The Battle Begins

Li Zhi had been a little too optimistic.

Every time a fighter took off, it carried fuel measured in tons. With only the dozen or so bullet holes Li Zhi had punched into it, draining it dry would apparently take quite a while.

If that were the only problem, it would have been easy enough to deal with. There was nothing but uninhabited forest for a hundred miles around, so there was plenty of time to let the fuel slowly drain out.

Unfortunately, the fighter was flying straight toward Chicken Coop Base.

The base could never allow another country's fighter to fly over it, and Li Zhi couldn't allow that to happen either.

"Three-Yellow Chicken, if you don't want that star, how about letting me have it?"

Xu Feng and Liao Yifei had already reached Li Zhi's side, and they naturally knew what the situation was.

Liao Yifei had never stopped thinking about getting a star painted on his fighter. Seeing Li Zhi dragging his feet, he couldn't resist teasing him.

"Shoo, shoo!"

Li Zhi had no time to pay attention to Liao Yifei. He definitely couldn't let this Peacock fighter keep flying forward, but he was still reluctant to destroy it just like that.

If he destroyed it now, wouldn't everything he'd done before have been for nothing?

Return-to-base limit!

The flight control system had begun warning Li Zhi to watch his fuel. After tangling with the two Peacock fighters for so long, he had nearly run out, even with two drop tanks.

Drop tanks!

Li Zhi suddenly thought of another desperate measure.

Li Zhi maneuvered his fighter into a risky position above the unmanned aircraft, only about five meters away from it.

"Three-Yellow Chicken, what are you planning to do? Be careful!"

Seeing Li Zhi make such a move, squadron leader Xu Feng hurriedly warned him.

The fighter below Li Zhi was now covered almost entirely in fuel and could catch fire or explode at any moment.

If it exploded, Li Zhi was so close that he would surely be caught in the blast.

Li Zhi didn't reply to Xu Feng, concentrating instead on making fine adjustments to his position.

Once he was in position, Li Zhi jettisoned both drop tanks. Pilots could release drop tanks at will, and sometimes jettisoning them to save fuel was a very common procedure.

After dropping the tanks, Li Zhi didn't check whether they had hit the fighter below. Instead, he immediately began climbing at the steepest possible angle and switched on his afterburner.

When a drop tank collided with a fighter, the metal striking metal could easily produce sparks.

The three men watching nearby were dumbfounded. None of them had expected Li Zhi to pull a move like that.

Their eyes followed the two falling drop tanks.

One tank passed less than a meter from the Peacock fighter's right side, brushing past it.

The other struck the glass canopy over the nose squarely, exactly where Li Zhi had aimed.

The drop tank, weighing over a hundred jin, failed to shatter the canopy glass, but it severely disrupted the fighter's flight attitude.

The fighter had already been in a slight dive, and now it headed straight for the ground.

Li Zhi leveled out and began watching the fighter, while Xu Feng and the other two had been staring at it without blinking all along.

The Peacock fighter soon plunged headfirst into the dense forest.

After it disappeared into the trees, all four kept their eyes fixed on the spot where it had vanished.

One second, two seconds, five seconds, one minute.

A minute passed, but the explosion they had imagined never came. The entire forest looked as though nothing had happened.

"Enemy aircraft down, coordinates E118.5, N42.3, intact!"

After confirming that the fighter hadn't exploded or caught fire, Li Zhi immediately reported the situation to Lei Hu.

Lei Hu hadn't expected Li Zhi to actually bring down an enemy fighter intact. Shooting one down wasn't very difficult; Lei Hu believed most of these pilots could do it. But bringing one down intact was another matter.

It wasn't just a question of skill. More than anything, it came down to luck, and Li Zhi's luck was clearly good.

For one thing, the fighter hadn't been flying very high, and the dense forest below had provided it with excellent cushioning.

Combined with Li Zhi's correct actions, the fighter Eagle Country had sold to Peacock had miraculously survived intact.

Peacock Country knew nothing of this. The fighter's signal had disappeared after its altitude dropped below the radar's limit.

Peacock simply assumed Dragon Country had shot it down. After all, no country would allow another country's fighter to fly deep into its airspace.

And this was a Peacock fighter carrying a large quantity of ammunition. Relations between Peacock and Dragon Country hadn't been good for over a thousand years!

"Good! When this is over, I'll put you in for a commendation!"

Lei Hu was delighted. When the Peacock fighter's signal disappeared, he had thought Li Zhi had shot it down. He hadn't expected such a surprise.

With matters here settled for the moment, Xu Feng and the other two continued toward the border, where quite a few fighters from both countries were already facing off.

Li Zhi didn't go with them, however. He chose to return to base instead.

It wasn't that Li Zhi was afraid; he needed to go back and resupply!

No one knew how events would unfold next. A larger conflict might even break out between the two sides.

After all, the other side had lost two fighters, and with the operation near Great Snow Mountain already underway, Peacock might well lash out in desperation.

"Chicken Coop, Three-Yellow Chicken landing in three minutes! I will be resupplying fuel and cannon ammunition."

They were in a combat situation now, so there was no need to request permission to land. If a fighter happened to be taking off, the tower would notify him.

As long as there was no notification, how and when to land was up to the pilot.

"Three-Yellow Chicken, the resupply point is on the runway!"

There was almost no wind on the ground now, and even the sky had begun to change. Thin rays of sunlight shone through the thick clouds and began to illuminate the earth.

After the fighter landed, the ground crew quickly drove a dedicated refueling vehicle up beside Li Zhi.

To save time, the fighter would be resupplied right on the runway.

The ground crew were even quickly replenishing the two ammunition loads of cannon rounds he had fired earlier.

The entire resupply took less than five minutes. Neither side exchanged a word throughout, and Li Zhi didn't get out of the fighter.

There was no time for Li Zhi to take care of personal business now. In any case, the base had plenty of diapers!

Once resupply was complete, Li Zhi immediately notified the tower again, then took off and left the base.

Now was the time to flex their muscles. Every additional fighter gave them that much more confidence, and how could Li Zhi miss such a lively scene?

At the same time, fighting had also broken out near Great Snow Mountain.

The unprepared Peacock soldiers could offer almost no resistance. Dragon Country's ground forces drove them back again and again, and hardly any gunfire could be heard throughout the entire process.

Almost every Peacock soldier turned and ran the moment he saw a Dragon Country soldier!