Mystical Journey

On the yellow-green grass.

Tap-tap-tap…

The deep sound of gunshots continued on and on, rising and falling, once this side fell silent, the other side would ring out again.

The grass was battered up by the storm of interweaving bullets, some places had even lit up in flames, emitting black smoke.

"Split up and attack, try to keep them occupied."

A deep and powerful voice came from behind the soldiers manning the guns.

"Yes."

The gunshots stopped, and the soldiers split up into groups of five, scattering into several small teams and spanning out in all directions.

The commander had short white hair, and wore a slim-fitting black coat, his expression was cold, his eyes hidden under his slightly-black triangular sunglasses.

He had a strong body and a cold, calm aura, as though he was an icy-cold stone pillar standing on the spot, unbreakable, unmovable.

He was Garen’s most trusted helper other than Baldy, Jay Bencott.

This young man looked mature, but in truth he was not even twenty years old, and his true age was probably even younger than Garen. He was a child soldier since young, and his malnutrition made his hair turn white, the effects were irreversible no matter how well he lived as an adult.

After Garen had taught him the Shooting Shadow Secret Skill, he began to idolize Garen desperately, undergoing a series of tests, and truly becoming Garen’s trusted helper, joining the Nighthawks.

"He has no bullets, no food, and he does not dare to light a fire, or else the smoke will reveal his tracks." A bespectacled female officer beside Jay said softly.

"I exchanged a shot with him, but sadly for him I’m wearing a bulletproof vest, while he isn’t. There was the smell of blood, he can’t get too far." Jay nodded.

As he spoke, he opened the inner flap of his coat, and took out a bunch of small components from inside with a familiar hand, and then he rapidly constructed the components, quickly building a white handgun with a scope in his hand.

Activating the handgun, Jay’s hand gave a jolt.

Bam!!

A shot abruptly exploded into an empty space in the grass to their right. An earth-yellow figure leaped out of there all of a sudden, and took off in a run.

Jay did not have any time to say anything else, and chased after him.

The gun in his hand kept shooting as he ran.

Bang bang bang!

Each bullet hit the ground beneath the person’s feet accurately, but every shot missed by a hair, the second before he could steady his aim, that person could defy the laws of momentum and abruptly bounce away, without any sense of rhythm whatsoever.

"Reflexive dodging?" Jay smiled coldly. Abruptly he pulled out another white handgun from his waist.

Instantly, there was twice the number of bullets.

Bam!!

A ball of fire exploded in front of the person, it was a hand grenade!

Some of the soldiers had roughly predicted which direction they would go, and tossed a hand grenade there.

Both of them paused for a second as a result of the jolt from the explosion, then they rolled towards the left at almost exactly the same time.

There was the rattle of several more shots underneath that person, sending up a spray of yellow dirt.

And the place Jay had been standing at erupted abruptly, there was actually a landmine hidden there.

The gunshots stopped, the smog of grass and dirt temporarily blocking off visibility of this place. The soldiers in the distance stopped firing as they were afraid of hitting Jay by accident, they had tried this manner of sweeping shot many times before, it wasted a lot of bullets and was never effective.

The two of them hid in the smoke and grass, both hidden from the other.

Jay held his left arm, it was completely charred black, the blast had clipped his arm. He held a gun with one hand, a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Lightly, he hooked up a small stone with his foot, and applied some strength to it.

The stone flew up instantly, landing in the grass about a meter away.

Smack.

The sound was extremely small, almost lost in the sound of the wind.

Bang!

Jay abruptly moved to the right, a cloud of yellow dirt exploded exactly where he had been, it was the splash from the impact of bullets.

"They can estimate my location just by the backtracking from the sound and direction of the stone’s landing?"

A hint of battle-thirst appeared in his eyes.

"It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered such powerful opponent…"

His handgun shook, and nodded three times.

Bang bang bang!

In the grass that had been shot at just now, neither of the other two places that he had guessed had any traces of movement, which evidently meant he had not caught his opponent’s tail.

Jay fired off a shot and decisively changed location, there was a red cross appearing lightly in his right eye, it seemed to be a bulging cross-shaped vein, but it also looked like a blurred mark.

This cross-shaped mark just happened to be in the middle of his pupil.

This was the Shooting Shadow Secret Skill, after activating the Shooting Shadow, his senses, agility, and reflexes were so much higher than normal. Even the tiniest of movements around him could not evade him.

But he had a feeling that his opponent was not that much weaker than him, even after activating the secret skill, he still could not accurately gauge his opponent’s movements.

Somersaulting and standing up abruptly, he instantly fired off a series of shots.

Bang bang bang bang bang bang!!

The gunshots did not stop, and there was a grunt hidden among them.

"Got you!" The corners of Jay’s lips curved. He retreated backward rapidly, the red cross in his eyes disappearing instantly.

The large team behind him was ready in formation.

Several mobile cannons were locked and loaded.

In that instant, the cannons spewed out clouds of white smoke, and there were the dull sounds of something hitting the ground.

At almost the same time, on a grassy hill nearby, there was an explosion of bright fire light, and waves of dirt flew high into the air.

"Target identified, exterminate on the spot." Jay lay down low, hidden, and gave orders directly into the communicative earpiece of his Hawkeye sunglasses.

"Understood."

"Pay attention, I shot him, activate the tracking chip in the bullet right now, he can’t escape." Jay told them.

"We’re already identifying the signals, please leave it to us."

"Jay, how’s the situation?" The voice in the earpiece changed suddenly, becoming Garen’s low and calm voice.

"I got Levi with my tracking bullet, he can’t escape." The corners of Jay’s lips curved, and he replied softly. "Please leave it to us, our people are already identifying the signals, coupled with the satellite surveillance, he…"

"Watch out!!" A soldier knocked him away abruptly.

There was a loud and piercing wail, then barroom!

In the scarlet firelight, that soldier and Jay were both sent flying.

"It’s a helicopter! An armed helicopter! Careful!!" Only then was there a yell in his earpiece.

Jay’s head was spinning, as he crawled up from the ground.

He could just see three black helicopters appear out of nowhere in the sky nearby, he had no idea how long they had been there, each helicopter was three times as large as regular helicopters, covered from tip to tail in cannons, just like a honeycomb. There were also two mid-air machine guns attached to each side of the helicopters. Through the glass, they could see that the people inside the helicopters were controlling the guns to aim their way.

They were all wearing white uniforms, which probably meant they came from one organization.

"Take cover! Take cover!!" A loud voice yelled.

"Where are the Firethorns!? Destroy them!" Jay yanked the Hawkeye and roared.

Whoosh whoosh!

Two missiles flew towards the two helicopters, leaving a trail of smoke behind them.

One was hit by a bullet, exploding in mid-air, and the other accurately hit one of the helicopters.

Boom!!

A cloud of red flames erupted in mid-air, the middle of the helicopter was shot into a fireball, the whole helicopter tilted down and crashed into the ground, finally bursting with a loud explosion.

"Let me!" Jay ran back into the formation quickly, grabbing an anti-materiel rifle handed to him by a soldier. He fell belly-first onto the ground and propped up the gun, the red cross appearing in his eyes once more.

The rifle’s barrel moved slightly, the wind resistance, deflection, distance, any obstacles, all of these factors and statistics flowed past Jay’s heart.

He instantly locked down his aim.

Bang!

There was a dull sound from the barrel of the gun.

In the distance, a helicopter exploded on cue. It instantly exploded into a fireball in mid-air, and spun as it crashed down.

Its oil tank had been pierced straight through.

There was one helicopter left.

But by then it was too late, the last helicopter seemed to have been shocked, pouring out all of its missiles at once, six whole missiles whistled through the wind as they shot in all directions, and the machine guns also began to shoot in madly all directions.

The barrage made the soldiers around them unable to look up for some time, some were hit by the shots, their bodies breaking into two.

Faced with this sort of war weapon, unless you had an anti-materiel and powerful weapon, most guns were totally useless against it, you had no choice but to hunker down and take the hits.

"Take cover! Take cover!!"

Just then, a missile abruptly flew at them from another patch of grass, drawing out a straight path and crashing right into the helicopter.

Boom!!

The last helicopter also exploded into a fireball, crashing to the ground.

In the distance, Garen put down the bazooka on his shoulder, he was standing on a camouflage jeep driving toward them at high speed, there was a long motorcade behind him, filled to the brim with many soldiers and mercenaries armed to the teeth.

Baldy stood to Garen’s right, and the girl with the ponytail stood at his left, looking like his guards.

The men on the two sides gathered rapidly, and by then there was already thick smoke and wildfires all over the grass. Levi’s shadow had disappeared from view a long time ago.

"Boss, I put a tracking bullet in him, he can’t get far!" Jay greeted Garen respectfully with a bow.

"Everybody, comb the area for him!" Garen waved his hand, and all the vehicles behind him stopped, the groups of men began to jump off, the gun-toting elites instructing them to search in all directions.

"Give everyone a search order every ten minutes." Garen looked at the girl with the black ponytail, and the latter nodded.

Glancing at the three helicopters that had crashed in the distance.

"Those are all Russian-made heavy duty helicopters, how many did you encounter just now, Baldy?"

"Five, and more than ten elite special forces soldiers, they were troublesome. There were all mine-planting and counter-surveillance experts among them." Garen replied in a low voice.

"Thank you for your trouble." Garen nodded, "Do you know what faction they’re with?"

"They’re with White Phoenix, the Primary Colors are very unhappy with how we stopped the operation last time, they think we broke the rules they set, so they have designated us Nighthawks as a kill target, I think they were the ones who sent these teams." Baldy introduced them simply, the Primary Colors’ White Phoenix used to be his old employers, so naturally he would still be familiar with them now.

"They’re with White Phoenix?" Garen’s eyes narrowed. "That is a huge thing…"

White Phoenix was one of the Primary Colors’ combat branches, they had a very established mercenary hiring system, and they even had some extreme and mysterious power supporting them from behind, their background was too deep to fathom.

"We can give them a little lesson, but it’d be enough to target White Phoenix alone, we shouldn’t declare war on them just yet." Garen was wary of the Blood Breed’s high-level power. After experiencing part of the witches’ high-level power, he maintained a certain sense of threat from this strange and mysterious power system.

This system was completely unlike the knowledge he had studied before. He could barely even detect and defend against them.