of this offering was rather steep, though. The paper was real, usable money, and five million was a lot.

"Think of it as the price of buying souls. Not bad! I like this idea!" Mifeng wasn't the least bit upset about the money.

As they spoke, the sky gradually darkened. Just then, a huge bank of clouds drifted overhead, plunging everything into complete darkness. The camp's lights were dim.

"I'll take out the power," Mifeng said.

Zhang Erhu slipped away without a sound, and Zhang Sanhu followed soon after.

"Zhang Yihu, follow—" Zhang Hao began.

"I'll go ahead and scout the way," Zhang Yihu said. He was a bodyguard, and by nature couldn't leave Zhang Hao exposed to danger. It had nothing to do with ability; it was a matter of principle.

Zhang Hao didn't argue. He followed Zhang Yihu forward.

There was no wall around the barracks, but coils of barbed wire stretched across a wide area, and there were plenty of land mines. None of them could escape Zhang Yihu's notice, though. The detector showed every buried mine as a bright red dot.

He held a machine gun in one hand and a knife in the other. Though Zhang Yihu was a heavy robot, once he activated his hover system, he moved more stealthily than a cat, barely making a sound. He stopped ten meters from the barbed wire.

Zhang Hao was close behind him. He looked up and only then noticed an explosive tripwire on the ground. It was triggered by an infrared beam; anything that crossed it would set off an explosion. No wonder Zhang Yihu had stopped.

The infrared beam was a meter off the ground, while the area below was thick with land mines. Zhang Yihu slowly slid his knife back into the sheath at his thigh, tucked the gun under his arm, then crouched down and reached one hand toward the ground, crawling forward quickly.

Zhang Hao followed his example. It was a good method, and the two of them soon reached the barbed wire.

Zhang Yihu grasped the wire with one hand and drew his knife with the other, quietly cutting through a section of it. He moved the severed wire aside without a sound, then looked back at Zhang Hao.

Zhang Hao gave a slight nod and immediately passed through the opening. If not for the hostages' safety, he wouldn't have been so cautious. He could have simply charged in and killed everyone. But now he had to find the hostages first, or he wouldn't dare make a reckless move.

Suddenly, the searchlight went out. The roadside lamps and the lights in the rooms went out, too. Every light had gone dark. A gunshot rang out, and Zhang Hao couldn't help cursing. He knew it wasn't Mifeng's group shooting; some soldier's gun had gone off by accident.

"Charge!"

Zhang Hao and Zhang Yihu raised their machine guns and raced toward the courtyard where the hostages were being held.