"Understood," Du Zhanpeng sighed. "Then we attack head-on. Qin Fen, you're responsible for taking out that sniper immediately. Lin Ling and I, along with Wuyi, will focus on disrupting the AK fire. Everyone else will play it by ear."

"My marksmanship is no worse than anyone else's."

Du Peng voiced a cold protest.

Du Zhanpeng stood up, tidied his uniform, turned back, and gestured to the other recruits with a low command: "Follow Qin Fen closely. When we reach the large rock, split into two groups. Half follow me, half follow Qin Fen."

Du Zhanpeng finished speaking, lifted a leg, and walked into the rainforest, without giving Du Peng a single glance from start to finish. It was as if the young man didn't exist at all.

"Du Zhanpeng..."

Du Peng felt an urge to raise his rifle and shoot him dead right there. However, doing so on this island, the Du family would certainly not let it go easily. Even if he didn't fear death, what about his mother?

With Qin Fen, the seasoned guide, leading the way, the group quickly reached the position behind the large rock again.

Du Zhanpeng rapidly allocated the personnel. After finalizing the arrangements, he completely forgot to assign Du Peng to any squad.

Du Peng moved toward the right side of the large rock with the men assigned to him. Du Peng then heard Xing Wuyi quietly ask, "Du Peng, you didn't give him any orders."

"What orders would I give a piece of trash?" Du Zhanpeng retorted with a cold sneer. "What qualifications does he have for me to issue him orders?" A shockwave passed through Du Peng; his already grim face grew even colder.

"No qualifications, no qualifications, no qualifications..."

That sentence spun ceaselessly in Du Peng's mind like a curse. Since he could remember, he had heard Du Zhanpeng utter those words countless times.

Du Zhanpeng approached Qin Fen, extended his wrist, and then made a gesture to synchronize their watches. They were entering combat readiness. Hand signals were, after all, the safest form of communication.

The two synchronized their watches quickly. Du Zhanpeng then pointed to the position of the hand on Qin Fen's watch, confirming the firing time for the first shot once more.

Qin Fen nodded gravely. The instant this time arrived, he had to fire, or else any comrades flashing out immediately afterward could be locked onto by the sniper and killed with a single shot.

Carrying the Barrett M82A1 heavy sniper system, Qin Fen moved like a nimble cat toward the passage to the right of the large rock. Snake Head, Mute, Big Stone, and fifty others followed closely behind him in a tight formation. Du Peng, positioned in the middle of the group, crouched low, facing the opposite direction from the advancing members. In his hand, a P308 rapidly scanned the environment behind the formation. The moment there was any disturbance, he would become this team's guardian angel and messenger.

Almost simultaneously, all the new recruits released the safeties on their weapons. Snake Head nervously watched Qin Fen, whom he greatly admired. This recruit, responsible for initiating the first shot and ensuring the enemy sniper was eliminated, remained surprisingly relaxed, leaning against the massive boulder as if basking in the moonlight.

Du Zhanpeng glanced again at the hand on his wrist. He silently closed his eyes, calculating the time purely by intuition, no longer observing the movement of the hands.

He knew that watching his watch would be a distraction—it would put him at least half a beat behind Qin Fen. This half-beat might mean nothing ordinarily, but here, it could cost Qin Fen his life.

Click...

The watch hand ticked once, reaching the time they had agreed upon. Qin Fen rapidly lowered the muzzle of his rifle, which had been pointed skyward. His body moved in concert with his legs using the Luohan Buyun technique as he slipped into the center of the passage. At that instant, fire erupted from the muzzle of the Barrett M82A1 heavy sniper system. The massive gunshot echoed between the narrow mountain path walls.

The bullet, with a spin rate of 279mm/11 inches, tore through the air with a sharp, whistling sound.

The sniper, who had been lying in ambush in the pile of firewood on the roof of the second floor, was startled by Qin Fen's move. A sniper, using the martial art Luohan Buyun for movement? What accuracy could he possibly maintain then?

Before this thought fully formed, the bullet penetrated the scope of the sniper's equipment and drilled into his right eye. With a bang, the sniper's head exploded like a smashed watermelon, scattering red and white brain matter and blood everywhere.

At the moment of the gunshot, those standing near Du Zhanpeng felt a sharp impact on their faces, as if a heavy object had dropped from the sky.

The violent speed of the Seven Stars Immortal Thunder Cavalry Slash propelled Du Zhanpeng into the center of the passage instantly. The strike from his palm transformed into a powerful expenditure. A high-explosive incendiary grenade, slightly smaller than a fist, tumbled through the air.

"Oh! NO!"

The fifteen gunmen armed with AK47s lying in wait on the second floor cried out simultaneously as they saw the grenade rolling in the air.

Being hit by a sniper shot meant only one death; they only had a one-in-fifteen chance of dying. But if this grenade landed on the roof of the second floor, who knew how many would die.

Four AKs simultaneously aimed at the grenade tumbling overhead. The instant the staccato bursts of fire erupted, the recruits hidden behind the giant rock collectively charged into the passage at top speed.

Those in the very front rank immediately dropped flat. The second rank fired from a single-knee kneeling position. The third rank fired from a half-crouch. Only the fourth rank fired while standing.

The defending terrorists had sensed them long ago. They vaguely perceived a dense aura of killing intent behind the rocks and felt that an attack could be launched at any moment. Yet, they never expected the first two figures to flash out with such formidable power. The coordination among the others who followed was seamless, almost without gaps. Over fifty P308s opened fire simultaneously, instantly flooding the entire second floor with suppressing fire.

Even the rock-hewn structure sent flying chips of stone under such intense firepower. A metallic rain lashed out in front of the fifteen AK gunmen. Thud...

The soul-shaking roar of the Barrett sniper system echoed through the valley again. A terrorist wearing a bulletproof helmet had his entire head above the neck vanish. Blood spurted uncontrollably from the wound.

"Damn it! Reinforce! Hurry up!"

The suppressed terrorist gunmen yelled desperately into their comms. Human figures flickered in and out of view on both the first and second floors of the building.

Dark muzzles poked out of the windows one after another. The iron door of the building slammed open with a clang, and terrorists, also clad in body armor, carrying AK47s charged directly out of the rooms, unleashing a barrage of bullets toward the recruits.

The metal hatch on the second-floor rooftop also burst open with a crash, and terrorists jumped out directly, their AK47s roaring wildly.

Bullets whistled through the air over the open ground. Neither side retreated an inch, allowing bullets to strike their armor and letting the rounds scream past their ears. The high-speed airflow cut against their cheeks, but neither side would yield ground.

Everyone understood: retreat was absolutely impossible at this moment! Whichever side chose to back down and yield would never be able to hold their heads up again. Countless bullets would keep them suppressed on the battlefield, pinned behind cover, unable to emerge.

The whistling of the bullets and the impact sounds against the body armor became nearly the only sounds on the small battlefield.

"Grenades! Throw them into their passage!"

A terrorist hiding in the first-floor room roared hoarsely into his comms.

Hearing the command, a terrorist pulled the safety pin on a grenade and swung his arm back, preparing to hurl it toward Qin Fen's position.

Another terrorist shouted urgently at the same time, "Don't..."

Before his warning was finished, the thunderous roar of the Barrett sniper system sounded once more across the battlefield. The terrorist about to throw the grenade felt an agonizing pain shoot through his arm. The forearm holding the grenade seemed to explode like a charge packed into his hand, instantly shattering bones and spraying gore everywhere. The grenade, still clutched in his hand, dropped straight onto the floor slab of the second-floor roof...

"Damn it!"

The terrorist who shouted the warning let out a shriek and jumped toward the floor below. The other terrorists, seeing the black grenade, instantly understood what had happened and also leaped downstairs.

Boom!

Flames and black smoke billowed upward following the grenade's explosion.

The terrorists hiding inside the building wondered if the floorboards above them would be blasted apart.

The terrorists who jumped from the second floor leaped directly into the crossfire zone between the two sides, betting everything on luck.

Some were lucky, landing on the muddy, open ground completely unscathed. Others were unlucky; their limbs were shot off, and they collapsed onto the ground, instantly rendered combat ineffective.

Du Zhanpeng kept firing while mentally counting the enemy numbers. There were about fifty terrorists in total. Their only sniper was down; therefore, they were facing roughly fifty opponents.

One foolish command, one small grenade, had completely disrupted the terrorists' formation. The number of terrorists on the roof approached twenty—more than a third of their entire defense.

One grenade forced them to temporarily stop firing, forcing everyone to evade. Worse still, some were instantly incapacitated on the spot.

The pressure on the recruits eased. Two-thirds of them increased the rate of fire on their P308s to the maximum, firing suppressively without regard for aiming. The remaining third engaged in precise, targeted shots.

"Sniper! Take out that sniper!"

The terrorists inside the building screamed again into their comms. The enemy sniper was like the most skilled surgeon, wielding a scalpel to perform rapid excisions. Every time the rifle cracked, a terrorist died.

The Barrett M82A1 heavy sniper system, originally designed to engage light armored vehicles and helicopters, made little difference between engaging body armor and engaging a piece of tissue paper, especially since Qin Fen was using the 279mm/11-inch spin rate warhead.