Midnight.
This was an exquisitely wide and tall mountain villa, filled with the ceaseless sounds of laughter and revelry. A flowing mountain stream silently wound past the building, heading toward the quiet courtyard.
Tall soldiers, all exceeding average height, patrolled both in front of and behind the villa.
These men stood at their posts with expressionless faces, not even exchanging a whisper among themselves. The cold gleam of rifle barrels peeked subtly from their arms. Unlike the local M22s, these were Type 97 rifles produced by China North Industries Corporation—a batch Myanmar had purchased from China back in the 1990s for testing, reserved exclusively for the Myanmar Army’s elite troops.
Today had been far from peaceful, yet these elite soldiers hadn’t been deployed to suppress riots or protests. Instead, they were here, guarding a group of people.
Tunqin swept his gaze over the flawless defenses below and let out a playful smirk.
The villa’s interior was decked out in extravagantly luxurious fashion. Massive glass chandeliers cast dazzling beams of light, while the mirror-smooth floors bore a few scattered flecks of cigarette ash. In the spacious living room, a group of young officers laughed boisterously as they drank and chatted, the air thick with a foul stench.
“It’s not easy, huh? Who the hell is important enough to get our future generals locked up?” one man drawled after taking a slow drag on his cigarette, his tone a mix of sarcasm and jest.
Tunqin calmly stubbed out his own cigarette and replied mildly, “Whoever they are, if they mess with me, they’ll pay the price.”
“Hey, didn’t your dad tell you to swallow your pride?” The speaker perked up, eyes lighting with interest at the unexpected response. “I thought they had some big-shot status or something.”
“Bullshit on that. No matter how high up they are, can they outrank our general?” chimed in a younger officer with a lower rank right away. His eyes shone with obvious flattery and bootlicking as he looked at Tunqin. “Did you lure those people up north, sir?”
“Yeah,” Tunqin said, feigning nonchalance. “Fired off a rocket at them. They’re probably reduced to ash by now—not even scraps left.”
Someone chuckled and took a puff. “A rocket? That one’s gotta cost tens of thousands of USD at least. Only our general’s got that kind of pull.”
Tunqin held up a hand modestly, struggling to suppress a smile. “Hey, watch your mouth. It’s not like I couldn’t be a gene—”
Boom—
His words drowned in a massive explosion. The once-silent small building erupted in gunfire the next instant! Bullets ripped through the air at supersonic speeds like a torrential downpour, accompanied by billowing gunsmoke and screams rising one after another.
Acrid black smoke drifted everywhere, but the sound of doors being blasted open shook the heavens. Before Tunqin could react, the world spun wildly before his eyes the next second, overwhelming pain crashing over him like a tidal wave. He let out a pig-like wail on instinct.
Silence fell all around, broken only by Tunqin’s screams echoing into the night.
Click.
The unmistakable sound of a bullet chambering rang out. Zhou Xianhui pressed her left knee firmly into Tunqin’s back, her knife gleaming with chilling menace in her hand, her eyes filled with a rare, icy coldness.
“W-Who are you?”
Sprawled on the cold tile floor, Tunqin asked in a trembling voice.
He paid no mind—or rather, dared not pay any mind—to the blood seeping from the gash on his face. In that split second when he’d lifted his head, a group of highly trained unknowns had already knocked out all the other officers cleanly. He was the only one left with even a shred of consciousness.
How long had those elite troops outside held out? A few seconds? What the hell were these people here for?
The living room, filled with smoke and laughter just moments ago, had transformed into a blood-soaked hellscape.
“Just tear gas and tranquilizers. We’re not here for anyone else’s life.” Her voice was feather-light, but to Tunqin, it sounded like the grim reaper itself.
Not here for anyone else’s life—did that mean his own was on the line?!
Tunqin swallowed hard instinctively, but with his back pinned so completely, he couldn’t even shudder. Overwhelmed by terror, his brain short-circuited, but before he could ask more, Zhou Xianhui spoke again.
“I’ve said it all—hold nothing back, no bullshit,” she said airily, tossing her knife aside with a flick. It rang softly as it sliced into the floor like butter. “Each finger buys you five seconds.”
“Ah… what, what fi— Ah!” Tunqin started to blurt out, but he didn’t get to finish. A long blade plunged straight into his pinky finger.
No one in the room spoke or objected. Zhou Xianhui kept her knee grinding into his back, quelling all his struggles with irresistible force.
Her right hand lightly flicked the razor-sharp blade. Mountain Element resonated with it, producing a crisp, jade-like chime. Zhou Xianhui narrowed her eyes—one flick, two… five.
Five seconds up.
In a flash, she yanked the knife free and slashed again!
A brief hush followed, shattered by even more agonized howls.
The searing pain raced along his nerves straight to his brain, tearing Tunqin apart from the inside. Zhou Xianhui had briefly attended medical school and been an outstanding student, her hand-drawn anatomical diagrams rivaling printed ones. Years of medical knowledge gave her intimate command over every nerve and bone in the human body. She struck with precision—inflicting excruciating torment without the overwhelming shock that might cause a blackout.
Gushes of warm blood poured out, soaking the priceless carpet in moments. His screams dragged on too long. Another five seconds elapsed. Zhou Xianhui withdrew the blade once more, then calmly slid it back in.
Blood sprayed, a few drops splattering onto Zhou Xianhui’s cheek and trailing down in a vivid streak. The gruesome stain only accentuated her pale, refined features. Wipe away the blood from her knife hand, and she’d still be the gentlest soul in Action Division Team One—no one would suspect a thing.
If Ye Jingqiu saw this with her own eyes, she’d probably stare in shock, unsure if this was the same woman. But the veteran base members behind Zhou Xianhui remained impassive, as if witnessing nothing new. After all, before Shi Zui had joined the base, Zhou Xianhui’s reputation for this sort of thing had burned even fiercer than Constance’s.
Instinct was a mirror to the depths of the human heart. For someone who possessed 【Mountain·Howl Listener】, how serene could one really expect her to be?
Pain crashed over him like a tidal wave, and the primal urge to survive forced Tunqin to speak. Under the crushing pressure of Death, he threw all caution to the wind, his voice roaring out as loud as his wails on the day he was born.
“I! I’ll talk! It was all me! That mess in Bamaw—I ordered those guys to get revenge!” Tunqin gasped for air to ease the agony. “But it’s not entirely my fault! I only said to teach that Ye girl a lesson. I never told them to straight-up kill them!”
“Still making excuses…” Zhou Xianhui sighed. She was almost too lazy to draw her blade again. A flash of dull orange elemental energy streaked by, and in an instant, a sharp spike of rock erupted from the ground, piercing straight through Tunqin’s entire palm.
Tunqin doubled over desperately, his body curling like a fish on the brink of death. He roared silently with wide-open mouth, the pain having stolen his voice.
This time, Zhou Xianhui kindly gave him a few extra seconds.
“I-I only told those guys to blast your car with guns,” Tunqin finally said, his trembling words laced with fear and panic. “Everything else—everything else, I swear I had nothing to do with!”
Zhou Xianhui’s eyes flickered. At this point, Tunqin was unlikely to lie anymore. She cut straight to the chase. “You didn’t leak anything to that Messiah crowd, right?”
If the answer was no, then at least the Awakener captain and Xiao Qiu should be safe. They just needed to track them down fast.
“I-I didn’t say it outright…” Tunqin stammered here, but he was quick on the uptake. Before Zhou Xianhui could frown and give him another stab, he spilled it all himself. “We had a deal—three signals a day. If they stopped, it meant intruders in Yangon or Bamaw.”
Zhou Xianhui gritted her teeth, fighting down the surge of rage in her chest. “Why didn’t you mention this yesterday? And none of what you said left a trace in the system?”
Tunqin’s eyes darted away. “The signals were sent as elemental pulses. Besides, you told me yesterday to cut off contact with—Bang!”
Tunqin’s voice cut off for good.
Zhou Xianhui coldly lowered the large-caliber handgun capable of shattering a lion’s skull. Without sparing another glance at the fragmented corpse on the ground, she reached out and activated her Will Ring to contact Xie Pingzhi.
The connection was still loading. Zhou Xianhui closed her eyes gently, praying hard that the captain and Xiao Qiu still had the strength to fight.
Their Will Rings had been destroyed in the explosion, and Aether couldn’t pinpoint their locations.
Bamaw’s dense forests, carved into canyons by the Irrawaddy River, were thick with vegetation, towering mountains, and treacherous waters—searching would be a nightmare. The only spot Team One all knew about was the Project Y’s equipment production site in Bamaw. If Xiao Qiu and the captain couldn’t hold out for rescue, they might head there to wait.
But Tunqin had already cut ties with Messiah. If Xiao Qiu and the captain were too injured to fight and ran into the Savior group on the road…
The consequences didn’t bear thinking about.
Zhou Xianhui could only call the base for backup, then plunge back into the mountains and forests, combing through them like fishing a needle from the sea, praying her teammates were safe.
~~~
Stars hung low over the plains as the great river roared onward. Beneath the vast night sky, the temperature dropped, stirring up gusts of mountain wind that rustled the leaves and grasses, bringing a faint, refreshing chill.
“Hiss—so painful.”
On the shallow riverbank, Ye Jingqiu slowly opened her eyes.
As her nerves and senses came back online, a sharp, throbbing pain radiated from her leg, while the lingering dizziness in her head threatened to overwhelm her entirely.
The RPG-7 lived up to its reputation. Though Ye Jingqiu had summoned a Wind Element Aether Domain to block most of the damage, the residual shockwave had still hit like a truck.
So… where was she now?
Her head hurt worse than ever. She instinctively glanced at the Will Ring on her wrist, now snapped clean in two by the rushing water, and gave up on getting answers from Aether.
She tried hard to recall what had happened before she blacked out, but her memories felt like scraps of shredded paper. No matter how she searched, the last image stuck in her mind was the moment she lunged toward the captain.
So… had she fallen into the river with the captain, and the current carried them here?
The thought jolted Ye Jingqiu upright, or as upright as she could manage. Her eyes swept the area like searchlights. Sure enough, about ten meters away, Shi Zui lay motionless, eyes closed.
“Captain?”
No response. A vague sense of dread rose in Ye Jingqiu’s heart. She pushed herself up from the pebbled ground with her right hand, ready to scramble over, but the moment she tried to straighten her leg, she collapsed again.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Ye Jingqiu dragged her right leg out of the icy river water. As expected, a bullet fragment was embedded in her calf, just inches from the main artery.
After the shockwave knocked her out, Ye Jingqiu had lost control of her elements and couldn’t stop the flying shrapnel.
But… wait!
Her gaze snapped to the captain, still unconscious nearby. Her own physique was supposedly a bit weaker than the captain’s. If the captain hadn’t woken up yet…
Ignoring her own wound, the panicked Ye Jingqiu snatched up a nearby branch for support. Limping and hobbling with all her strength, she rushed toward Shi Zui.
Crack—the branch snapped under her weight, sending her tumbling to the ground again. But spurred by a horrifying suspicion, she ignored it.
Trembling with dread and prayer, she carefully rolled the faintly breathing Shi Zui over. Her worst nightmare came true in an instant—her scalp crawled with horror.
A jagged bullet fragment protruded viciously from the captain’s back, the full length of it buried deep in the center of her back.
Shi Zui’s life now hung by a thread.
