Chapter 1470: The Poaching Wolf

Xia Qing had to pass through an open valley floor over two hundred meters across to get from the hidden valley on the Third Peak back down to the parking area at the base of the mountain.

On the left side of the valley floor, fourteen hundred meters away, was the slope of the Second Peak of Mountain Fifty. That slope had been contaminated by incendiary toxic gas shells and was a medium-danger zone. After a year of hard work by Squad Zhang He, it had now been downgraded to a low-danger zone, and small snowdrift mounds just over half a meter tall were evenly distributed across it.

These small snowdrift mounds were windbreaks that Xia Qing had led her team to build with wooden sticks, dry grass, and rainproof cloth, in order to protect the transplanted green-light saplings through their first winter.

At this moment, these windbreaks had become cover for two snipers from the raiding squad.

Behind a rock taller than a person, three hundred meters to the right of the open ground, the raiding squad's gunner was lying in ambush. The last member of the raiding squad was hidden in the snow along Xia Qing's second-best escape route — the one she would have taken if she'd narrowly dodged the gunner's and snipers' attacks.

The ambush positions chosen by this raiding squad were extremely professional, and every one of them had their body covered with thick snow to block infrared detection.

If Hearing Xin Yu hadn't sent an aerial overhead shot marked with four red circles, Xia Qing's team would definitely not have been able to retreat unscathed when they came down the mountain through here.

Now, these four invaders had gone from hunters to prey.

Hunting requires patience above all else. After the hunting squad lay still and observed for an hour, Hearing Zhu Li raised her hand and gave a covert signal to Xia Qing in the distance, indicating that her intelligence gathering and preparations were complete.

Xia Qing, sniper rifle in hand, returned a hand gesture, then silently counted: one, two, three!

"Bang!"

Hearing Zhu Li squeezed the trigger in turn; her target was the advanced elasticity evolver hidden in the snow fifty meters from her.

The moment the gunshot rang out, all four snow mounds trembled at once. The gunner immediately stood up with his rocket launcher on his shoulder, and the instant he aimed the muzzle at Hearing Zhu Li, he exposed his upper body.

"Bang!"

Before he could fire, Xia Qing, eighteen hundred meters away, squeezed the trigger and sniped him dead.

"Boom!"

Because she didn't have a hundred-percent hit rate, Hearing Zhu Li tossed out a high-explosive grenade after firing, then immediately ducked into a crevice in the rock and tucked herself tightly behind her soft-body protective shield.

"Boom!" The grenade Hearing Zhu Li threw was hit by the raiding squad's Sniper No. 1 and detonated in midair.

The explosion made Hearing Zhu Li's eardrums ring. The sharp fragments slammed into the soft-body protective shield covering her like hailstones. Hearing Zhu Li could clearly feel the terrifying sensation of the shield's surface caving inward slightly, and she gripped the shield's handle in a death grip, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

"Bang!"

What pulled her out of her fear was the sound of a sniper rifle. Even though her ears were still ringing from the explosion over thirty meters away, even though her teeth were chattering and her whole body trembling, Hearing Evolver Hearing Zhu Li still clearly distinguished the sound of Xia Qing's sniper rifle.

That gunshot snapped Hearing Zhu Li out of her fear, and she immediately followed the methods the instructor had taught during special training, working hard to steady herself.

"Boom!"

"Bang!"

"Invading elasticity evolver has been taken out."

The sound of the elasticity evolver fifty meters from her hitting the ground, the counter-shot from the invading sniper, and Xia Qing's calm voice all rang in Hearing Zhu Li's ears almost simultaneously. She pressed the walkie-talkie button hard and sent out intel in a trembling voice: "Sniper No. 1 is using a medium-caliber sniper rifle, No. 2 is using a large-caliber."

"Copy that, stay under cover."

Xia Qing's hearing-evolution level was higher than Hearing Zhu Li's, so of course she could tell that the invading Sniper No. 2, fifteen hundred meters from her, was using a large-caliber sniper rifle — the bullet he fired had struck the rock two meters to Xia Qing's left.

That didn't prove Sniper No. 2 lacked sniping ability, because Xia Qing's sniping position was cleverly chosen, and the enemy would need to pop smoke grenades to draw her out.

Xia Qing didn't move a muscle, her muzzle aimed at the invading Sniper No. 1 who had just fired and hit the grenade.

That sniper had clearly also recognized the model of Xia Qing's rifle from the sound, so he retreated from his optimal sniping position and ducked behind a boulder that didn't offer sniping conditions.

They had already been exposed. Invading Sniper No. 1 might use his speed advantage to quickly relocate behind Xia Qing and coordinate with Sniper No. 2 to snipe her; or he might take turns retreating with his teammate, pulling out of Xia Qing's sniping range and escaping together.

Xia Qing was fighting two enemy snipers alone — one at beginner or intermediate level, the other of unknown level. In professional terms, Xia Qing had now entered a "hunter-versus-hunter" combat situation, and the odds were not in her favor.

The boulder Sniper No. 1 chose could fully shield her body, but she overlooked one thing: this was Xia Qing's territory.

Sniper Xia Qing of course knew exactly how thick every boulder on her own territory that could serve as sniper cover was!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Xia Qing rapidly squeezed the trigger, and three armor-piercing sniper rounds, with pinpoint precision, slammed into the same spot on the boulder where invading Sniper No. 1 was hiding.

The first bullet gouged a shallow crater in the rock, the second widened the crack, and the third brutally punched through the stone wall and hit invading Sniper No. 1's shoulder.

Because of insufficient kinetic energy, the third bullet that penetrated the stone wall failed to punch through Sniper No. 1's bulletproof suit, but it rendered that boulder useless as cover.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Invading Sniper No. 2 didn't use the opportunity of Xia Qing attacking Sniper No. 1 to escape, but instead used the same sniping tactic on the boulder shielding Xia Qing, covering his teammate.

But the cover Xia Qing had chosen was thick enough; she ignored Sniper No. 2's harassment and kept squeezing the trigger, firing at the already-cracked boulder in front of invading Sniper No. 1. Sniper No. 1 could only hold up his soft-body shield and sprint at full speed, fleeing at top speed toward cover farther away.

"Bang!"

"Ah!"

Sniper No. 1 had run less than two seconds before an armor-piercing round punched through her left ankle; she let out a scream and collapsed. Before the spurting blood had time to stain the snow on the ground, a second armor-piercing round struck her neck.

Xia Qing quickly relocated and calmly reported the situation to her teammate: "Invading Sniper No. 1 has been taken out."

"Copy that!" Hearing Zhu Li, hidden under cover, was no longer panicked at all — only excited.

Nine-and-a-half-level visual evolver Xia Qing immediately judged the direction invading Sniper No. 2 had fled from the tracks in the snow: "Sniper No. 2 is fleeing toward Mountain Fifty-One. I'll go after her."

The enemy was an intermediate, meaning a level-four or level-five speed evolver, but Xia Qing's top running speed had already been raised to level five and a half.

Want to run? Not a chance! Dare to come up here to hunt her, and don't even think about walking out of this territory alive!

"Copy that, I'll go tally the supplies."

Four invaders, one had run — only three corpses remained here. Hearing Zhu Li of course had to hide these three bodies as quickly as possible. Carrion birds were already circling overhead; if they attracted large raptors that carried the corpses off, their losses would be significant.

"Stay safe."

Although this was Zhu Li's first time in real combat, she had already gone through several months of training and was still up to the task of collecting the bodies. After Xia Qing gave her a reminder, she set off at full speed.

Which rocks to step on, which vines to grab for fast progress — Xia Qing knew it all clearly, but Sniper No. 2 ahead did not.

The distance between the two closed to 2,100 meters. Just as Sniper No. 2 fell again, Xia Qing raised her sniper rifle and was about to fire when she suddenly saw a brown-gray evolved wolf leap down from a boulder and shatter the enemy's spine.

Xia Qing...

At the moment of the kill, she had been poached by a wolf that didn't play by the rules!