TN: This is the longest chapter I’ve ever worked on. It’s much shorter after, but you’ll understand why I’m working on this
On a moonless night, above the cloud layer, a large transport aircraft flew in solitude, its black fuselage rhythmically blinking with tiny lights.
In the spacious cabin, seventy-four Xuan Jia Squad assault team members sat roughly divided into three groups according to their team assignments. Some closed their eyes, lost in thought, some wore headphones and listened to music, while others still anxiously checked their equipment.
Meng Huai and Xia Yan sat together near the cockpit, maintaining some distance from other team members.
"You've completed three years of service now, right? If I remember correctly, you're about to complete your tenth Level D or higher mission. If you don't want to be Xuan Jia Squad's commander candidate, you can apply to the training center."
Meng Huai rarely showed such a relaxed demeanor, trying to stretch out his limbs to relax.
"Now that Xiao Yao has joined the squad, I must stay with him." Xia Yan shook his head helplessly, his gaze turning toward somewhere deep in the cabin. "I promised the director I would take care of him."
"Mm, you two brothers are quite fated... to meet again even under these circumstances."
Meng Huai showed a half-smile, then pulled out a string of ID tags from his pocket, carefully examining them one by one: "I've almost forgotten how many batches of people the squad has gone through... After this mission, I'll submit a report to higher-ups to transfer Gu Yao to another squad. Though you're not blood brothers, having childhood acquaintances together is never good..."
Usually, Meng Huai was rigid and cold, speaking little. Only when alone with Xia Yan would he express so much.
Looking at the string of ID tags in Meng Huai's hand, Xia Yan's heart grew heavy too. Each tag represented a comrade who had fought alongside them, men and women, all carefully trained by the Commander's constant guidance.
They either died at the hands of vampires or were carelessly blood-infected. Either terminated on-site or hunted down by the entire Shadow Arrow Force after fleeing, ultimately leaving behind just a tag.
"For this assault operation, one of us should stay on the ground. If something happens to me, you'll be the next Commander."
Meng Huai put the ID tags back in his pocket, turning his gaze toward the night sky through the cabin window. He continued, "I've sent off too many people. If you hadn't lived long enough, we probably wouldn't be sitting here chatting now."
"You're the Commander. As long as you're here, everyone has a higher chance of survival... Let me lead the team down instead."
Xia Yan shook his head, hands behind his head as he leaned against the cabin wall.
"No, I'm not comfortable with that; there are too many newcomers." Meng Huai didn't accept his old subordinate's suggestion, his expression somewhat helpless. "Starting next month, headquarters will expand various operation squads, supplementing with some normal blood type personnel specifically for Level E or F missions. The recruitment cycle for rare blood types will be longer, with more complicated procedures."
"Is the personnel shortage getting worse?" Xia Yan glanced at the seventy-some teammates in the cabin, his expression darkening. The assault company's authorized strength is one hundred people, but we've only added seven people in the past half-year. We're still quite short; every team is under-strength."
"Mm, well, the assault company requires rare blood types... Sigh, out of the nation's 1.4 billion people, there are just over 3 million at most. After excluding the elderly, weak, women, children, and those who don't meet conditions, then passing psychological tests, immunity tests, and three phases of training, there aren't even 20,000 people... Our Xuan Jia Squad is considered good; some squads have completely stopped recruiting rare blood type personnel."
Recalling the meeting at Western Surveillance District headquarters a few days ago, Meng Huai's words grew colder.
Xia Yan didn't look at the Commander's changing expression, just silently watching his teammates in the dim cabin.
These people were different from those like himself who were active military before joining the Shadow Arrow Force. They had been taxi drivers, corporate white-collar workers, delivery riders, kindergarten teachers, or college students.
They had probably been secretly registered since their blood type was determined at birth, until one day, they suddenly faced the nation's secret recruitment. They passed layer upon layer of screening and a year of strict training, finally entering this secret unit unknown to the public, receiving higher military ranks and huge allowances.
"Beep!"
A familiar electronic buzzer sounded in the cabin as red lights came on. The soldiers each grabbed hold of the cabin wall handles, waiting for the transport plane to execute its difficult night landing.
Under the night sky, along both sides of a winding military road in the valley, long rows of indicator lights suddenly lit up. The huge transport aircraft began descending at almost a thirty-degree angle, diving toward a straight section of road. Just before touching ground, it pulled up its body, raising its fat belly, and dozens of wheels slammed onto the road several seconds later.
The cabin door opened, and Xuan Jia Squad members wearing night vision devices rushed out of the plane with raised weapons. They formed three columns heading toward the densely forested hills to the northwest. Under the cover of darkness, they would march ten kilometers within an hour to reach the designated mission area.
In the dark valley lay a sprawling complex of buildings without a single light, deathly still like a rotting behemoth.
As one of the great Third Front projects of the last century, its once passionate bustle had become deserted again after decades of peaceful development.
When less than two hundred meters remained to the nearest building, hearing a bird call signal from behind, everyone crouched down and pulled medication vials from their tactical chest pouches, injecting them directly into their thighs or arms.
This was an anti-blood-infection immune booster, which could enhance resistance against vampire blood infection.
Although all combatants were rare blood types, completely immune to blood infection from the vast majority of Thrall-level and Servant-level vampires, their immunity dropped sharply against Knight-level or higher vampires. Injecting this special anti-blood-infection immune booster could increase blood infection resistance by about 30% - it was the best they could do.
Though he had received repeated training at the training center, Gu Yao still felt nervous holding the medication, hesitating to inject it. He had experienced that extremely uncomfortable high fever reaction during immunity testing.
"What are you doing, fool!"
In the darkness, a figure approached and snatched the syringe from Gu Yao's hand, forcefully jabbing it into the youth's thigh. By the voice, it was Tao Qiao'er, one of the few female team members on this mission and a veteran of over one year's service.
As several milliliters of expensive medication entered his body, quickly absorbed by muscle tissue, Gu Yao shuddered as his whole body began heating up.
"Everyone, rest for five minutes after the injection, and monitor your temperature. Raise your hand if it is over 39 degrees—you can withdraw from the operation."
Meng Huai and Xia Yan made their way past each team member, speaking softly and moving to the next person only after receiving an OK hand signal.
"How is it?"
Hearing the familiar voice beside him, Gu Yao quickly removed the fluorescent thermometer he had held in his mouth for thirty seconds - it showed 38.1 degrees.
He casually gave Xia Yan an "I'm fine" gesture to hide his inner nervousness. Still, the drug-induced fever was gradually speeding up his heartbeat.
"That's good... From now on, you must always stay with me, understood?"
Patting his little brother's shoulder, Xia Yan turned to the other team members and carefully verified everyone's temperature after the anti-blood-infection immune injection.
Five minutes passed in the blink of an eye. Two people with high temperatures were left behind, while the remaining seventy-two Xuan Jia Squad assault team members, all enduring fever reactions, split into three directions and crept toward the abandoned building complex shrouded in darkness.
Behind them, a special box opened, and groups of small things whose details were invisible in the darkness rose into the air, chaotically dancing in the night sky before heading toward various corners of the building complex as if guided by something.
These were special butterflies developed through genetic technology by a secret Chinese laboratory over a decade ago. They were attracted to special pheromones released by vampires' neck sweat glands, which provided identification guidance. Various countries later secretly imported them for use on the front lines of vampire combat.
The fluttering butterflies passed through the night sky, floating gracefully in and around the vast abandoned factory area. Their wing scales emitting faint fluorescence were clearly visible through night vision devices.
In the dark factory ruins, a shapely young woman was scrolling through short videos on her phone, occasionally letting out a light laugh.
Suddenly, a beautiful purple butterfly landed on the back of the young woman's fair hand. Her pupils contracted sharply, her pretty face instantly twisting with terror and ferocity. Then her blood temperature rose, and all her muscles and bones twisted out of place, making frightening and strange cracking sounds.
In Gu Yao's night vision view, a tall companion leaped like lightning from the darkness, pouncing toward the low-level Thrall, activating their blood-boiled ability.
Xia Yan executed a throat lock, preventing the vampire beneath him from making any sound, then immediately thrust a silver dagger directly into their lower ribs.
The sharp silver dagger effortlessly penetrated the subject's clothes and mutating frail body, driving at an angle straight toward the heart.
The female vampire, who had already mutated fangs during her blood-boiled state, saw her twisted, fierce expression change to fear and pain. Then, her entire body underwent an astounding rapid carbonization, gradually withering and shrinking like something burned, finally twisting into a strange posture with contorted limbs, resembling a carbonized corpse from a fire.
Slowly walking up to the dead female vampire, Gu Yao's face turned slightly pale.
Although he had undergone secret training for a whole year and received extensive knowledge about vampires, seeing a young and beautiful woman from just seconds ago now transformed into a twisted monster with a completely carbonized body made bile rise from his stomach. Only by forcing himself to take several deep breaths did he avoid the embarrassment of vomiting.
Such ambushes occurred almost simultaneously in multiple corners of the factory ruins.
Some were violently resolved with daggers, others were taken down with powerful blood-dissolving tranquilizer rounds. Soon, the dozen or so lowest-level Thralls standing guard on the perimeter were cleared entirely by Xuan Jia Squad's combat members.
Both Meng Huai and Xia Yan had chosen not to remain on the ground, instead serving as commanders of the First and Second Teams, respectively. They jointly penetrated the abandoned factory's central area and entered the underground workshop. The Third Team, composed almost entirely of members with less than a year's service and less combat experience, lagged slightly behind in the overall assault operation.
Just as they charged into the factory interior, they saw a team member at the front suddenly fall to the ground from a silent, invisible impact. Blood flowed from their eyes, nose, and mouth, with the blood spurting from their mouth even containing fragments of internal organs.
In the darkness, the directional high-energy infrasound released by the high-level vampire cut through the Xuan Jia Squad warrior's practically useless sound-absorbing bulletproof suit like an invisible knife, the high-energy resonance shredding bones, muscles, and internal organs.
"It's a Knight!"
Xia Yan also felt dizzy, his sound-absorbing bulletproof suit emanating scorching heat as if on fire. He quickly bit his tongue, then used all his strength to crash into Gu Yao beside him, carrying him away.
Gunfire erupted as several semi-automatic shotguns created a web of fire at close range. A sturdy but incredibly agile shadow weaved back and forth through countless golden lines traced by the high-speed shotgun pellets.
Aiming at the incredibly fast-moving shadow less than fifty meters away, Gu Yao desperately pulled the trigger, firing 12-gauge shells one after another while stealing glances at Xia Yan, who was focused on shooting in front of him.
The semi-automatic shotgun was a close-range killing machine against fast-moving targets. After firing, the shotgun rounds split into even more small silver pellets, creating a dense curtain of fire, like a huge flyswatter, that knocked down the vampire Knight who had charged to within ten meters of Xia Yan.
Lethal silver ions entered the vampire's body, burning and carbonizing everything at temperatures far exceeding the blood-boiling state. The critically wounded vampire Knight's entire body erupted in strange smoke, like a desiccated corpse dried by high temperature, hunched over beside a broken lathe.
"Knights are standing guard outside, the entrance is blocked, the Embrace ceremony has likely already begun - charge in together!"
The ambush now exposed, Xia Yan stared at the underground passage entrance in the distance, seeing Meng Huai's First Team already beginning demolition work, and issued the assault order.
As soon as he finished speaking, the fully armed team members behind Xia Yan quickly formed a new formation and rushed toward the underground passage.
As one team member passed by the vampire Knight's corpse, the completely burned and carbonized thin vampire suddenly leaped up, its twisted limbs wrapping around the team member like an octopus. Opening its charred skull-like mouth to reveal fangs, it viciously bit toward the team member's neck.
The attacked Xuan Jia team member let out a scream, then collapsed as if all strength had been drained from their body.
A gunshot rang out as a silver handgun round precisely shattered the vampire Knight's charred skull at extremely close range.
Xia Yan crouched beside the bitten team member, adjusting the beam of his tactical flashlight while checking the person's pupils.
"How many!"
Luckily, there was no change in the person's pupil color. Xia Yan made hand signals, urgently questioning.
The wounded team member spat blood, struggling to say a number. Xia Yan's expression finally relaxed as he pulled the person behind a low wall: "You, wait here for the Support Company!"
With that, he grabbed his weapon and led his subordinates to continue the assault.
...
In the crowded underground factory passages, Thrall and Servant-level vampires continuously leaped out from various corners, attempting to block Xuan Jia Squad's advance.
No matter how agile and strange their movements, they were cut down by Xuan Jia Squad's concentrated fire, the silver bullets igniting flesh and blood the instant they tore through the vampires' bodies.
In the deepest part of the underground workshop, inside a vast sealed space, a massive blood pool emanated a stench unbearable to normal humans. Dozens of completely naked male and female Thralls, wearing strange ecstatic smiles, walked into the blood pool one after another.
A blood-flesh tentacle extended from an indistinct mass in the blood pool, piercing into a Thrall's body. The latter visibly shriveled and curled up before collapsing into the blood pool.
On the outermost edge, more than a dozen men and women of various ages quietly watched the scene before them, each face bearing an intoxicated yet nervous expression.
A young woman in a beautiful summer dress was surrounded like a moon among stars by high-level vampires, wearing an expression of arrogant self-satisfaction.
"Clan Leader, Grandmother's revival is faster than we expected. Look how good her appetite is!"
A middle-aged man spoke respectfully to an elder before him, while casting slightly envious glances at the surrounded young woman.
"Yes, it's time for our Tang family to prosper. Get the girl ready to receive Grandmother's blood seed. Haha, no one knows that Grandmother will have two blood seeds this time!"
The elder's expression was relaxed, but his slightly trembling hands revealed his true current emotional state.
"Clan Leader, will there be any problems if we secretly remove blood seeds like this?"
Looking at the increasingly twisted, disgusting, giant flesh ball in the blood pool, the middle-aged man's eyes were very intense, but also showed some fear and unease.
The elder smiled craftily, shaking his head slightly: "Of two blood seeds, only one is mature. We'll take one and hand over the remaining one later. No one will be able to tell... This is a once-in-a-millennium opportunity for our Tang family."
At this moment, an attendant approached with a panicked expression, whispering something in the middle-aged man's ear, causing him to suddenly shudder.
"Cl... Clan Leader... we seem to have been exposed... Shadow Arrow is here." The middle-aged man's excitement quickly ebbed, his face beginning to pale.
The elder froze, his expression struggling for several seconds before he muttered: "Shadow Arrow's noses really are like dogs'... We've come too far to stop! Send more people to delay them for another half hour. Once Grandmother completes the seeding, we'll withdraw!"
"Tell everyone, the Tang family has no way back now. Whether our family business can prosper in the future depends on this one time!"
...
Ghost-like vampires kept emerging endlessly, but no longer in chaotic swarms - more like they were entering the fray to delay time.
The assault team members responsible for the advance were consuming extreme amounts of energy under tension and high fever, having rotated several waves already, but the long underground workshop passage ahead seemed to have no end in sight.
One team member swayed and leaned crookedly against the wall, clutching their chest and gasping for breath.
"Company Commander, his temperature has exceeded 40 degrees, heart rate close to 180! He can't fight anymore!" Tao Qiao'er checked briefly before walking to the shooting Xia Yan's side, her face grave.
"Establish a temporary collection point, let those with temperatures over 39 degrees withdraw from combat and wait here for the Support Company!"
Speaking thus, Xia Yan turned his head to look at Gu Yao beside him, expression somewhat hesitant: "Xiao Yao, why don't you... You stay here and watch over them."
"No, I'm staying with brother, otherwise the Second Team will have even fewer people."
Another series of trigger pulls as the semi-automatic shotgun turned a mutated Thrall leaping through the air into a cloud of charred, bloody mist, then ejecting the empty magazine and reloading a new one.
Gu Yao, who had gradually entered the right state, actually showed hints of a veteran's touch.
During a combat interval, another round of temperature checks forced over ten members with excessive temperatures to withdraw. Between the three teams, fifty-eight people remained, and fortunately, ammunition was still adequate.
Meng Huai and Xia Yan huddled together, examining the map. They found they weren't far from the final mission coordinates, so they decided not to abandon the mission midway.
Fifty-eight assault team members, led by Meng Huai and Xia Yan, gathered their courage again and launched an attack toward the final passage.
With a violent rumble and tremor, high explosives directly collapsed the barriers blocking their path, shattering the so-called isolation wall built from countless old machines into pieces.
The slowly settling dust revealed their mission's true face—a spacious underground sealed space that appeared to be a hazardous industrial materials storage area.
The assault team members, including Meng Huai and Xia Yan, who were charging out of the dust, gradually stopped in their tracks.
Before their eyes was an enormous blood pool, and in its center, a vast and disgusting mass of flesh covered in dense tentacles of various sizes.
Looking from afar, they could still see a naked young woman standing in the blood pool beneath the huge flesh mass, with two blood-dripping flesh tentacles swaying slowly in the air.
"What the fuck is that monster!"
A veteran team member, second only to Xia Yan in service length, suddenly turned pale, unable to help, and cursed in a trembling voice.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Meng Huai, the first to recover from shock, immediately grabbed a portable rocket launcher from one of the team members and pulled the trigger, aiming at the huge flesh mass that occupied most of their field of vision. A high-explosive incendiary warhead rocket flew toward the target.
Unfortunately, a tentacle suddenly lashed out, intercepting the subsonic rocket in mid-air, causing it to explode into a scorching fireball against the thick ceiling.
Almost the instant the explosion sounded, more than thirty vampires of varying heights and builds rapidly approached, a third of them Knight-level! Seeing their blood-boiled, mutated bodies made it clear they weren't to be trifled with.
For the Xuan Jia Squad assault team members, now numbering less than sixty and already deeply fatigued, this scale of charge meant absolute disadvantage to the extent that the vampire Baron hiding in the darkness hadn't even deigned to personally engage.
Intelligence had clearly been inaccurate; this so-called small vampire Baron family's strength had been severely underestimated.
Looks like we'll die here today... Xia Yan thought numbly while pulling the trigger, his face cold as a certain image suddenly appeared in his mind, causing a bitter smile to cross his lips.
Semi-automatic shotguns, long-range support sniper rifles, handguns, grenades - the Shadow Arrow Force officers and soldiers desperately expended their ammunition one after another. One demolition expert even wrapped several high-explosive charges around himself with a look of despair.
"Xia Yan, I leave this to you! Organize and establish a defense line!"
Meng Huai dropped the empty portable rocket launcher and unshouldered the large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle he hadn't yet used, running toward a dark corner without looking back.
Amid the intermittent gunfire and explosions, in the blood pool, the naked young woman had walked to the huge blood mass, smiling as she looked at the flesh tentacles suspended in mid-air, preparing to embrace the mass to complete the final blood seed planting ceremony and become a dreamlike existence.
In a dark corner in the distance, atop a tall abandoned locomotive, a flash of fire erupted as a large-caliber silver alloy bullet, propelled by expanding propellant, left the barrel at nearly triple the speed of sound, raising a thunderous roar in the sealed but spacious underground warehouse.
In the blood pool, the naked young woman's head suddenly burst like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer. After standing stunned for several seconds, her delicate body slowly fell forward into the blood pool, just like the lowly Thralls used as blood food before.
The elder who had been watching family members surround and attack the Shadow Arrow Force now had eyes that were almost burning red as he turned toward a corner in the darkness, revealing an expression of uncontrollable rage.
The elder's gaze sharpened as his blood temperature slowly rose, special proteins accumulated in his bone marrow rapidly breaking down. The muscle tissue and vocal cords in his throat simultaneously underwent mutations invisible to the naked eye as a directional high-energy infrasound wave shot toward the dark corner where the long-range sneak attack had come from.
Meanwhile, the huge flesh mass in the blood pool seemed to sense the death of its planting target and began to grow agitated.
More tentacles extended from the mass, angrily and chaotically whipping around, even breaking several low-level vampires in half, spraying clouds of blood mist.
"Clan Leader... Grandmother's lost control, if we don't leave now, she'll swallow us all... Let's go, Clan Leader!" Face pale, the middle-aged man behind him grabbed the elder's arm and pulled him back.
"Such a good opportunity, such a good opportunity! Ah..." The Tang family clan leader actually shed crimson tears at this moment, beating his chest in deep regret. "Kill! Kill them all!"
After shouting himself hoarse, the two quickly walked toward another dark end in regret and anger, completely disregarding the gunfire behind them that had suddenly intensified several fold.
Following the elder's order, almost all the vampires present had blood-red eyes as they recklessly burned and broke down the special blood energy proteins painstakingly accumulated in their bone marrow, pushing their blood boiling state past the threshold. One body after another, whether thin or sturdy, rapidly mutated while running at high speed.
...
Following a thunderous explosion in the underground storage area, all sounds simultaneously ceased. Except for burning ruins and choking disgust, everything fell into strange silence, as if transported to another time and space.
At this moment, mechanical rotation sounds suddenly rang out in the underground factory that had been silent for decades.
The dark ceiling trembled deeply and rhythmically as streams of outside air began flowing into the sealed space, bringing hints of coolness to the smoke-filled underground warehouse area.
The Support Company remaining on the surface must have found and activated the emergency ventilation system.
Dismembered limbs of Shadow Arrow Force personnel and vampires lay everywhere. The occasional team member who remained physically intact lay unconscious on the ground.
In the blood pool, the horrifying flesh mass continued expanding in volume, each tentacle growing significantly thicker, slowly moving out of the blood pool while gathering vampire corpses along the way and absorbing them into itself.
"Is anyone there, is anyone still alive... that monster... monster... it can regenerate... kill it..."
From a dark corner in the distance came Meng Huai's weak but stubborn mumbling, accompanied by coughing from severely injured lungs, clearly audible in the spacious underground space.
Seeming to understand the Commander's meaning, Xia Yan coughed up a mouthful of fresh blood, then staggered toward the blood pool, still clutching the last incendiary grenade.
"Brother!"
A familiar voice came from behind as a youth ran out of the smoke, directly supporting Xia Yan's body.
"Give me all the grenades. Xiao Yao, go check on the Commander." Xia Yan spoke while coughing blood and reaching toward Gu Yao's front.
"Brother! I'll do it!"
Looking at the huge flesh mass still twisting and expanding in the distance, along with more than a dozen blood-flesh tentacles waving wildly, Gu Yao snatched the red-marked incendiary grenade from Xia Yan's hand and combined it with several grenades from his own body.
Running forward about ten meters, Gu Yao threw the ammunition with all his might, then executed a standard tactical roll on the ground, ducking behind a rusted old pressure vessel.
Huge flames rose up around the terrifying flesh mass as the shock wave swept across almost every protrusion in the underground space. The high temperature boiled the fresh blood in the pool, causing waves of foul-smelling steam to rise.
The flesh mass in the blood pool was completely disfigured by the flames and high-temperature shock wave, and all tentacles were either broken or falling limply from the air into the boiling blood pool.
Not bothering to look back toward the blood pool flesh mass, Gu Yao got up and ran to Xia Yan, helping him stand.
"Brother... did I... did I do okay!"
Tension, fear, excitement, sadness - countless expressions piled up on Gu Yao's smoke-blackened baby face, the slightly misaligned lip muscles left from his childhood cleft lip correction surgery, trembling slightly.
"Go check on the Commander..."
Xia Yan coughed up another mouthful of fresh blood, his face gradually turning pale, but still stubbornly pointed toward a certain dark corner.
Just as the two turned around, two long black shadows flashed out of the blood pool again, whipping through the air like long whips, directly piercing into Xia Yan and Gu Yao's bodies.
The huge charred flesh-blood mass occupying most of the blood pool, along with its final two blood-flesh tentacles, began carbonizing, crumbling, and dissolving as if completing a final ritual, piece by piece, chunk by chunk, melting into the boiling blood.
"Brother..."
Gu Yao moved his lips, staring in shock at the wound in his abdomen, as if unable to believe everything that had just happened.
Xia Yan, his side pierced by a tentacle, had already forgotten the pain, only quietly watching Gu Yao's gradually reddening pupils, his heart feeling ice-cold to the core.
Gu Yao was blood-infected... Looking at his own side, he could clearly see the mangled wound.
"My eyes... quickly check my eyes!"
Xia Yan weakly dropped to one knee, grabbing Gu Yao's hand and speaking with frail urgency.
"Brother... have we both been blood-infected..."
Gu Yao crouched beside Xia Yan, touching his abdominal wound while looking at the other's reddening irises, and actually smiled: "Brother, I didn't drag you down, did I..."
Having said this, his whole body went limp on the ground.
Scanning the underground space as the dust settled, apart from scattered Shadow Arrow team members still twitching slightly, there was only an endless field of dismembered limbs. Xia Yan closed his eyes in pain.
Several seconds later, Xia Yan helped Gu Yao up again, struggling slowly toward a certain corner. Soon, beneath a large, shattered locomotive, they found Meng Huai, his body intact but twitching slightly.
After killing the dangerous target, Meng Huai himself had suffered internal organ rupture and massive bleeding from the subsequent infrasound attack. Only the adrenaline he'd injected himself with in the final moments kept him barely breathing. The large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle that had achieved such merit had long since disappeared.
Looking into Meng Huai's eyes, Xia Yan smiled happily: "Commander, it's okay; you're not blood-infected."
Speaking thus, he pulled out a painkiller with trembling hands, mustering his strength again to inject it into Meng Huai's body, while muttering: "Hold on a bit longer... support is almost here..."
"Are you... are you leaving..."
As the painkiller took effect, Meng Huai's mind slowly began to blur, but his gaze remained firmly fixed on the now-red irises of both Xia Yan and Gu Yao.
"I promised the director I would take care of Xiao Yao... I'm sorry, Commander Meng, but Xiao Yao must live, and I must live too..."
Having said this, Xia Yan held the unconscious Gu Yao tightly, slowly turned around, and stumbled toward a certain corner.
"No... you can't leave... terminate... terminate on site..."
Meng Huai, on the ground, struggled to support his upper body, trembling as he pulled out his handgun, searching for Xia Yan's back through his swaying, blurry vision.
The two departing young men seemed to split into multiple shadows in the smoke and flames, making it impossible to distinguish the real from the false.