Working as a police officer in Mexico.

Chapter 723 What era is this? Still summoning gods?!
Michoacán, deep in the vast Santa Ana Mountains.

Time seems to stand still here, isolated from modern civilization.

Beneath the dome formed by towering ancient trees, the light was dim, and the air was filled with the sweet and pungent smell of earth, decaying leaves, and some strange herbs burning.

Anyone who has been to the primeval forests of the Greater Khingan Mountains knows that just looking at them makes you feel uneasy, really uneasy.

The place smelled terrible, but I had no idea where the smell was coming from.

This is the stronghold of an extreme separatist force of the "Cora" tribe, who call themselves "Guardians of the Mountain," upholding ancient traditions considered barbaric by outsiders, and fighting against all influences from Mexico City with bloodshed.

Deep in the mountain valley, on a clearing that had been forcibly carved out, stood a rough and ferocious giant stone statue. The statue's face was indistinct, but its open mouth and protruding eyes exuded a primal ferocity.

At the foot of the statue is an altar made of black stones.

Meanwhile, campfires were burning brightly around the open space.

Hundreds of tribal members lay prostrate on the ground, most of them dressed in simple coarse cloth clothing, their faces and bare skin painted with intricate and mysterious white patterns using natural pigments.

Their eyes were fervent and bewildered, and they muttered incantations as they followed the movements of the figure before the altar.

He was an old priest, as thin as a skeleton draped in human skin. He wore a heavy, colorful robe woven from various bird feathers and small bones, his face was painted with red and white paint, and he wore a huge crown on his head decorated with horns and the fangs of wild beasts.

It's not that we don't want to bring them into civilized society, but rather that they refuse to enter, or rather, the chiefs don't allow them to enter.

Otherwise, who will exercise my power?

Michoacán has tried many things before, but none of them worked.

He held aloft a black obsidian dagger.

The old priest chanted in an ancient and obscure tribal language, his voice hoarse yet incredibly penetrating.

His body trembled violently, as if he were communicating with the gods in the darkness. With each pause, the prostrate crowd below would let out a suppressed, tidal wave of sobs and worship.

On the periphery of the crowd stood dozens of tribal soldiers, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and with gleaming yellow bullet chains crisscrossing their bodies.

They too had battle markings on their faces and fierce eyes. Unlike the purely fanatical believers in the arena, their eyes held a more realistic cruelty and vigilance. They were the backbone of this tribal armed force, believing in both ancient gods and the modern killing weapons in their hands.

“…&%￥#@!!!” The old priest suddenly uttered a string of sharp, piercing syllables, and the chant reached its climax.

He turned around, faced the statue, and opened his arms as if to embrace it.

As he moved, four strong warriors shoved two men, who were tightly bound and had rags stuffed in their mouths, to the altar.

The two men were wearing ripped Mexican state police uniforms, their faces covered in bruises and blood, their eyes filled with extreme fear and despair.

They struggled desperately, whimpering in their throats, tears mingling with sweat, but their resistance was like an ant trying to shake a tree in the hands of the strong tribal warriors.

"Look! The mountain god is hungry! It needs the blood and souls of warriors to gain strength!"

The old priest roared in heavily accented Spanish, making sure everyone could understand, “These cowards of the Lowlands! These lackeys of the invaders! Their blood is the best offering to the gods! The gods will grant us strength, so that our bullets may pierce the hearts of our enemies, our blades may sever their heads, and the mountains of Santa Ana may become the graveyard of all outsiders!”

"Woo—!!!" The crowd erupted in a frenzied response.

A tribal warrior roughly grabbed one of the young policemen by the hair and slammed him hard onto the cold altar.

The young policeman's eyes widened, his body convulsing violently from extreme fear.

The old priest stepped forward, raising his obsidian dagger high as he chanted the final sacrificial incantation.

The light from the campfire focused on the sharp tip of the dagger.

The next second, the dagger, leaving a blur, slashed fiercely across the young policeman's neck!
"puff--!"

Blood gushed out like a burst water bladder, the scalding liquid, with a strong smell of rust, splashing onto the altar, covering the old priest's robes and his withered cheeks.

The policeman's body jerked violently a few times before going completely limp, with only blood still flowing, meandering along the grooves carved on the altar towards the hideous stone statue.

The old priest stuck out his tongue and licked the blood that had splattered on his lips, his face showing a look of intoxication and madness.

He raised his blood-stained hands, faced the boiling crowd, and roared with all his might:

"God has consumed the offerings, God has heard our prayers! He has promised! He will protect us! The spirits of the mountains and forests will guide us, and the wrath of our ancestors will be imbued in our weapons! We are invincible! We will slaughter those lowlanders who have defiled the holy land and reclaim the land of our ancestors!"

"Kill them all!"

"Take back the land!"

Long live the Mountain God!

The crowd went completely wild, waving their arms and roaring deafeningly. The soldiers with guns also raised their AK-47s and pulled the triggers into the dark night sky.

“Da da da da——!!!”

The dense gunfire echoed through the valley.

Deep within the Santa Ana Mountains, as the primitive and bloody sacrificial ritual reached its climax, with frenzied shouts and celebratory gunshots echoing through the valleys, they were completely unaware that their every move had already been exposed to the "sky eye" thousands of meters above the ground.

A Mexican Air Force RQ-4A Global Hawk high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle is silently cruising above the clouds, its high-precision infrared thermal imaging sensor coldly capturing all heat source signals of the ground below.

There are so damn many hotspots in the valley.

And there's a bonfire...

You're starting a fire in broad daylight...

Hundreds of kilometers away, in the underground command center of the Southern Theater Air Force in Michoacán.

The brightly lit hall was filled with the low hum of various electronic devices and the beeping of communication signals. Huge electronic screens displayed data streams and processed images transmitted from the drone's guidance system. A pilot technician monitoring the screen sat bolt upright, his fingers rapidly tapping on the control panel, zooming in on the image.

"Report! An unusually high-intensity, high-density heat source cluster has been detected! Coordinates: Valley in region E103, N47 of the Santa Ana Mountains. Thermal imaging shows at least three hundred active units, accompanied by persistent high temperatures."

The air force lieutenant colonel on duty immediately walked quickly to the screen.

"Can you do further identification? Are there any weapon features?" the lieutenant colonel asked in a deep voice.

"The resolution is limited, but some heat source outlines show characteristics of long, strip-shaped metallic objects, consistent with the form of individual weapons. Combined with the fact that this area has been marked as the core activity zone of the Kola separatist armed group, the probability of it being a high-risk target gathering area exceeds 90%." The technician quickly analyzed the data.

The lieutenant colonel did not hesitate any longer. "Immediately upload the intelligence to the Southern Command! Request authorization for a tactical strike!"

The intelligence was instantly transmitted to the Southern Command via an encrypted data link.

The high command, already furious from the criticism from the General Staff, made a decision almost immediately after verifying the source of the intelligence and the nature of the target.

"The target has been identified as a gathering place for illegal armed groups and extremist separatists, who are engaging in illegal activities and pose a serious threat to national security. Authorization is granted to execute the immediate strike procedure within the area cleanup contingency plan. Order: Dispatch the nearest A-10 attack aircraft squadron, armed with incendiary bombs, to conduct indiscriminate saturation bombing of the coordinates! Thoroughly eliminate all hostile targets in the area!"

The order was quickly translated into specific operational instructions and issued to a frontline air force base.

Inside the base, a piercing battle alarm suddenly sounded.

The ground crew, like tightly wound gears, sped towards the tarmac.

A rugged, sculpted A-10 Warthog attack aircraft was already ready. Upon receiving orders, ground crew swiftly mounted several heavy MK-77 incendiary bombs onto the pylons beneath the wings and fuselage. These bombs, filled with a mixture of thickened gasoline and thermite, were incredibly powerful.

"Target coordinates entered. Mission: Area clearing. Good luck, pilot," came the brief instruction from the control tower.

"Warthog received, mission clear," the pilot calmly replied, pushing the throttle.

The A-10 attack aircraft's twin turbofan engines roared, propelling this steel behemoth, designed specifically for ground attack, as it accelerated and lifted off the runway, plunging into the night sky and hurtling toward the Santa Ana Mountains.

After a flight of more than ten minutes, the A-10 attack aircraft reached the target airspace. The pilot descended, and through the canopy, below lay a range of undulating mountains, appearing inky black in the moonlight. The onboard navigation system, linked with real-time data from command, precisely guided the aircraft toward the target point marked "Death Valley."

The revelry continued in the valley.

The second captured policeman had been brutally murdered; his body, like a broken doll, was impaled on a spear and hung beside the altar.
Blood dripped from his ankles, looking particularly gruesome in the firelight. The old priest stood on the altar, his face and robes stained with both congealed and undried blood. He opened his arms, enjoying the worship of his tribesmen below, while his mouth roared in a frenzied tone:

"The gods are pleased! But they crave more! We need more of our enemies' blood to irrigate our land and strengthen our arms! Tomorrow! When the sun rises, we will..."

“Woo-hum-hum!!!”

A deep, rapidly approaching whooshing sound suddenly came from overhead, drowning out the noise in the valley!
Everyone was startled and subconsciously looked up at the narrow patch of night sky cut through by the canopy of the ancient trees.

A large, dark gray bird with a unique shape was seen soaring over them at an imposing height, hundreds of meters above their heads! It wasn't flying fast, but its massive wings and distinctive twin tails created an unsettling silhouette in the sparse moonlight.

"What is that?!" someone exclaimed in terror.

“It’s an Iron Bird! The government’s Iron Bird!” A seasoned militant recognized it, his voice trembling.

The old priest's chanting abruptly stopped, a flicker of surprise and uncertainty crossing his cloudy eyes. But the arrogance instilled by his long isolation from the world forced him to remain calm, even attempting to interpret this uninvited guest as a miracle: "No! Don't panic! Perhaps it's a messenger sent by the mountain god, it..."

Send your mother!

Even the Empress Dowager would have to admit defeat, and you're still not running away?
Back then, my mother almost ran away whenever she saw a car.

Just as the A-10 attack aircraft flew directly above the valley, the pilot calmly pressed the bomb release button.

"Sizzle—sizzle—sizzle—"

Several black dots detached from under the wings and belly of the aircraft, plummeting vertically towards the brightly lit, densely populated valley below with a deathly shriek!
Time seemed to freeze at this moment.

Everyone looked up at the approaching black dots, and a primal, extreme fear gripped their hearts in an instant!
next second!
"boom!!!!!!!!!"

The first incendiary bomb exploded upon impact!

This was not the shockwave and shrapnel of an ordinary bomb, but a ball of orange-red fire that exploded, expanded, and spread rapidly in an instant!
The viscous incendiary agent, with a temperature reaching thousands of degrees Celsius, was like magma from hell, radiating outwards in all directions!

Immediately afterwards——

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!!"

More incendiary bombs rained down, exploding into huge clusters of death flowers throughout the valley!
Flames! Flames everywhere!
The viscous fuel adhered to everything that could burn—trees, thatched huts, altars, idols…and, even, the human body!

A piercing scream, so shrill it was inhuman, instantly replaced the previous frenzied shouts!

People were engulfed by flames, turning into wildly dancing and struggling torches, and then burned to charcoal within seconds.

The trees crackled and popped in the intense heat, rapidly carbonizing and collapsing. The stone statue, considered a sacred object, was also engulfed in flames, its surface paint and countless years of accumulated bloodstains sizzling strangely under the intense heat.

The wooden pole from which the policeman's body was suspended was set on fire, and the body quickly curled up and charred in the flames.

Those who tried to escape were overtaken by the flowing sea of ​​fire after only a few steps, collapsing to the ground and turning to ashes in extreme agony.

The densely packed crowd had nowhere to escape under the indiscriminate flames. In just a few dozen seconds, the entire valley was transformed into a raging inferno, the air thick with the stench of burning flesh, hair, and organic matter, even overpowering the previous smell of blood.

After dropping its bombs, the A-10 attack aircraft in the air coldly looked down at the valley below, which had been completely ignited and resembled a furnace. After confirming that there were no more signs of large-scale life, the pilot gently pulled the control stick, made a beautiful turn, and disappeared into the distant night sky with the engine roaring.

All that remained behind was that desolate, still-burning wasteland of death.

What era are we living in...?

They even resort to summoning gods.

They went too far with the Boxers; they invited Yama, the King of Hell, instead.

(End of this chapter)