Chapter Nine: Coast of the Man-Eating Sharks (3)
Glass shards were everywhere. The walls had split apart, the buildings had collapsed.
Amid half-collapsed ruins, Nan Bei instinctively reached her arm backward, searching for Cheng Muyang. She forgot to breathe, her heart pounding like thunder, terrified that shrapnel had hurt him. Very soon, her wrist was caught.
“Don’t move,” Cheng Muyang told her softly.
As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly coughed twice, seemingly choking on the dust.
After a few seconds of silence, there was another enormous explosion, followed immediately by the sound of machine-gun fire sweeping across the area. She could tell it was a Gatling gun. Normally, it was only in localized wars that anyone would bring in a machine gun this large to attack.
This was the base of the Freedom Armed Forces, one of the most difficult organizations for the Philippines to control. Kidnapping, murder, terrorist attacks, they stopped at nothing. And yet tonight, someone had easily broken in.
Amid the continuous exchange of fire, the explosions continued. Buildings were constantly being blown apart.
They were staying in the northwestern corner, where the first bomb had exploded. So the attackers had probably entered precisely from here, then continued exchanging fire with the people stationed at the base.
The shouts of people, along with the sounds of gunfire, were gradually shifting toward the southeast.
She did not know how long Cheng Muyang intended to keep crawling.
“The people who came in are speaking Filipino,” he suddenly said.
Nan Bei listened to him.
“And from the sound of it, they have a Mindanao accent,” Cheng Muyang briefly summed up. “I don’t know if they’re official forces or another organization. They’re not after us. Let’s use this opportunity and see if we can get out.”
At the instant another explosion sounded, Cheng Muyang pulled her up from the ground and led her in retreat in the opposite direction.
In the pitch-black, gloomy night, flames were everywhere.
From the ruins came the constant cries of women and children.
Between the wreckage stood people holding guns. From the looks of them, they were the attacking forces.
Nan Bei moved quickly through the darkness with Cheng Muyang. There were bodies beneath their feet, bodies among the ruins, corpses everywhere.
This was not the first time she had escaped with him.
A dozen or so days ago, in the typhoon and tsunami, Cheng Muyang had taken her, unable to see a thing, and swum a thousand meters. Back then, Nan Bei could only rely on him. But at this moment, she finally realized just how well the two of them fit together.
The two of them exchanged no words.
Yet with the slightest movement from him, she understood the path he had chosen.
Cheng Muyang suddenly stopped. After feeling around in the darkness for a few seconds, he tossed out a dark shape.
She reached out and caught it.
A miniature assault rifle.
Cheng Muyang took one for himself as well. Relying on the observations he had made over the past dozen or so days, he was already extremely familiar with the terrain here. This village bordered both the rainforest and the sea. The people who had suddenly launched the attack had come from the rainforest side.
So Cheng Muyang naturally chose the sea.
She had no idea what he had chosen, only followed him until she heard the sound of the waves and finally understood his plan. But when she saw the terrain here clearly, she stopped in her tracks.
“What is it?” Cheng Muyang turned to look at her.
“Here…”
Before she could finish, Cheng Muyang abruptly raised his gun and pulled the trigger.
One shot, one target. He hit four people in succession. Crouched at his feet, Nan Bei quickly fired follow-up shots for him. A bullet whistled past her ear, and the sudden sharp pain made her flinch. Warm blood flowed down from her ear.
It was soon chilled by the sea wind.
Cold seeped through her shoulder.
Fortunately, the two of them were in the darkness, while those people were exposed in the open.
And Cheng Muyang’s marksmanship was extraordinarily accurate. In less than two minutes, he had taken care of seven or eight people guarding the shore.
Only after he finally lowered his gun did Nan Bei press a hand to her ear. Once the threat to their lives was lifted, the pain immediately began racing through her nerves. Seeing what she was doing, he pulled her hand away and, by the distant glow of the flames, carefully examined the gunshot wound on her ear.
Fortunately, the bullet really had only grazed her ear.
“Good thing,” Cheng Muyang comforted her softly. “It didn’t ruin your looks.”
Nan Bei grimaced in pain. “There are sharks here. Man-eating sharks.”
“The place you came to this afternoon?”
“Mm.”
“There’s no other way. If we want to leave, this is the only route left.” Cheng Muyang bent down to examine the side of the rocks. “Someone carved a narrow path here. We should be able to get out.”
Following his gaze, Nan Bei also looked toward the side of the rocks. The upper half of the rock wall had been forcibly cut away, leaving a section just wide enough for one person to move along with their body pressed against the wall. Although she did not know what it had been made for, it was clearly a man-made path.
That afternoon, because she had been attacked by the little sharks that suddenly leapt from the water, she had never dared approach the shore.
She had never expected there to be a path here.
The rocky shore connected directly to the road outside the village.
Although they had never taken this route before, it was definitely safer than going in any other direction.
Cheng Muyang found a military bandage on one of the corpses and used it to fasten her gun around her waist. She wanted to climb down first, but Cheng Muyang patted her shoulder. “Let me go down first.”
In the darkness, Cheng Muyang kept one hand against the edge of the rock wall and slid down with his entire body pressed against the stone.
Nan Bei kept her nerves taut, watching in the other direction in case someone suddenly appeared. But clearly, the people who had launched the surprise attack were very familiar with the surroundings. They probably would not expect anyone to retreat along the shark-infested shore, and had only symbolically left seven or eight people behind.
Once Cheng Muyang had reached the ground, he held out his left hand, signaling for her to step on it and climb down.
Nan Bei hesitated, but she also knew his personality. He would absolutely not let her climb down on her own. In the end, she could only carefully step onto one of his hands and slide down along the rock wall.
Only when the two of them were both standing on the narrow path did Nan Bei finally let out a breath of relief.
Cheng Muyang kept close to the rock wall, maintaining half a step of distance between them. She followed him, moving silently forward for two steps, when she saw white streaks glide across the surface of the sea. Soon, they became dense and numerous.
She grabbed Cheng Muyang by the wrist. “Great whites.”
Cheng Muyang stopped and followed her gaze toward the sea.
The two of them were not standing very high above the water.
If an adult great white leapt up, it would have no trouble biting into their bodies. The scene from that afternoon flashed through Nan Bei’s mind. If the sharks were hungry, they could easily leap two or three meters higher than this, let alone reach them here.
“Beibei,” he suddenly said, “follow this path and get to the outside as fast as you can.”
“What about you?” she asked instinctively.
“I’ll go up there and throw the bodies down to lure the sharks away.”
Nan Bei understood what he meant.
But the next second, she saw even more clearly the danger that would come afterward.
It would be easy for him to throw down those bodies and temporarily lure the sharks away, but what about after she left? Who would help him draw the sharks away? And once those carnivores had tasted blood, they would certainly be even more eager for living prey. She did not dare think any further. She shook her head and told him, “Let’s go back and find another route.”
“It’s impossible now. There are five hundred people stationed at this base, so there must be more than two thousand attackers. The two of us can’t possibly fight our way out. Besides, I’m an ally of the Freedom Armed Forces. If I’m caught, I can only die.” Cheng Muyang reached up with his left arm and caught hold of the edge of the rock wall above them. “Listen to me. Keep following the path. I’ll catch up with you very soon.”
She agreed with every word he said.
Yet she could not make her feet move.
For a moment, she even thought that rather than leave him behind, she would rather die with him.
But Cheng Muyang’s expression was very calm, as if proving that this was not yet a dead end. At last, his gaze convinced her. She steeled herself and continued along the rock wall toward the shore.
Cheng Muyang disappeared behind her. Suddenly, there was the sound of something heavy plunging into the sea.
White shadows swarmed across the surface, and the smell of blood kept drifting up. She did not look back again, keeping her mind entirely on moving forward. Behind her, she could hear things falling into the sea, the sounds of biting and tearing, and the sounds of sharks fighting over food.
About ten minutes later, she finally reached the end. She was now at the edge of the shore. Beneath the night sky, black waves repeatedly washed over the coarse sand. She turned around, but because the rocks curved, she could not see the end of the path.
There was no Cheng Muyang.
Standing on the unfamiliar shore, Nan Bei inexplicably felt her legs go weak, unable to keep her standing. She took the gun off herself and sat down on the beach to wait for him. It had been a long time since she had waited for someone like this.
She did not know whether he was alive or dead. She was waiting for him entirely because of a promise, because she had agreed to wait for him.
Just like that last phone call from Nan Huai, when he had also said, “Beibei, give me some time. I’ll come find you again.”
There was also the sea wind, blowing coldly against her entire left shoulder.
Her own blood was there.
She stared without blinking at the path. She did not know how much time had passed. Finally, a black shadow appeared, approaching her at an extremely fast speed. In the end, she could make out that it was him, and he had already jumped down from the rocks.
He had clearly been through a fight, with bloodstains on his body.
But fortunately, it had been a close call without disaster.
Exhausted to the point of collapse, he sat down beside her and let out a long breath.
Nan Bei looked at the wounds on his arms. None were deep, and some had already stopped bleeding.
“Good,” she said quietly. “No disfigurement, and you haven’t lost any body parts.”
He silently reached out and gently put an arm around her waist.
She leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“Don’t move.” He affectionately brushed his lips against her cheek. “There’s someone here.”
Those words instantly tightened every nerve in her body.
The support beside her suddenly disappeared. Cheng Muyang moved with the utmost speed, pulling away and lunging behind a rock not far behind them. At the same time, she had already picked up the gun and aimed it toward the rock. Soon, curses rang out, and a group of figures rolled out from behind the rock. The two people locked in combat were both gripping daggers.
Cheng Muyang could not use his right hand. Using only his elbow, he pinned down the other man’s wrist, preventing him from using the knife.
Nan Bei aimed at the two men, her index finger resting on the trigger.
This was the second time she had seen him fight at close quarters, but clearly, this opponent was more skilled than the steward from the Zhousheng family. In the darkness, she could barely make out which one was Cheng Muyang. Just as she steadied herself to take aim, the opponent was pinned beneath Cheng Muyang’s elbow, which pressed against his neck. He suddenly threw his head back, revealing that it was Kyle.
Nan Bei frowned. In the instant she hesitated, Kyle forced a sentence through clenched teeth.
It was Russian, which she could not understand.
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