Shoot It Down

The drone's maneuvers also stirred Li Zhi's fighting spirit. Since the other party wanted to play, he would give him a good game.

Inside a camouflaged tent in the mountains, less than ten kilometers from the drone.

"Brother, that fighter jet spotted us. What do we do?"

"Quiet!"

The man he called brother was a little impatient. He was concentrating on piloting the drone, while the remote control in his hands displayed footage of its surroundings.

Suddenly, a burst of gunfire flew toward the drone, startling them both.

"Brother, it's attacking us!"

"Shut up, I'm not blind!"

Liu Lei operated the drone nervously. He and his younger brother, Liu Xin, were the legendary "five hundred thousand."

By a stroke of luck, he had managed to contact an overseas organization. After getting a taste of the rewards, he began regularly providing it with intelligence from within the country.

At first, they were not very bold and only supplied unimportant intelligence. They couldn't get their hands on anything important anyway.

But the buyer paid readily even for completely useless information. This made the brothers increasingly ambitious, and they gradually grew dissatisfied with such small-time dealings.

They began buying professional equipment and asking around about the locations of military bases. After all, the buyer was very interested in that kind of information and paid considerably more for it than for other intelligence.

Some time ago, they had also "accidentally" learned about the friction between Dragon Country and Peacock Country. They did not know that the buyer had deliberately leaked the news to them.

The buyer offered them a price neither could refuse to come and scout out the base's location, and even supplied them with a state-of-the-art armed drone.

The brothers had already thrown in their lot with the buyer, and the price was indeed tempting, so they accepted the job.

The brothers had been lucky, too. Over the past few days, because of Li Zhi's training, his fighter jet had not been flying very high or particularly far from the base.

This allowed them to narrow down the base's approximate location. Just as they were preparing to move closer, they happened upon Li Zhi's live-fire training.

Footage of a Dragon Country fighter jet attacking in combat was worth a great deal to the buyer, too!

That made the two of them willing to take a risk. They piloted the drone closer to film, only for Li Zhi to spot it.

The moment Li Zhi attacked, Liu Lei knew the drone was lost. No matter how powerful it was, it still couldn't quite compare to a real fighter jet.

What he needed to do now was lure Li Zhi as far away as possible, giving them enough time to escape.

Suddenly, the footage from the drone began shaking violently. Its flight became extremely unstable, and it nearly crashed into a tree.

Li Zhi had flown his high-speed fighter jet right past the drone, severely disrupting its flight.

The taunting maneuver angered Liu Lei, who was operating the drone from hiding.

Liu Lei reached for a button he had never pressed before: the weapons fire button!

As an armed drone, it naturally had an attack module, but Liu Lei had been afraid of exposing himself and had never tested it.

After sweeping past the "target drone," Li Zhi looked back with some satisfaction. A drone was only a drone, after all; it couldn't compare to the big machine he was flying!

That glance back nearly made Li Zhi break out in a cold sweat.

The drone had opened fire!

What the hell? Old Xu has gone way too far! This target drone is actually armed, and he didn't even tell me beforehand!

The bullets fired by the drone flew past Li Zhi, nearly hitting him. Startled, he quickly climbed and put some distance between himself and the drone.

As Li Zhi climbed, the plane's signal reappeared on the control tower's screen.

"Three-Yellow Chicken, what are you doing?"

The moment the tower reestablished contact with Li Zhi's fighter, squadron leader Xu Feng grabbed the radio and demanded an answer.

"Captain Xu, it's not what I'm doing-it's what you're doing! You nearly hit me just now!"

Li Zhi felt thoroughly wronged. Even now, he still believed the drone had been sent by the base.

"What are you talking about? What nearly hit you?"

Xu Feng clearly didn't understand what Li Zhi was saying, but his keen instincts kept him from missing that detail, and he began asking Li Zhi what had happened.

"Captain Xu, why didn't you tell me beforehand that you'd sent an armed drone? I was almost hit just now!"

"An armed drone? Didn't you shoot the drone down?"

"The drone down below wasn't sent by the base?"

Li Zhi finally realized what was going on. He had assumed all along that the base had sent it, but Xu Feng apparently knew nothing about it!

"Down below? There's another drone near you?"

Xu Feng's voice suddenly grew louder. The staff nearby heard him too and immediately began operating the radar control console.

But the drone had remained below the radar's minimum detection altitude the entire time, so the base's radar and those in the surrounding area clearly could not detect it.

"That's not our drone! We only launched one target drone!"

Xu Feng told Li Zhi, though even if he hadn't, Li Zhi had already guessed as much from his reaction.

"Shoot it down. I'll send people over right away!"

An unidentified drone had appeared near the base, and an armed one at that. Xu Feng's face turned ashen.

This was a slap in his face!

They had only just had a clash with Peacock Country, and now a drone had slipped close to the base. Even a fool could tell why.

There had to be a gap in the defenses around the base as well, but now was not the time to dwell on that.

They needed to bring the drone down and send people to search immediately. The drone couldn't be too far from its control source!

The base couldn't handle this on its own, and Xu Feng had never considered covering it up. He immediately reported the matter to Lei Hu and requested his support.

Meanwhile, Li Zhi, having received the order to attack, had already begun another run on the target.

"Rat-a-tat-tat!"

The autocannon's accuracy left much to be desired. Scenes where two shots hit an opponent only happened in movies!

The drone was also extremely small. Hitting such a tiny target while moving at high speed still required a little luck.

"Rat-a-tat-tat!"

After two attack runs, Li Zhi still hadn't hit the drone, but he had adjusted his aim.

"Rat-a-tat-tat!"

During the next attack, one of the drone's four propellers was hit and shattered by the bullets.

Having lost a propeller, the drone couldn't even stay level. After struggling for a while, it struck a tree branch and fell straight down.

"Boom!"

The instant it was shot down, its built-in self-destruct program activated. The drone instantly became a ball of flame, igniting the dead branches and leaves around it.