Transcending Worlds: I Have an Invincible Shelter

Abandoned oil fields on the outskirts of Dubai.

Forty minutes southwest of the city center, the asphalt road turns into a dirt road, the streetlights disappear, and the landscape on both sides changes from urban buildings to bare, yellowish-brown rock walls.

The oil field was abandoned a decade ago, leaving behind a narrow canyon passage.

The cliffs on both sides are steep, and in the narrowest places, only two cars can pass side by side. The potholed, gravel road in the middle is the only passage to the core stronghold of the Serbian mafia.

On the high ground to the left of the canyon, a bald young man knelt on one knee behind a rock, his right eye covered by the eyepiece of a night vision telescope.

Nikolai.

Nicknamed "The Butcher." The top Serbian gang leader in Dubai.

This person's resume is excessively clean, if you only look at his UAE residency visa.

If you investigate any further, you'll find that this guy retired from North America fifteen years ago, held the rank of sergeant, served in Syria and Ukraine, led special forces teams, and had more blood on his hands than he sold heroin.

He had heard the news of Mokro's destruction half an hour earlier.

Kucker is dead, and the Puffett Building was massacred, led by a madman in a red suit and on a cane.

He chose to ambush the enemy in the canyon.

This was a tactic he was most familiar with. In the complex terrain of Syria, he had ambushed three convoys in the same way, wiping them all out without a single one escaping.

At this moment, all four firing positions were in place on the rock walls on both sides of the canyon. Fourteen Browning M2 heavy machine guns, 12.7 mm caliber, with an effective range of 1,800 meters, were sufficient to take down armored vehicles.

There were also eight mercenaries crouching behind them, each carrying an RPG-7.

"Boss, the target convoy has appeared," came the scout's voice over the walkie-talkie.

Nikolai put down his binoculars, spat out the betel nut he had been chewing for a long time, and stood up.

"How many vehicles?"

"Three black SUVs, with their headlights on, came along the dirt road."

"Only three?"

"Only three." Nikola paused for a moment, then laughed.

"What a madman! He dares to drive three cars into my canyon?"

He pulled a tactical knife from his waist, licked it, and said, "Listen up, everyone. Open fire 300 meters after the vehicles enter the valley. Don't let a single one out."

"receive."

At the horizon, three black bulletproof SUVs lined up, their headlights blazing, and drove towards the canyon, kicking up clouds of yellow dust.

Audi sat in the back seat of the middle car, his eyes closed, his head resting on the headrest.

The ledger was pressed against his chest, hard and firm, and he could feel it with every breath.

Alfa sat in the passenger seat, his palms constantly sweating, glancing occasionally at the darkness outside the window.

Wu Meng sat on the right side of the Audi, his posture upright, his hands resting flat on his knees, as calm as if he were standing guard at the Black Forest camp.

Before long, the convoy entered the canyon.

The rock walls on both sides narrowed, and the headlights shone on the rough stone walls, creating swaying light spots.

The gravel road was extremely bumpy, and the chassis would occasionally scrape against protruding stones, producing an unpleasant metallic scraping sound.

Three hundred meters.

Nikolai pressed the communicator and uttered only two words: "Fire."

Fourteen M2 heavy machine guns opened fire simultaneously.

The bullet's muzzle velocity is 890 meters per second, and it can penetrate 20 millimeters of homogeneous steel plate at a distance of 500 meters.

Fourteen tongues of fire poured down from the high cliff, their trajectories intersecting, sealing off the bottom of the canyon into a death zone.

The tracer bullets drew dense orange-red lines in the night, which looked absolutely beautiful.

The car at the very front was the first to be hit.

The armor of this bulletproof off-road vehicle is top-of-the-line for civilian use, capable of withstanding 7.62mm rifle rounds.

However, the M2's 12.7mm armor-piercing rounds were unreasonable; they hit the car like they were piercing tofu. The windshield shattered, the doors were pierced, and the bullets penetrated the vehicle body and flew out from the other side, leaving behind fragments and blood mist.

At the same instant, a bullet hit the fuel tank, and the first vehicle exploded.

The fireball rose three or four meters high, and debris flew dozens of meters away. The driver and passenger were thrown out of the car by the blast wave and landed on the ground, their bodies unrecognizable.

Immediately afterwards, two white trails of flame shot out from the high ground.

RPG-7 rocket.

The two tandem warheads accurately hit the second off-road vehicle, which was the car carrying the three Audis.

The first bullet hit the hood of the car, and the explosion tore the entire front half of the car apart.

The second bullet struck the middle of the vehicle, lifting it off the ground by the shockwave. The vehicle flipped twice in the air before landing roof-down on the gravel road and sliding for seven or eight meters before coming to a stop.

The driver of the third vehicle slammed on the brakes, leaving two black tracks on the gravel. Before the vehicle had even come to a complete stop, heavy machine gun fire came after it.

Bullets clattered against the car, and the black-clad thugs inside were pinned down under the seats, unable to open the doors.

The canyon was filled with firelight, thick smoke, and the sounds of metal twisting.

On the high ground, Nikolai stood up straight, tucked his tactical dagger back into his waistband, crossed his arms, and surveyed the battlefield below the valley.

"What did I say? In my territory, even God has to kneel down."

He glanced back at his men and waved his hand.

"Go down and check. I want that madman's head, intact. Let all the Dubai underworld know what happens if they mess with me."

The eight mercenaries split into two groups and descended the slopes on both sides of the rock face, assault rifles held at their chests, their steps steady.

The firelight at the bottom of the valley illuminated the surroundings. The wreckage of two burning off-road vehicles lay across the road, billowing black smoke. The air was filled with the pungent smell of gasoline, rubber, and burnt protein, making one feel nauseous.

The mercenary at the front approached the wreckage of the second vehicle and poked at the twisted door with the muzzle of his gun.

The car door was blown off in half, and the seats inside were burned down to their frames.

"No body found," the first mercenary reported into the communicator.

"Search carefully! Even if it's blown to pieces, you have to piece it back together!" Nikolai's voice came through the communicator.

The second and third mercenaries walked around to the other side of the vehicle and stopped.

In the flickering firelight, something was moving inside the burning chassis.

It wasn't a flame, nor was it a fallen part.

It was the sound of footsteps, heavy, rhythmic footsteps on the metal wreckage.

Eight mercenaries raised their guns, aimed at the thickest part of the smoke, and pushed the safety off with their thumbs.

A figure emerged from the twisted and deformed frame; it was Wumeng.

His purple suit was gone. To be precise, it was burned away.

The shirt, trousers, and leather shoes were all reduced to ashes in the explosion and fire, leaving only a pair of black trousers of unknown material, with a few sparks still rising from the edges.

His upper body was completely naked, and the skin the eight mercenaries saw was not human skin.

It had a dark red, metallic surface that gleamed with a calm luster under the firelight.

There were no burns, no bullet holes, and no shrapnel wounds. The high temperatures and shrapnel at the epicenter of the explosion left nothing on this body.

The flames were still burning at his feet, licking his calves, but he didn't care at all.

The pupils of the eight mercenaries contracted, and their fingers instinctively pulled the triggers.

Da da da da—

The assault rifle fired in full automatic mode, and all the bullets struck Wumeng in the chest.

The sound of metal hitting metal was crisp and piercing. The bullet struck it, deformed, fell to the ground, rolled a few times, and was still steaming.

Wu Meng looked down and glanced at the faint white mark on her chest where a bullet had struck.

He looked up at the mercenary.

The mercenary dropped his gun and ran; his status as a retired North American special forces soldier was useless at that moment.

He immediately thought of American blockbusters, where MT is Iron Man! How could such a thing exist in reality!

On the high ground, Nikolai held up his binoculars, his expression frozen.

Tony Stark

He blurted it out instinctively. The firelight was so bright, and the distance was so close, the image in the night vision goggles was so clear that he couldn't mistake a single detail.

"What the hell is going on..." Nikolai's voice was squeezed out of his throat.

He snatched the communicator from a mercenary next to him: "Heavy machine guns! All heavy machine guns, bring them here! Shoot him! Shoot him to death!"

The muzzles of fourteen M2 heavy machine guns turned toward the lone figure at the bottom of the valley. The mercenaries gripped their pistols again, and the belts of ammunition clattered as they loaded the guns.

The bullets, coated with orange tracer, streaked across the night sky, raining down on Wumeng's location.

Iron Man didn't dodge.

He lifted his foot and took a step forward.

The first volley of bullets struck his chest, shoulder, and abdomen, exploding into a shower of sparks and creating a continuous metallic clanging sound, like a hailstorm.

Sparks kept flying from his dark red skin. The armor-piercing bullets were designed to tear through steel plates, but when they hit him, they only left fleeting white impact marks, not even creating dents.

The mercenaries on the high ground were at a loss, their fingers gripping the triggers tightly, feeding one ammunition belt after another, firing so many bullets that the spent cartridges piled up to half a foot thick on the ground.

Nikolai threw the telescope to the ground, grabbed an RPG-7 rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and aimed it himself.

"Even if Tony Stark himself came, I'd still punch him!"

At the same time, Wumeng slowly raised her right hand and spread her five fingers.

Deep within the palm, a ball of intense white light shone through the gaps between the fingers, strikingly bright in the darkness.

The ball of light was pulsating, coalescing, and expanding.

A low humming sound filled the air, the gravel beneath our feet began to vibrate slightly, and the spent cartridges on the ground jingled and bounced up on their own.

For the first time, Nikolai's hand, which was holding the rocket launcher, began to tremble.

Wu Meng squatted down, and the moment her legs bent, the gravel ground beneath her feet collapsed.

It wasn't that he was crushed; rather, the entire ground couldn't withstand the pressure and cracked outwards from his feet, creating a shallow crater about one meter in diameter.

Then the figure disappeared. Not vanished, but too quickly.

The mercenaries only saw a blurry shadow shoot out from the valley floor, rushing upwards along the almost vertical rock wall, sending rocks flying with the shockwave and leaving a spiderweb-like crack in its path.

On the left-hand high ground, the No. 2 machine gun position.

Several mercenaries were unleashing a barrage of fire at the bottom of the valley when something suddenly caught their eye.

The mercenaries turned their heads and saw a dark red humanoid figure standing three meters away.

In the next instant, a blur flashed by, and Wu Meng stretched out her left hand, gently waving it across the necks of several mercenaries.

The heads of the several people were severed from their necks and flung away.

His head slammed into the rock wall behind him, creating three head-shaped craters in the rock, and rubble fell down in a flurry.

The whole process took only a moment.

The mercenaries at the other three firing positions witnessed this scene firsthand.

The mercenary at position number one immediately took his hands off the machine gun, raised them above his head, and before he could even shout "I surrender," his legs had already carried him down the mountain.

The two men at position number three exchanged a glance, threw down their guns simultaneously, and ran off in different directions.

At position number four, a guy was still hesitating when another mercenary next to him grabbed him by the collar.

"If you fucking want to die, then stay here by yourself," he said, dragging him away in the opposite direction.

The advantage of professional mercenaries is that they know better than ordinary soldiers when to run.

This is not cowardice; it is a correct tactical judgment.

But Nikolai couldn't escape. He stared incredulously at the dark red figure a dozen meters away, his teeth grinding together.

He shoved aside the men who tried to pull him away, picked up an RPG-7 from the ground, knelt down on one knee, slung the rocket launcher over his shoulder, and brought his right eye close to the sights.

"Die, monster!" The trigger was pulled.

The rocket shot out of the barrel, its exhaust flame blinding, and the projectile spun as it headed straight for Wumeng's face.

When the rocket came flying over, Wumeng's reaction was not to dodge or block, but to raise her right hand, spread her five fingers, and point her palm at the direction of the attack.

Before everyone's eyes, the dark red hand precisely caught the warhead of the rocket.

Just toss it around.

It exploded in mid-air.

Seeing this, Nikolai threw down his rocket launcher and rushed toward a military jeep parked fifty meters behind the position.

He ran incredibly fast, the sweat on his bald head was blown away by the wind, and his legs pushed off at twice the speed they used during training.

Pull open the car door, jump in, start the engine, shift gears, and floor the accelerator.

The Jeep's engine roared, the rear wheels slipped for half a second, and then it suddenly launched forward.

The tires hurled dirt and gravel into the air, and the roar of the diesel engine echoed through the canyon.

Nikola gripped the steering wheel, not turning his head.

He began to feel that he still had a chance, as long as he got out of this oil field and onto the main road.

The next instant, a loud crash came from the roof of the car.

No, it's not the roof. It's the hood.

The front of the jeep was slammed into the ground by an inexplicable force.

The front safety lever plowed into the soil, and the front axle snapped with a sharp metallic crack under the pressure.

The rear of the car was thrown up by inertia, the rear wheels lifted off the ground and into the air, and the whole car almost flipped over.

The engine exploded, the cylinder block cracked, and coolant and engine oil mixed with white smoke gushed out from the crack.

The airbag deployed and splattered all over Nikola's face.

He was trapped in the deformed cockpit, the steering wheel pressing against his stomach and the dashboard pressing against his legs.

His forehead hit the airbag frame, and blood flowed down his nose and dripped onto the steering wheel.

Through the shattered windshield, he saw a pair of feet standing on the collapsed hood.

Dark red feet.

Wumeng squatted on the hood, tilted his head, and looked at the blood-covered face behind the windshield.

At the bottom of the canyon, the door of the third off-road vehicle opened.

The car wasn't hit at all from start to finish. Audi's cane was the first to stick out and tap the gravel ground before the man followed.

The red suit was perfectly wrinkle-free, and his hair was still neatly combed back.

Alfa got out of the car from the other side, glanced around to make sure there was no threat, and then followed the Audi.

Audi walked slowly, his cane striking the cartridge cases with each step, making a soft metallic crunch.

From the valley floor to the high ground, the scree slope is about four or five hundred meters long.

Audi walked up step by step without pausing or pausing, and his breathing remained steady.

He walked up to the wrecked military jeep, and Wumeng jumped off the hood, landing silently, and stood aside.

Audi surveyed the Jeep's dire state and reached for the driver's side window, which was now cracked into a spiderweb pattern, with the tip of his cane.

Glass shards clattered in, landing on Nikolai's shoulders and thighs.

"Mr. Nikolai."

Nikola struggled to lift his head from between the airbag and the steering wheel; his left eye was covered in blood, and he could only see clearly with his right eye.

He saw a young man in a red suit standing outside the car window, leaning on a cane, with a gentle expression.

That's the madman. He's with an Iron Man.

Audi extended the curved end of his cane through the car window and gently lifted Nicola's chin, forcing him to tilt his head back.

"Your welcoming ceremony was very grand," Audi said with a smile. "I really enjoyed it."

Nikolai coughed twice, blood foam spilling from the corner of his mouth. His voice was hoarse, as if sandpaper was stuck in his throat.

"Who exactly are you...?"

You asked the wrong question.

Audi retracted his cane and tapped it twice on the gravel ground. "You should ask me what I want."

Nikolai, panting, didn't reply.

"I heard you have a connection to North America, dealing in arms." Audi looked down at him. "I want that connection."

silence.

Nikolai was calculating, wondering if he had any leverage left, any way out, or any other option.

Alpha saved him from this thought process.

The sound of the gun being cocked was particularly crisp in the quiet night. The muzzle was pressed against Nikolai's forehead, the barrel still warm from his body heat.

"You have three seconds," Alpha said, his tone more like he was giving a weather forecast.

"I'll hand it over." Nikolai closed his eyes. "It's all yours."

"That's not enough." Audi chuckled. "Starting tonight, the Serbian mafia will be under my control."

Your people, your guns, your business—all are under my control. So are you.

Nikolai opened his right eye a crack and glanced at the dark red humanoid figure standing next to him.

Nikola shifted his gaze back to Audi's face. "...Do you have a choice?"

"Yes." Audi raised his cane and pointed to the sky. "You can choose to go see God now. I can help you fulfill this wish."

Nikolai's lips moved. "I'll do it."

Audi withdrew his cane and took a step back.

Several thugs dressed in black went around to the side of the car door and pried open the deformed door frame with their bare hands.

The metal creaked and rattled as the doorframe was pulled open wide enough to drag a person out.

When Nikolai was pulled out, he groaned. His left knee was swollen badly, probably fractured.

Audi didn't look at him again.

Walk to the edge of the highlands, facing the direction of Dubai city.

The night sky was very clean; there was no light pollution over the desert, and you could see the stars.

The city skyline glowed orange in the far distance, and the lights of the Burj Khalifa were faintly visible.

Closer in, the navigation lights of three or four armed helicopters were moving, and the sound of their rotors carried on the night wind, growing louder as they approached.

The military has arrived.

With such a large commotion at the oil field, the heavy machine guns fired for five minutes and the RPGs exploded several times; it was impossible to hide it.

Audi didn't panic.

He took out his phone and started sending messages to Ankebo.

Overnight, Dubai’s two largest gangs were destroyed, and a gang leader was incorporated into the organization.

"The mess in Dubai has been cleaned up."

Audi swiped his finger lightly, and the message was sent.

The helicopter's sound grew closer, and the wind picked up, carrying the dry, cool air characteristic of a desert night.

"Now, let's wait for the storm to start."