131: Slaughterhouse Canyon

The mountain path was rugged, and the marching column snaked through the red dust like a silent iron dragon.

Everything was going incredibly smoothly.

Reno's brow furrowed tighter and tighter.

The outposts along the way were empty, and the surveillance cameras high on the rock walls were all shut down, their dark lenses looking like the eye sockets of the dead.

“It's too quiet,” he whispered to his adjutant, A Yong, over the internal communication channel.

“Yeah, Captain, it's as quiet as a graveyard,” A Yong said, warily scanning the surroundings. “Did those bastards run off a long time ago?”

“Doesn't seem like it,” Reno shook his head. “Tell the boys to crank up their shield power to seventy percent. Maintain combat spacing; don't bunch up.”

“Understood!”

“Where's Glack?” Reno asked.

“Leading the way up front, urging us to hurry,” A Yong said, gesturing with his chin.

Before he could finish, Glack, the leader of the Skull Crusher Mercenary Group, twisted his massive body, his four thick arms waving exaggeratedly.

“Hurry up, Brother Reno! Stop dawdling!” His voice echoed in the valley, filled with impatient urging. “My men have already scouted ahead; there's not even a Ghost in sight! Let's take down the energy station in one go before they have time to react!”

He pointed toward an increasingly narrow mountain pass ahead, where the rock walls were as steep as if carved by a knife, resembling the gaping throat of a giant beast.

“See that? Through that canyon is the back door of the energy station! My informant said the defenses there are the weakest. We'll strike from there and blow them apart from the inside!”

Reno stared at the canyon entrance. That fleeting trace of doubt in his heart was infinitely magnified at this moment.

It was too perfect—perfect like a meticulously arranged script.

Meanwhile, several kilometers away, inside a mobile command vehicle disguised as a rock.

The man codenamed “Shadow Chaser,” J, sat before the screens. On the display, the dense clusters of light representing Reno's joint forces were slowly and steadily driving into the area he had marked with crimson lines.

He had named that area the “Slaughterhouse.”

“All units, take note.” J's voice was transmitted precisely to the terminals of every ambush point via the quantum communication network, cold and devoid of emotion. “The prey has entered the cage. Await my command.”

At the canyon entrance.

The moment Reno's powered combat boots took their first step into the canyon, an intense sense of crisis strong enough to make his hair stand on end shot through his spine like an electric current.

He stopped abruptly. His combat instincts overrode everything, and he let out a hoarse roar.

“Something's wrong! Everyone retreat! Fast!”

However, it was already too late.

“Hahahaha! Trying to run now? Too late, you Hanhai Trade idiots!”

Glack's sinister laughter rang out from behind, filled with the pleasure of betrayal. He and his mercenary group suddenly charged backward like a receding tide, putting distance between themselves and Reno's troops.

“You!” Reno spun around, his eyes filled with unbelievable fury.

Glack simply raised a scaly middle finger toward him from a distance and pressed the detonator in his hand.

“Boom—!!”

The violent explosion was deafening!

The canyon entrance collapsed with an earth-shattering roar! Massive rocks and rolling dust completely sealed off their only path of retreat!

“It's a trap!” A Yong shouted in despair.

Before he could finish his sentence, the chain reaction began.

“Open fire!”

With J's command, the massacre descended.

Above the cliffs on both sides of the canyon, dozens of automatic turrets and sniper points disguised with optical camouflage revealed themselves simultaneously. Blazing energy beams and Gauss rounds poured down like a storm from hell!

On the valley floor, beneath their feet, flowers of death bloomed one after another! Proximity mines detonated repeatedly among the crowd, kicking up fragments of flesh and steel!

“Ah—!”

“My leg!”

“Enemy attack!!”

Screams, explosions, and the sharp whine of shattering energy shields mixed together. Reno's troops were instantly thrown into chaos. Those recruits who had just left the mining area and hadn't yet experienced true war were stunned by the first encounter, falling into a massive panic.

“Find cover! Triangular defense formation! Now!” Reno roared. He activated his personal shield's overload mode and, braving the rain of bullets, forcibly dragged a terrified recruit behind a rock.

“A Yong! Take men and suppress the left high ground! Fire suppression!”

“Yes, sir!”

The elite veterans under his command, relying on their instincts from a hundred battles, quickly used the terrain to launch a counterattack. But their firepower was like a few insignificant toothpicks in the face of the meticulously constructed interlocking fire network.

Deeper despair was yet to come.

At the other end of the canyon, a massive camouflaged door integrated with the rock wall slowly opened.

J's most elite “Ghost” special forces unit, like a black tide, charged silently from the front, wielding the latest pulse rifles.

They were attacked from three sides.

There was no way up to heaven, and no door into the earth.

Inside the mobile command vehicle, J admired the massacre footage being transmitted back to the screen, a contemptuous smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

He connected to Glack's communication.

“Good job.”

“Hehe, Officer J, about my final payment...”

“It has already been credited,” J said flatly.

“Thank you, Officer! Pleasure doing business with you!”

J cut the communication directly and issued a new order to his adjutant: “Tell the Ghost Squad to slow down the pace. Do not wipe them all out.”

The adjutant was stunned. “Officer?”

“Leave one survivor.” J's gaze fell on the large man in the center of the screen, covered in blood but still roaring commands. “I want him to personally bring this purest despair back to his master.”

In the canyon, another wave of explosion air slammed Reno hard to the ground.

He struggled to lift his head, his vision a sea of blood. He saw A Yong's left shoulder pierced by an energy beam; he saw one brother after another, whom he had trained himself, riddled with bullets in the rain of fire, falling silently.

Endless regret and fury surged up his throat like magma.

“Aaaaaargh—!”