Chapter 041: Encounter Battle

It was already one in the morning when Rice finally finished writing this chapter. Dead tired, she posted it and went straight to bed, hoping for strong support—recommendations, rewards, bookmarks, anything!

Xiao Fen’s family had lost Changjiang.

And his fate was unknown.

Or, more precisely, his body hadn’t even been found.

To the elders in the village, this was nothing short of a calamity. Death is the greatest tragedy, and someone whose bones aren’t left behind is doomed to wander as a lonely ghost.

This news spread through the entire Li Jiaba village overnight.

Liu Fen fainted four times in a single day. When she opened her eyes again, dusk had already begun to settle. The old Li family home had only three rooms built of red brick. In the center was the main hall; to the left, two small rooms front and back, one for her son Changjiang, one for her daughter Li Ke. To the right was the bedroom for Li Lin and Liu Fen, and behind the hall was the kitchen.

Not destitute, but far from affluent.

“My child!” she wept again.

Li Ke, barely thirteen, sat at the edge of the bed, eyes red, clutching Liu Fen’s hand. Mother and daughter were lost, bewildered. The room was packed with the village’s elderly women and middle-aged wives; the second uncle, the eldest uncle, and the fourth uncle’s family were all there, filling the hall to the brim. At the head sat a man of about fifty, his brow deeply furrowed.

The room was thick with smoke, acrid and choking.

“Stop smoking that damned thing! Do you realize what’s happening? My third uncle and Changjiang are missing, possibly dead. Can’t you show some restraint?” a girl, not yet out of her teens, burst out angrily, her eyes red, scolding the crowd. Embarrassed, people quietly stubbed out their cigarettes.

“I told him during New Year’s, warned him not to go. Now look—a father vanished, a son lost abroad, with no idea when he’ll return. If something happens, how are Xiao Fen and her daughter supposed to survive?”

“He was always so steady, so cautious. Why did he act so rashly this time?”

“It’s those troublemakers from Stone House, urging him on. Said working abroad pays well, but who believes in a pie falling from the sky? If it were such a good deal, would it really fall to him?”

“That’s enough! It’s bad enough as it is—what use is all this arguing? Go home, it’s getting dark. Don’t linger here with your idle chatter. Juan, stay with your mother tonight and keep your third aunt company. Don’t let anything happen to her.”

With the middle-aged man’s word, the crowd quietly rose and left.

After the clamor, silence settled in, and even the glow from the incandescent bulb seemed colder.

Meanwhile, far away in the Libyan desert, Li Changjiang could never have imagined he’d become the subject of “dead and without a corpse.”

If he delayed his return any longer, they might even build a memorial tomb for him.

The condition Hamis offered was almost irresistible. Changjiang thought, if not for his search for his father, Li Lin, he might have accepted on impulse.

Two million dollars!

Fourteen million yuan!

He could work a lifetime and never earn so much.

Libyans were truly filthy rich.

Changjiang had no idea who Hamis really was, but he guessed a thing or two. With such elite armed men under his command, able to offer a two-million-dollar contract at the drop of a hat, he was certainly no ordinary figure.

Power and money, both at his disposal—in Libya, only one kind of person held such a position: someone in the government.

But with Changjiang’s limited experience, that was as far as he could guess.

“Hey, need some water?” Hamis tossed him a rather unappetizing leather pouch, probably a waterskin. Changjiang took it, drank a mouthful, suppressing the urge to gag. He was unused to these locals’ habits.

They actually used animal bladders for water—a revolting practice.

Yet, he had to admit, after treatment, it was surprisingly effective for carrying water, aside from the taste.

The group had been walking nearly six hours. It was about ten in the morning local time, but with the sun overhead, no one would believe it was only nine—it felt like noon.

The heat was unbearable.

Sweat soaked Changjiang’s shirt, but it didn’t cling; the temperature was so high that sweat evaporated almost instantly in the waves of heat rising from the ground.

Suppressing his nausea again and again, Changjiang forced the water down—out here, even the best plastic bottle couldn’t beat this primitive contraption.

He was still moving forward when, in the distance, he saw a massive cloud of sand rise, yellow and thick, blotting out the sky.

Just the scale of it meant it wasn’t a handful of people, but a whole group or a convoy.

Staring at the approaching sand clouds, Changjiang felt a wave of dread.

Something was wrong!

“Quick, hide!”

“Take cover, now! Damn it!”

Before his words were finished, more than two streams of white smoke swept out from the sand clouds, forming an attack net.

More than five of them!

Boom!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Explosions thundered, and Changjiang was hurled to the sand by a shockwave. When he crawled up, he couldn’t see anything around him, only hear shouts and gunfire.

Bang, bang, bang!

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

The unique sound of rifles drowned out all fear.

There was no doubt—they were under attack. That was no sand cloud, but a convoy of three off-road vehicles and two large trucks.

Bang!

He shot down an artilleryman preparing to fire. Changjiang didn’t dare linger, immediately rolling away.

Thud, thud!

Bullets punched holes where he’d just been lying.

Damn!

He cursed, then suddenly felt a sharp sting in his arm. Looking down, he murmured, “That was close!” A bullet had grazed his arm, leaving a shallow but burning wound.

He quickly checked himself—no other injuries. Then he turned to find Hamis.

“Damn, this is bad!”

To Changjiang’s right, four or five masked Libyan government soldiers surrounded Hamis, who was motionless, blood oozing from his abdomen.

Changjiang scrambled over, relieved to find him alive. He wasn’t a saint—Hamis’s life meant nothing to him—but here, under someone else’s roof, he had no choice.

If Hamis died here, who knew if Changjiang would ever make it to Tripoli alive.

“Are you okay? Where’s the wound?”

Hamis pointed to his abdomen. Changjiang tore open his shirt—luckily, it hadn’t hit anything vital. The bullet entered through the left side and lodged in his lower back.

Gritting his teeth, Changjiang pressed Hamis down and stuck a finger into the wound.

“Ah!”

“What are you doing?”

“If you don’t want him to bleed to death, let me handle it, damn it—stop yelling!”

Annoyed by the bumbling Libyans, Changjiang glared at them coldly. His look made Hamis’s men exchange nervous glances and turn away. One seemed about to say something, but under Changjiang’s fierce gaze, he thought better of it and went back to shooting.

Changjiang pushed his finger deeper. Hamis convulsed in pain.

He found it!

With a hard pull, Changjiang dug out the bullet. With no other way to stop the bleeding, he grabbed a handful of sand and pressed it onto the wound.

Baked for hours in the heat, the sand wasn’t quite like a branding iron, but close enough to make Hamis cry out.

“Hey, stop howling, you coward! You wanted to throw money at me—go ahead, throw it!”

At that thought, Changjiang winced again.

Damn, that was two million dollars!