Chapter Eighty-Three: Revenge

Heba wiped the sweat from his face and sighed. Then he drew a short spade from his belt.

“Forget it, Connor. This bastard is riding with us on this run, and we’ll never see him again after this. Just grit your teeth and get through it. Better to bury the girl first and be done with it. Didn’t the captain warn you? For some reason the border troops are searching hard today. If it weren’t for that, heh, our inside contact would have had us shot full of holes already.”

“Heh, to be honest, I only respect the captain. He’s got real skill. It’s a pity about this little girl, being ruined by some white pig like that.” Connor also drew a spade from his waist and looked at the girl’s body lying quietly in the grass. On his ugly face, regret was plain to see, but his hands never stopped, and he began digging into the already damp, soft earth. Before long, the two burly men had dug a pit about a meter deep.

Chen Cao slowly raised his head and looked at the girl. She was no more than a teenager, and yet she had been violated like this. At the thought of it, all sorts of vile scenes flashed through his mind, and the hand gripping his dagger bulged with veins.

The two strong men were still busily shoveling earth in the grass, utterly unaware of the disturbance behind them. Chen Cao quietly made his way over. They had firearms, and to attack them with nothing but a dagger would come at too high a price, so...

He seized Connor’s foot as the man was digging with all his strength and yanked hard. Connor cried out and, caught off guard, toppled into the pit he had dug himself. At the very moment he fell, he felt a sudden heat at his throat.

“What are you doing...” Heba clearly was not used to such a sudden threat, especially with a corpse lying nearby.

But before he could finish, he felt a chill at his neck, and Chen Cao’s cold voice reached his ear.

“If you don’t want to end up like your partner, try moving.”

Heba steadied himself. His Adam’s apple bobbed. This was no illusion. Though he could not move his head, his eyes could dart toward the pit. In only a few seconds, Connor was already lying in the hole, making a gurgling sound in his throat, both hands clutching his neck as filthy blood kept pouring out, his legs twitching weakly in the dirt.

A few more seconds and he would be a dead man. No, worse than dead. No one could save him now. Heba, who had long worked the jungle routes and killed without mercy, knew that better than anyone.

Terrified to the core, Heba dared not move. His grip loosened, and the shovel clattered to the ground. He had plainly given up resisting.

Chen Cao pressed down lightly, and the dagger sank a few lines into Heba’s throat. A thin thread of blood began to run from the blade’s tip.

Heba’s throat gave a slight involuntary quiver, but he still did not dare move.

“You know I’m not joking,” Chen Cao said coldly, holding the knife in place. “From now on, you answer my questions. Understand?” He eased the blade back a little. “You only need to nod or shake your head. Do you understand?”

Heba nodded faintly to show that he did.

Chen Cao knew time was short. It was impossible for the border troops of the Great Chen to come searching here under the guidance of these smugglers’ inside contacts, but since the route had been bought and controlled by them, they must be highly alert. He had to pry the information he needed from them within the narrow window he had.

“Are you drug traffickers, and is there an informant among the border troops?”

Heba nodded.

“All right. Who killed this girl? A white man? Another trafficker?”

Heba nodded again.

“Good. Now for my last question: which direction did they go?”

Heba hesitated.

With a swift rasp, the moment he paused, a cold object stabbed into his thigh. Agony flared through him, and a lump of earth was shoved into his mouth so he could not cry out.

Chen Cao drew the dagger from Heba’s thigh and pointed it at his eye, his voice icy. “You know I’m not joking. Where are they, you filthy dog? Or I’ll gouge out one of your eyes next.”

Heba frantically nodded and pointed toward the direction of the rocks, where Chen Cao had just been drinking water.

“Good. How many of them are there?” Chen Cao asked.

Heba widened his eyes. Chen Cao had him by the throat, and the dagger’s sharp tip gleamed in the blazing sun, only an inch from his eye. He understood at once that this yellow-skinned man was not bluffing. He would really carve out his eye.

So, trembling, he held up two fingers.

Two. Good. Now you should pay for your crimes. Go to hell!

Chen Cao did not gouge out Heba’s eye. Instead, as the pupil contracted, he yanked the blade free and slashed hard across Heba’s throat.

Blood burst out in a torrent.

Heba tried to shout, but the dirt in his mouth choked him. Now he felt the blood within his body find a breach and rush toward his neck. Instinctively, he clutched at the wound.

“Go to hell, you bunch of poison-dealing bastards.” Chen Cao wiped the blood from the dagger on Heba’s body, which was already twitching faintly. He would never show mercy to traffickers like these.

He looked once more at the girl lying nearby, then walked over and checked her breathing. She had obviously been dead for a long time.

Chen Cao let out a soft sigh and said slowly, “Forgive me for not being able to give you a proper burial. But don’t worry. I will take their heads to honor your spirit.”

With that, he headed toward the giant rock.

In the shade of the trees, insects cried all around. The greenery was lush and calm, a scene of peace. And yet there, between two thick trunks, hung a hammock in colors wildly out of place with the forest. It held the body of a fat white man in camouflage.

The hammock swayed gently. The white man had his hat pulled over his face, clearly napping at midday.

Not far away, before a protruding rock, stood a yellow-skinned man. He was sharpening a machete, and each scrape of steel against stone sounded in the silent jungle. His expressionless face made him seem eerie and terrifying in the stillness.

From behind the trees, Chen Cao silently and swiftly assessed the scene. The yellow-skinned man should be the captain mentioned by the two traffickers. From the veins standing out on his wrists, the sharply cut muscles, the ridged flesh on his face, and the killing intent in his eyes, he was certainly a skilled fighter. As for the white man, though large and sturdy by sight, he lounged about in a hammock even in such a perilous place of smuggling, with no sign of caution or disguise. He was clearly accustomed to comfort and not much to worry about.

Chen Cao raised the weapon in his hands. It was an old-style rifle just taken from the traffickers. Such guns were nearly obsolete now, and not much used outside anymore. Still, though its firepower was limited, it would be enough to wound one of them. He slowly brought the barrel out and aimed at the captain’s head. At close range, such shooting was child’s play for Chen Cao, who had received special training from elite marksmen like Li Jiali.

Yet at that very moment, the captain, like a cunning fox, stood up and, as if carelessly, moved to the white man’s side, hiding his body behind every angle.

“Damn, he spotted me!” Even as Chen Cao was astonished, the captain decisively drew a handgun from behind his waist and began firing at him.

Chen Cao’s nerves tightened. He rolled swiftly to the side, and in the very act of rolling he squeezed off a shot. As he came to a stop, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know that I can alter the trajectory of a bullet. If you hadn’t fought back, you might have lived a few more minutes.”

“Ah!” At the sound of Chen Cao’s shot, the captain clutched his leg and cried out. But he did not return fire. He knew he had run into a master and should not linger in battle. Holding his leg, he shouted at the white man, “Someone’s here. Run!” Then he fled swiftly into the jungle.

The white fat man heard the gunshot, then the captain’s cry, and rolled heavily out of the hammock. His bulky body thudded to the ground, then sprang up at once as he ran rapidly in the opposite direction from the captain. His speed and agility were almost beyond ordinary description. It showed that no matter who a person was, once driven by the instinct to survive, hidden potential could be unleashed without limit.

But he had forgotten who he was facing: Chen Cao, the elite among elite, trained by special forces.

Unhurriedly, Chen Cao lowered his gun and watched the two fleeing directions, steadying himself before heading after the white man.

He had to avenge the girl, and also avenge his countryman. From the two traffickers, he had learned that the true culprit behind the girl’s death was this white fat man before him.

The white man was running for his life. He clearly knew nothing about concealment or jungle pursuit. Leaves all around were knocked crooked and flattened as he tumbled and scrambled past them, and thorns along the way tore bloody marks across his body.

The force driving him to flee with such desperation was the fact that Chen Cao kept following at an easy pace behind him, occasionally firing a shot in his direction but never striking him. It was obvious the other man was merely playing a cat-and-mouse game.

At last, the white fat man suddenly cried out as a bullet struck his thigh. He collapsed on his backside and rolled onto the ground, then raised his pistol and fired backward again and again until the trigger gave only empty clicks.

The sound of bullets firing from the barrel could bring him temporary reassurance, while the empty clicks from the barrel brought him endless fear.

Through his gasping, he saw a powerful man with his upper body bare, a bloodstained cloth wrapped around one shoulder, and a body full of sharply defined muscle, walking toward him with a dagger in hand.

The Flame Sovereign, chapter eighty-three, Revenge. End of update.