Summit of Wushan Mountain Pass,
Time: September 2025, 01:30 AM
POV: Tan
I snapped wide awake as yellow flashes of light erupted from the gun barrels, tearing through the pitch-black darkness. The vibrations from the roar of war-grade weapons surged through the air, hitting my skin with a force I could actually feel.
Sparks flew as the bullets shredded the body of the car in front of us, tearing it to pieces.
“Aaah! I should never have gotten on this truck! This is so unlucky!” The bob-haired girl’s voice was louder than anyone else’s.
“Is it going to hit us? Please, just let me go!”
Bro snapped his head around… “Did I kidnap you? You sneaked onto someone else’s truck and you still have the nerve to talk like this? Get down low! And stop complaining!”
My hands were shaking and ice-cold. My legs had almost no strength left to press the accelerator.
The stench of gunpowder and white smoke swirled together, mixing with the mountain mist. The air pressure from the blasts slammed against the truck’s body until I could feel the vibrations rattling through the chassis.
They were advancing down from the summit like a pack of wolves closing in for the kill. Brake lights flashed in a continuous line. I slammed on my brakes, my body jerking forward with the force.
Before the truck had even come to a complete stop, Bro flung the door open! “Be careful!”
He leapt onto the road, tucking and rolling across the asphalt before disappearing into the deep, dark drainage ditch that ran down along the mountain range.
I looked down at the silver handgun in my hand and the flashes of death hurtling toward me from the front, unavoidable. I turned to threaten the two girls...
“Don’t try anything funny. I don’t want to shoot you in the stomach.” I had no idea how I managed to say those words, considering how terrified I actually was.
At that exact moment, Sawn and Yusuf Khan leapt from their trucks with practiced maneuvers, as if they were carbon copies of Bro. The three of them sprang up in perfect synchronization before running hunched over, parallel to the ground, sliding into the roadside drainage ditch to join the two or three others who had jumped down ahead of them.
Muzzle flashes erupted from the ditch, firing back and forth, causing the group of people on the summit to halt in stunned silence.
“...................”
I thought to myself that they probably never expected a normal cargo convoy to have fangs—something even I never knew until now.
“Can I get down? I’m scared.”
Hearing the young woman’s fear caused what little courage I had left to surge back. My protective instincts kicked in… “Don’t go down there. It’s safer up here. Trust me.”
“But I’m scared. The bullets are getting closer every second!”
“If you’re scared, don’t look. Keep your head down and hide behind the seat!”
I tried to peer through the windshield into the dark shadows moving in the ditch. More drivers were crawling up to reinforce the line. They crawled low, like predators stalking their prey in silence.
They utilized the angles of the ditch to move past the front of the first truck, firing suppressing shots intermittently.
They had already crawled past Yusuf Khan’s lead truck, surpassing the 100-meter mark before the summit. The trajectory of the Wuhan gangsters' bullets, which had been raking across the trailer trucks, began to shift, concentrating their fire into the ditch instead.
“You’re safe now.” I felt a wave of relief as the Grim Reaper turned its face elsewhere.
The flashes of light from the gun barrels scattered across the summit allowed me to estimate the number of opponents. The weapons the other side was unleashing were clearly superior in volume!
The sounds of various types of firearms clashing continuously echoed through the mountains. I gripped the silver gun in my hand so tightly I shook, feeling the mass of death swarming all around this truck.
This wasn't just a simple debt collection or a robbery... it was a small-scale war in the middle of a valley where no one could lend a helping hand.
"Bang-bang-bang!" The gangsters fired down incessantly, but why had Bro’s group suddenly gone dead silent?
A hand grenade exploded in the middle of the road. I quickly scanned the area but saw no one. Bullets chewed through the dirt at the edge of the ditch, sending debris flying.
“....................” My heart sank.
The sudden silence was even more terrifying than the sound of the bullets. The Wuhan mafia moved their forces down, unleashing a massive volley of fire at the spot where Bro’s group was last seen.
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“...................” I stopped breathing.
“Did they lose?” I jumped in shock; the bob-haired girl had poked her face out right next to mine.
“Go hide behind the seat.”
“I want to see too.”
“If you want to watch, stay behind the seat!”
I turned back to focus on the darkness, my heart trembling violently. My breathing was so constricted it pained my chest. It was so silent that I began to think they might be wounded and in need of help.
“Don’t get out of the truck.”
“I’m not stupid. Why would I go down there just to get shot?”
I felt relieved hearing that. Deciding to abandon the driver’s position, I gripped the silver gun he had entrusted to me and leapt out of the truck.
I tried to roll, mimicking what I had seen, but before I could even reach the ditch, my peripheral vision caught the sight of dark shadows jumping down right after me.
The sound of footsteps hitting the asphalt amidst the silence snapped me back to reality.
“Run fast, Unnie!” The two girls were sprinting away, fleeing back toward the end of the convoy for dear life.
“Dammit!”
In that second, my mind wavered violently. I couldn't decide whether to go find my brother, who had gone silent, or go back and grab them.
But then... Sawn’s voice bellowed out, shattering the silence…
“Close your eyes!”
A blinding flash from a flashbang grenade scorched through the darkness.
Yusuf Khan stood firm within the shadows. He shouldered a strange iron tube with a warhead shaped like a lotus bud, aiming it toward the summit.
“Thump!—Whiz!—BOOM!” A massive force slammed into the center of the four cars, vibrating through the entire mountain. Flames erupted in an instant, revealing flickering silhouettes of people writhing in agony amidst the inferno.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!” Sequential explosions sent three of the cars soaring into the air before they crashed back down, the sound of crushing steel echoing loudly. The flames leaped high toward the sky, painting the entire valley in the color of blood.
Khan didn't give the enemy a single second to recover. He quickly aimed that giant iron tube once more…
“Thump!—Whiz!—BOOM!”
A giant fireball exploded on the left side, near the edge of the cliff. The impact swept away everything in its path, sending bodies flying through the air from the sheer pressure.
“…………………” The deadly silence of the mountain was replaced by total devastation.
“Light 'em up!” Bro and Sawn charged out, splitting into two teams with speed and systematic precision.
I watched the images of people writhing before me, thinking to myself with pity... You guys are truly unlucky. The "Wuhan Dragons" have come to an end, their bodies turning to dust on this very mountain.
The sound of gunfire rang out, one shot at a time, calm and deliberate. It wasn't a firefight; it was the closing of accounts for those who still had a faint breath of life left. Then, everything returned to silence once again.
“Law books didn't prepare me for this.” I suddenly remembered the two girls and quickly turned back to look… They had run down the slope quite a distance already, but they hadn't yet passed the last trailer truck of the convoy parked in a long line below.
“Bro! Please radio the trucks at the back and tell them to catch my girls for me! She had a fight with me and is sulking, trying to go home.” I still did them the honor of making up a lie to cover for them. They’re definitely going to get it when they come back.
I rushed over to the others who were surveying the corpses on the hill.
“They picked the wrong convoy.” Bro walked straight toward Yusuf Khan.
“The path is clear. Dust to dust.”
“Jetdoe! Khan... you put on the fireworks show all by yourself, huh?”
The sound of palms striking together rang out loudly in place of a thank you.
They bumped shoulders and laughed in high spirits, moving along to repeat the same gesture with each of their brothers-in-arms one by one.
Yusuf Khan turned around with a wide grin. His green eyes, reflecting the flames of a victor who had just unleashed his primal instincts amidst the inferno, were truly a sight to behold.
Bro raised the radio to issue orders… “Everyone, come up here and help clear the area. Sweep it clean.”
To me, the scene before my eyes was horrific beyond description. The charred wreckage of cars and the corpses scattered in gruesome conditions—the smell of burning fuel mixed with the metallic stench of blood hung heavy in the air. Worst of all was the smell of burnt flesh, so nauseating it made my stomach churn.
“Do you think anyone survived, Sawn?” Yusuf Khan asked, while his right foot toyed with a severed head that had been torn from its body, rolling it back and forth like a soccer ball before winding up and kicking it deep into the abyss of the valley.
Sawn was moonwalking, having fun amidst the corpses strewn across the ground… “I don’t know either. I’ve counted nineteen lying dead on the road. Plenty more fell over the cliff. As for those over there in the dark, they’re too shredded to count,” he replied, using his foot to nudge a human part aside before sliding toward the shoulder of the road.
I was stunned by his chilled-out demeanor. Was the Sawn who always scooped food for me and took such good care of me really the same person as this man?
Bro pointed his finger and shouted orders... “Sisamorn and Ram, tell them to clear all those corpses and cars. Throw everything off the cliff. Destroy as much evidence as possible.”
“Sisamorn! Tell them to use adhesive patches over the bullet holes on Khan’s truck. Then mix some engine oil with dirt and smear it over the scars to hide them. Cover the whole thing with a tarp!”
I stood there, mesmerized by the systematic command in such a high-stakes emergency. It was like a textbook of a world I had never known existed.
He turned to look at me with a frown, then glanced toward the truck. “Tan, why the hell did you get down?”
“I wanted to see. Why haven't I seen Loweis here?”
“Oh, right! He's probably got a headache. Whatever.” He paid it no mind, walking over to wrap his arm around Sawn’s shoulder and whispering softly… “You and I need to change routes. We won’t go through Chongqing. It’s better to cut down through Guizhou Province and head straight to Kunming... What do you think?”
I didn't wait for an answer; I half-ran, half-walked back down when I saw the cleanup team dragging and pulling the two girls upward. I quickly yanked the two girls along to get them back on the truck, feeling utterly frustrated.
“..............” Once the truck door closed shut, the silence inside the cabin felt even heavier than the explosions outside.
I turned to face the two girls and shouted at the top of my lungs, losing my cool… “Do you want to die that badly?!”
The middle-finger girl simply tilted her head up and looked away. That attitude of hers was like splashing gasoline onto the fire raging in my heart.
“If you two had been caught in the crossfire and ended up dead, have you thought about how much your parents would grieve? Huh?”
“Then just let me go!” Her gaze was stubborn, showing not a hint of fear.
“At first, I thought I’d let you off once we found a safe place. But since things have come this far, I have to find out what you two stole from them.”
“I didn't steal anything. Don't you dare accuse me!” At that moment, her eyes darted toward her older sister’s backpack.
“Still being stubborn? Should I just shoot you and get it over with?” I shifted the gun. Her sister noticeably gripped the backpack tighter, hugging it close.
“Che! Your hands are still shaking. Stop acting tough.” The middle-finger girl didn't flinch; her neck remained as straight as if her spine were braced with steel, deliberately tilting her chin up.
The gaze that had once looked on in terror when facing Bro had changed; now she looked at me as if I were nothing but thin air…
“‘Go ahead then,’” her voice was a mocking challenge. “‘Shoot if you want. If you’re brave enough.’”
“Don’t test me!” That challenge sent my blood pumping with rage. This girl wasn’t just stubborn… she was a walking disaster, plain and simple!
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