77: Chapter 77 Ghost Gliding

“Ziii—”

The sharp sound of the pulley friction against the steel cable carved a thinning, receding line into the deathly silent night.

Finally, it vanished completely.

Wang Ping's entire being was thoroughly swallowed by the thick, impenetrable darkness.

Inside the warehouse, one could hear a pin drop.

Everyone froze in place like stone statues under a binding spell, staring fixedly at that endless darkness.

Time seemed to stretch into viscous syrup at this moment.

One second.

Two seconds.

Ten seconds.

[My god... Master Xi, did he succeed?]

[Don't talk! Don't send bullet chats! I'm begging you! It'll expose him!]

[I can't see! I can't see anything! There's only pitch-black darkness!]

[What about the heart rate monitor? Look at the heart rate monitor on the streamer's screen! The red dot representing the pathfinder is still moving!]

In the Livestream room, the hearts of hundreds of millions of viewers were all in their throats.

They didn't dare to breathe or blink, for fear of missing any tiny detail... high up in the air.

The wind howled in his ears.

It was cold and bone-piercing.

Wang Ping curled his body into a ball, tightly clutching the crude pulley device.

This was the posture with the least wind resistance that Mr. Chen had taught him.

Beneath his feet was the churning, pitch-black Suzhou Creek.

On the river's surface, he could see the tiny, moving lights from the Japanese Army patrol boats.

Distant, yet lethal.

He didn't dare to look down.

He could only look ahead.

Looking toward that darkness of the Concession, which represented the hope of life but was equally bottomless.

The rotation speed of the pulley was alarmingly fast.

He felt less like a person and more like a stone fired from a slingshot.

A stone fired toward an unknown fate.

Suddenly.

An unheralded crosswind slammed into him from the side!

Wang Ping's body swayed violently in mid-air like an out-of-control Pendulum.

He gritted his teeth hard, using all his strength to control his body's balance.

He remembered Mr. Chen's instructions.

The more it swayed, the more he had to relax, using his body to counteract that force.

He was a veteran who had crawled through piles of corpses for over a decade.

He wasn't afraid of death.

But he was afraid that his failure would cut off the path home for those four hundred plus brothers behind him.

The clothes on his back were already soaked with cold sweat.

Just as he was about to steady his form, a searchlight from a Japanese Army patrol boat below suddenly swept upward!

The brilliant beam of light, like a sharp sword, instantly pierced the night sky!

At this moment, Wang Ping's heart stopped beating!

Instinctively, he curled his body to the limit, almost hanging directly beneath the steel cable.

The beam of light brushed past the soles of his feet, barely missing him.

That lethal light even allowed him to see the worn-out patterns on the soles of his shoes.

The searchlight slowly moved away.

The Japanese Army on the boat didn't seem to notice anything unusual.

Wang Ping let out a long, heavy breath.

The relief of surviving a near-death experience almost made him collapse.

He didn't dare to be the slightest bit careless again.

He focused all his attention on feeling the vibration of the pulley and the flow of the wind.

“Zi zi...”

The sound of the pulley began to change.

It was no longer a smooth, high-speed rotation, but carried a hint of intermittent, frictional noise.

Almost there!

Wang->->->->(To be continued in the next page)

Pencil Novel

Ping's heart tightened as he recalled Mr. Chen's final instructions.

He reached out his right hand, which was wearing a thick leather glove, and followed the method Mr. Chen had taught him, lightly pressing it against the rapidly spinning steel cable at a specific angle.

Deceleration.

The immense friction caused his glove to instantly begin smoking.

But he gritted his teeth, firmly controlling the force of the deceleration.

Too fast, and he would lose control.

Too slow, and he would stop halfway.

Like a top-tier acrobat, he danced his final and most heart-pounding dance on the steel cable of life and death... on the opposite bank.

Inside an abandoned Cotton Mill warehouse.

A dozen or so capable-looking men wearing black short-sleeved shirts were hiding in the shadows, holding their breath.

They were the most elite thugs of the Green Gang.

Leading them was none other than A-Si, who had witnessed Chen Xi's "miracle" at the Paramount.

“Si-ge, it's been nearly fifteen minutes, why isn't there any movement?”

One subordinate lowered his voice, sounding somewhat impatient.

“They're not playing us, are they?”

“Shut up.”

A-Si scolded coldly.

His eyes were fixed on the direction of the Sihang Warehouse on the opposite bank.

He was more nervous than anyone.

Mr. Du had given a strict order: if tonight's matter was botched, they would all end up at the bottom of the Huangpu River.

Just then.

An extremely faint, almost negligible rustling sound came from above them.

Everyone snapped their heads up.

At the broken window on the second floor of the warehouse, a dark figure descended from the sky like a ghost.

The dark figure landed without making a single sound.

With a standard, textbook roll, he dissipated all the impact.

Then, he crouched on the ground, his rifle already aimed in the direction where they were.

The entire movement was as smooth as flowing water.

Fast as a bolt of lightning.

Quiet as a falling leaf.

A-Si and his subordinates were all dumbfounded.

They hadn't even seen clearly how this person appeared.

It was as if he had grown out of the darkness out of thin air.

Is this a fucking human?

This must be an immortal who jumped down from the heavens, right?

A-Si sucked in a breath of cold air; he finally understood why Mr. Du regarded this matter as more important than his own life.

That dark figure was indeed Wang Ping.

He confirmed the surroundings were safe, then slowly stood up and pulled out that small flashlight from his pocket, pointing it toward the Sihang Warehouse.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

Three times... Sihang Warehouse, third floor.

Deathly silence.

Everyone was like a frozen statue, motionless.

Xie Jinyuan held up his binoculars, the veins on the back of his hands bulging from the force.

Shangguan Zhibiao's fists were clenched until his knuckles turned white and cracked.

Chen Xi stared at the faint red dot in his mind that represented Wang Ping's life signal.

The red dot crossed that river that represented death.

Then, it stopped on the opposite bank.

Motionless.

Chen Xi's heart also tightened.

Why did it stop?

Did he fail the landing and get injured? Or was he discovered?

At the moment he was burning with anxiety.

In the darkness of the opposite bank.

A faint beam of light lit up.

It flashed once.

It flashed again.

One more flash.

Three times.

No more, no less.

Like a bomb that ignited all hope, dropped into the deathly silent deep sea.

“It worked!”

Someone, it wasn't clear who, was the first to roar it out, their voice carrying a sob.

The entire warehouse instantly came to life from its frozen state.

There were no earth-shaking cheers.

Only heavy, uncontrollable gasps.

And the whimpers of iron-willed men embracing each other, weeping with joy.

They were alive.

They were really going to live!

Xie Jinyuan slowly lowered his binoculars; this iron-blooded regiment commander, who hadn't even blinked in the face of a hail of bullets, now had eyes that were alarmingly red.

He turned around and looked at those tear-streaked faces of survivors.

His voice carried a hint of uncontrollable trembling, yet it was filled with steel-like power.

“First batch!”

“The wounded and the female students!”

“Begin the retreat!”