Beginning to Fight the Motorcade Alone

"Lieutenant, there is something I need to discuss with you." Hou Rui, who had been walking forward, suddenly quickened his pace. He caught up with the Alliance lieutenant and lowered his voice, feigning an air of mystery.

"What is it, Douglas—urgh!" Before the lieutenant could even finish his sentence after turning around, a dagger that Hou Rui had drawn from his sleeve ruthlessly slashed across his neck.

"Splurt!"

As a spurt of fresh blood from the lieutenant's neck splattered all over Hou Rui's face, he kept his composure and caught the lieutenant's collapsing corpse with one hand. At the same time, with his other hand, he drew the Type 92 automatic pistol from his waist, reaching it past his armpit to aim at the guards behind him.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang!" Four shots rang out in rapid succession within a single second. Hou Rui, launching a sudden attack, directly shot down the soldiers who had been monitoring him from behind. Then, releasing the lieutenant's corpse, he swiftly pulled the pistol from the dead man's waist, dropped into a deep squat, pitched forward, and rolled across the ground, ducking behind the body of an armed pickup truck.

Just as Hou Rui poked his head out from the side of the pickup, before he could even stand up, he saw the pickup's driver push open the door and place one foot on the running board, preparing to get out. Still lying on the ground, Hou Rui raised his gun and fired twice in succession. One shot struck the driver in the thigh, and the other pierced straight through his vest.

By this time, the general's convoy had been thrown into disarray by the gunfire. Nearly all the drivers were craning their necks, searching for the shooter, while several guards who were already on duty rushed furiously toward the spot where the Alliance lieutenant had fallen.

After finishing off the pickup driver, Hou Rui scrambled to his feet and broke into a fast run. After covering a dozen meters, ignoring the shouts of the guards behind him, he leaped into the air, aiming his two pistols through the small driver's side observation port of an armored vehicle nearby. With two instant shots, he blew the head off the armored vehicle's driver, who had poked his head out to investigate the gunfire.

In the brief moment of delay, the guards had blocked both ends of the convoy. Even the machine gunners standing in the beds of the pickup trucks locked their sights on Hou Rui. With no other choice, Hou Rui leaped down the embankment of the unpaved road and began running madly toward the rear of the convoy through the waist-high grass growing along the slope.

"Quick, quick, quick! Everyone out of the vehicles! We must catch him; this bastard is definitely an American spy!" No matter how dull-witted they were, the general's elite guards—having lost several companions to Hou Rui—were fully mobilized. Dozens of guards leaped from the trucks like dumplings being dumped into a pot at their officer's shouts, dispersing to comb the area for Hou Rui.

By this time, however, Hou Rui had already reached the very tail end of the convoy. Hugging the deep ditch along the roadside, he crept toward a heavy machine gun, intent on securing high-powered weaponry first.

"There he is! Rat-tat-tat!" Following a shout, Hou Rui's position was exposed. He had no choice but to spin around on the spot, facing the sweeping fire of an AK-47. Raising his weapon, he accurately shot down an approaching guard. Yet the sound of gunfire instantly betrayed his exact location, and dozens of guards converged on the spot like a swarm of bees.

Since he had been exposed anyway, cautious stealth was pointless! Hou Rui abandoned the deep ditch along the embankment, scrambled to his feet, and ignoring the bullets whizzing past behind him, dashed toward a pickup truck fifteen meters ahead. While running, he kept firing, taking down an Alliance machine gunner in the truck bed with two shots.

However, no sooner had the Alliance machine gunner collapsed than two guards leaped out of the cab on the opposite side. Using the open car door as cover, they aimed their rifles and opened fire on Hou Rui.

"Rat-tat-tat!" At a range of barely ten meters, facing a head-on barrage of AK-47 fire, a cornered Hou Rui dropped into a semi-crouch once again. He forced himself into a brutal, face-to-face duel of marksmanship against two enemies, a test of whether his Type 92 pistol could take them down first or if he would be struck by their AK-47s.

"Rat-tat-tat! Bang, bang, bang!" In this raw, unadorned fight to the death, Hou Rui struck first, shooting and killing both opponents, while the bullets fired from across the way shaved past his waist by a hair's breadth.

With no time for hesitation or lingering fear, Hou Rui prepared to charge forward again, but a bullet from behind mercilessly tore through his left arm, sending him stumbling and nearly pitching him back into the ditch.

Even after being shot, Hou Rui didn't even have time to look back to locate the shooter. Holding his gun in his uninjured right hand, he fired blindly backward to check the enemy's pursuit, while accelerating his pace to dash toward the pickup truck. With a roll and a bound onto the road surface, Hou Rui reached the shelter of the pickup's open driver-side door.

"Rat-tat-tat! Clatter, crash!" Amid a fierce barrage of gunfire, the guards who had jumped from the trucks closed in to within fifty meters. Their vanguard mercilessly poured countless rounds into the pickup serving as Hou Rui's cover, instantly shattering its windshield into dust. Several bullets tore through the car door, leaving chilling bullet holes behind.

Snatching up the AK-47 dropped by a dead guard, Hou Rui bit down on the pain in his arm, retreating while firing in bursts. A few continuous strings of shots laid low the enemies who had pushed closest. Seizing this rare window of opportunity, Hou Rui vaulted into the bed of the pickup truck and laid his hands on the ownerless heavy machine gun. The next instant, the heavy machine gun began its grim summons of death!

"Click! Thump-thump-thump!"

Racking the bolt swiftly, the moment Hou Rui sent the first heavy machine gun round flying, he immediately began sweeping the barrel across in a panning motion. At this point, aiming was entirely unnecessary, for the road surface fifty to one hundred meters ahead was packed with guards.

"Thump-thump-thump!"

Amidst the dense roar of the heavy machine gun, Hou Rui simply swept the barrel from left to right. In the span of just three to four seconds, he killed or wounded at least twenty to thirty guards.

At such close range, the penetration power of the heavy machine gun bullets was pushed to the absolute limit. Nearly every fired round tore through two bodies at once. Most absurdly, Hou Rui watched with his own eyes as a single shot blew the head off the lead guard, immediately punched a fist-sized bloody hole through the chest of the second guard directly behind him, tore through the stomach of a third, and finally ripped away a large chunk of flesh from the thigh of a fourth soldier standing in that straight line, sending him crashing to the ground in shrieking agony.

Amidst this chorus of screams and twisting, contorted bodies, the aggressive vanguard of guards was instantly shattered. Those who survived scrambled down the embankment in a panic or dived for cover behind other vehicles in the convoy.

There was no time for pity or reflection, for even as Hou Rui was unleashing carnage upon the enemy infantry with the heavy machine gun, the gunners aboard the other pickup trucks opened fire. Equally lethal heavy machine gun bullets easily shredded the sheet metal of the pickup cab beneath Hou Rui's feet, hammering relentlessly against the gun's steel shield right in front of him.

"Thump-thump-thump! Clang, clang, clang!"

Hou Rui gritted his teeth, readjusting his barrel to engage in a duel with another pickup truck dozens of meters ahead. For a few tense seconds, the two machine gunners found themselves locked in a stalemate of firing and deflecting rounds off their respective shields.

Yet Hou Rui was completely on his own, whereas the enemy gunner could afford to keep trading fire with him indefinitely. Out of the corner of his eye, however, Hou Rui noticed that after taking heavy casualties on the open road, the guards had grown smarter. Having scrambled down the embankment, they were rapidly maneuvering around his flanks, threatening to encircle him.

No, I have to take out this damn gunner immediately!

A thought flashed through Hou Rui's mind. He suddenly jammed the barrel of his heavy machine gun downward and fired a short burst into the rear tires of the pickup ahead. As the sound of the front pickup's tires blowing out rang out, its chassis tilted violently to one side. The moment the gunner in the bed lost his balance and swayed, his body exposed from behind the shield, Hou Rui seized the long-awaited window and slammed his finger onto the trigger.

"Thump-thump-thump!"

The stream of bullets not only blasted the enemy gunner flying but also severely mangled the unmanned, tilting machine gun mount, solving Hou Rui's immediate crisis.

"Ha!" Just as a triumphant smile touched his lips, it instantly froze in place. Looking past the disabled vehicle ahead, Hou Rui saw that on an armored personnel carrier further up, a guard officer was swinging a heavy anti-aircraft machine gun around, pointing its barrel straight at him.

Damn it! The moment the premonition of danger struck, a heavy anti-aircraft bullet screamed through the air, piercing clean through the shield beside Hou Rui. Even as he instinctively threw himself out of the vehicle, several more ultra-heavy rounds roared toward him.

"Bang, bang, bang! Splat, splat, splat! Boom!"

The pickup truck Hou Rui had just occupied was torn apart, its engine shattered as the entire vehicle detonated. The chain-reaction explosion of the machine gun ammunition stored inside popped like firecrackers, while the wildly ricocheting shrapnel forced the surrounding guards to flatten themselves against the ground for cover.