Chapter 401

Chapter 401 The Mysterious Sniper

If Yan Kaida’s mouth hadn’t been stuffed with a stinking sock right now, he would have roared in fury — Qinglong Gang, you’ve got some serious nerve!

But he could no longer say another word.

A second bullet, seemingly arriving from beyond the heavens, had drilled straight and true into his skull! A great spray of red and white matter erupted from the blown-open top of his head!

Those two shots had come so abruptly that the Qinglong Gang members had absolutely no idea someone would choose this moment to assassinate the Yan father and son of the Desert Wolf Gang!

For a sniper, firing at night makes it very easy to expose one’s position, so after those two gunshots rang out, the Qinglong Gang members had already determined that the sniper was firing from the roof of the grandstand!

“He’s up there!”

Many people shouted at once, then trained their guns on the roof of the grandstand!

But spotting an enemy doesn’t mean you can catch one. This sports center, capable of hosting international events, was simply enormous — the grandstand roof was easily ten or more stories high! Nobody could figure out how the sniper had even gotten up there!

Such a height was, without question, completely out of reach for the Qinglong Gang members. They craned their necks upward, only to find that the sniper had vanished without a trace.

In truth, all these Qinglong Gang brothers should have counted themselves lucky. With the precision marksmanship that sniper had just demonstrated, if he had wanted to open fire on them from the grandstand roof, it would have been nothing short of a one-sided massacre!

At that distance, even with a handgun’s range, any bullets that did reach their target would have little accuracy to speak of — in that regard, the handgun’s limitations were painfully obvious!

The mysterious sniper seemed to know that the people below with their handguns posed absolutely no threat to him. He calmly disassembled his rifle, placed it with great care into its case, then moved to the back side of the rooftop and slowly rappelled down along a black rope!

His night-ops suit blended perfectly with the dark sky above, without a single glint of reflection. Even if someone had been staring intently in that direction through binoculars, they would have found nothing to give him away!

The shouting and warnings from the Qinglong Gang members had no effect on him whatsoever. In just ten seconds, he had already descended halfway!

But at that very moment, a flash of cold light sliced through the night sky and struck the black rope with pinpoint precision!

Even though the rope had been reinforced with strands of extremely high-tensile steel wire, that sudden flash of cold light seemed to cut through anything in its path — the instant it passed, the rope snapped clean in two!

A five-bladed throwing star!

The sniper had had absolutely no warning this would happen, and he plummeted downward from more than ten meters up, accelerating as he fell!

It seemed he had some real martial skill to his name, because in those terrifyingly brief seconds, he somehow managed to force his body to adjust mid-fall, twisting himself around!

He had been falling with his back facing down, but he wrenched himself around to face the ground instead!

Even so, the sheer height of the fall still left him completely rattled when he hit the ground. After landing, the mysterious sniper tumbled across the ground several times before staggering unsteadily to his feet!

This alone showed that his physical conditioning was genuinely impressive — anyone else in his place would have ended up with snapped tendons and broken bones!

But before he could take more than a few steps, two bullets fired from a nearby thicket of trees tore through the air one after the other, drilling into both of his thighs!

Shot in both thighs, the man crashed to his knees with a thud!

It was obvious that only Holman could possess marksmanship like that!

The mysterious sniper knelt on the ground, touched his thighs where blood was gushing out, and a look of cold resolve flashed across his eyes.

Before he could make any move, a nimble figure came flying in and delivered a crushing kick squarely to his chest!

The mysterious sniper took the full force of the blow, spat blood, and was sent flying backward, crashing heavily to the ground!

Jin Taizhu lunged forward and ripped the black mask from the man’s face!

He and Holman had long since been lying in ambush here on Su Rui’s orders, waiting for exactly this moment!

The mask was torn away, revealing an utterly ordinary man’s face!

But what left Jin Taizhu absolutely stunned was that this man’s eyes had rolled back to show the whites, and thick black blood was trickling from the corners of his mouth!

His chest had taken a heavy blow — so why was black blood coming from his mouth?

This was a sign of poisoning!

Jin Taizhu’s heart sank. He quickly reached out to check the man’s breathing, only to find that air was going out but none was coming in.

Prying open the mysterious sniper’s mouth, Jin Taizhu clearly saw a poison tooth!

Realizing he was finished, the man had swiftly and decisively bitten through his own tongue with the poison tooth. The toxin had entered his bloodstream in an instant, killing him on the spot!

This was an absolute dead man’s agent!

Jin Taizhu had seen his share of such agents before, but every time he encountered one of these men with a poison tooth set into their mouth, it meant the situation was deeply troubling!

Holman walked over as well, looked at the man who had chosen to kill himself rather than be captured, and couldn’t help shaking his head. Then he crouched down alongside Jin Taizhu, and the two of them began going over the mysterious sniper’s body inch by inch.

Su Rui’s figure also emerged from the shadows. He walked up to the sniper, reached out and took the long rifle case, then turned the disassembled sniper rifle’s components over in his hands several times, as if speaking to himself: “B50 sniper rifle. This is an American product from fifteen years ago — it’s been obsolete for several years now.”

The Apollo Guard members all used the most cutting-edge weapons available today. These people would never have given a second glance to an old-fashioned sniper rifle like this.

Jin Taizhu and Holman both stopped what they were doing at the same time, as if listening to Su Rui speak.

“As for why it was phased out — when this rifle was designed, the goal was to maximize the air compression generated during firing, giving the bullet the greatest possible kinetic energy. It was a fine idea in theory, but in practice it pushed things to an extreme: after firing several dozen rounds in succession, the entire barrel had to be cooled down completely, otherwise there was a real risk of the chamber exploding or the weapon misfiring.”

Su Rui seemed entirely unbothered by the corpse lying at his feet, and continued talking in what seemed like a rather ill-timed leisurely manner, as though this sniper rifle had stirred up a great many memories for him.

“For the American military, this rifle was essentially a defective product. If it had actually been deployed on the battlefield, a sniper’s ability to sustain continuous fire would have been completely compromised — and they might even have found their own lives in danger.”

Su Rui turned the sniper rifle over in his hands with a nostalgic look on his face as he spoke, seemingly unaware that Zhang Ziwei had walked up beside him.

Zhang Ziwei’s beautiful eyes moved from Su Rui to the body on the ground, her gaze filled with both puzzlement and something more complicated.

Even she couldn’t quite figure out why Su Rui would stand next to a corpse and reminisce. What if the enemy had a second sniper lying in ambush somewhere? The danger level here was simply too high!

But Zhang Ziwei didn’t interrupt him. She trusted that if Su Rui was doing this, he had his reasons.

Just like tonight — Su Rui had seemed to sense long in advance that something was going to happen, and had sent people to lie in ambush around the stadium early on. Zhang Ziwei knew perfectly well that this kind of uncanny foresight and razor-sharp instinct was something she could never possess in her lifetime!

“Fortunately, this sniper rifle was never produced in large quantities to begin with. After being phased out by the American military, almost all of the B50s ended up on the underground arms market.”

Su Rui glanced at Zhang Ziwei and continued: “By a few years ago, this old sniper rifle was already considered outdated, so after it entered the underground arms market it didn’t attract much of a scramble. Only mercenaries without much money would spend anything on it — any professional killer with real resources wouldn’t have given this mediocre rifle a second look.”

“As for why I’ve been going on about all of this,” Su Rui said, pausing at this point with a faint, wistful smile, “it’s because… when I had just entered the dark world, this was the first gun I ever bought with every last coin I had on me.”

Hearing Su Rui say this, both Holman and Jin Taizhu straightened up with solemn expressions!

The great Apollo himself — and the first gun he had ever used was this kind of mediocre, obsolete weapon!

This fact struck Jin Taizhu and Holman deeply!

It went to show that the power of one’s weapons was never the deciding factor in how things turned out. Someone like Su Rui — even if you handed him an ordinary kitchen knife — could still carve out a path of light through the Western dark world!

Zhang Ziwei didn’t know Su Rui’s history all that well. Before this, she had assumed Su Rui was simply a privileged young heir who had come out of that particular family — just one whose skills far surpassed those of the average rich young man.

But now, she was beginning to realize she had only just started to glimpse the tip of this man’s iceberg!

When Su Rui said all of this, he made no effort to keep it from Zhang Ziwei — and she understood clearly what that meant. He had completely accepted her as one of his own!

Once that realization sank in, Zhang Ziwei’s eyes went still for just a moment!

And Su Rui’s reminiscing didn’t seem to be over yet: “It was with this very rifle that I completed two hired jobs and earned my first money.”

At that, Su Rui’s tone shifted abruptly. The nostalgic note in his voice vanished, replaced by a cold edge: “Of course, that’s not the main point I wanted to make.”

The three of them tensed up — so there was something even more important coming.

“At the time, aside from a small number that were scattered elsewhere, nearly this entire batch of rifles was bought up by a Japanese conglomerate.” Su Rui’s words hit like a thunderclap, detonating in the minds of Zhang Ziwei and the others!

“A Japanese conglomerate?”

“Actually, there’s no need to think too hard about it. When it comes to large organizations capable of purchasing this kind of firearm in bulk, there is simply no other group in all of Japan besides the Yamamoto-gumi.”

Su Rui stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing up at the night sky. His voice was calm, yet the conclusion he had just laid out was enough to stun anyone. No — it wasn’t a conclusion. It was a fact!

Hearing Su Rui’s words, Holman immediately tore open the mysterious sniper’s shirt! Sure enough, tattooed on the man’s chest was a samurai longsword!

That was the mark of the Yamamoto-gumi!