132: Exposure

With Ling Chao leading the way, the group began to circle the perimeter of the canyon along the patrol route. Along the way, they encountered two patrol squads, but perhaps due to the hot weather, neither patrol squad bothered to acknowledge them.

Thus, they were able to approach the canyon entrance smoothly, but the closer they got to the valley mouth, the more anxious Li Xiao felt.

"God bless us, please don't let any Murphy's Law happen."

Li Xiao muttered to himself as Ling Chao led them to the gate at the valley entrance.

There were about a squad's worth of people on duty here; one person was responsible for operating the gate, one was on guard duty, and the rest were in the artillery bunkers.

At this moment, the gate was open, and Ling Chao prepared to walk in without hesitation. Just then, the soldier on duty suddenly said, "Why is your squad only six people? Where are the other four?"

"The other four are behind us; two of them accidentally fell while patrolling the mountain earlier."

"Oh, is that so..."

The soldier on duty didn't seem overly suspicious. Just as Li Xiao thought they would be able to pass through the valley entrance immediately, the soldier suddenly said, "Password!"

As soon as these words were spoken, everyone, including Ling Chao, was stunned. Why was there a password?

Li Xiao secretly regretted not leaving a survivor to ask about the situation when they ambushed the patrol squad earlier. Weren't they done for now?

Seeing that Ling Chao couldn't say anything for a long time, the sentry's expression clearly changed; he even gripped his rifle tightly, his thumb sliding toward the safety.

"Attack!"

Ling Chao shouted coldly and opened fire immediately. At the same time, the other two team members behind him fired simultaneously at the soldier in front of the gate controls.

In that instant, both were taken down. Although they were using rifles with silencers, it was already useless.

This was the canyon entrance, after all, and the snipers on the cliff walls were watching the situation at the gate at all times.

Within five seconds of their attack, a chilling alarm sounded throughout the narrow canyon.

Suddenly, the artillery bunkers on both sides and the light and heavy machine gun emplacements on the cliffs turned their guns and opened fire on them.

"Quick! Charge in!"

Ling Chao roared, leaped over the one-meter-high gate, and rushed to open the gate controls.

At this moment, dozens of Black Hawk Empire soldiers rushed out of the guard tents, blocking the path into the canyon. A dense barrage of bullets from above and below descended upon them all at once.

Li Xiao was hit by dozens of bullets, his whole body numb with pain. Seeing this, Yue Ge and his spotter shielded Li Xiao together and then followed Ling Chao to launch an attack.

Chen Hu, a Shadow Special Operations Soldier specializing in machine guns, picked up a squad machine gun with a 150-round drum magazine and charged forward through the dense rain of bullets, sweeping the area. The Black Hawk Empire soldiers blocking the road were mowed down by his gunfire one after another.

The worst of these soldiers were corporals, and many more held officer ranks, but facing Chen Hu, who feared no damage, even if their marksmanship was accurate and they were fearless of death, they could not stop his advance.

But after finishing off this batch of defenders, Li Xiao discovered that even more enemy troops had appeared ahead, and two infantry fighting vehicles had even come as reinforcements.

Seeing this situation, Li Xiao quickly told Yue Ge and the others to charge forward, while he himself braved the hail of bullets to take out a four-tube rocket launcher.

Before coming here, Li Xiao had over 28 million HP in his Life Pool. After replenishing 10 million HP for that new recruit of the Shadow Special Forces, he still had over 18 million HP.

Therefore, he didn't need to worry about his HP at all; the most critical thing was how to break through the defense as quickly as possible and enter the interior of the military factory.

Li Xiao quickly turned on the ignition switch of the M20S four-tube rocket launcher and aimed at the infantry fighting vehicle that was firing at Ling Chao and the others.

Four rockets flew out trailing exhaust flames, illuminating the canyon corridor, which was originally obscured by trees and was no more than forty meters wide.

As the rockets exploded, the infantry fighting vehicle's autocannon stopped for a few seconds before firing again.

"Damn! I should have bought man-portable anti-tank missiles from Nangong Yan!"

It was too late for Li Xiao to think about that now. However, although a single armor-piercing round from the autocannon dealt over 3,000 points of damage to living targets, it didn't hit every time.

Li Xiao had already loaded five four-tube rocket launchers with rockets and placed them in his backpack, so he could use them as soon as he took them out.

It was mentioned before that a single shot from the four-tube rocket launcher dealt 8,000 points of damage to light armor. Li Xiao pulled it out and fired fiercely, dealing 32,000 damage per volley. After firing twenty rockets in a row, he finally blew up one of the infantry fighting vehicles.

Ling Chao and the others didn't care about the firepower of the remaining infantry fighting vehicle. They all charged forward together, engaging in a direct firefight with a force of over a company.

In just two minutes, the Imperial Soldiers blocking the road had fallen all over the ground.

Without infantry coordination, they didn't care about the firepower of the infantry fighting vehicle at all.

Thus, Shadow Special Operations Soldiers number five and six rushed toward the infantry fighting vehicle, clutching C4 explosives in their hands.

The vehicle driver was completely dumbfounded when seeing this. Seeing infantry dare to charge an infantry fighting vehicle without any support fire was something he had never seen in his life.

The key was that these god-of-death-like guys weren't even afraid of autocannons, let alone an infantry fighting vehicle at close range.

The driver reversed frantically, but the ground behind was covered in soldiers' corpses, making it hard to build up speed.

Ling Chao was the first to rush to the front of the vehicle and slapped the C4 explosives directly onto the periscope, blocking their observation port.

Everyone else followed, rushing over and quickly plastering dozens of C4 explosives onto the vehicle.

The enemy troops inside the vehicle seemed to realize what Ling Chao and his team were about to do, so they opened the rear door and rushed out, attempting to stop the Shadow Special Forces.

However, Ling Chao didn't even look at them, letting them fire bullets into his body.

Once the C4 explosives were attached, the team members finally turned their guns and wiped out the few panicked Black Hawk soldiers who looked as if they had seen a ghost.

Boom!

Several team members pressed the detonators simultaneously, and the infantry fighting vehicle turned into a pile of scrap metal.

The hundreds of light and heavy machine guns on the cliff walls were still firing at them, but the gunners on the catwalks couldn't keep up with the pace of Li Xiao and his team.

By this point in the battle, Ling Chao and his team still had over 9 million HP, and Li Xiao's Life Pool had only consumed a few hundred thousand, including HP contributed by the Black Hawk Empire soldiers they had just killed.

They braved the hail of bullets and continued to advance deep into the canyon. Along the way, large quantities of wooden crates and various materials were piled up under the cliff walls on both sides of the canyon, all covered with waterproof camouflage tarps.

"It seems this really is a secret factory, but these are all finished materials. Is this just an assembly plant?"

Li Xiao felt puzzled, but the pain from the bullets constantly hitting his body prevented him from thinking too deeply about it.

As they were running, Li Xiao suddenly heard a heavy mechanical sound behind them. When he turned to look, a huge iron wall had suddenly risen from the ground behind them.