186: Chapter 186 Did we really fall for it?

Three hundred meters away, the tree line was dead silent.

Lin Fan leaned against the reef, letting Yang Ningcong's curses pass through his mind like a sieve.

Wang Laoliu was organized separately, stationed apart from those four bodyguards.

The maritime security plan for the Yang Family had been crafted by a professional team.

What was even more troublesome was that even though Yang Ningcong had been shouting for so long, the other side remained completely motionless.

It wasn't blind obedience; they had their own judgment.

People like that were tricky to deal with.

Yang Ningcong grew tired of cursing, his volume dropping into low-pitched curses that brushed against the muddy ground.

"Bastards… Taking money and not doing the job…"

His eyes darted to the side, trying to find some response on the faces of those bodyguards.

No one chimed in. The Short-haired Bodyguard met his gaze and quickly averted his face.

Yang Ningcong was still cursing.

Lin Fan's gaze unconsciously swept to the left.

A corpse lay prone in the mud, its back draped with half a broken ship plank.

Face down, around forty years old, similar in build to him—about one meter seventy-something, on the slender side.

Its face was completely buried in the muddy water, making its contours indistinguishable.

At over three hundred meters, an optical scope could clearly see clothing colors, body outlines, and the range of movement.

But facial features?

In the lead-gray light with mist hanging on the lenses, a human face was just a blur of flesh.

Besides, earlier the gunman had been in a rush to open fire when he approached Yang Ningcong, and he had immediately retreated into the reefs, exposing only half his head from start to finish.

The gunman's clearest impression of him was most likely that gray-black jacket and messy hair.

Lin Fan shifted his gaze from the corpse to himself, then back again.

An idea began to take shape.

He didn't hesitate.

Rolling over, he first flipped the corpse over from the mud.

Male, his facial features swollen and deformed from soaking in water, wearing a dark blue short-sleeved polo shirt, khaki pants on the lower body, and barefoot.

Lin Fan took off his own gray-black jacket.

The sea breeze poured straight in, chilling the sweat on his back.

He wrapped the jacket around the upper body of the corpse and zipped it up to the chest.

Viewed from a distance, the clothes were right, and the build was similar.

Just a little more.

Lin Fan flipped the corpse over so its back faced the sky.

Looking around, he saw that the crevices of the reefs were jammed with plenty of debris washed in by the tsunami.

A curved iron frame was wedged crookedly between two rocks, likely the framework of some shelving from a cabin, over a meter long with a curved hook at the front end.

He pulled it out.

He was in no rush to push the corpse out.

For a gunman like this, after missing three shots, his vigilance had been cranked up to the maximum.

For any suddenly appearing target, he would observe first before deciding whether to open fire.

He had to test the waters first.

Lin Fan picked up a baseball cap from nearby. The brim was crooked, and the logo was no longer clear.

He slipped the hat onto the curved hook of the iron frame.

Squatting down beneath the lowest gap in the reef, he slowly raised the iron frame upward.

The hat emerged from the top of the reef.

The speed was very slow, about the rhythm of a person hesitating whether to poke their head out.

The brim of the hat rose to a position about ten centimeters above the edge of the rock.

It stopped.

One second.

Five seconds.

Ten seconds.

There was no gunfire.

He pushed it up another two centimeters.

Still nothing.

Twenty seconds passed, and the direction of the tree line remained dead quiet.

Lin Fan retracted the iron frame and took off the hat.

No shot was fired; the hat was too fake, which was to be expected.

He had never expected the hat to fool anyone.

What he wanted was for the opponent to see this stupid trick through the scope.

A person trapped behind the reefs, not daring to show their head, and forced to probe with a hat.

What did that indicate? It indicated that this person was panicked.

It indicated that he lacked experience and countermeasure methods, and was using the most primitive and low-level way to test whether the muzzle was still there.

He wanted to escape, but didn't dare.

The next time he truly poked his head out would be his last.

Lin Fan clapped the hat onto the corpse's head, pulling the brim down low to cover that swollen face.

Then he propped the upper body of the corpse against the inner wall of the reef, arranging it into a semi-sitting posture.

Its head leaned back slightly, like an exhausted person leaning against a rock and panting.

The iron frame extended into the jacket from the back, with the front curved hook catching the inside of the collar, just barely able to support the weight of the upper body.

Lin Fan squatted beside the corpse, adjusting the angle.

Looking over from three hundred meters away, the gray-black jacket, the baseball cap, half-sitting on the edge of the reef, the body outline was almost identical to the target that had been hiding behind the rocks just moments ago.

Only the final step remained.

Poking the head out.

Lin Fan gripped the bottom end of the iron frame with one hand, slowly, little by little, pushing the corpse toward the gap in the reef.

First was the shoulder.

The shoulder line of the gray-black jacket squeezed half an inch past the edge of the stone wall.

Stop.

Two seconds.

There was no gunfire.

Lin Fan continued to push.

The head began to tilt outward, and the side of the hat's brim protruded a section from the edge of the reef.

The curve of the baseball cap almost matched the curve of a human head.

Viewed from a distance, it looked just like a person who had finally summoned the courage to carefully poke half their head out from behind cover.

The brim of the hat had crossed the edge of the stone wall for less than a second.

Bang!

The gunshot was crisp and decisive; before the echo could even spread, the bullet had already arrived.

The hat, along with half the skull beneath it, blew apart simultaneously.

Unidentified matter mixed with shredded pieces of the hat flew blasting outward.

The iron frame was violently jolted by the impact brought by the trajectory, and the upper body of the corpse tilted backward, smashing against the inner wall of the reef before sliding down.

There was no head left.

To be precise, three-fifths of the head remained, but the part that had been exposed no longer existed.

White fragments stuck to the stone wall, smeared with a mess of blood.

"Ah…" As the gunshot rang out, the other bound women on the beach screamed out loud.

They had watched with their own eyes as half a head disappeared, and these women were all Yang Ningcong's playthings.

Where had they ever seen such a bloody scene?

Lin Fan shrank his entire body into the deepest part of the reef, his back pressed tightly against the stone wall, motionless.

His heart beat like a drum inside his chest.

He lowered his head and glanced at his hands.

His fingers were trembling.

Lin Fan took a deep breath, clenched his fists, then released them, forcing his fingers to regain stability.

The gunman had fired.

The head had been blown to pieces.

Judging from the shooting reaction, the opponent had waited nearly three seconds before opening fire, indicating that he was indeed observing.

The angle, speed, and range of the hat's brim being exposed were all simulating the action of a real person tentatively poking their head out.

The gunman judged that it was a real person and decisively pulled the trigger.

This showed that he had fallen for it.

But had he really fallen for it?

Lin Fan leaned against the stone wall, staring at the gray sky above his head.

Another possibility spun through his mind.

What if the gunman hadn't fallen for it?

What if the other party saw through the scope that the contour of the head was wrong, or noticed that the angle of the neck was too rigid, and deduced that it was a corpse?

He would still fire.

Blasting the corpse's head off, letting the target behind the reef think they had succeeded, thinking the gunman had wasted a bullet on a fake target, and thinking there would be a window of opportunity the next time they truly went out.

Then the target would poke their body out and welcome that true bullet.

But if he didn't take this opportunity to go out, once that gunman came down to Yang Ningcong's side and untied the ropes of those bodyguards, he would have even less of a chance.

Whether to go straight out or continue waiting, Lin Fan couldn't make up his mind for a moment.