Chapter 174
Chapter 174
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
A dense barrage of gunfire tore through the silence of the snowy plain, bullets raining down like a torrential storm.
Qingshui twisted the throttle as far as it would go, sending the motorcycle carving a wild path through the snow. Bullets struck its bodywork, spraying dazzling showers of sparks. Several even grazed her clothes, trailing sprays of blood in their wake, but she didn’t so much as flinch.
Once again, that blinding white light swallowed her entire field of vision.
An off-road vehicle was hurtling straight toward her, its engine roaring loudly enough to drown out the shrieking wind.
This time, Qingshui didn’t dodge.
She charged straight into the light, lowering herself until she was nearly pressed flat against the icy body of the motorcycle. Her back arched, every muscle in her body taut.
Just as the two vehicles were about to collide, she wrenched the handlebars. The front wheel shot high into the air, the motorcycle tracing a sharp arc above the ground.
Boom!
The raging wind tore at her clothes. Carried by the momentum of her charge, Qingshui and the motorcycle launched into the air, then slammed down hard onto the roof of the oncoming off-road vehicle.
Using the terrifying momentum of the impact, Qingshui sprang into the air once more.
Behind her, several bullet holes instantly burst open across the vehicle’s roof!
For a moment, time seemed to freeze.
Qingshui hung suspended amid the wind and snow, her icy gaze cutting through the gunfire to lock onto the figure in the passenger seat below.
It was a teenage boy, neatly dressed and spotless, utterly out of place on this blood-soaked battlefield. Yet his expression was frenzied and twisted, with a smile so chilling it made the skin crawl.
It was him.
The leader of these Madmen. That highly intelligent monster.
And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the way he looked at her seemed… familiar.
Qingshui clamped her left hand around the motorcycle’s handlebar to steady herself. Her gun hand blurred through the air.
Bang!
A deafening gunshot exploded.
In almost the exact same millisecond, the boy’s gun spat out a bullet of its own.
The two bullets crossed in midair.
The searing round punched straight through Qingshui’s left shoulder, the horrific impact instantly cracking her rib cage. A metallic sweetness surged up her throat, and dark red, frothy blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. Agony and suffocation swept through her like a tide.
“Urgh–”
The impact shattered her balance in midair. Like a kite with its string cut, she plummeted straight down.
Cat’s shoulder was bleeding too, but he didn’t even glance at the wound. He simply stared fixedly in the direction Qingshui was falling.
“Heeheehee! Die! Dieeeee!!!”
“Run her over! Run her over! Hahahahahaha!”
The instant Qingshui began to fall, snow and dirt erupted all around her. Four or five off-road vehicles came racing in like maniacs, their tires grinding violently against the snow with a teeth-grating screech, as though determined to crush her into pulp.
“Get the hell out of my way!”
A furious roar, distorted almost beyond recognition, erupted alongside the explosive howl of an engine.
An off-road vehicle with a completely shattered windshield barreled onto the battlefield. Its body blocked the hail of incoming bullets, rattling under the relentless impacts, yet it continued to smash the surrounding vehicles aside and forced its way into the very center of the battlefield.
An Xiaolin had the accelerator crushed to the floor, her eyes bloodshot. She sent the vehicle hurtling toward Qingshui’s falling figure.
Thump!
Qingshui landed squarely on the roof. The tremendous impact made the entire vehicle sink sharply on its suspension.
She lay sprawled across the roof, her finger still clenched around the trigger. The violent collision blanked her mind for an instant, but she snapped back to her senses the very next second and used every ounce of strength to steady herself.
She had only just flipped herself into the vehicle when she caught sight of two dark figures slowly rising onto the roof above them.
One on the left. One on the right.
They loomed overhead, their pitch-black gun barrels trained on Qingshui and An Xiaolin inside.
“An Xiaolin!!”
Qingshui’s pupils contracted. She raised her gun and roared a warning.
An Xiaolin wrenched the steering wheel, but before she could swing the vehicle around and counterattack, a deafening gunshot rang out.
A cold bullet tore through the air and struck one Madman with pinpoint accuracy. It crashed off the roof and rolled across the ground, but still didn’t die. It struggled, trying to get back to its feet.
She actually… hit it!
On a distant hilltop, Ye Que was shaking like a sieve in the frigid wind. Her entire body trembled uncontrollably, and cold sweat had soaked through the clothes beneath her coat.
Wu Wujie stood guard beside her, struggling to remain upright as he used his body to shield her from the howling wind and snow.
“Good lord… these two Madmen…”
Ye Que clenched her teeth, her eyes burning with anxiety and fury. She cursed the two reckless fools below for taking turns throwing their lives away.
Trembling, she raised her rifle again and tried to lock on to her next target.
Achieving sniper-rifle accuracy with an ordinary rifle was already almost impossible. She had never received professional training and relied entirely on instinct whenever she fired. Two hundred meters was already the very limit of what she could handle.
But now, a full kilometer of deadly distance separated her from the battlefield. The wind and snow obscured her vision, and her targets were moving. She had to give it everything she had to protect her companions trapped in mortal danger below.
She didn’t know if she could hit anything, but she had to fire.
She had to.
………
“What terrible aim.”
On another distant slope, a figure perfectly camouflaged against the snow watched Ye Que’s wildly off-course bullet through a scope, the corner of her mouth twitching.
She tapped her earpiece. “Captain, should I shoot? They’re probably about to die.”
A languid voice came through the earpiece. “No rush. Let’s keep watching.”
“All right…” she muttered. “It’s not like our mission is to capture 009 anyway. But why would it go to such lengths to capture humans? Doesn’t it love running away more than anything?”
“That’s why we’re going to keep watching.”
“OK.”
She took her finger off the trigger, as though she were merely watching a show that had nothing to do with her.