In the close confines of the manhole, Tang Wantian was overcome by claustrophobia, feeling suffocated and having extreme tightness in her chest. She felt like she was being buried alive and was in agony. The only light she got was the one that shone through a little hole in the manhole cover, which was also her only source of clean air. As the minutes ticked by, it became unbearable, and she felt an overwhelming urge to scream out for Xiao Luo and ask him to lift the manhole cover.
But, suddenly, she heard the disorderly sound of countless heavy boots marching right over her in the streets above. It frightened her, and she held her breath. Then, she heard vehicles rumbling nearby, and she knew that the Libyan rebel fighters had arrived.
***
“Lieutenant Colonel!”
A Libyan rebel captain saluted Hamis.
“Where is he?” Hamis asked in an anxious, husky voice.
“Over there, atop the public residential building,” the captain answered as he pointed at the seven or eight-story building in the distance.
Hamis pushed him aside aggressively and scowled, “Sh*t! If you know that he is there, why haven’t you taken him down?”
Hamis glared at the captain, then stormed out and was ready to take matters into his own hands.
The captain stopped him and said, “No, Lieutenant Colonel, the man is a crack shot. Dozens of our men were already shot dead by him, all with one shot to the head.”
“All with one shot to the head?”
Hamis was so shocked that his eyes opened wide. A captain had already reported to him a similar incident that occurred in a nearby factory. He was sure that the shooter hiding in the factory was also this Mie, and his marksmanship was not to be underestimated.
“Yes, Lieutenant Colonel,” the captain said, nodding his head affirmatively, “they have all taken cover, and we are awaiting your command. Please give us your orders!”
Hamis was furious and glared at the captain. “F*ck the orders! I want the men to storm the building, and I’ll give whoever captures him alive a hundred thousand dollars!” he roared. He had more than 800 men; why should he be afraid of a sniper whose location was known? There was no way that a lone shooter could stop an entire contingent of men converging into his spot in unending waves of fearless fighters.
“Yes, Sir.”
The captain answered solemnly and passed down Hamis’s order.
Huge sums of money would turn any man into a hero. After hearing of the hundred thousand dollars reward, the Libyan rebel fighters rushed frantically toward the residential building from all directions.
“Come on then. No matter how many of you there are, I’ll kill you all!”
In the building, Xiao Luo’s eyes glowered murderously, and the beast in him had awakened. An evil essence manifested within him and a strange emanated from his body.
A force of two hundred Libyan rebels surged into the residential building’s ground floor, with the intent of overpowering Xiao Luo with the sheer number of their men. But, without any warning, the ceiling above them came crashing down at precisely that instant. And dozens of them died on the spot. Massive blocks of concrete blocks with jagged edges and exposed rebars smashed into the rebels, cutting through flesh and bone and causing internal organs and intestines to spill out of their bodies. The scene was unspeakably gruesome.
The other rebel fighters were momentarily startled before they regrouped and scrambled up the stairs to the upper floors.
When they set foot on the third floor, a black object was thrown from a corner of the space. It sailed through the air, bounced off several steps before rolling down the staircase into the crowd of rebels.
“It’s a hand grenade!!!”
One of the rebel fighters screamed with his eyes bulging in horror.
Immediately, the hand grenade blew up, sending shrapnel and a wave of heated gas rippling through the stairway. Piercing cries of anguish could be heard as smoke billowed and limbs were flung into the air. Dozens of the rebels died, and their badly burnt bodies were strewn all over the stairway.
“Hiss…”
They had been persuaded by the offer of a large reward, but the gruesome sight made the rebel fighters gasp, and many of them started to retreat in panic. Their opponent had the advantage of high ground, and if they continued to ascend the building without a plan, they would all be killed by grenades before even reaching the top floor.
“Hey, what are you thinking?”
Taking cover, the rebels heard a voice mock them from the above.
The Libyan rebels looked up instinctively and saw Mie, the lone sniper, whom their lieutenant colonel had ordered captured alive with a hundred thousand dollars bounty on his head.
BANG! BANG! RAT TAT TATAT!
They immediately reacted and started to shoot blindly.
However, Xiao Luo was quicker and more agile, and he had already moved away from the stairwell entrance when they started shooting.
The rebel fighters did not hesitate this time, and they went after Mie with a vengeance. Just as they reached the fifth floor, they saw a man wearing camouflage fatigue standing in a battle-wracked and empty hall with his back to them.
“Put your hands in the air!”
The captain yelled, keeping his gun trained at Xiao Luo.
“Haha, haha, haha …”
Xiao Luo’s shoulders were shaking as he burst out in cold-blooded laughter.
The laughter made the rebel fighters cringe, and their hair stand on ends, for it was a mysterious, devilish laugh which struck fear into their hearts.
“Did you hear me? Put your hands in the air!” the captain yelled again.
Xiao Luo slowly turned around. “You guys don’t even know if you will still be alive in the next minute, and yet you think you have the right to ask me to put my hands in the air?”
There was no emotion in his eyes, and they were blood red and glowering–a sign to his enemies that he was lusting for blood. The temperature in the room suddenly plunged down to the freezing point.
R-red… his eyes had turned red!
The rebel fighters felt their very souls leave their bodies in fear, for they had never seen a man with these blood-red eyes. Instinctively, the captain sensed the danger, and his will to survive kicked in. “Open fire, kill the man!” he yelled.
Even a reward of a hundred thousand dollars suddenly did not seem like much, and in fear, the rebels pulled their triggers.
BANG! BANG! RAT TAT TATAT!
As their guns blazed away, bullets flew in all directions, and shell cases were strewn all over the ground. Hundreds of shots rained down on Xiao Luo in seconds.
But it never occurred to anyone that the moment they opened fire, Xiao Luo was no longer where he was.
He was gone?
Where did he go? Was he a ghost?
The rebel fighters were dumbstruck, and a sense of fear prevailed as they looked for Xiao Luo all over.
Suddenly, the captain felt a strange chill at the top of his head, and as he looked up, all he saw was a steel rod smashing down on his head. He did not even have the time to react as the steel rod smashed into his head forcefully.
THUD!
The captain fell dead when he got struck. His brain disintegrated into mush when the steel rod cracked his skull into pieces. Quantities of blood and whitish brain matter flew from his head, and all that was left of him was a decapitated corpse slumped on the ground.
The rebel fighters were horrified when they saw their captain lying dead without his head. This unknown man needed only one blow to do that– was he a human or a monster?
In fear, they started to shoot wildly.
But Xiao Luo turned into a phantom, and no bullets could hit him. He ran through the rebel lines in a flash and struck each one of them with a staggering blow to their heads using a steel rod that he had picked up.
Every blow took a rebel fighter down, and they all had their heads smashed in, splattering blood and brain matter all over the floor.
