Chapter 215: Sniper
Chapter 215: Sniper
The instant Hayasaka Taeko died.
A certain connection suddenly snapped.
……
A pure white marble table.
A chessboard with stark black and white squares.
Different chess pieces stood on the board.
One side was carved from white crystal, the other from black obsidian.
From the shadows, a finger wearing a skull ring on its left ring finger moved a white piece.
It was the “Queen” of the white pieces. This “Queen” easily broke into enemy territory, capturing a Knight.
Suddenly, at that very moment, the player of the pieces let out a soft, surprised sound. A fine crack appeared on the “Queen” piece in their hand. With a ping, it shattered into countless fragments at their fingertips.
“Truly unexpected… Could it be that they are also starting to move?”
It seemed incredible. Or perhaps they had sensed something.
The player couldn’t help but laugh, the corners of their mouth curling up slightly.
“……Things keep getting more interesting!”
The smile already on their face widened even more. Revealing a grin filled with greater interest, they then brought a hand up to their cheek.
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The big boss, Hayasaka Taeko, was dead.
The incident on the island could pretty much be considered concluded at this point.
Fang Jing wasn’t interested in any further abnormal situations either.
However, Fang Jing didn’t believe all the “problems” were solved either – so many people had gone missing on Yūmi Island, there was no sign of the living or the dead. That was also a troublesome matter.
Next, he didn’t intend to get involved in anything else happening on this island.
“I should probably leave here soon,” he murmured to himself.
The identity of “Kume” was fake, and Ōsumi Kyotaro, who had connections to him, was also dead.
That meant only four survivors knew he had come to this island.
Considering how best to conceal his identity, the cleanest solution would naturally be to kill these four. Doing so… would allow him to leave the island silently and unnoticed.
But he had no interest in killing indiscriminately. These four were just innocent survivors.
He also had no intention of chatting or saying goodbye to them. Yūmi Island was surrounded by sea. Under normal circumstances, leaving wouldn’t be easy. However, since he had prepared to come to this island, he had certainly considered some means of departure.
“First, I’ll go back to get the signal generator. Once activated, I can contact Ōsumi and the others…”
Fang Jing also feared unforeseen trouble on the island; he had made extra preparations for that too.
Hidden in his luggage was a signal generator. Outwardly, it just looked like an ordinary wristwatch. The signal generator was concealed inside the watch face; opening it would reveal the device.
Returning to the half-demolished apartment, he found his luggage and changed into a different jacket.
He gathered his belongings and packed everything into his backpack.
It was precisely at that moment that his hands stopped moving. He heard a sound – the distinct click of a weapon being cocked.
“Range roughly within fifty meters… Not inside the building. That means it’s outside… direction is northeast…”
At such a distance, the sound of a weapon being cocked would be impossible for any normal person to hear. But with the current sharpness of Fang Jing’s five senses, he perceived the sound with absolute clarity.
No, strictly speaking, he hadn’t precisely heard it. He had sensed an intense surge of hostility.
It was because of this fierce hostility that his perceptive power expanded dramatically.
He tilted his head slightly, glancing towards the window’s position. Then, abruptly, he lunged violently forward, tumbling into a roll.
A Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle targeted him from afar. A specially designed armor-piercing bullet shot out at incredible speed. The sniper aimed at the head visible through the window. Dozens of rounds sprayed out amidst the muzzle flashes.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The armor-piercing rounds blasted through the wall behind Fang Jing, the nightstand, and the electric fan sitting on it.
Glass shattered with a crash.
The concrete wall thumped, spraying countless fragments.
The spiraling bullets, spinning on their trajectories, wreaked reckless havoc one after another.
The sniper possessed astonishing skill. Even as Fang Jing dashed through a hole into another room, the sniper was still able to find an angle through the window for another shot.
A high-caliber bullet like this would leave a terrifying hole in a person’s body if it struck.
Fang Jing also had no particular desire to test the destructive power of such a fearsome projectile on the human body.
(While I’m confident I could withstand an armor-piercing round at full power, there’s truly no need for that.)
He arched his body, shifting into a cyclone that crashed through the wall. He sprinted out of the apartment and darted rapidly in another direction.
The sniper tried tracking him, but with too many obstacles around, direct aiming became impossible.
Fang Jing plunged into dense, lush bushes and shrubs. Using the cover of thick trees and their shadows, he managed to shake off the sniper.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was rid of trouble.
As he moved swiftly, he detected faint stirrings within the dark green woods.
Here they come!
His eyes narrowed slightly. He kicked a small stone at his feet.
Whoosh!
The stone shot through the air, thwacking into a figure emerging from cover. It struck the figure square in the head, exploding into a cloud of dust. The person didn’t even manage a scream before collapsing with a loud thud.
“Careful!”
Someone yelled in a low voice from behind. Several others opened fire. A rapid volley of gunfire followed, bullets sweeping densely over like rainwater battering banana leaves. The bushes, branches, and trees around Fang Jing were shredded into splinters by the onslaught.
Fang Jing moved as well. Like an agile leopard, he bounded and leaped, racing towards the far edge of the woods. Bullets streaked past beside him, not even grazing a single hair on his head.
“After him!”
The group shouted. Fang Jing heard numerous rustling movements amidst the dense trees.
“How did so many people get onto this island…? And they’re all fully armed, equipped with significant weaponry.”
Right at that moment, the distinct sound of rotor blades suddenly echoed from afar. Fang Jing turned his gaze upwards through a gap in the trees and spotted two helicopters speeding towards his location.
“Those look like attack helicopters? Meaning it can’t be ordinary mercenaries or people sent by underworld gangs…”
They had snipers deployed, and now attack helicopters had joined the fray. This clearly screamed military-level operation. But it was strange… Why would such a force specifically come all this way to Yūmi Island?
Was it perhaps to deal with Shinzaki Tenrikyo? That didn’t quite fit either. Shinzaki Tenrikyo was just a religious organization to the outside world; they hardly warranted such a massive response.
“It also couldn’t be aimed at me. I came to the island under a hidden identity…”
Not many would know the details of his movements where one could take too many shots with such powerful weapons.
The possibility of Sunao-gumi betraying him and leaking information was quite low.
As for the Information Broker(s)… they were more in a cooperative relationship with him. There was no reason for them to stab him in the back now.
Forget it. Thinking about this right now was useless. He needed to leave this island as soon as possible.
Fang Jing didn’t know a lot about modern weapons, but he clearly understood their massive threat to him.
An attack helicopter was basically a low-altitude fire platform. Sitting high above, it could bring to bear anti-tank missiles, rockets, or rotary cannons – all posing a potent danger to him now.
“There! Get him!”
A group of armed soldiers charged forward from all directions towards Fang Jing’s location, firing their weapons as they advanced.
Fang Jing had no interest in lingering and tangling with these people. Especially considering they were likely military-backed. Engaging them in battle would undoubtedly lead to messy consequences.
He dashed towards the steep sea cliffs. From almost fifty or sixty meters above, he leaped into the vast ocean below.
In an instant, churning waves surged up, and Fang Jing vanished without a trace beneath the sea’s surface.
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“‘Falcon’ calling ‘Sea Fox’, ‘Falcon’ calling ‘Sea Fox’, come in.”
A voice like sand scraping against metal crackled from the Radio’s other end.
After a brief pause, a man’s voice, clear and loud, came through.
“Situation report? ‘Falcon’…”
“B5 jumped off the Cliff. It’s been three hours now, no sign of the body.”
The sound of the helicopter blades was abnormally deafening, forcing the response to be loud.
“Jumping from that height… normally, survival shouldn’t be possible, right!”
It was a question, though the speaker behind them seemed likely answering it himself.
“Alright then. To be cautious, ‘Falcon’, please conduct another sweep of the surrounding sea. If Target B5, an involved party, manages to escape… that wouldn’t be ideal for our side.”
This was Sea Fox, one of the field commanders.
“About the current situation… have necessary intelligence been gathered?”
“Not yet fully compiled. However, based on available intel… the Anomaly Barrier hazard level… should be categorized below Stage A…”
“An Anomaly Barrier below Stage A? Mm, that’ll suffice. Good. In that case, those monsters from the C.C.S.D. won’t need to be deployed…”
Sea Fox offered no direct comment on “Falcon”’s assessment.
Their operational unit was an independent organization spun off from the Defense Agency era. Codenamed “Lost Number”, it officially didn’t exist. In other words – all its members were ghosts. A group composed entirely of those who shouldn’t exist.
Their operational mandate boiled down to three key actions: Search, Secure, Destroy (S.S.D).
It wasn’t the kind of cool, glamorous work shown in movies or cartoons. Most of the job involved tedious, monotonous tasks – surveillance, investigation, evidence gathering. It was painfully boring, and sometimes, brutally exhausting.
The core purpose of their work was information lockdown. Secrecy was paramount.
The entire organization’s function was to exterminate information pertaining to “aberrant entities” before it could ever emerge from the shadows.
It was a necessary evil.
Countless analyses had established that the Anomaly Barrier hazard level classification provided an effective framework for assessing and categorizing incidents related to “aberrant phenomena”, “Strange Phenomenon(s)”, “spiritual barriers”, and other “supernatural events”.