Chapter 479: Resignation

The night sky sparkled with starlight, the sea breeze salty, cool, and refreshing.

Zhong Tian Bei Ji held the helicopter's control stick, sweat-soaked palms gripping it tightly, piloting the Sikorsky S-76 over the dense forest canopy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he unconsciously glanced at Pi Fu, who was intently studying the island's tourist map in the back seat, and couldn't help but recall the phrase: "The gap between people is greater than that between a person and a dog."

The first time he heard the name Pi Fu was during a special mission his brother Gouchen participated in at Toy City.

Gouchen regretfully failed to seize the Hidden Chamber and was brutally beaten, nearly dying again.

At that time, Zhong Tian Bei Ji's impression of the ID "Pi Fu" was merely that of a 【promising, lucky newcomer】, worth covert observation and possibly worth posting a bounty on the black market for intelligence.

When Zhong Tian Bei Ji directly encountered Pi Fu during the 【Immortal Court Lawyer】 mission, his impression of the latter deepened further.

Boldness, meticulous thinking, a kind face with a ruthless hand, and the ability to rapidly adapt to even the most absurd worldviews—these were essential traits of top-tier players, and Pi Fu clearly demonstrated them all.

At that moment, Zhong Tian Bei Ji already knew that unless he could swiftly uncover Pi Fu's real-world identity and confront him offline,

it would be nearly impossible to kill him based solely on the difficulty of the scenario missions.

When rumors began circulating that the 【Star Anvil Platform】 was closely cooperating with the 【Evil Tech Alliance】, Zhong Tian Bei Ji knew it was already impossible to stop the latter's rise.

Then, just days ago, the London incident erupted; Zhong Tian Bei Ji, glued to the livestream, watched as the Insect Lord's Divine Sin Mech smashed a Level 35 Arcane Master with a single elbow strike.

What else could he say? He could only offer a resigned smile.

He finally understood how the sect elders in those xianxia novels felt when facing a protagonist who couldn't be killed, ran like hell, and evolved faster than a rocket.

The Unyielding Qi Cultivator from the Countryside Refuses to Surrender the Ancient Secret Treasure

The Despicable Foundation-Establishment Evil Cultivator Turns the Tables and Kills the Sect's Secret Agent

A Coalition of Multiple Sects Launches a Joint Assault Against the Golden Core Demon Lord

The Nascent Soul True Immortal Is Breaking Through the Heavenly Tribulation

The Noble Earth Immortal Lord Has Arrived Today at His Loyal Kunlun Mountain

A level every few weeks, a realm every few months—no fantasy novel protagonist ever leveled up this fast.

Zhong Tian Bei Ji did not know that in the London battle, 80% of Li Cheng's combat power resided in the mechanical swarms infused with excessive Xuanlei Qilin blood,

and he had finally and completely abandoned any thought of seizing the Hidden Chamber. Isn't it enough to just give up?

"There's firelight ahead in the valley, no suitable landing site detected yet—may need to rappel."

Zhong Tian Bei Ji said calmly, his hands firmly gripping the control stick as he slowly pushed forward.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a faint pinpoint of light suddenly flare up far to the left-rear of the helicopter.

The light hovered beneath the clouds, elusive as a candle flame in the wind.

A chill surged through Zhong Tian Bei Ji's entire body in an instant; his sixth sense, honed by years of teetering on the edge of life and death, instinctively sensed deadly danger approaching.

"Missile incoming!!!!!"

He screamed at the top of his lungs, yanking the control stick with all his strength to execute a sideward turn.

This S-76C+ was equipped with two Turbomeca Arriel 2S1 engines, offering greater power than the original S-76.

The helicopter turned right, its tilted rotors generating lateral thrust, banking over 30° and climbing sharply within three seconds.

Li Cheng gripped the handle tightly, defying his body's survival instinct, deliberately pulling open the cabin door and leaning out of the violently shaking helicopter to look outside.

He saw

the light point to the left-rear flickering rapidly, crossing the entire forest in an instant, narrowly passing just meters beneath the helicopter.

Boom—

The explosion roared through the forest, flames bursting skyward, the rolling heatwave nudging the helicopter slightly upward.

Li Cheng stood on the tilted floor of the helicopter, shifted to the right, and looked down. The ground had been blasted into a massive crater; several towering trees nearby were now ablaze.

An air-to-air missile—likely the U. S. military's AIM-120.

Li Cheng's mind raced: the AIM-120's maximum range was 100 kilometers, its top speed approximately 4 Ma He.

With a diameter of 18 cm and length of 3.7 meters, at a distance of 10 kilometers its angular size was only 0.01° (below the human eye's resolution limit of 0.02°), barely visible as a tail flame.

If a missile was detected beyond 5 kilometers, the human reaction window was less than 3.7 seconds.

And most civilian helicopters, including the Sikorsky S-76C+, had roll response times exceeding 3 seconds,

meaning the entire evasion process—detecting the missile, choosing a maneuver, executing it—had a total effective reaction time of only 0.7 seconds.

Zhong Tian Bei Ji's reaction speed was already near human limits, yet before he could even exhale and calm his adrenaline-fueled arrhythmia,

another pinpoint of light flared again in the night sky's cloud layer to the left-rear. "Fuck!!!!!"

Zhong Tian Bei Ji cursed in local vernacular—civilian helicopters had no Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS), nor any countermeasures like flares or chaff.

He focused entirely, his body nearly merging with the helicopter, yanking the stick violently left to execute a barrel roll while simultaneously applying full right rudder, the vertical tail fully deflected.

This maneuver, called a barrel roll, under Zhong Tian Bei Ji's precise control, made the Sikorsky S-76C+ roll sideways like a tumbling barrel through the air.

All unsecured objects in the cabin rattled down; Li Cheng gripped the handhold tightly, preventing himself from falling.

Half a second later, the second AIM-120 air-to-air missile skimmed past the highest point of the helicopter's barrel roll trajectory, missing entirely.

"Damn."

Even psychologically resilient Li Cheng couldn't help but twitch his eyelid—the AIM-120 carried 22 kilograms of high-explosive fragmentation, and the Sikorsky helicopter still had nearly a thousand liters of fuel.

If hit, getting a full corpse would be considered a courtesy from the system.

"Well done,"

Li Cheng exhaled, patting Zhong Tian Bei Ji on the shoulder. "If Zobayan had your skill, Kobe wouldn't have crashed."

"I was just lucky."

Zhong Tian Bei Ji, still shaken, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

He was grateful for the highly realistic VR technology open-sourced by Whale Song and Prometheus; in his spare time, to relax, he often played flight simulators, flying all kinds of aircraft: helicopters, gliders, FPV drones.

After catching his breath, Li Cheng picked up the radio and contacted Shenyu and the others. "Hey, we were just attacked by two AIM-120 air-to-air missiles—the U. S. military has moved; they likely came from the San Juan U. S. military base."

The Autonomous Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, located in the eastern Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, is one of the United States' autonomous territories.

On the east side of Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Puerto Rico, there is a U. S. military base, deployed with the National Guard's 156th Airlift Wing, primarily equipped with C-130 Hercules transports, C-17 transports, and various fighter jets.

The straight-line distance to Little Saint James Island, or Epstein Island, is only 135 kilometers.

Just as the players guessed, the SVIPs on this island have overwhelming power, able to directly summon the National Guard, urgently bypassing the Pentagon, and directly launching missiles,

Since they can summon the National Guard, then continuing to summon the Coast Guard, and even airborne forces, isn't unreasonable.

Fortunately, the players had previously blown up an airport shuttle bus on the runway, blocking the runway.

"We. Airport runway"

The walkie-talkie transmitted Oracle's broken, intermittent voice, mixed with noisy static. Before Li Cheng could hear it clearly, two more light points lit up in his left rear field of vision.

whatcanisay.

The players were simultaneously relieved—the overload limit of a civilian helicopter is 2.5G, and facing two terminal active radar-homing missiles flying at Ma He 4, evasion was already impossible.

"Prepare to crash-land."

Zhong Zhong Tian Bei Ji shouted, pushing the control stick forward. While diving the aircraft downward, he unbuckled his seatbelt, pulled open the cabin door, seized the right moment and leapt down, plunging toward the lush canopy of an arbutus tree, hanging from it like an ape,

As for Li Cheng, he grabbed the rappelling rope, descended rapidly, and swung forcefully toward the rear of the helicopter.

The slime form of Hui Yu urgently reshaped, transforming into a whip, and with a "snap" precisely hooked onto a vine in midair, stopping Li Cheng's further fall.

"Hoo—"

Li Cheng listened to the crash and explosion of the helicopter ahead, watched the fire shooting skyward, and couldn't help but let out a breath of relief. He carefully grabbed the vine, slowly moved to the canopy, and climbed down along the trunk.

His feet touched the ground again. Li Cheng immediately took out the walkie-talkie to contact Oracle, but no matter how hard he tried to make it out, he could only hear words like "supernatural monsters, be careful."

Immediately after, the walkie-talkie emitted continuous static, and communication was no longer possible.

"What the hell is going on." Li Cheng frowned tightly and turned to look south.

————

At the same moment, Joker, who had just occupied the airport and was feeling smug, was pushing Oracle, who sat in a wheelchair, fleeing down the hillside, gasping for breath.

And down the mountain, a bear-shaped monster nearly six meters in size, with eyes burning with flames—clearly not any species from Earth's history—was roaring, and like pushing building blocks, easily shoving aside the wrecked airport shuttle bus.

Clearing a runway for the airport.

"Damned slaughterhouse, I knew the mission wouldn't be this simple, the prize pool is still stacking!"

Oracle silently raged. The largest ursid to appear in real-world Earth's history was the South American short-faced bear; fossils show its weight could reach 1600-1800 kilograms, roughly equal to nine Liangzi.

And that bear-shaped monster was more than four sizes burlier than a short-faced bear, one bite a cow, two bites a Liangzi—as for why a cow only needed one bite while Liangzi needed two, that was naturally because eating Liangzi requires inserting a clove of garlic in between,

In short, the demon bear's vitality far exceeded that of the weakened players,

This world itself possesses supernatural power.