novelraw Chapter 309: The Vulture's Feast
Chapter 309: The Vulture's Feast
A terrible premonition, like an arctic chill, pierced straight through Lin Jie's bones and muscles.
He instinctively stretched out his arm and shoved Brewer, who was beside him, hard to the side!
"Take cover!"
Just as Lin Jie roared, a sharp, whistling sound of something tearing through the air immediately came from the top of the bell tower!
"*Whoosh—!*"
A bullet glowing with red light grazed the spot where Brewer had just been standing, embedding itself directly into the tombstone behind him.
Stone fragments flew in all directions.
"Damn it!" Brewer was shoved, staggering several steps and nearly falling.
He looked at the deep bullet hole in the tombstone, and his back was quickly soaked with cold sweat.
If not for Lin Jie's reaction, Brewer's head would have been blown to pieces by now."Sniper!" he bellowed, rolling to hide behind another, larger tombstone, then raising his Spencer shotgun.
White Ghost reacted just as swiftly, his figure rapidly melting into the cemetery's shadows until he was out of sight.
Lin Jie, using the momentum of his roll, took cover behind a withered tree.
He cautiously peeked half his head out, using binoculars to observe the abandoned bell tower.
Under the moonlight, a black figure atop it was withdrawing a peculiarly shaped, long-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver.
A trace of a mocking smile was on the man's face, as if lamenting the shot he had just missed.
Lin Jie recognized that face.
It was a face with blond hair, blue eyes, and an arrogant expression.
It was precisely the captain of the Iron Cross squad they had driven away from St. Jacob's Church earlier.
This guy wasn't dead. And he was doing very well.
"Good evening, three rats who crawled out from underground."
The Iron Cross captain's voice came from the top of the bell tower.
"I admire your courage, truly. Daring to challenge that monster, the one even the Swamp Spawn avoid. And... you actually succeeded."
The Iron Cross captain's words were full of false praise, but every syllable stabbed into the hearts of Lin Jie's trio.
He knew.
He knew everything.
This man had been watching them the entire time!
"Do you think you're heroes?" The Iron Cross captain chuckled lightly, his laughter dripping with undisguised contempt. "No, you're not. You're just the more diligent worker ants, hauling back the sweetest piece of honey for us, the real hunters."
As his words fell, two more figures emerged from the other two directions of the bell tower.
One was of medium build, wearing dark hunting attire suited for movement, with a long tachi hanging at his waist.
He appeared to be Japanese, his face flushed with a sickly, excited redness, his eyes like those of a hungry jackal.
He didn't look at Lin Jie and the others. Instead, he first shot a glance with his cold eyes at the Iron Cross captain high above, his fingers lightly stroking the sword hilt, his voice sharp.
"You talk too much, Prussian."
He made no effort to conceal the scorn in his tone.
"If not for that heart, I would never endure traveling with brutes like you who understand nothing of 'the beauty of silence.'"
"Watch your words, ronin," the Iron Cross captain above responded coldly, but did not flare up.
"Alright, gentlemen, save your strength for these rats."
The figure emerging from the right, a classic American cowboy, interrupted the tense atmosphere between the two.
He was tall, his hat brim pulled low, a chewed-up toothpick in his mouth, deftly twirling two silver revolvers in his hands like a juggler, spinning them on his fingertips.
"I don't care about beauty, and I don't care about discipline," the cowboy spat out the toothpick, revealing a mouthful of smoke-stained yellow teeth. "As long as I get my cut when we split the loot afterwards, I don't care who I work with."
Three hunters of different nationalities and starkly contrasting styles, from three different directions, formed a tight encirclement and slowly advanced toward Lin Jie and the others.
The aura emanating from these men was steady and concentrated, their equipment was excellent, and they were all at their peak condition.
This was an ambush, striking at the weary with rested troops.
These guys never intended to fight the Butcher head-on from the start.
They abandoned the foolish act of high risk and high investment, choosing instead the smartest and most shameless method.
Hunters preying on other hunters.
"Come out, don't hide," the Iron Cross captain's voice rang out again. "I know you're at your limit. That cripple with the broken arm, that masked man with the ruined weapon, and you, the clever little Eastern monkey... what do you have to fight us with?"
The Iron Cross captain's words were full of venomous insults. His intent was obvious: to anger them and make them lose their cool.
Brewer's teeth ground together with an audible *creak*.
The burly man, enduring the intense pain from his left arm, wanted to charge out and fight them to the death.
But Lin Jie's icy voice poured like a bucket of cold water over Brewer's head.
"Don't move. Going out now is death."
Lin Jie's gaze was locked onto the pistol in the captain's hand.
That [Discipline] wrapped in barbed wire.
Tracking trajectory.
This armament possessed a degree of automatic tracking capability.
This meant conventional cover and evasion would lose all meaning before it.
The Iron Cross captain enjoyed the silence from Lin Jie and the others.
The man said no more, instead raising his [Discipline] once again.
"*Whoosh!*"
Another bullet shot out.
This time, the target was the withered tree Lin Jie was hiding behind.
Lin Jie threw himself forcefully to the side as the bullet approached.
The bullet narrowly grazed his scalp, blasting a large hole in the trunk of the withered tree.
Followed by a third shot and a fourth...
The Iron Cross captain was in no hurry to deliver a killing blow.
He was like an elegant conductor, using that weapon capable of playing a symphony of death to continuously harass them with long-range shots.
Each shot landed near the hiding spots of Lin Jie's trio, forcing them to constantly relocate.
The three of them were like rats being chased in circles.
Meanwhile, the Japanese swordsman and the American cowboy unhurriedly tightened the encirclement, sealing off all their escape routes one by one.
Lin Jie's squad was, in the truest sense, an arrow at the end of its flight.
Brewer's left arm was fractured; though he could still fire his gun with difficulty, his combat effectiveness was greatly diminished.
White Ghost's [Emptiness] prosthetic was completely ruined, robbing him of his core assassination and phasing abilities, leaving him with less than a tenth of his strength.
Only Lin Jie was relatively unscathed, still possessing the strength to fight.
In contrast, the other side consisted of three elite hunters at their peak.
This battle was unequal from the very beginning.
"What do we do?" Brewer's voice held a trace of helplessness.
He understood perfectly well that if they continued passively taking hits like this, they would eventually be picked off one by one as their stamina gave out.
Lin Jie did not answer.
His mind was racing, performing a cold, ruthless assessment of combat losses.
"If I were alone, using the complex terrain here and the cover of night, I'm confident I could hold these three off, maybe even escape unscathed."
"But with Brewer and White Ghost in their current state... no."
"Brewer is severely injured. White Ghost has lost his weapon. If we fight head-on, they definitely won't survive the enemy's first concentrated volley."
"Call for help? The Baroness's carriage isn't far, but that coachman is just an ordinary person. He wouldn't fight three ruthless hunters for us."
"Besides, the distance from here to the carriage, under the muzzle of that tracking gun, is an insurmountable line of death for the wounded."
"I have to split the battlefield. I can't let them become my weakness."
Lin Jie's gaze fell on the lead box in his embrace.
[Plague Heart].
This was the trophy they had bought with their lives and blood.
It was also the sole target of the other side's mission here.
An idea sprouted in Lin Jie's mind.
"You two..." Lin Jie's tone was firm. "Take the heart and go first."
Brewer and White Ghost were both stunned.
"What did you say?" Brewer looked at Lin Jie incredulously. "You want us to desert? Lin, I, Brewer, may not be a hero, but I'm no coward either!"
"This isn't desertion," Lin Jie's eyes were exceptionally calm. "This is tactics. Our objective is to get this thing back safely, not to die here with them. As long as the heart is in our hands, the initiative remains with us."
As he spoke, ignoring Brewer's protest, he forcibly shoved the heavy lead box into Brewer's arms.
"Listen, Brewer. You and White Ghost break through from the western cemetery wall. The terrain there is the most complex, with the most cover. I'll stay here and hold them off as long as I can."
"No! That's too dangerous!" Brewer flatly refused. "How can you possibly hold off three of them alone?"
"Who says I can't?" A strange smile suddenly appeared on Lin Jie's face.
He looked up at the figure atop the bell tower, then slowly stood up from behind the withered tree.
Lin Jie abandoned all cover, exposing himself completely to the Iron Cross captain's gun.
"Hmm?" Seeing Lin Jie's action, the Iron Cross captain raised an eyebrow slightly, showing an interested expression.
"Captain, is it?" Lin Jie's voice carried up to the bell tower. "Your target is this thing, right?"
As he spoke, he took something out from his backpack.
It was not the [Plague Heart].
It was the only relic they had found earlier in the remains of Sludge Mountain.
A human spine, blown apart and still stained with a bit of sludge.
Of course, the Iron Cross captain and his men didn't know this.
In the hunters' eyes, the object in Lin Jie's hand, emitting a faint spiritual energy fluctuation, was very likely the legendary [Plague Heart].
"You're clever, Easterner," a flash of greed appeared in the captain's eyes. "Hand it over, and I might consider... leaving your corpses intact."
"Fine," Lin Jie nodded, then made a move that took everyone by surprise.
He threw the spine with all his strength toward the open area to the east—the direction opposite Brewer and White Ghost!
"You want it? Go get it yourself!"
The Iron Cross captain's face immediately changed.
He hadn't expected this Easterner to be so decisive.
The Japanese swordsman and the American cowboy were also momentarily stunned, instinctively looking toward where the spine was falling.
This was the moment.
"Go!"
Lin Jie roared!
Brewer and White Ghost swiftly turned and sprinted toward the western wall!
"Bastard!" The Iron Cross captain reacted immediately.
He cursed angrily and aimed his gun at the fleeing Brewer.
But it was too late.