In the forest, Luo Jun sprinted wildly like a frenzied wolf with blood-red eyes, leaping and dashing fearlessly through the trees.
Though he ran swiftly, each of his steps was carefully placed.
Despite parts of his ghillie suit being snagged by brambles, Luo Jun no longer feared being tracked by snipers, for a simple reason - among the fifty mercenaries, three sniper teams were the limit, and the other mercenaries, though skilled in sniping, were far from the level of the original three professional teams.
Thus, Luo Jun no longer needed to move as cautiously as before.
He pushed his physical limits to the extreme, his muscles tensed like steel.
Suddenly, his footsteps came to an abrupt halt as he crouched like a weasel beneath a tree.
He struggled to control his heavy breathing.
His cautious gaze fell upon the leaf-covered ground ahead, where too many footprints were visible, filled with puddles of water - clearly, they had just been made.
"They're up ahead!"
Luo Jun felt relieved, for had he been any later in killing that sniper, he would have been unable to escape!
Crouching low, Luo Jun followed the footprints, and after half an hour, he heard the faint voices of the group's advance, now in the Character-Shaped Mountain Valley, only about fifty meters away.
Luo Jun found a slightly elevated position and observed a group of twenty to thirty people moving forward.
Among them were indeed mercenaries and survivors, with the survivors leading the way, and the mercenaries behind, weapons in hand, vigilantly guarding the surroundings.
Luo Jun quickened his pace towards the spot where the enemy sniper had died.
The lack of radios for these men greatly aided Luo Jun, for a unit without real-time intelligence was akin to a blind force.
By the time he was five hundred meters ahead of them, Luo Jun had already reached the lowest position of the sniper he had killed, whose death was gruesome.
A bullet had blown open the top of his skull, spilling brain matter everywhere, the stench of blood nearly unbearable.
Luo Jun was unfazed by such sights, and he took some chocolate, three grenades, and a green canteen from the body.
Next, he found the man whose leg had been shattered by a bullet, but not only was one leg blown off, the other was barely hanging by shreds of flesh, his body drained of blood.
The SV-98 sniper rifle he had taken lay two meters ahead, and after ensuring there was no grenade attached to the trigger, Luo Jun picked it up.
Likewise, he collected the food, canteen, and grenades from this spotter's body.
He then found the two other snipers, their deaths equally gruesome, though better off than the two hit by the Barrett anti-materiel rifle - one could hardly imagine the damage such a tank-busting round would do to a human body.
Luo Jun removed the magazines from the collected guns and put them in the pockets of his ghillie suit.
He then hid the rifles, deciding to retrieve them after dealing with the mercenaries, as the sniper rifles could prove useful.
Raising an SV-98, Luo Jun gazed towards the valley, where the group trudged on like mountain explorers, struggling to advance. He refrained from opening fire now, as if he did, they would scatter into the forest, making them impossible to track down - if even one escaped and made it back, his plan to return to the ship would be ruined.
"1, 2, 3... including the four snipers killed, there are 21 mercenaries in total!"
Luo Jun's mind raced. He hadn't expected them to send so many - that meant only six mercenaries remained on the ship!
Only six!
Jones had indeed betrayed him!
On the ship at that moment, Jones stood atop the corpses, puffing on a cigar as he gazed towards the forest, knowing a fierce battle loomed, but it no longer concerned him.
"Goodbye, Mr. Lee."
With those words, Jones drove all the women off the ship and steered the vessel into the distance.
One by one, he fed the corpses on the large ship to the fish in the sea.
He had been planning this since that night in the tent - he needed this ship, he needed to leave this place and treat his disabilities!
So he would trade the intelligence on this island to Smith, letting him use the US military's nuclear technology to create a pair of flexible, durable prosthetic limbs and repair the tendon damage in his legs.
Only then could he hope to return to his prime.
The women Jones had driven off huddled crying in the tents, bewildered, even the woman who had accompanied him and her daughter were left behind.
She should have known - a killer has no heart, and any affection she gave him was merely a value exchange in his eyes.
Luo Jun was so enraged he wanted to curse Jones out, for he should never have trusted him.
But at the time, he truly had no choice but to cooperate with him.
What made it even more frustrating was that he had foolishly believed Jones had developed some camaraderie with these people - now he saw it was all his own delusion.
For a underground assassin like Jones, who had experienced countless brutal killings, any capacity for emotion had long been eroded by slaughter.
Luo Jun now didn't even know if the intelligence Jones had provided was still reliable, for he had been deceived - among the information Jones had given, there was certainly some truth, because assassins were trained in micro-expressions and psychology; if Jones had been lying, it would have been easy to detect.
So most of the information he shared was likely true, with only a small portion fabricated - that fabricated part was probably his intent to cooperate.
There was no way to go back to the beach and settle the score with Jones now - he had probably been gone for half a day already, and even if Luo Jun flew back, there would be no trace of the ship left.
Luo Jun gathered his frazzled emotions and set off again.
He decided to keep following these people and see if there really was any secret on this island.
In fact, Jones had not told Luo Jun that the first team had already penetrated the heart of the island and brought back some strange, shimmering fragments.
But that was only a small part of it.
Jones had intercepted the intelligence, taking the shimmering fragments and hand-drawn maps from those mercenaries who had gone insane.
Only the other mercenaries and survivors were unaware of this.
All Jones wanted was this intelligence, for with it, he could trade with Smith for what he desired.
As for the ship's crew, Jones knew Luo Jun would rescue them, so he felt at ease leaving - it was just that he could not take the women with him, for that would force him to deal with their presence, which would directly impact all his plans.
After all, anyone leaving this island was a problem, let alone bringing along so many women.