The group rushed down to the third floor.
Jing Lan immediately caught a whiff of a sickening, putrid smell in the air.
He quickly pinpointed its source: a bloody, yellowish mass hung on a wall in the stairwell, resembling a crumpled raincoat.
Lu Renjia stepped forward, his voice trembling as he spoke.
“This… this is Section Chief Wang’s… skin.”
Jing Lan was speechless.
Long Taobing, holding his pistol, advanced.
“Skinned alive.”
“Section Chief Wang ambushed and killed one of their men.”
At that moment, the man from the couple who had been following them suddenly shrieked.
“Help me! I’ll report them! Uncle Han! I’ll report them!”
‘A furious curse erupted in everyone’s minds; this guy had betrayed them at the crucial moment!’
“Fei Caiwu! May your mother be—”
Lu Renjia cursed, raising his gun to shoot.
However, the man named Fei Caiwu had already darted down the stairs, shouting to the people below.
“They’ve escaped! I’ll report them! Don’t skin me alive!”
From around the corridor’s corner, a camouflaged teenager suddenly leaned out.
He held a Type 56 semi-automatic rifle, firing a shot that struck Lu Renjia squarely in the chest.
“Old Lu!”
Long Taobing shrieked in alarm.
Beside him, Jing Lan raised his AK-47, firing two rapid shots.
One bullet tore into the teenager’s chest, while the other ripped away half his head.
That damned Fei Caiwu had directly exposed the group’s whereabouts.
With no time to tend to the wounded Lu Renjia, who was almost certainly beyond saving, the others quickly raised their guns, scanning their surroundings.
Jing Lan pointed towards the stairwell, addressing Xiao Bingyi.
“Comrade, haven’t you shot balloons before? Aim your gun here.”
“The rest of you, clear this floor! Kill anyone you see!”
It seemed Long Taobing and Lu Renjia were close friends.
Lu Renjia’s sudden death left him rigid, as if struck by lightning, before he erupted in a furious roar.
“I’ll kill all you motherf*****s!”
Clutching the MP9 Jing Lan had given him, he stormed into other rooms, firing at anyone he encountered.
Sounds of women and children pleading for mercy seemed to emanate from the rooms, yet Long Taobing mercilessly shot them down.
The deafening gunshots, the wails of the dying, and the muffled gurgles from throats in their last moments mingled into a horrifying cacophony.
Jing Lan frowned, turning to Jun Zhongding beside him.
“Why are there women here?”
“They must be the bandits’ families!”
“They operate as a collective, like a nomadic regime; there were originally more of them, but the others have gone elsewhere, for reasons unknown!”
As expected, the bandits from Myanmar were moving in groups.
There was no telling how many vicious, grotesque thugs were currently crossing the border, preparing to assault the great nation.
Jun Zhongding, a bespectacled technician, picked up the Type 54 pistol Lu Renjia had dropped, speaking as he did so.
“I’m not really comfortable with this; perhaps I should just stay here and guard?”
The woman who had followed them down approached.
“Then give it to me! And you call yourself a man!”
Jun Zhongding handed over the pistol, and the woman, gripping the weapon, walked towards the other side of the stairwell.
Just then, a barrel of a Type 56 semi-automatic rifle peeked out from the stairwell corner, only to retract instantly.
“Careful!”
Jing Lan had barely finished his warning when the female staff member swiftly advanced.
She paused at the corner, extended her gun around it, and fired a single shot.
From the other side of the corner, a man cried out, ‘Ouch!’, before collapsing with a thud.
However, the considerable recoil of the Type 54 pistol sent a jolt through the woman, making her rub her wrist.
“Learn from her.”
Jing Lan patted Jun Zhongding’s shoulder, then pressed his AK-47 into his hands.
“Try using it, or at least hold it for me.”
Jing Lan had already noticed, far outside the window, that the group of bandits below Leng Yu’s grain silo were communicating via walkie-talkie.
Someone attempted to rush up from below, but Xiao Bingyi, guarding the stairs, cursed and laid down suppressive fire, preventing anyone from advancing for the time being.
‘Good, this was the chance to snipe those people.’
Jing Lan noticed that the Type 56 rifle belonging to the teenage sniper he had headshotted was modified; it had a 4x scope, effectively turning it into a sniper rifle.
This was likely the very weapon used to attack him, Leng Yu, and their companion earlier.
He immediately grabbed the rifle, retreated into the stairwell’s shadows, and aimed at the several thugs in the open area outside.
‘This was a weapon he had personally trained with!’
‘At the provincial shooting range, using a Type 56 semi-automatic to hit mannequins was an exhilarating experience.’
He aligned the scope with the upper body of Old Six, who was holding a megaphone, and fiercely squeezed the trigger.
“Bang-bang!”
Jing Lan absolutely adored the crisp report of this classic old rifle.
The bandits who had gone to encircle Leng Yu had utterly failed to anticipate that their own sniper rifle would be turned against them, leaving them nowhere to hide on the open ground.
Two men frantically attempted to scramble for cover beneath the grain silo.
However, gunshots rang out from the window to Jing Lan’s left, and tracer fire arced away, felling both men in quick succession.
Jun Zhongding also held a Type 56 semi-automatic—likely the one left by the sniper killed by the woman.
“You clearly knew how to use it, Old Brother, yet you insisted you weren’t comfortable.”
Jun Zhongding shook his head, adjusting his glasses.
“I haven’t used one before.”
“But I observed your movements and simply imitated them.”
‘Remarkable! Truly befitting a technician; his hands followed his eyes, mastering every operation in a single attempt.’
“However, there’s one thing you didn’t learn: when sniping, your body should retreat into the shadows, otherwise, enemy snipers might spot you.”
Jun Zhongding immediately stepped back.
“It seems my observational skills still need improvement.”
The man’s voice was deep and somewhat clumsy, reminding Jing Lan of the Chinese dubbing for the protagonist’s Titan in *Titanfall 2*.
At that moment, Xiao Bingyi suddenly shouted from the stairwell entrance.
“Grenade!”