Chapter 101: The Treacherous Mine

Sade’s leg had just begun to move when it suddenly froze. He asked in confusion, “What’s wrong, Mr. Yang?”

Yang Jie Kai walked over, shoved Sade aside, and studied the conspicuous tripwire hidden in the grass for a moment. Then he casually reached out and yanked it free.

The motion made Sade break out in a cold sweat, but after a moment, no sound came from anywhere.

After pulling loose the tripwire attached to the decoy mine, Yang Jie Kai continued forward and slowly felt his way toward a patch of dead leaves roughly half a meter beyond it.

He gently brushed the leaves aside, revealing something that looked like an iron nail.

The moment Sade saw it, cold sweat poured down his face. He felt as though he had just escaped death.

It was a booby trap. The obvious tripwire had merely been a decoy. Anyone acting normally would step over it and continue forward, only to trigger the nail-like mechanism beneath their foot.

“Mr. Yang, this is a minefield. We have to leave immediately.” Sade spoke with sweat covering his face, still shaken by his narrow escape.

Yang Jie Kai stared at the nail-shaped trigger for a moment. Then he drew his military dagger and began carefully scraping away the loose soil beside it, revealing a round land mine.

Sade, standing nearby, was utterly perplexed. Once they had discovered the mine, they could simply go around it. Why risk their lives trying to defuse it?

Yang Jie Kai had his back to him, so Sade could not see his expression. If he had, he would have been so astonished that his mouth would have fallen open.

Because Yang Jie Kai was smiling.

I hope you don’t disappoint me.

After carefully defusing the round mine, Yang Jie Kai did not hurry to remove it. Instead, he drove his dagger into the soil beside it. Just as he had expected, the blade struck something else.

He cautiously scraped away more of the loose earth. When the object beneath was exposed, Sade was so shocked that his jaw nearly hit the ground.

There was another mine beneath the first one.

If Sade had been the one handling it, even after discovering the booby trap, he would certainly have been blown to pieces. He could never have imagined that another mine was connected beneath the first.

Yang Jie Kai smiled.

Judging from the way the trap had been buried, its creator was undoubtedly a master of the highest order.

And he knew that the King of Snipers, Moska, was particularly fond of this sort of trick—mines hidden beneath mines, reality concealed within deception.

It seemed Moska was here.

“Sade, issue the order immediately. Have everyone withdraw.”

Now that he had found traces of Moska, there was no longer any point in using those soldiers to cast such a reckless search net, regardless of whether they lived or died.

Besides, against an expert like Moska, those men would only be a burden.

When Sade received the order, it sounded to him like heavenly music. Though he could not identify the man who had planted the trap, he knew that its creator had to be a supreme expert. Continuing forward would simply amount to suicide.

Yang Jie Kai proceeded alone.

This time, he no longer allowed himself to be careless. With every step, he paid close attention to the slightest movement around him.

Some said that the King of Snipers, Moska, was an emissary of Satan. Anyone who had ever been caught in his sights would eventually descend into hell.

Yang Jie Kai dared not lower his guard.

For a truly elite sniper, marksmanship was only the foundation. He also had to be an expert in concealment and camouflage, understand various forms of behavioral psychology, and know how to plant all kinds of deadly traps.

Yang Jie Kai continued forward. He encountered no further resistance, but he defused four extraordinarily intricate booby traps in succession. By then, he was certain that Moska was somewhere in this dense forest.

He walked on for a while longer without finding another trap.

Yang Jie Kai frowned slightly, slung the sniper rifle across his back, and switched to an M4 assault rifle.

Before long, he encountered a well-equipped squad. After a brief exchange of fire, Yang Jie Kai’s shots never missed, and he quickly wiped out the entire unit.

He had taken only a few more steps when his pupils suddenly contracted. His body curled into a ball, and he rolled sharply to the side before springing diagonally upward at an astonishing angle.

Crack!

A bullet flew past him, grazing his body before striking the ground.

Yang Jie Kai rolled behind a large tree, his forehead covered in sweat.

Moska had arrived.

That squad had been nothing more than human bait. Moska had probably heard no explosions from the traps and had therefore guessed that the intruder was a formidable expert. So he had decided to strike first.

Crouching behind the tree, Yang Jie Kai slowly removed his equipment piece by piece.

When facing the King of Snipers, the lighter one’s body, the better. This was not close-quarters combat. In a duel against the King of Snipers, life and death were decided within a hair’s breadth.

One second. Two seconds.

A minute. Two minutes.

An hour passed, yet neither side made the first move.

When masters crossed weapons, they usually needed only a single exchange to gauge one another’s strength.

Moska, hidden in the darkness, had failed to hit his target with that first shot. Moreover, the opponent’s military evasive maneuver had revealed that he, too, was a genuine expert.

Yang Jie Kai, meanwhile, had seen from that single shot that Moska was even more dangerous than he had imagined. If he had not survived the biochemical bomb attack and undergone a physical mutation that had enhanced his speed and strength, he would already have been dead.

The two men remained concealed, locked in a silent standoff. Though neither moved, the strain of maintaining such intense vigilance consumed no less energy than running a marathon.

In a duel between two supreme snipers, victory belonged to whoever could endure the longer silence.

Yang Jie Kai was certainly under more pressure than Moska. If another enemy unit arrived and began searching the area, he would be finished.

He waited for the perfect opportunity.

At last, it came.

A mountain wind suddenly rose. Yang Jie Kai kicked hard at the dead leaves on the ground, sending them whirling in all directions as the wind caught them.

His body abruptly lunged to the side.

Crack!

The two sniper rifles fired almost simultaneously. A bullet skimmed past Yang Jie Kai’s forehead.

He lay on the ground, gasping heavily, yet a smile curved across his lips.

The exchange had been simple, but only the two men involved knew how dangerous it truly was.

In the distance, Moska’s hand still gripped his sniper rifle, but a gaping hole had been torn through his forehead.

The sudden mountain wind and the scattering leaves had slightly disrupted his vision. His reaction had been delayed by only a few milliseconds—but those few milliseconds had cost him his life.

Mission accomplished. Withdraw.

Anyone who did not know the truth might think Moska had been defeated with ease.

The answer was, of course, no.

Only Yang Jie Kai understood how close he had come to death. It was probably the first time in his life he had stood so near to the Grim Reaper. Only he knew that luck had played a part in his victory. If that mountain wind had not risen at precisely that moment, or if there had not happened to be a pile of dead leaves beneath his feet, then once Moska had locked onto him, Yang Jie Kai would have been the one to fall.

The more highly skilled the opponents, the simpler the confrontation appeared.

Naturally, he did not go looking for Zaka to collect his five-million-dollar commission. That old fox had surely laid a vast trap and was waiting for him to walk straight into it.

But none of that mattered to him anymore.

It was only after boarding the flight back to Huaxia that Yang Jie Kai finally let out a long breath.

“Sir, would you like some juice or coffee?” a beautiful flight attendant asked politely as she approached.

“No, thank you. Plain water will do.” Yang Jie Kai leaned back in his seat in the most comfortable position he could find.

At that moment, a woman’s voice came from beside him.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee.”

The voice sounded strangely familiar. Yang Jie Kai turned his head and saw a woman whose delicate features were flawless. She looked familiar, but he could not immediately remember where he had seen her before.

Just then, the television screen in the first-class cabin began showing footage from a concert by a famous Huaxian actress.

Yang Jie Kai slapped his forehead.

Damn, he had run into a celebrity.

Only then did he remember that the fair-skinned beauty beside him was Liu Yan, a hugely popular actress throughout Huaxia. Her most famous feature was her astonishingly ample figure, which had made her the dream lover of countless men.

“Wow, I never expected to find a major celebrity sitting beside me!”

Yang Jie Kai glanced at the two enticing curves beneath Liu Yan’s dress and swallowed. “Miss Celebrity, how about we get acquainted? My name is Yang Jie Kai.”

Liu Yan shot him a sidelong glance, smiled, and replied politely, “Hello, Mr. Yang.”

Liu Yan’s greatest virtue was that she never acted like a star. She had no airs whatsoever. Despite having been famous for many years, she had never been involved in even the slightest scandal—a rare thing in Huaxia’s entertainment industry.

Yang Jie Kai was about to say something when the flight attendant poured him a glass of water.

At the same time, she handed Liu Yan a cup of coffee.

Just as Liu Yan was about to reach for it, Yang Jie Kai suddenly snatched the coffee first. He held it beneath his nose, sniffed it, and said to the flight attendant, “Miss, why does this coffee smell strange? Is it expired?”

“Of course not. It was freshly brewed.” The flight attendant responded politely.

Yang Jie Kai continued, “Do you like coffee? If it’s all right with you, may I give this cup to you?”

The flight attendant froze for a moment, then smiled. “I’m sorry, sir. If you need another cup, I can pour you one. There are still many passengers waiting behind you, so please don’t hold everyone up.”

Yang Jie Kai toyed with the coffee cup in his hand and said pointedly, “If Miss Liu Yan drank this coffee, I imagine it would break the hearts of quite a few fans, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The flight attendant’s expression had begun to change.

“Mr. Yang, would you please hand me the coffee?” Liu Yan asked politely.

Yang Jie Kai smiled at her. “Miss Liu Yan, have you offended someone recently?”

Liu Yan was startled. She had no idea why he had suddenly said that.

Yang Jie Kai smiled. “Otherwise, why would someone put poison in your coffee?”

Then he turned back toward the flight attendant with a smile.

“Miss, am I right?”

The flight attendant’s expression changed drastically. She suddenly pulled a sharp knife from the serving tray and lunged viciously at Liu Yan.