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

A bullet flew from 800 meters away and accurately pierced the sergeant's temple. Blood, brain matter, and bone fragments sprayed into the air, creating a red and white mist that splattered onto the faces of the two mercenaries holding Li Mo down.

The sergeant's body stiffened for a fraction of a second, then he fell straight to the side like a toppled statue. The pistol slipped from his loose fingers, bounced on the concrete, and accidentally discharged, piercing his own foot.

-

Eight hundred meters away, atop an abandoned water tower on the northwest side of the mine, Xie Huai'an looked up from behind his sniper scope and let out a long breath. He had been holding his breath for so long that it trembled slightly as he exhaled.

Bai Ye sat beside him, still holding the observation scope in his hand. He had just used the scope to track the sergeant's movements the entire time, and reported the firing parameters—wind speed, distance, and target movement trajectory—a second before the sergeant pulled the trigger.

"Hit." Bai Ye's voice remained calm, but the knuckles of his fingers holding the observation scope were tinged with a very faint bluish-white.

Xie Huai'an didn't answer. He took another deep breath, pressed his face back against the sniper scope, put his finger on the trigger, and said in a faster-than-usual voice, "Second target, machine gunner. Continue reporting parameters."

"Wind speed remains constant, distance 820, deviate one micrometer to the right."

On the water tower, the sound of sniper rifles rang out steadily at a rate of one shot every three seconds.

Xie Huai'an's marksmanship was precise and ruthless; every bullet took away a key target—the machine gunner, the communications soldier, and the commander who was trying to regroup the troops.

-

On the open ground of the mine, the other members of Group A all changed their expressions the moment the sniper support arrived.

Li Mo leaped to his feet, the disheveled state he had just endured being pinned to the ground like a veiled disguise. As the sergeant fell, he grabbed the wrist of the mercenary holding his right arm, twisted it in the opposite direction, and the sound of bones shattering rang out crisply.

The man screamed and released his grip. Li Mo seized the spare pistol from his waist, pressed the muzzle against his chest and fired two shots. Then he turned and shot another mercenary who was still trying to raise his gun between the eyebrows.

"Everyone!" His voice boomed through the communication channel, carrying a power that had been suppressed for too long finally erupting, "Go!"

Thirty seconds left in the countdown.

As Lu Xiao turned around while the three mercenaries behind him were being targeted by the sniper, he twirled his pistol halfway in his palm and shot down the closest one with a single shot.

Countdown: 15 seconds.

Xie Ran discarded the machine gun, which had run out of bullets, and jumped out from behind cover. He held a machete in his left hand and an iron pipe he had broken off from a mine cart in his right, and charged into the midst of the last few mercenaries who were still putting up a fight.

He single-handedly withstood the final barrage of fire, sustaining at least three new wounds, but his movements didn't slow down in the slightest. Blood streamed down his left arm, dripping onto the ground.

"Fifteen seconds! Everyone evacuate!" Li Mo grabbed the sergeant adjutant, who had been knocked unconscious by the butt of his rifle—this was the mission target, the factory manager, who had to be captured alive—and ran wildly in the direction of evacuation.

"Run!" Li Mo's shout drowned out the gunfire and the preheating of the explosion.

Group A, consisting of five men and a knocked-out prisoner, rushed at full speed toward the breach in the old wall on the north side of the mine. Behind them were the final seconds of the countdown, beneath their feet was the ground shaking more and more violently, and above them was Xie Huai'an's continuous cover fire from the water tower.

As Lu Xiao ran, he glanced back at the office building. The megaphone was still hanging on the balcony railing, and the sergeant's body lay on the open ground.

"What a pity," he said as he ran. "That Frenchman was a lot of talkers, but he had a nice knife. We should have picked it up as a collectible."

"You still have the nerve to think about the loot?!"

"People should have aspirations."

Three seconds left in the countdown.

They climbed over the old wall.

Two seconds left in the countdown.

They rushed into the edge of the rainforest.

Countdown: one second.

The entire underground workshop of the mine exploded with a muffled bang.

The first wave of explosions came from deep underground, and the shockwave traveled upwards along the tunnel system of the old mine, tearing the ground into more than a dozen cracks from which orange-red flames spewed out.

Then came the second wave—the chain reaction of explosions. Conveyor belts, mortar barrels, automatic rifles, and ammunition boxes were blasted into pieces in a series of explosions. Flames gushing from the cracks formed pillars of fire tens of meters high, illuminating the rainforest night sky as if it were daytime.

The mine's office building collapsed entirely in the third wave of explosions, its reinforced concrete structure crumbling like building blocks and crashing into the already blasted underground space. Heavy machine guns, armored vehicles, ammunition depots—everything was engulfed in flames and ruins.

Team A retreated to the rendezvous point in the light of the explosion.

Li Mo threw the unconscious prisoner to the ground, then leaned back against a tree trunk, panting heavily. The bandage on his right arm was soaked with blood, which dripped down his fingers.

Lu Xiao sat on the ground counting his wounds, but gave up halfway through.

Wen Yan put down the medical kit and squatted down in front of Li Mo to examine his right arm.

The moment the bandage was removed, he looked at the reopened wound and the fresh blood seeping from the edges of the stitches, his brow furrowing so deeply it could have trapped a mosquito. But he said nothing, simply taking a suture kit from his medical bag and working even faster than before.

Xie Huai'an came down from the water tower, carrying a sniper rifle, and walked through the rainforest to the side of the team.

Lu Xiao turned to look at him, the smile on his lips finally returning to its normal warmth: "Xie Huai'an, when did you learn to snipe?"

"I always will." Xie Huai'an squatted down next to Wen Yan and pressed the bandage on Li Mo's arm. "You've just never seen me use it."

"So, all those years you were a communications officer in Pokong, you were actually a sniper?"

"Being a communications officer is my main job. Sniping is a hobby."

Xuan Xiao jogged over behind Xie Huai'an. His mouth hadn't closed since the beginning, and his eyes were filled with shock that he hadn't yet fully processed.

He looked at Xie Huai'an, then at Shen Zhuo and Xie Ran who were slumped on the ground, and then at Li Mo who was covered in blood. His lips moved for a long time before he could only manage to utter, "Who...who exactly are you people?"

Shen Zhuo opened one eye and grinned at him, the smile standing out brightly against his face smeared with mud and blood: "We're the Breaking Void Group A. Got it? Next time you complain about training being tiring, think about tonight."

Bai Ye was the last to walk to the side of the line and found a rock at the edge of the crowd to sit down. Wen Yan looked up at him, her gaze lingering on his face for a moment, before continuing to stitch. Xie Huai'an also glanced at him but remained silent.

Li Mo leaned against a tree trunk, looking up at the night sky illuminated by the firelight. The sound of the explosion still echoed through the rainforest, and the ground trembled in the distance like the aftershocks of a small earthquake. He closed his eyes, and a very faint smile curved his lips.