Rebirth of a Mercenary: The Ace Mercenary Forced to Be the Beloved of the Group

The aftershocks of the explosion still echoed through the rainforest, and the beams of searchlights had already swept across the ventilation shaft. Whistles, shouts, and the sound of combat boots trudging through the mud approached simultaneously from three directions.

Without hesitation, Li Mo kicked aside the rotten wooden planks covering the entrance to the drainage ditch along the backup route, and a stench more repulsive than that of a swamp gushed out from the dark opening.

"Down!" He lowered his voice, grabbed Wen Yan and pushed her into the ditch, followed by Shen Zhuo and Lu Xiao. Xie Ran brought up the rear, glancing back before jumping down—the firelight at the ventilation shaft was still burning, casting flickering shadows on the rainforest canopy. He grinned, gave that direction a middle finger, and then plunged into the darkness.

The drainage ditch was less than 1.5 meters high, forcing everyone to stoop as they moved forward. The water was up to their calves, and unidentified flocculent matter and rust fragments floated on the surface. With each step, they could feel their boots sinking into some kind of soft, rotten sediment.

The beam of the flashlight swayed on the water's surface, illuminating the dense mold and moss covering the walls on both sides. In some places, grayish-white mycelium had grown, glowing eerily in the flashlight's beam.

At the end of the waterway was a rusty iron gate, half-open, with a faint airflow coming through the crack. Lu Xiao squeezed to the front and used the back of his machete to pry the gate open. Behind the gate was a wider tunnel—the main transport tunnel of the old mine.

"The 3D map shows that we should take the middle fork and head about 400 meters to the northwest to reach the lower level of the factory." Lu Xiao held up his handheld terminal, which displayed a 3D structural diagram of the mine.

They followed the map for six minutes, encountered three forks in the road, and turned back twice.

The middle fork in the road ends at a newly constructed concrete wall, distinctly different from the brick and stone structures of the French colonial era. The left fork leads to a dead end locked by an iron gate. The right fork, after walking about two hundred meters, branches into two more paths, completely unmarked on the map.

"Stop." Lu Xiao raised his fist, and the team stopped.

He stared at the 3D map for several seconds, then flipped the screen over to show Li Mo. "The intelligence doesn't match the actual terrain at all. This mine has been modified—large-scale modification. Old tunnels have been blocked or rerouted, and some places weren't even dug by the French; they were newly excavated later. This 3D map is basically a piece of waste paper now."

"Can you locate it?"

"Location is possible, but it can only tell us where we are, not which way to go. These side roads don't even exist on the map." Lu Xiao swiped his finger across the screen a few times, bringing up another layer of data. "Moreover, the underground signal attenuation is too severe; the real-time data packets Xie Huai'an transmitted had a packet loss rate of over 30%."

"Captain," Xie Huai'an's voice cut in, "I'm looking up old files from the French colonial period. Give me a few minutes."

There was a few seconds of silence on the communication channel. On the high ground, Bai Ye sat in front of the observation scope and heard the entire conversation. His finger slowly turned the focus knob on the observation scope, then stopped.

Xie Huai'an said to Bai Ye, "Xiao Bai, I've sent you the original mine maps from the old colonial archives. See if you can find any clues."

Bai Ye looked down at the terminal screen.

"Brother Huai'an," he began, his voice still calm, "the French have a habit of marking emergency supply warehouses at the end of the main tunnels. The blueprints mark twelve warehouses on the main tunnels, each with its own independent vertical ventilation shaft leading to the surface. If the PMC blocked some passages when modifying the tunnels, the supply warehouses are the most likely to be overlooked—because the warehouses are located at the deepest part of the tunnel system, usually embedded in the rock strata, making them difficult to find and modify."

"In other words, if we can find a overlooked supply warehouse, we can find a vertical ventilation shaft that leads directly to the core area of ​​the factory." Xie Huai'an paused for a moment. "How do you know about this labeling convention?"

Bai Ye's finger paused for half a second at the edge of the terminal. He realized he had said too much, too precisely. A sixteen-year-old boy, without formal military topographical training, shouldn't know the notation conventions of French colonial engineering archives.

"I saw it in a book," he said, his tone completely flat.

Xuanxiao chimed in from the side, "How many books have you actually read? Send me a list later, I want to catch up too."

Xie Huai'an remained silent for two seconds.

"Received. I'll rematch the route using this logic. Three minutes."

Xie Huai'an overlaid and compared the old blueprints with modern satellite topographic maps, his fingers tapping a dense, crisp sound on the keyboard.

Two minutes and forty seconds later, his voice cut back: "Found it. Go 120 meters to the left fork in the road from your current position. There's a side wall boarded up with wooden planks. Behind the planks should be an old supply warehouse. If Bai Ye's judgment is correct, there's a vertical ventilation shaft on the roof of the warehouse."

Lu Xiao led his team forward along this route. After 120 meters, they indeed found a side wall sealed off by thick wooden planks on the right side of the alley.

The beam of the flashlight swept upwards—sure enough, there was a vertical ventilation shaft in the top of the stone chamber, with rusty iron ladders embedded in the shaft walls. About fifteen meters above the shaft opening, there was a faint airflow, carrying the smell of machine oil and metal shavings.

"Little cabbage, you're practically a walking library." Shen Zhuo looked up at the ventilation shaft, his admiration genuine. "When we get back, do you want to look at my acupoint chart? You can borrow it; I can't understand it anyway."

Bai Ye did not respond.

Lu Xiao patted Shen Zhuo on the shoulder and lowered his voice to say to Li Mo, "This kid's brain is on a completely different level from ours."

Li Mo walked down to the bottom of the ventilation shaft and tested the stability of the ladder. Rust chips fell down, but the main body of the iron ladder was quite sturdy. He took the lead and climbed up, and the others followed in turn.

At the end of the ventilation shaft was a wire mesh door, which was unlocked.

The five members of Group A filed out of the ventilation shaft, silently dispersed, and each found cover.

The scale of the production line far exceeds what intelligence described. This is not an "illegal weapons workshop," but an underground arms factory with mass production capabilities.

Lu Xiao's gaze swept over a spray-painted label on a wooden crate. His lips moved, and his voice was low, but his tone carried the gritted teeth of someone who had been ripped off: "Two million? That'll have to be paid extra."

Before his words had even finished, a very faint, crisp sound came from the darkness deep within the workshop. Metal against metal. Then came a muffled, swear word uttered in French.

There are people here.