121: Chapter 121 The Hunter's Ticket

The wire fence gate slammed shut behind them, sealing off the dry heat of the wilderness and the mocking laughter of those wealthy elites.

The woods weren't as cool as imagined; moisture mixed with the smell of rotting leaves drilled straight into their nostrils, stuffy as a steamer.

"Are we still going deeper?" Ava stepped heavily onto the thick layer of fallen leaves; the thorny vines here caught on the hem of her expensive hunting trousers.

Chen Mo didn't look back, using the compound bow in his hand like a walking stick to clear the ferns blocking their path.

"We're too close to the fence here." Chen Mo stopped and looked up at the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy.

"Since McLean went to the trouble of setting this up, he must have installed surveillance near the entrance. I need to find a blind spot."

After walking for about fifteen minutes, the terrain began to steepen.

A natural depression had formed beneath a protruding rock face, surrounded by waist-high shrubs—a perfect hiding spot.

Chen Mo tossed the heavy black equipment bag into the rock cave and turned to look at the panting Ava.

"Stay inside." Chen Mo drew the Browning M1910 from his waist, checked the magazine, and handed it to Ava.

"Unless you see me come back, don't make a sound, no matter who comes. Even if you hear me screaming, don't come out."

Ava took the gun, her palms slick with sweat.

She looked at Chen Mo's camouflage-painted face, wanting to say something, but found her throat tight.

"How many of them are there?"

"That's my question." Chen Mo pulled a carbon arrow from the quiver, his fingertips gently brushing over the sharp, three-edged barb. "You just need to remember to turn the safety off."

Chen Mo didn't waste any more words and turned to dive into the dense forest.

The moment he left Ava's line of sight, his breathing changed.

[Status: Cold-Blooded Hunter (Activated)]

[Perception range increased by 20%... Auditory filtering enabled... Heart rate forcibly stabilized at 60...]

The noisy buzzing of cicadas around him rapidly faded in his eardrums, turning into some kind of irrelevant background white noise.

The rustle of wind through the leaves, the crisp snap of dry branches being stepped on in the distance, and even the heavy sound of military boots hitting the ground a hundred meters away flowed into his brain like streams of clear data.

Chen Mo clung silently to the trunk of a massive oak tree like a gecko.

Two hundred meters away.

A five-man tactical squad was advancing in a fan-shaped search pattern.

They wore unmarked camouflage uniforms and held AR-15 rifles equipped with silencers and thermal imaging scopes.

Their movements were standard, and they were even communicating with tactical hand signals.

These weren't ordinary private bodyguards.

These were McLean's private soldiers, or rather, a pack of hyenas who treated murder as a business.

"Boss, the thermal imaging isn't picking anything up." The point man in front lowered his voice, speaking into his headset. "Are those two rookies from New York scared into hiding in some rat hole, too afraid to move?"

"Shut up and watch the road." The captain's voice came from behind. "The boss said they need to be dead-dead. Don't you dare capsize in a gutter like this."

The point man curled his lip in disdain, and his military boot snapped a dry branch.

At that very instant.

A faint sound of a bowstring.

Twang.

If you didn't listen carefully, the sound was like a large mosquito buzzing by your ear.

The point man didn't even have time to perform a Tactical Evasion maneuver.

A black arrow, carrying terrifying kinetic energy, burrowed into the soft flesh under his chin where there was no protection, pierced straight through his brainstem, and finally exited the back of his head with a spray of red and white matter, pinning him to a pine tree behind him.

The fletching of the arrow was still vibrating, emitting a low, humming sound.

The point man didn't even let out a scream; his body, like a robot that had lost power, fell straight backward.

"Enemy attack!"

The captain's reaction was extremely fast; almost the moment the point man fell, he lunged behind a rock nearby. "Three o'clock direction! Suppressive fire!"

Pfft, pfft, pfft!

Four silenced rifles fired simultaneously, the dense bullets sending wood chips flying from the shrubbery.

But there was nothing there.

Only a few shattered leaves drifted in the air.

"Damn it! I can't see any heat signature!" The sniper responsible for observation lay in the grass, his eyes glued to the scope.

"Is that guy a ghost? How can his body temperature be the same as the ambient temperature?"

Chen Mo was, of course, not a ghost.

He was currently hanging upside down on a pine tree twenty meters away, his legs locking onto the trunk like iron pliers.

[Cold-Blooded Hunter] didn't just improve his perception; it also drastically lowered his body surface temperature and metabolic level.

In the thirty-five-degree jungle in the afternoon, he was just a rock to the thermal imager.

Chen Mo pulled back the bowstring again.

This time, it was three arrows.

This wasn't some system skill, but a little trick he'd picked up from the corpse of a junkie who played underground black archery in that chaotic district of New York.

The accuracy was a bit off, but at this distance, it was enough.

He released his fingers.

The three arrows shot out in a triangular formation.

The sniper was just about to poke his head out when an arrow pierced his shoulder, the massive impact force flipping his entire body over.

Immediately after, the other two arrows plunged into the thighs of the other two mercenaries who were busy changing magazines.

"Ahhh!!"

The screams finally echoed through the jungle.

The excruciating pain of barbed arrowheads tearing through muscle was simply not something an ordinary person could endure.

"Don't scream! He's in the trees!" The captain roared, raising his muzzle and firing wildly at the canopy.

But there was no one in the trees anymore.

Chen Mo, like a primate, swung between the branches and landed lightly behind the wounded sniper.

He held his hunting knife in a reverse grip, the blade coated with a layer of black anti-reflective paint.

Squelch.

The sound of the blade slicing across the throat was like tearing a piece of old cloth.

The sniper's scream turned into a wheezing hiss; he clutched his neck with both hands, blood spurting from between his fingers and staining the grass in front of him.

The remaining two wounded men completely broke down.

They didn't care about the wounds on their legs, tossing aside their rifles and drawing their pistols, firing wildly at their surroundings.

"Come out! You bastard! Come out!"

The bullets ran out.

The click-clack of the slides locking back sounded particularly harsh in the woods.

Chen Mo stepped out from the shadows.

He held neither bow nor knife in his hands.

He stood there in front of the two wounded men, his eyes as calm as if he were looking at two corpses.

The two wounded men wanted to change magazines, but their trembling hands couldn't hold anything.

Chen Mo walked over and kicked them, one by one, shattering their jaws.

The world went quiet.

Only the captain, who had been hiding behind the rock, remained.

"Who are you..." The captain's voice was trembling. He had discarded his rifle and drawn the combat knife from his leg.

As a veteran who had fought in the South American jungles, he had seen tough men.

But he had never seen a monster who, armed with a bow and arrow, could slaughter a fully armed squad, leaving only him alive, in less than two minutes.

"I'm a cleaner."

Chen Mo drew the hunting knife from behind his waist and loosened his neck, which emitted a series of crisp, bean-popping sounds.

"Come on, let me see what you've got."

The captain roared and charged, his knife carving a tricky arc, aiming straight for Chen Mo's heart.

It was standard military combat technique, concise and lethal.

But in Chen Mo's eyes, the movement was as slow as a slideshow.

Chen Mo side-stepped, raised his hand, caught the opponent's wrist, and twisted hard.

Snap.

The wrist was broken.

Immediately after, the hunting knife was driven into the gap between the captain's ribs, piercing straight into his heart.

[Ding! Extraction successful!]

[Acquired Skill: Jungle Warfare (Mastery)]

[Acquired Memory Fragment: McLean's Private Vault Password (Incomplete)]

Chen Mo pulled out the knife, letting the corpse slide to his feet.

He turned around and looked at the shivering figure in the nearby bushes.

It was the point man who had fallen first; the arrow hadn't hit a vital spot, only grazing his skin, but he had already been scared out of his wits and was lying on the ground playing dead.

Chen Mo walked over and stepped on his chest.

"Don't... don't kill me..." The point man cried, his crotch already wet.

Chen Mo bent down and used the point man's clothes to wipe the blood off the knife.

"Go back and tell McLean."

Chen Mo's voice was very soft, yet it made the point man shudder.

"Tell him, the roles of hunter and prey have switched."