Chapter 483: The

At noon on the red‑soil plateau, the sun was so scorching it could roast a layer of oil onto a person.

Manuro stood at the edge of the makeshift leveled yellow‑soil runway, his neck stretched long like a Vulture waiting to be fed. Behind him his armed guard squad bore loaded rifles, and on the hood of the jeep serving as command vehicle were even a few bottles of champagne chilled after being procured from the Luanda Black Market.

He had just signed a contract that felt like a Contract of Selling Oneself yesterday, and today Lu Qingshan announced that the "reinforcements" had arrived.

Manuro's lingering displeasure was quickly replaced by anticipation. His mind filled with Hollywood movie scenes: the hatch opening, rows of Rambo‑type figures in sunglasses, chewing gum, bodies laden with grenades marching out, even a cold Soviet Union drill sergeant would do. As long as they could fight, drive the damned government troops into the sea, and make him president, it was worth it.

A muffled roar came from the horizon.

Three gray‑white‑painted Ilyushin‑76 transport aircraft sliced through the heat wave, roaring with a massive howl, lumbering onto the runway, and the swirling red dust instantly choked Manuro into a series of coughs.

The hatch opened slowly.

Manuro straightened his back abruptly, even tidying his beret, ready to greet the heavenly troops.

But the next second, his chin nearly slammed into his own foot.

No camouflage uniforms, no heavy machine guns, and not a single pair of sunglasses or cigar.

Stepping out of the aircraft's belly were a group of middle‑aged men in uniform deep‑blue work cloth overalls and yellow safety helmets. Their skin was dark and rough; on their backs they carried not rocket launchers but bundles of iron shovels and Cross Pickaxes, and the nets they held contained enamel basins and towels.

The most absurd thing was that the leader, a fifty‑something old man with a face full of wrinkles, was shouldering a massive black‑iron marching pot on his shoulder.

A few hundred people, in a chaotic line, laughed and chattered as they descended the gangway; some pointed loudly at a distant baobab tree, their demeanor exactly like a crew of migrant workers hauled from a domestic construction site.

Manuro stared dumbfounded for a full minute, until the pot‑shouldering old man gave him a simple, hearty grin, flashing a pair of smoke‑stained yellowed teeth.

"Mr. Lu!" Manuro spun around, yanking Lu Qingshan—who was sipping tea beside the jeep—by the collar, his eyes reddened and saliva spitting everywhere, "What do you mean by this? Is this the elite you promised would help me win the war? Are you planning to have them block tanks with iron pots or dig the government troops' corners with iron shovels?"

"This is a scam! I want to tear up the contract!"

Lu Qingshan gently brushed Manuro's hand aside, not even glancing at the "migrant workers," and simply tipped his head to blow on the floating tea in his cup.

"Why the hurry?"

"To fight this war you need food, you need sleep. If you want to win, first plant the roots," Lu Qingshan sipped his tea, his tone as flat as if discussing the weather, "Manuro, do you believe that in three days you'll be begging them to teach you how to wield an iron shovel?"

Manuro trembled with anger, kicked over the empty ammunition crate beside him, cursed as he led his guard away. He thought those Easterners must be crazy, or perhaps he himself was crazy to believe them.

For the next two days, the desolate mining zone grew even more surreal.

Those few hundred "Blue Ants" completely ignored the ever‑present threat of battle. Under the command of the pot‑shouldering old man—now everyone called him "Old Money foreman"—they displayed a chilling efficiency.

They built no machine‑gun bunkers, nor did they set up barbed wire.

They began digging.

Lu Qingjun crouched on the earthen slope, watching the fiery scene below, his eyes nearly popping out.

"Su, the deputy, this… what on earth is this?" Lu Qingjun pointed below, "Old Money wants to build a building here? The foundation's been dug way too deep, isn't it?"

Su Mingyuan sat on a stone, notebook in hand, sketching as he adjusted his glasses and smiled enigmatically, "Little Lu, you don't get it. This is our unit's old tradition. That ditch—do you think it's a drainage canal? It's a communication trench. That angle of the earth mound is a bullet‑deflecting facet."

"What about that flat ground in the middle?" Lu Qingjun pointed to the camp's core, where the earth had been leveled like a mirror, even raised into a ridge.

"Oh, that's a vegetable plot," Su Mingyuan said matter‑of‑factly.

"Vegetables… a vegetable plot?!" Lu Qingjun nearly rolled off the slope, "What era is this, still planting crops?!"

"That's our rule," Su Mingyuan closed his notebook, gazing at the red earth with a hint of pride, "Once you plant vegetables here, the place becomes our home. Since it's home, no one can take it away."

On the third night, there was no Moon.

The African night was as black as ink, with only occasional beast howls drifting from the distant jungle.

A twenty‑person elite reconnaissance squad slipped silently to the mining area's perimeter. Their leader, a bearded Cuban, was a mercenary instructor hired by the government troops with a hefty sum—a truly ruthless character who had crawled out of a pile of corpses.

Their intel indicated a group of clueless Huaxia construction workers had arrived, unarmed—essentially walking‑in meat. Capture a few tongues and they could figure out what Lu Qingshan was up to.

Manuro's guard was still sound asleep in a camp several kilometers away, with not a single sentry on duty.

The Cuban gave a signal, and the twenty shadowy figures crouched, slipping into the freshly‑dug "construction site" under the cover of night.

Too quiet.

The silence felt off.

The Cuban had just crossed an earthen beam when the ground gave way beneath his foot; before he could react, a sharpened hardwood stake sprang silently from the side.

"Puff."

It was the dull, brief thud of a stake entering flesh.

The forward scout didn't even hum before collapsing like a sack of rags.

Immediately, the once‑dead silent site sprang to life.

Those "blue work clothes" who had been smiling and swinging hoes in the daylight now resembled demons crawling out of hell. They bore no guns, only engineering shovels, pick‑axes, and even razor‑sharp sickles.

No gunfire, no battle cries.

Only the whine of blades slicing air and the crisp crack of bone shattering.

A Cuban mercenary lifted an AK‑47, but an engineering shovel swooshed in with a gust, precisely shearing off the finger that pulled the trigger, then flipping the shovel blade to smash his Adam's apple.

Another tried to pull a grenade, only to have a pair of hands erupt from the pit beneath his feet, gripping his ankle and yanking hard. He lost his balance and fell, met by a cold masonry knife.

It was an asymmetric slaughter.

Ten minutes.

Just ten minutes.

Everything returned to calm. Apart from a heavy scent of blood hanging in the air, it was as if nothing had occurred.

At dawn the next day, Manuro was woken by a clamor.

He stormed out of the tent, ready to question Lu Qingshan about why last night's activity hadn't been reported, only to slam his foot hard at the camp gate.

"Old Money foreman" was squatting, wiping the massive black pot with a rag; its bottom shone black, spotless. Seeing Manuro approach, he stood, brushed red dust from his trousers, then casually lifted two heavily‑bound, bruised humanoid shapes from beside him, tossed them like dead chickens at Manuro's feet.

They were the Cuban instructor and his deputy.

At that moment the two usually invincible killing machines had vacant eyes, trembled all over, rag stuffed in their mouths, and stared at the Old Money foreman as if he were a devil.

"This…" Manuro retreated a step, nearly stepping on his own heel.

"Last night a few wild dogs came and ruined the vegetable ridge I just raised," Qian Weiguo said flatly, pointing to the freshly turned red earth a short distance away that seemed a touch higher than the rest, "The rest is buried as fertilizer. These two leaders are yours to interrogate."

He pointed to a spot on the map at the outer edge of the mining area; that was the site of last night's firefight.

"This place has good soil, loose and breathable, suitable for planting potatoes," Qian Weiguo lifted his head, and a chilling glint that made hearts race flashed in his cloudy old eyes, "also suitable for burying people."

Manuro watched the two Cuban men who were already terrified, then glanced at the surrounding workers in blue uniforms calmly washing their faces, brushing their teeth, and preparing to start digging; a cold shiver ran up his spine to the crown of his head.

He finally understood—this was not any kind of laborer.

It was clearly a pack of tyrannosauruses cloaked in sheep's clothing.

Lu Qingshan had arrived at some point, still holding that Yixing teacup in his hand.

He patted Manuro's shoulder, who was already frozen like a wooden chicken.

"How about it, Mr. Manuro? Now, can we discuss how to train your troops?"

Manuro mechanically nodded, his Adam's apple rolling with difficulty.

"First lesson," Lu Qingshan said, pointing at the silhouettes bending over to level the ground, "let your soldiers first learn to bend their waists like them. Only after mastering the bend can they, when they lift their heads, twist off the enemy's head."

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away in the capital of Angola, Luanda.

In the command center of the Soviet Advisory Group, a dead silence prevailed.

An urgent battle report lay on the table: the elite reconnaissance squad was completely annihilated, none survived; the site showed no trace of large‑scale gunfire, only uniform, surgically precise cold‑weapon wounds.

"This is an extremely dangerous signal."

The silver‑haired Soviet chief military advisor crushed the cigarette butt hard, stared at the inconspicuous red dot of the mining area on the map, his face so gloomy it seemed it could drip water.

"This is not ordinary mercenaries; a fully formed, highly tactical Special Forces unit has intervened."

"Send the order, bring up the T-62 Tank regiment. Whoever they are, I'll crush them into mush with steel tracks!"