Transcending Worlds: I Have an Invincible Shelter

"Damn it! Are you trying to get me killed?"

In downtown Dubai, three blocks south of the Ocean Hotel, there is a private club with a Persian-style bronze door.

From the outside, this place looks like a top-tier luxury club, but only guests with black gold cards know what it's like inside.

Ankebo was lying in a suite on the twentieth floor, surrounded by three white-haired, blue-eyed Eastern European girls, each more beautiful than the last.

To be precise, just three seconds ago he was enjoying life.

Then my phone vibrated.

Andy sent two messages.

The Mokro gang has been wiped out, and Kuk is dead. The Serbian gang has been wiped out, and Nikola has surrendered.

Ankebo almost jumped out of bed.

He threw off the blanket draped over himself, stepped barefoot onto the Persian carpet, and waved to the three girls.

"Get out, get out, get out! Everyone get out!"

One of the white-haired girls leaned closer to him, her lips close as if she wanted to say something.

Ankebo glared at her, and the girl was startled. She wrapped herself in a bath towel and ran outside, forgetting to put on her high heels.

The three girls had barely stepped out the door when Ankebo locked it from the inside.

He walked around the room twice, then came back and drew the curtains tightly shut. He then pressed his ear against the door to listen to the sounds outside.

Only after confirming that no one was eavesdropping did Ankebo pick up his phone.

He mentally cursed Audi's ancestors for eight generations, and then casually cursed Alfa as well.

But despite the complaints, the phone call still had to be made.

Ankebo hovered his finger over the screen for several seconds before finally dialing.

Ankebo had a lot of profanities in his mouth, but the moment he opened his mouth, a picture flashed through his mind: the terrifying memory of drowning in the sea.

The swear words got stuck in his throat, and he swallowed them back.

He changed his tone, lowering his voice: "Was it arranged by that person...?"

Ankerpo, who had served in the Coast Guard for so many years, had never seen such a tactic in wiping out two major underground forces in Dubai overnight. What were those two gangs? They were the white gloves of countless powerful figures in Dubai and even the entire UAE.

Drugs, arms, money laundering, and human trafficking all operate on these two lines.

If you tear off your gloves, what will happen to those people with dirty hands?

Ankpo doesn't even dare to imagine how many people in Dubai will be unable to sleep after tonight.

Audi's voice on the other end of the phone sounded relaxed, even a little excited.

"Enough with the nonsense, get on with what's in front of me."

We're currently blocked by military helicopters, and there seems to be a police presence around the Puffett Building as well. Go and handle this quickly; how long will it take to get them to leave?

Ankebo almost dropped his phone.

Taankpo, captain of the UAE Coast Guard.

You want him to talk to the commander of the armed helicopters? Talk about what? Talk about life ideals?

"I'll try my best. Please wait a little longer."

"No, brother, you promised the gentleman you'd cooperate fully," Audi urged.

Ankebo's temples throbbed twice.

"I did promise that person, but he didn't tell you to make a huge mess of Dubai!"

Ankebo finally couldn't hold back and his voice suddenly rose eighteen degrees.

"Do you know how many people will die because of what you've done tonight? Do you even know who's behind those two gangsters?"

"Anyway, quite a few have already died."

Audi spoke casually, as if he were saying that he had ordered two extra dishes for dinner.

"If you don't want to communicate, that's fine too. I'll have Master Wumeng, whom the master left behind, handle it. But you'll see how he communicates very soon."

Ankpo didn't say anything.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, and lit a cigarette from the bedside table.

I was browsing through a message from within the military, a video. The image wasn't very clear; it was taken by an infrared camera on a helicopter. But the content was clear: bullets hit the metal like they were hitting a sheet of iron.

Ankpo initially thought it was a CG effect, but he could clearly see Audi and Alfa not far away.

Some within the military are already calling it "Iron Man," and if it actually targets armed helicopters, the nature of the situation will completely change.

When a gang fight escalates into an attack on the military, that becomes a terrorist incident.

Ankerbo exhaled a puff of smoke, thinking that Audi's words, though crude, made sense. But then he remembered that the military had issued a strict order to acquire the source of "Iron Man's" technology at all costs.

Even more critically, two battalions of troops are being moved towards the canyon.

Ankerbo stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, taking two tries to put it out. "Let that... Iron Man hold on a little longer."

"What do you mean?"

"The military thinks they can win. A bunch of generals think they can take that guy down if they send enough men. You want me to negotiate at a time like this? Negotiate my ass."

Ankebo's voice was dry and detached. "They need to be taught a lesson, to realize that force can't solve anything, before they'll sit down and listen. Do you understand what I mean?"

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"You made Wumeng beat up the military people?" Audi's voice sounded a bit strange.

"Just don't kill anyone. Scare them a bit, shoot down a few helicopters. I need some leverage to talk to the higher-ups."

"...Alright then."

Ankebo hung up the phone.

He sat on the edge of the bed for three seconds, then pulled another phone out from under the pillow.

This phone only has one number saved; it doesn't even have names in the contact list, just a string of numbers.

This number doesn't belong to his direct supervisor, nor to his direct supervisor's superior.

The people above them.

According to regulations, Ankpo, as a captain, is not qualified to directly contact this level.

Skipping over it would be taboo, but tonight is not the time to follow the rules.

Ankebo edited a message, revising the wording three times, and finally only left one sentence.

After sending the message, Ankebo threw the phone back under his pillow, stood up, walked to the window, and pulled back the curtains a crack to look outside.

Dubai's night view remains dazzling.

The lights of the Burj Khalifa shine into the sky, and the hotels on Palm Jumeirah are ablaze with color, their vibrant hues reflected on the sea.

Beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous.

Ankpo thought to himself, "After tonight, the rules beneath this city will have to be rewritten."

And he, Ankpo, a lowly Coast Guard captain, was riding on the cracks in the earthquake.

One step forward leads to soaring success, one step back leads to the abyss.

He pulled out another cigarette, lit it, took a deep drag, and made up his mind. "I'll gamble."

On the other side, Audi, watching the navigation lights getting closer on the horizon, put his phone back in his pocket and uttered two words.

"waste."

The person being insulted was Ankpo.

We agreed to cooperate fully, and now we're making him wait? Wait for what? Wait for those generals to bring their tanks over?

The four armed helicopters had formed a combat formation, two in a row, staggered one in front of the other. The sandstorm whipped up by their rotors could be felt from hundreds of meters away.

A message in Arabic came over the aircraft's loudspeaker, roughly saying, "Put down your weapons and lie down, or we will open fire."

The Alfa Romeo and Nikola immediately dropped to the ground, but the Audi remained unmoved.

Nikolai's voice was hoarse with the lingering pain of someone who had survived a close call. "You bastard, you don't actually want to go against the military, do you?"

Audi did not respond to the two.

The second call rang out, faster and more forceful than the first, clearly indicating that the military's patience was running out.

The third call didn't come. Instead, the plane turned its nose around, and the hum of the cannon preheating came from the air.

At the same time, after the second call, Audi had already turned to look at Wumeng.

"Lord Wumeng," Audi said in a low voice, "I'll have to trouble you again to bring those helicopters down. Just be careful not to kill anyone inside, just scare them a little."

No sooner had he finished speaking than the two people next to him reacted faster than a helicopter opening fire.

Alfa turned his head and glared at Audi.

Nikolai struggled to lift his upper body from the ground, his eyes wide open like saucers.

"Are you crazy?" The two of them spoke almost simultaneously.

Nikolai continued, "Fire at the military, do you know what that is? A terrorist attack! Tomorrow, your face will be on the world's headlines!"

Americans, Europeans, the UN—they'll all get involved! You can forget about staying in Dubai, you can't stay in the entire Middle East!

Audi looked left, then right, and shrugged. "Ankpo said it. I didn't say it. Go settle accounts with him."

alpha:"……"

Nikolai: "..."

Audi shrugged, took two steps back with his cane, and made room for Wumeng.

He muttered to himself, "I've been entrusted with this task, so I must be loyal to it. If you two have any objections, we can raise them at the meeting later."

Wu Meng moved before he could finish speaking. Without a running start or gathering his strength, the gravel beneath his feet was kicked up and scattered outwards. His figure was no longer in the same spot.

The pilots of the four armed helicopters spotted the signal on their infrared screens almost simultaneously.

A humanoid heat source with an abnormally high temperature is rising from the ground at an illogical speed.

The pilot of the lead plane instinctively pushed the stick, the nose of the plane tilted up, and the cannon began to roar.

The shells were fired at a rate of 700 rounds per minute, and the tracer trajectories drew a fluorescent green band of light across the night sky.

The dark red figure weaved through the bullet trajectories, its trajectory completely erratic, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes left, sometimes right, each change of direction accompanied by a muffled sonic boom.

The infrared tracking system on the helicopter was being shaken erratically, the target frame kept jumping around, and it was impossible to lock onto it.

The pilot of the lead plane had just swore when a face appeared on his windshield.

A dark red, expressionless face.

The pilot's hands snapped off the control stick, and his body instinctively recoiled into the seat back.

Wu Meng's right hand rested on the nose fairing, his fingers pressing down.

Five finger marks were left on the metal skin, and the nose of the helicopter was pulled down.

The pilot struggled to pull the stick, but couldn't budge it. The nose of the helicopter was being held down by a hand, making the attack helicopter look like a chicken with its head being held down.

Wu Meng let go, turned around, and disappeared.

The pilot of the second helicopter was climbing in an attempt to break away when the tail rotor suddenly made a loud bang of metal shattering.

The tail rotor is gone, not because of a malfunction, but because the entire tail rotor assembly was unscrewed.

The helicopter, having lost its tail rotor, began to spin uncontrollably. The pilot cursed as he searched for flat ground to make an emergency landing. Fortunately, flat ground was plentiful in the desert.

The plane skidded along the sand dunes for forty or fifty meters, kicking up clouds of yellow sand, before finally coming to a stop.

The pilots of the third and fourth planes turned around and fled.

They witnessed firsthand how the two planes in front of them crashed.

The airborne cannon missed, the missile couldn't lock on in time, and the opponent's speed exceeded the design parameters of this weapon system.

This was a situation they couldn't handle; staying in the air would only lead to two outcomes.

It's either an emergency landing or a crash.

The two helicopters turned around almost simultaneously and broke away at full speed.

On the ground, Audi stood there with his cane, looking up at the navigation lights scattering in the night sky, then looking down at the expressions of the two people next to him.

Alpha's mouth was open, and it forgot to close it.

Nikolai sat on the ground, his legs trembling.

Audi took out his phone and sent a message to Ankpo.

"All done. Four planes, two made an emergency landing, two escaped. No one died. Go talk to yours now."

After sending the message, he crouched down and patted Nikola on the shoulder. "See? You've chosen the right person to follow."

Nikolai opened his mouth, but no word came out.

He had seen airstrikes in Syria and drone formations in Ukraine, but the image of Iron Man dismantling a helicopter with his bare hands did not belong to any war he knew.

A gust of wind came from above, and Wumeng fell back to the high ground from the air. Her feet landed on the ground, and the gravel only wobbled for a moment.

At the same moment, Audi's phone vibrated.

Ankebo replied with three words: "Wait for news."