Mercenary I am the king

Chapter 990 Reverse Hunt
These words struck like a thunderbolt, causing a violent shock to everyone's hearts.

Eyes widened instantly, filled with disbelief and horror.

Turn back?

Go find those two thousand heavily armed pursuers?

With just a hundred or so exhausted, out-of-ammunition and-food remnants?

This is crazy!

Do you want to die even faster?!
"What...what did you say? Are you crazy?"

A Haftar veteran leaning against the rock wall cried out, his chapped lips splitting open again in shock, drawing blood.

"Are you going to die?"

Another young soldier muttered to himself, his eyes unfocused.

Song Heping ignored their reactions, radiating a cold and resolute aura.

"Pursuers! GNA! SBS! They were torn apart by the sandstorm just like everyone else! They were just as thirsty! Just as chaotic! Just as disoriented!"

His voice carried a penetrating power that cut through the fog, "Now! Now! They are more vulnerable than us! They have water! They have ammunition! They have supplies!"

He took a sudden step forward, the sand beneath his feet making a screeching sound.

"No water? Then steal it! Quench your thirst with their blood! Use their corpses as road signs!"

He roared, throwing hope into everyone's eyes.

"My four thousand mercenaries are already across the border with water and guns, heading towards the oasis to find us! They need time! We need to take care of their pursuers and get water so we can hold out until they join us! This is our only way to survive! Either we die of thirst or we fight our way out and carve out a path to life! If we don't fight to the death, even if my men eventually find us, they'll only find a pile of corpses!"

Every word was like a heavy hammer blow, striking the soldiers' already crumbling mental defenses.

Beneath the ashes of despair, the smoldering flame of survival, forcibly suppressed, was suddenly ignited by this extreme and bloody declaration.

Yes, dying of thirst is death, dying in battle is also death!
Why not give it a try?
Why not tear a piece of flesh from the enemy and drink their blood?!
The soldiers' faces froze in shock, then were replaced by a ferocious, desperate look, like that of trapped beasts.

Everyone's chapped lips tightened, and a wild flame reignited in their murky eyes—the fierce glint of wolves cornered on the edge of a cliff, ready to pounce on their hunter.

Someone instinctively gripped the broken rifle in their hand, their knuckles cracking.

A strong smell of rust and the sour stench of sweat filled the air, mixed with a desperate, murderous intent.

"Boss...done it!"

The jinx was the first to let out a hoarse growl. He suddenly drew his gleaming fighting dagger from his waist, the blade reflecting a cold glint in the afterglow of the setting sun.

His face was expressionless, revealing only a bestial instinct fighting for survival.

"Grab water! Grab a way to survive!"

Wrench stood up, spitting out the sand from his mouth. His eyes, sharp as an eagle's, were fixed on the direction he had come from, as if he could see through the sand dunes and into the chaos of the enemy and those precious water bottles.

"Seize a way to survive!"

"Kill back!"

Scattered shouts erupted from the crowd, quickly merging into a chorus.

The instinct for survival overwhelmed fear, and the madness born of desperation ignited their fighting spirit. On faces covered in sand and dust, only a bloodthirsty desire remained.

They were no longer lambs to the slaughter, but hyenas tormented by hunger and thirst for too long, who smelled blood.

Song Heping's gaze passed over the group of soldiers who had been set ablaze and landed on the depression in the rock.

General Haftar had opened his eyes slightly at some point, and those eyes, once sharp as a hawk but now cloudy and dim, were fixed on him.

His gaze was extremely complex, containing shock, disbelief, and a deep scrutiny, as if he were truly seeing the mercenary leader before him for the first time.

The general's lips twitched slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only nodded very slightly, almost imperceptibly.

That was a heavy, tacit signal.

"Give all the water to the wounded and the evacuation teams, let them continue towards the oasis. We'll turn back and fight them to the death! Listen to my orders, begin the operation immediately!"

Song Heping's order was swift and sharp, like a blade being drawn from its sheath.

The last ten liters of water were carefully poured out and divided equally into dozens of empty, deflated kettles and every other container that could be found.

Every movement was accompanied by heavy breathing and greedy eyes.

Song Heping picked up one of the worn-out military water bottles, which contained only a shallow layer of water, and walked to the stretcher.

He crouched down and roughly pried open the "hunter's" dry, bleeding lips, which were covered with sand and blood scabs, and stuffed the spout of the pot inside.

The hunter's body jerked violently, and a more intense hoarse sound came from its throat—the instinctive swallowing of life by a dying person.

Muddy water mixed with blood trickled down his filthy chin.

Song Heping didn't even glance at the pleading gaze of the young Haftar soldier next to him, who was also on the verge of death, with unfocused eyes and fingers unconsciously digging into the sand.

That soldier is beyond saving.

This is an unchangeable fact.

Giving him water is tantamount to exploiting another soldier whose life could be saved.

He quickly tightened the lid, tucked it back into his waistband, and did so without the slightest hesitation.

Sometimes, a mercenary leader needs a heart harder than steel!

"Take the wounded! Take this water!"

He growled at the squad leader in charge of the escort—a lieutenant with sunken cheeks but resolute eyes—"Use your lives! Get them to the oasis! Find the water! Then wait! Understand?"

The lieutenant pounded his sunken chest, making a dull thud: "Understood!"

His gaze swept over General Haftar and "The Hunter" on the stretcher, his eyes filled with resolute heaviness.

Under the scorching sun, the wounded, supporting each other, carrying each other, and staggering, moved towards the Kurtan Oasis.

Every step sank deep into the sand, each movement accompanied by suppressed groans and heavy breathing.

They took away the last symbol of hope for the team, but also a heavy burden.

Song Heping withdrew his gaze, no longer looking at the mournful procession slowly disappearing into the silhouette of the sand dunes.

He turned around and looked behind him.

More than 130 soldiers who could still grip their weapons, like hungry wolves with their fur shaved off and fangs bared, silently gathered behind him.

Their eyes reflected a red light under the blazing sun, burning with the same thing—an extreme thirst for water, a mad obsession with survival, and a ferocious, predatory nature driven by death.

There were no slogans, no mobilization, only a heavy, oppressive breathing that seemed to be carrying the weight of a storm, and the faint sounds of weapons clashing and sand being shaken off clothes.

"go!"

Song Heping's voice was low and hoarse, like a cold wind blowing from the heart of the desert.

With a wave of his hand, he took the lead, his boots sinking deep into the cold sand, and resolutely stepped back in the direction he had come from, towards the pursuers and carnage lurking in the darkness.

Behind them, more than 130 pairs of military boots, covered in sand and dust, silently and resolutely stepped onto the scorching sand, leaving a trail that led to hell or a path to life.

Evening is the harshest mask of the Sahara. The daytime heat vanishes as quickly as the tide recedes, replaced by a biting cold that seems to freeze to the bone.

The wind stopped completely, leaving behind a suffocating silence and icy air. Every breath felt like inhaling tiny ice needles, stinging my parched throat and nasal cavity.

The sand, scorching hot from the sun during the day, now greedily absorbs the last of the body's heat, and with each step, a chill runs from the soles of the feet straight to the top of the head.

Song Heping walked at the front of the group, like a black reef moving in the sea of ​​sand.

His senses were forced to their limits by extreme thirst and cold, magnified to an unbelievable degree.

His ears filtered through the deathly silence for any suspicious sound—the faint rustling of sand sliding down the steep slope, the mournful, short cries of an unknown owl in the distance, the heavy, suppressed breathing of the soldiers behind him, and the slight clattering of their teeth from the cold.

Suddenly, he stopped abruptly, raised his right hand in an instant, clenched it into a fist, and made a tactical hand signal to "stop advancing".

As if pulled by an invisible thread, the group of more than 130 people behind them froze instantly.

All sounds of breathing, footsteps, and the rustling of clothes came to an abrupt halt.

All that remained was the frantic pounding of hearts in the cold chest, pounding against everyone's eardrums.

More than a hundred pairs of eyes suddenly lit up in the twilight, like a pack of wolves lurking in the dark, warily scanning their surroundings.

Song Heping slowly squatted down, grabbed a handful of cold sand, and felt the biting chill.

He turned his head to the side and put his ear close to the ground.

The cold sand rubbed against his earlobe.

After a few seconds of deathly silence, an extremely faint but unnatural sound, like a tiny electric current, traveled through the vibrations of the sand grains and into his ears.

It's a human voice!
It was a chaotic, terrified, and exhausted scream!

and also…

The sound of metal clashing!
distance…

Very close!

Just beyond those rolling sand dunes ahead!
He suddenly raised his head, his eyes flashing with a ravenous light.

He silently made several hand gestures: his index finger pointed in the direction of the sound, his palm pressed down (to conceal), and then his five fingers spread out and suddenly spread to the left and right (to flank from both sides)!

Without a word, the wolves behind him instantly understood the command.

The tacit understanding honed through long periods of life-or-death struggles was on full display at this moment.

The group dispersed silently and swiftly to both sides, disappearing into the shadows of the sand dunes, like pebbles thrown into water.

Their movements were like those of lizards in the desert, using every sand ridge and every weathered rock as cover to silently slither forward.

The cold sand seeped into their boots, scraping against their ankles, but no one made a sound.

His parched throat felt like it was filled with scalding sand, and each swallow brought excruciating pain, but this pain was now suppressed by an even stronger urge to kill and a greedy desire for water.

Song Heping, along with a core group of men—the Calamity, the Wrench, and a few veterans with the fiercest eyes—slipped up the highest sand dune ridge like ghosts. He lay prone on the cold sand, cautiously peeking out a little.

The sight below caused even someone as accustomed to hellish scenes as him to have his pupils suddenly contract.

The valley was in complete disarray.

This was clearly a small, disorganized unit that had been completely lost and scattered during the apocalyptic sandstorm.

There were about three hundred people, dressed in the haphazardly pieced-together military uniforms of the GNA.

They were like a swarm of headless flies, wandering aimlessly on the cold sand, shouting and shoving.

Several camouflage-painted pickup trucks were stuck in the sand, their hoods open, and someone was futilely fiddling with the engines.

A few bonfires burned sporadically, their flickering flames illuminating the terrified, exhausted, and dust-covered faces of the victims.

confusion!

Utter chaos!
The soldiers huddled around the fire, not so much for warmth, but more for psychological comfort.

Curses, arguments, cries for companions, and groans of the wounded mingled together, creating a cacophony of sounds.

Many people slumped on the sand, clutching their guns, staring blankly at the flickering flames, or desperately gnawing on their rations.

water!
Song Heping's gaze, like a precise probe, instantly locked onto the target: several bulging canvas water bags, clearly under close guard, were piled up on the back of a pickup truck!
And there were military water bottles hanging from the soldiers' waists!
Inside, there is a life-saving liquid!

It is something a thousand times more precious than gold at this moment!

"Look... at the water..."

The voice of an old soldier beside me trembled uncontrollably and was filled with greed; his chapped lips opened and closed silently.

Song Heping's heart pounded wildly in his chest, each beat bringing a dizzying thirst, and the burning sensation in his throat had never been so intense.

The pile of water bags and canteens held his will like a magnet. He forced himself to calm down, his sharp gaze sweeping across the chaotic camp.

No heavy weapons…

There is no clear chain of command…

Exhausted...

Extremely low vigilance...

The sandstorm and the loss of direction completely destroyed their command system…

"A jinx."

Song Heping's voice was extremely low, like sandpaper rubbing together, "Left Wing, take fifty men, see that stuck pickup truck? Go around behind it and block the valley entrance! Be quick! Be ruthless!"

"OK."

A fierce glint flashed in the jinx's eyes, and he nodded silently, like a venomous snake poised to strike, as he slid silently down the sand dune.

"Wrench, right flank, thirty men, target that pile of water bags! Hold them there firmly! Don't let a single fly get near the water!"

Song Heping's gaze was fixed on the pile of containers that symbolized life.

Wrench licked his dry, bleeding lips, his eyes like those of a sniper scope aimed at its prey: "Understood! The water is ours!"

"remaining people."

Song Heping's gaze swept over the last few dozen faces around him, covered in sand and with eyes like hungry wolves. "Follow me! Frontal assault! Charge in!"

His voice exuded a murderous aura even more chilling than the cold night.

"Remember! This is about seizing water! Seizing lives! No prisoners! No hesitation! Kill them all! Loot them all!"

"Kill them all! Loot them all!"

Dozens of throats squeezed out suppressed, beast-like growls.

Thirst and killing intent merged completely at this moment, burning into a mad flame that destroyed everything.

　Asking for a monthly ticket! Asking for a monthly ticket!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)