Counter-Sniper and Being Snipe-Targeted

"Hurry!"

"Fack! Li! Li!"

The Old Russian and Elisa turned and jumped into the car, but Li Changjiang was nowhere to be seen.

Damn it!

"Fack! Li didn't get in!"

"Leave this place immediately and contact Polica! I'm going to shake that guy off!"

In the earpiece, Li Changjiang spoke at an extremely fast pace, but his footsteps were even faster. By the time the Old Russian and Elisa looked back to find him, only a retreating figure was visible, which quickly vanished into the crowd.

"Let's go!"

Without a moment of hesitation, the Old Russian scooped up the little girl in his arms and told the taxi driver to drive.

"Li, we will wait for you at the rendezvous point."

By this time, Li Changjiang had already rushed straight into the building. Moving at high speed, he tore off his earpiece, bounded up to the second floor via the elevator in a few strides, and found himself inside a massive shopping mall. The foot traffic was immense, yet blind spots inevitably existed. The British had undoubtedly chosen such a place for the hunt wisely—crowds made escape easier, and these assassins were operatives trained like killing machines, leaving no trace behind.

Unfortunately for them, what they had run into now was someone even more formidable—or rather, someone assisted by an advanced intelligence.

"Target locked! Twenty meters to your left!"

Inside his mind.

The hunting system promptly began prompting Li Changjiang. When this intelligent feature had first appeared, it had startled him, but he quickly realized its heaven-defying value.

It was essentially carrying a personal auto-search radar, equipped with omnidirectional, zero-blind-spot searching capabilities, though its effective range was under a hundred meters.

Twenty meters!

Li Changjiang frowned.

He instantly pinpointed the adversary's location and even determined the direction of the target's movement. Darting rapidly past rows of clothing racks on either side of the mall, Li Changjiang emerged from the aisle wearing a sun hat on his head and a black athletic jacket over his upper body—his appearance completely altered.

It was him!

Quickly!

His gaze precisely locked onto the rapidly moving figure. It was a white man of medium build, neither fat nor thin, with a black backpack slung over his shoulders. The man had rushed out of the third-floor stairwell and was heading straight toward the second-floor entrance.

Between Li Changjiang and the man was a stretch of clothing racks less than ten meters long, packed densely with garments, with sparse foot traffic around. Without a single moment of hesitation, Li Changjiang strolled leisurely toward that direction, though no one knew that beneath his jacket, his fingers were already tightly hooked around the trigger.

The British agent had seen Li Changjiang before and even had a deep impression of him—but that was through a rifle scope, and he never expected that the damned Chinaman had not fled, but instead turned back and re-entered the building.

Clearly, he had underestimated his enemy!

And so, the outcome was predictable.

Thud! Thud!

Two muffled sounds.

The trigger pull of a suppressed handgun actually produced quite a noticeable sound, but this was amid the bustling noise of the shopping mall. Li Changjiang had chosen a perfectly timed blind spot where the security cameras captured only a fleeting shadow darting swiftly through the clothing racks.

Both rounds struck the Briton squarely in the chest. Blood quickly stained his shirt red, and his eyes widened in sheer disbelief as he stared fixedly at Li Changjiang. But alas, he understood the truth far too late.

Thud, thud!

Quickly grabbing a piece of clothing from nearby to muffle the muzzle, Li Changjiang fired two more shots to finish the man off completely. Glancing around to confirm no one was watching, he shoved the corpse beneath a clothing rack, threw a few garments over it, and quickly shouldered the man's backpack. Shedding his own outer jacket, he turned and walked straight out through the opposite exit.

Time seemed to stand still.

No one knew that in less than a minute, he had executed a brilliant, unexpected counter-kill.

Nearly five minutes after Li Changjiang left the mall, a piercing scream instantly shattered the peace of the second floor.

A female customer, while browsing for clothes, had suddenly noticed a pool of blood seeping out onto the pristine white floor, frightening her out of her wits.

Promptly.

More than five police cars came screaming toward the scene with sirens wailing.

Inside the taxi, Li Changjiang's hands trembled slightly, though his expression remained normal, save for a lingering sense of palpitation.

He still found it hard to believe that just moments ago, he had walked face-to-face with a top-tier assassin and unexpectedly gunned him down.

It was pure luck.

Li Changjiang knew very well that the Briton had underestimated him, because right up until he was hit, the man hadn't even realized Li Changjiang would suddenly appear.

At a private airfield in the suburbs of Paris.

A helicopter sat waiting on the tarmac in the distance. The Old Russian and Elisa paced back and forth near the edge of the empty runway, time ticking away as anxiety gripped their faces.

With every passing minute, the probability of their exposure increased exponentially. The British were no fools, and the terrifying entities like MI5 certainly wouldn't overlook potential escape routes.

"We're out of time! We have to take off right now!"

The pilot shouted at the two of them, but the Old Russian merely glanced back and stayed put.

"Damn it! Why isn't Li here yet? Could something have happened to him?!"

"Look over there!"

Just as the Old Russian grew frantic, Elisa suddenly lit up with excitement, pointing toward the distant highway and shouting.

A taxi!

They bolted forward, grabbed the backpack, and rushed underneath the helicopter.

"Li, hurry! We're out of time!"

Pulling Elisa's hand, Li Changjiang climbed aboard. The helicopter immediately lifted off, leaving the airfield behind and flying straight in the direction of Marseille. The distance from Paris to Marseille was only a few hundred kilometers; at the helicopter's speed, they would arrive in less than an hour.

Once the aircraft surged into the mid-air, Li Changjiang's tense nerves finally relaxed. His gaze drifted toward the little girl huddled in Lena's arms. Lucia possessed a daring spirit; children were fearless in their ignorance and even found the situation somewhat novel.

Her little mind could not comprehend why a group of inexplicable people had suddenly intruded into her life, or why one of them felt almost like a father. Lena had never mentioned anything about Louis to Lucia; she didn't want her daughter to know that her father was merely a mercenary, an assassin.

Yet, when she heard the news of Louis's death from the lips of this Chinese man, Lena felt a deep wave of regret.

As it turned out, she had never truly forgotten that damned man.

The roar of the engine drowned out almost all other sound. Flying from Paris to Marseille, the helicopter did not take a direct route across the sky, because their destination was not Marseille, but a small island in the Mediterranean.

"Li! We must leave Europe immediately! Polica has already arranged a boat! We're heading straight to the port of Alexandria!"

Going to Egypt was a plan Li Changjiang had finalized long ago. If he wanted to unearth the root of all these problems, the only way was to find that American and retrieve that watch.

Li Changjiang would never gamble with his old man's safety. Both the Americans and the Libyans were currently hunting for this item, and there was no telling if the British already knew as well.

With MI5 intelligence outposts having lurked in Misrata for so long, it was impossible they were completely in the dark.

"Contact Polica. We need weapons!"

"Don't worry, I already had William prepare that!"

Approaching their destination.

The Old Russian had also grown much more relaxed.

When people relax, they tend to let down their guard. Li Changjiang was no exception, but the voice that suddenly echoed in his mind instantly left him stunned.

"Danger! Danger! Danger!"

Human reaction time fell far short of machine processing speed. By the time Li Changjiang registered the sound, his peripheral vision was already catching the view outside the window.

At that very glance.

He was scared out of his wits.

What the hell!

Beep! Beep! Beep!

And right at that moment!

The helicopter's warning alarm suddenly blared, scarce seconds having passed.

Within his line of sight.

A tiny black dot trailing a long, white plume of smoke was streaking straight toward the helicopter in mid-air.

Damn it!

It was an anti-air weapon! (To be continued.)