A Tap on the Glass, a Thumbs-up, and a Vanishing Act That Shocked Military Radar!

Inside the fighter's cockpit, shrill overload alarms blared in a cacophony.

Xu Hu gritted his teeth so hard they creaked.

As the undisputed ace of the 1st Air Division, an elite pilot codenamed "Fierce Tiger," when had he ever suffered such humiliation?

Normally, foreign high-altitude reconnaissance planes took detours when they saw him. Yet today, a masked man wearing flip-flops had left him behind eating his exhaust.

"I'll be damned if something burning aviation kerosene can't catch you riding a scrap of iron!"

Veins bulged on Xu Hu's forehead as he slammed the throttle all the way forward.

A dazzling plume of orange-red flame burst from the engine nozzle. Ignoring the airframe's alarms, the fighter accelerated again, hurtling forward.

At the same time, inside the Jinghai Military Region's underground combat command center.

Gu Changshan braced both hands hard against the rosewood desktop.

On the enormous electronic display, the gap between the two sets of speed and distance readings kept widening.

"Sir, the target has broken Mach 1.8! He's still accelerating!" Combat staff officer Liu Jianjun's forehead glistened with cold sweat, his voice trembling. "Fierce Tiger's about to lose him!"

Gu Changshan stared fixedly at the gray-clad figure flickering in and out of the clouds on-screen.

No protective equipment, no oxygen supply system, breaking the sound barrier in the flesh.

This was absolutely no fucking high-tech aircraft. Even Newton would have dropped to his knees and called him ancestor.

"Fierce Tiger, listen up!" Gu Changshan snatched up the red secure communicator, his voice hoarse. "You are absolutely forbidden to fire! Turn off your fire-control radar!"

He paused, his voice carrying a tremor even he could hardly believe.

"Try to pull alongside him and communicate with hand signals! This... this might really be a sword immortal of our Huaxia!"

Ten thousand meters above the ground, fierce winds howled.

Lin Bei wasn't exactly having an easy time of it either.

His washed-out short-sleeved shirt had long since frozen stiff, and his snot turned into ice crystals the moment it ran out.

If his Qi Refining First Layer spiritual power shield hadn't been desperately holding out, he would already have been an ice sculpture drifting on the wind.

"Didn't think this through. Should've put on a down jacket before heading out."

Lin Bei sniffed and lowered his eyes to the translucent panel only he could see.

But watching the numbers leap madly across it, he felt the freezing cold was worth it.

"Ding! Extreme horror from Xu Hu. Sensation Points +8,000!"

"Ding! Shattered worldview from Gu Changshan. Sensation Points +10,000!"

"Ding! Self-doubt from Liu Jianjun. Sensation Points +6,000!"

The total was already approaching the five-hundred-thousand mark.

It wasn't just the pilot in the fighter behind him contributing like mad. There were probably quite a few big shots on the ground staring at screens and questioning their lives too.

Lin Bei began doing the math.

This had gotten a little too big. He had even drawn out an active-duty fighter.

If he kept fooling around and those ground-based antiaircraft missile batteries got desperate enough to actually blanket him with saturation fire...

With his puny Qi Refining First Layer body, there probably wouldn't even be ashes left.

"Quit while I'm ahead. Once those people on the plane upload their videos and they spread online, that's where the real haul will come from."

Having made up his mind, Lin Bei prepared to leave.

The spiritual power inside him abruptly surged, and the iron sword beneath his feet, bought for 9.9 yuan with free shipping, rang out.

Then something happened that made every scalp in the Jinghai Military Region command center prickle.

On the radar screen, the red dot hurtling along at Mach 1.8 stopped without any warning.

There was no deceleration, no transition. Completely disregarding physics' most basic law of inertia, it simply nailed itself in midair.

Then the red dot traced a V-shaped turn that utterly defied aerodynamics and charged straight toward the pursuing fighter!

"Holy fuck!"

Xu Hu's scalp exploded with prickles, and his heart nearly leaped out of his throat.

Their relative speed exceeded Mach 2. This was a fucking collision course!

"Evade! Evade!" Alarm bells screamed inside Xu Hu's head. Clutching the control stick with both hands, he hauled it hard to the right with everything he had.

The fighter gave a teeth-grinding metallic groan under the strain. Its nose jerked aside, carving a perilous arc through the clouds.

The violent impact he had expected never came.

Xu Hu gulped down huge breaths, his heart pounding like a drum.

Instinctively, he turned toward the canopy on his left.

One glance was all it took for Xu Hu to freeze.

In the freezing air currents ten thousand meters up.

That man, that sword.

They hovered steadily just outside his fighter's canopy, matching its speed perfectly.

Less than two meters from the bulletproof glass.

Xu Hu could even see the pilling on the black mask pulled over the man's head.

Was this fucker even human?!

Looking at the dumbstruck pilot behind the glass, Lin Bei leaned a little closer.

Curling a finger, he knocked three times on the thick bulletproof glass.

The fierce winds at that altitude swallowed the sound completely, but Xu Hu saw the gesture perfectly clearly.

After knocking, Lin Bei leisurely gave Xu Hu a thumbs-up.

As if praising him: buddy, you handle that iron hunk pretty smoothly.

Xu Hu's brain crashed completely. He stared blankly at the other man, no longer even knowing where to put his hands.

Just as Xu Hu thought the man was about to do something else.

Lin Bei willed it.

"Invisibility Technique, activate."

Before Xu Hu's wide, round eyes.

On the high-definition live feed dozens of people in the command center were staring at.

The gray-clad masked man standing on an iron sword looked as though an invisible eraser were rubbing him away.

From head to toe, man and sword alike slowly turned transparent.

He vanished into thin air.

No explosion, no sonic boom cloud, not even a trace of disturbed air remained.

Just like that, barely two meters away in broad daylight, he had performed a vanishing act.

"Where is he?!" Xu Hu lunged against the glass, looking left and right. Outside, there was nothing but an expanse of white clouds.

Frantically, he looked down at the radar.

The data on his head-up display jumped wildly, and the radar screen that had been tracking the target instantly dissolved into snowy static.

"Target lost!" Xu Hu roared into the communicator, his voice cracking. "Tower! He's gone! He disappeared right in front of me!"

At the Jinghai Air Traffic Control Center.

On the enormous electronic display, the glaring red high-heat signal blinked once, then dropped completely to zero.

"No response on thermal imaging!" He Xiaoyun hammered frantically at the keyboard, sweat covering her forehead in her urgency. "Target lost across all radar bands!"

Zhao Zhen slumped in his chair, his lips trembling, unable to get a word out for a long while.

Inside the Jinghai Military Region's underground command center.

Deathly silence.

Dozens of combat staff officers remained leaning toward the screen, utterly motionless.

Liu Jianjun rubbed his eyes, then rubbed them again, confirming that there really wasn't a trace of a signal left on-screen.

He turned to Gu Changshan. "Sir... what... what kind of stealth technology is this?"

Gu Changshan ignored him.

The battle-hardened old general's chest heaved violently, his fingernails nearly digging into the wood.

Tap on a fighter's glass.

Give a thumbs-up.

Then vanish into thin air.

The military had played every trump card, deploying radar and fighters alike, yet they hadn't even touched a corner of his clothes. Instead, they had been toyed with like performing monkeys.

That level of swagger had practically pierced the heavens.

"Stealth technology? Fuck stealth technology!"

Gu Changshan slammed his hand onto the desk.

"What country's stealth technology can make a living person vanish into thin air?! This is mysticism!"

He strode over to the secure telephone and snatched up the receiver.

"Pass down my orders!"

"Everything that happened today is classified SSS-level top secret! Everyone at the air traffic control center and radar stations, along with the pilots involved in the interception, must sign confidentiality agreements! Anyone who leaks so much as half a word goes straight to a court-martial!"

"Contact the National Security Bureau immediately!"

A fierce light flashed in Gu Changshan's eyes.

"Even if you have to dig three feet into the earth, find this sword immortal for me!"