Guxiechen was brought onto the raging battlefield, standing precariously on the weapon pylon of an armed helicopter.

The Hallsom family was the second Electoral Family of the Romanians; the meaning of an Electoral Family was that the Romanian King could only descend from their direct lineage. The hidden influence the Hallsom family wielded was staggering; even on a routine smuggling run, they had over two hundred high-ranking Romanian warriors accompanying the transport ship.

The massive explosion in the stern engines cleanly eliminated over seventy of the closest high-ranking Romanian warriors. Of the remaining hundred-plus, about forty were incapacitated, while the other eighty or so were merely thrown clear, suffering only minor shocks; protected by their energy armor, they retained full combat capability.

The elite soldiers of the Hell's Angels Mercenary Group burst from the dense jungle, and the Romanian high-ranking warriors immediately launched a torrential counterattack.

Voiceless, bowl-sized high-energy particle beams erupted from their long-hafted poleaxes. These comet-like streams instantly ionized the surrounding air, each one whipping up a super-strong plasma cloud nearly a meter in diameter. They surged toward the Hell's Angels mercenaries like falling meteors. The mercs, fully kitted out and just emerging from the woods, were slammed head-on. Plasma clouds burst forth, scattering torn bodies as their equipment—grenades and ammunition clips—detonated, filling the jungle with a sound like popping beans.

A few light armored vehicles had just cleared the tree line, their dual heavy-caliber rotary cannons having fired barely a dozen shells, when dozens of particle beams struck them from above. The armor plating was pierced with bowl-sized holes. The plasma clouds exploded within the cramped interiors, and the drivers managed only a final, agonizing scream before dissolving into thin smoke amidst flashes of brilliant blue light. The multi-ton vehicles were hurled dozens of meters before exploding, mowing down another swath of nearby mercenaries.

The eighty-odd Romanian warriors, maintaining precise fire, consolidated their position, using the large, burning wreckage on the landing pad as cover. They managed to stubbornly halt the charge of several thousand mercenary fighters. Occasionally, an exceptionally brave mercenary managed to close the distance, but before they could even bring their machine guns to bear, the Romanians unleashed their psychic shockwaves. Mercenaries staggered back, blood streaming from all seven orifices; worse still, some had their brains instantly reduced to mush, dying on the spot.

Suddenly, a massive metal plate rose from the center of the landing pad, revealing the slow emergence of a new tunnel entrance. Hundreds of mercenaries from the Holy Unicorn Mercenary Group sprinted out, pushing enormous mobile tower shields. These custom shields stood two meters high, one and a half meters wide, and a full foot thick, constructed from laboratory-grade crystalline metal composites possessing immense flexibility and extreme hardness; ordinary heavy artillery shells were useless against them unless they were specialized high-velocity armor-piercing missiles.

The mobile tower shields were rapidly assembled into bunkers across the landing field, into which the Romanian warriors slowly retreated. Sheltered by these astonishingly resilient defenses, the eighty-odd Romanians, armed with their poleaxes, coupled with the several hundred Holy Unicorn mercenaries, fought with surprising effectiveness, pinning the thousands of Hell's Angels back in the dense jungle, unable to advance.

It was at this precise moment that Guxiechen arrived, having just captured Jilt Hallsom.

Eight heavy armed helicopters opened fire simultaneously about two to three kilometers from the landing pad. Ninety-six onboard high-speed missiles screamed toward the constantly shifting tower shields. Dozens of fiery blooms engulfed nearly half the landing field; more than a dozen tower shields were pulverized, and the mercenaries sheltering behind them were left mangled or dead. Dozens of Romanian warriors, enveloped in flickering blue flames, climbed out of the dirt, covered in thick smoke, cursing furiously as they fired wildly at the distant helicopters.

Hundreds of high-energy particle beams roared in. Guxiechen kicked the captive Jilt Hallsom, along with that strange alloy case he clutched, out of the helicopter cabin. He tumbled head-over-heels in freefall toward the forest below. Just ten meters above his head, the armed helicopter he had been riding exploded into fragments amidst the fire. Countless metal shards, trailing black smoke and flame, showered down, skimming past Guxiechen’s tightly balled body toward the jungle. With several sharp hissing sounds, Guxiechen’s buttocks and thighs were raked with bleeding cuts from the shrapnel.

"Damn it!"

Guxiechen’s face contorted in pain. He hastily channeled his protective Gang Qi to blast away several head-sized pieces of debris, only to suddenly see a metal spike, over two meters long, fall with lethal precision, cleanly skewering Jilt Hallsom’s head. Blood sprayed outward as the unconscious Jilt Hallsom blindly met the god of his Romanian people.

"The battlefield is indeed treacherous!"

The dead were no longer worthy of pity. Guxiechen thrust his right foot out, borrowing a powerful rebound force off Jilt Hallsom’s body. Just ten meters from the ground, he sprang upward lightly, arcing toward the furiously firing Romanian warriors on the landing pad. Directly behind him, fighters like Banruo from the Hell's Angels Mercenary Group followed the same trajectory, gripping weapons of all kinds as they charged the Romanians in the center of the field.

The Behrd Captain, roaring instructions into his comms, frantically adjusted the mercenary group’s deployment. Dozens of mass driver rounds detonated above the Romanians’ heads, their energy shields weakening to their lowest possible setting. Grenades and small-caliber shells continued to explode across the field, and the resulting shrapnel scythed through the Holy Unicorn mercenaries positioned behind the Romanians.

Guxiechen closed in on a Romanian warrior whose energy shield had been depleted by the electromagnetic blasts. He used no weapon; the Snow Soul Divine Claws were his ultimate tool.

A faint, hazy chill trailed the tips of his claws as Guxiechen, with a brilliant smile, ripped open the armor plating of the Romanian. A dull, fleshy thud sounded as his right claw struck the man’s lower abdomen. A thick, bowl-sized pillar of golden blood immediately erupted from the shocked warrior’s back. The savage Gang Jin whipped up hundreds of blood droplets the size of bullets, and the intensely cold Snow Soul True Gang instantly froze the hot Romanian blood into marble-hard pellets. It was like a machine gun firing at point-blank range, hundreds of these blood spheres sweeping across the Romanian warriors standing in front of Guxiechen.

The blood beads tore effortlessly through the bodies of the remaining Romanians; their energy-depleted armor could no longer protect their fragile forms. Golden blood sprayed across the field; the Snow Soul True Gang contained within the frozen beads locked the Romanians in place, and over thirty of them froze solid with blue-tinged faces.

Banruo and the other fighters crashed into the melee. Whether Romanian warriors or Holy Unicorn mercenaries, they could not contend with the impact of Xiantian-level masters. Their weapons were utterly incapable of threatening Banruo and the others, whose movements flickered like ghosts. The resistance collapsed in under a minute. Large groups of mercenaries broke formation and fled, only to be swiftly cut down by the Hell's Angels fighters waiting in the jungle.

The Hell's Angels stormed the underground base, eliminating the remaining Holy Unicorn personnel and securing all spoils and vital documents.

Once all the cleanup was complete, three cigar-shaped vessels, nearly two hundred meters long, descended from the upper atmosphere with a piercing shriek. Their matte-black hulls were covered in a layer of fish-scale external armor, dotted with over a hundred tiny blinking lights—indicators for the ship’s external sensors. Near the rear engines of each ship was a ten-meter-wide shield-shaped insignia: a two-headed dragon wreathed in black flame, grasping a shield and a sword in its claws—the emblem of the Earth Federation Army.

The ships settled stably on the landing pad, and nearly a thousand fully armed, regular soldiers of the Earth Federation Army poured out of the hatches. The highly disciplined troops quickly secured all key positions on the field.

The Hell's Angels mercenaries withdrew from the underground base, each soldier’s arms stuffed full of various recovered items. Federation Army soldiers then took over, taking full control of the facility.

The Behrd Captain, along with Guxiechen and the other high-ranking officers and Dou Shi-level masters of the mercenary group, approached one of the vessels. A middle-aged man in the uniform of a Federation Army Major General strode down the ramp, smiling broadly, accompanied by several field-grade officers.

The Behrd Captain exchanged enthusiastic greetings with Major General Smith. Guxiechen was surprised to find the Captain and Smith seemed to share a surprisingly close relationship. After a brief exchange, the Behrd Captain and Major General Smith struck a deal: all captured spoils would go to the mercenary group, and Major General Smith would additionally gift a batch of standard military ordnance to Hell's Angels. In return, the credit for the operation would belong entirely to the Federation Army—eliminating hundreds of Romanian warriors, wiping out numerous armed smugglers dealing privately with the Romanians, and destroying a Romanian first-class warship—this was substantial merit, enough to add a glorious page to General Smith’s military evaluation records.

Watching the arm-in-arm familiarity between the Behrd Captain and Major General Smith, Guxiechen finally understood why the military satellites of the African Military District had been guiding the mercenaries' missiles.

The exchange of interests took less than an hour. An hour later, the elite soldiers of the Hell's Angels Mercenary Group departed the Black Forest aboard transport planes.

Guxiechen sat atop the metal case confiscated from Jilt Hallsom, a cigar clamped between his teeth, drifting into a light doze.

Beside him, Banruo held a laptop, calculating Guxiechen’s battle achievements for the operation. After a period of focused muttering and tapping, Banruo firmly nudged Guxiechen’s shoulder and placed the laptop in front of him.

"Well done, Evil Dragon. Was this your first time on a proper battlefield?"

Thick cigar smoke puffed from Guxiechen’s nostrils as he reveled in the unique languor and comfort that followed bloody slaughter.

He nodded slightly, leaning back against the transport’s bulkhead, and asked vaguely, "Yes. What is it?"

"Congratulations. You personally took down thirty-eight Romanians this time." Banruo glanced at Guxiechen with envy. "You absolutely have to treat us to a big meal when we get back."

"Thirty-eight Romanians? How much are they worth?" Guxiechen’s interest was piqued.

"Hmm, set price, fifty thousand each! If captured alive, five hundred thousand each!" Banruo sighed with regret, tapping the side of the laptop. "Too bad that leader died unexpectedly. If we had captured him alive, considering the caliber of his armor, he’d be worth at least ten million!"

"Wow! That’s expensive!"

Guxiechen immediately regained his energy, sitting up straight and giving a hard pat to the metal case beneath him.

"Hey, then I’m genuinely curious—what kind of treasure made a Romanian master flee with it, abandoning all his attendants the moment things went south?"

Banruo’s eyes shone with the eerie green light unique to a hungry wolf.

"It looks like a coffin!" Banruo nodded solemnly. "Could there be a great beauty inside?"

A thick leg stomped heavily onto the metal case. The Behrd Captain, also puffing furiously on a large cigar, looked down from above and roared, "Whatever it is! If it’s valuable merchandise, according to group rules, fifty percent goes to the treasury, and the other half belongs to Evil Dragon! If it’s a great beauty, well, that belongs entirely to Evil Dragon!"

Tapping the solid metal case repeatedly, Guxiechen’s curiosity intensified beyond measure.

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