Chapter 93 - 85: Ambush

Chapter 93: Chapter 85: Ambush

’The attacker across the way is extremely cautious. Their aim is precise, and they’re laying down suppressing fire. I can’t stay in the car; this metal coffin is a sitting duck!’ Xu Mo made an instant judgment.

If he stayed in the car, the enemy could clearly see inside through the shattered windows or use their experience to lay down covering fire. Sooner or later, a bullet would find him.

With that thought, Xu Mo stopped hesitating. He took a deep breath, his muscles tensing in an instant as the power of the Cowhide Realm erupted from within. He aimed a vicious kick at the driver’s side door!

KLANG! The door was kicked wide open by Xu Mo’s powerful blow. At the same time, his body shot out from under the steering wheel like a cheetah, and with an incredibly swift and clean roll, he lunged out of the car.

The ground outside was muddy, slick, and mixed with gravel. Xu Mo paid it no mind. After rolling to absorb the impact, he used his momentum to scramble without pause toward a shallow ditch on the other side of the road. The ground there was slightly lower, creating a blind spot from the shooter by using the roadbed and the car for cover.

However, just as Xu Mo’s body landed in the ditch, before he could even fully regain his balance...

"Kill!"

Two low growls filled with killing intent erupted almost simultaneously from his left and right. Two figures, a man and a woman, sprang up like vipers that had been lying in wait, lunging from the edge of the ditch less than three meters away.

They had clearly anticipated Xu Mo’s most likely escape route after the attack and were lying in wait for him.

Both held gleaming blades. The man wielded a thick-backed chopper, while the woman held a pair of slightly more slender Mandarin Duck Short Knives. Their movements were swift and perfectly coordinated. Attacking from the left and right, their blades aimed straight for Xu Mo’s neck and abdomen. They were clearly going for a one-hit kill, giving him no chance to react.

’So it was premeditated. The sniper forced me out of the car, and the close-combat fighters were waiting in ambush here.’ Xu Mo’s thoughts raced as he instantly understood their entire plan.

From the sniper forcing him to stop, to the suppressing fire, to the close-quarters ambush—it was a perfectly interlocking chain of events. The plan was meticulous, the methods ruthless. Any ordinary survivor, even one with some combat experience, would have had no chance of survival against this series of attacks.

But they had misjudged Xu Mo’s strength.

Faced with the sudden pincer attack, the vicious blades already upon him, Xu Mo’s eyes were as cold as frost, showing not a hint of panic.

To Xu Mo’s senses, while their attacks were ferocious and their speed might seem fast, precise, and ruthless to an ordinary person, they were riddled with openings when compared to the dynamic vision and reaction speed he possessed as someone in the Cowhide Realm.

Their strength and speed were merely at the level of a trained human. They might be much stronger than a pre-apocalypse person, but compared to someone like him who had crossed the threshold of true cultivation, there was a fundamental difference in quality.

Xu Mo’s feet shifted slightly. His body slid to the left in an almost imperceptible movement, like a phantom, while his upper body leaned back slightly.

SWISH! SWISH!

The man’s thick-backed chopper sliced past Xu Mo’s chest with a vicious gust of wind, merely grazing his clothes. The woman’s Mandarin Duck Short Knives only cut through the air by his arm. Their combined attack, which they had been so certain would succeed, had been effortlessly dodged by the slimmest of margins.

Looks of utter disbelief appeared on both their faces. They clearly hadn’t expected their target, after just surviving a sniper attack and a hurried landing, to be able to execute such a precise and uncanny dodge.

But Xu Mo wasn’t going to give them another chance. The instant he dodged, his right hand moved as if by magic, reverse-gripping the hilt of the Mountain-Cutting Saber that was always at his waist. The blade flashed.

SLASH!

A cold arc of light flashed by, so fast it was almost beyond the limit of the naked eye.

The man with the chopper only felt a chill on his neck before his vision began to spin wildly. The last thing he saw was his own headless body, still frozen in its forward-chopping posture, blood gushing from the stump of his neck like a fountain. And the man he had considered his prey was staring at him with eyes as cold as ancient glaciers.

Almost simultaneously...

SLASH!

With another slash, the woman with the Mandarin Duck Short Knives didn’t even see how her companion died. She only registered a flash of light before her own perspective became bizarre. She saw the gray sky, the spinning mud, and finally, her own headless body slowly toppling over.

Two heads, their expressions frozen in shock and confusion, rolled into the mud. The headless bodies twitched as blood rapidly stained the ground beneath them, a thick, coppery smell spreading through the rain.

After dealing with these two close-combat "small fry," Xu Mo didn’t even spare the corpses a second glance. He executed another agile roll to quickly change his position, then dropped flat into the muddy water of the ditch, getting as low as possible. At the same time, he swapped his Mountain-Cutting Saber for the AK-47 he had slung on his back, aiming it warily toward the direction the shots had come from and other areas where enemies might be hiding.

Xu Mo’s judgment was correct. Just a few seconds after he took cover, a figure cautiously poked its head out from behind a small mound about 150 to 200 meters away. Seemingly because they couldn’t hear any sounds of close-quarters combat or see what was happening in the ditch, the person began to run quickly in his direction, hunched over. From their posture, it was clearly the sniper, coming to check if their two teammates had succeeded or to finish the job.

’My chance!’ Xu Mo’s eyes narrowed. The tables had turned. He steadily raised the AK. Although an AK’s accuracy at medium to long range couldn’t compare to a professional sniper rifle, at under 200 meters, it was more than enough for someone like Xu Mo, with the control granted by his Cowhide Realm.

Holding his breath, Xu Mo made a slight adjustment to his aim, predicting the target’s running path.

BANG!

The distinctive, loud, and violent report of the AK-47 exploded through the curtain of rain.

The running figure jerked to a halt, then flew backward as if struck by an invisible sledgehammer, collapsing heavily into the mud. He didn’t move again. The bullet had hit him squarely in the head.

The gunshot echoed before being quickly absorbed by the sound of the rain.

Xu Mo remained prone, completely still, even keeping his breathing to a minimum. His gaze swept over his surroundings like a radar, carefully scanning every corner, every clump of grass, every mound of earth, and every pile of rocks where an enemy might be hiding.

This group was cunning and their plan meticulous. From the initial sniper shot, to the suppressing fire, to the close-combat ambush, their combination of attacks was utterly ruthless. Who could guarantee there wasn’t a fourth, or even a fifth person, hidden farther away or in a more unexpected spot, waiting to be the final predator?

Rain soaked Xu Mo’s clothes and hair, and the cold, muddy water seeped through the front of his shirt, but he paid it no mind. At a time like this, the slightest impatience or carelessness could be fatal.

Time crawled by in suffocating and tense silence. One minute, five minutes, ten minutes... twenty minutes...

Besides the sound of the rain and the occasional gust of wind, there were no other unusual movements. No more gunshots, no sense of being watched, and no subtle sounds of human activity.

Only then, after scanning his surroundings several more times with extreme caution and confirming there were truly no other hidden threats, did Xu Mo carefully get to his feet.

Even now, Xu Mo’s muscles remained half-tensed, the muzzle of his AK-47 shifting slightly with his gaze.

He glanced at the two headless corpses nearby and the sniper with the headshot in the distance, his eyes cold. In this apocalypse, the depravity of the human heart was sometimes far worse than any mutated monster.

Xu Mo didn’t immediately go to check the bodies or the vehicle. Instead, he first moved quickly to a better position for observation and defense, maintaining the highest level of alertness. This sudden ambush had served as a warning bell—the final stretch of the road to Jiang City was likely going to be even more treacherous than he had imagined.