As they bantered over voice chat, Cheng Feng finished setting up her position and had already moved close to the melee zone.
The students participating in the team match were all highly capable to begin with. Those bold enough to jump straight into a chaotic free-for-all at the start were even more confident in their abilities.
After arriving, Cheng Feng cautiously surveyed the area. In two relatively concealed spots, she spotted candidates lying on the ground, apparently taken out. It was hard to tell whether they were completely done for yet, and for the moment, no one dared go over to loot the bodies.
Judging from the way they had fallen and the surrounding terrain, the shots that took them down had come from an elevated position diagonally to Cheng Feng’s right.
There was probably a professional-level sniper over there – someone she needed to avoid.
But the entire combat zone was constantly shifting and expanding. The candidates’ positions had likely changed already, making earlier observations unreliable. The locations where gunfire had broken out were also difficult to approach for a sneak attack.
For the moment, there seemed to be no opening for her to enter the fight. All she could do was wait and watch.
Cheng Feng’s eyes kept darting in every direction with each gunshot, while she pressed herself low into the shadowy grass.
Twelve… no, better to be conservative.
There were already more than fifteen people gathered in this area.
The approximate positions of everyone who had fired had formed a rough map in Cheng Feng’s mind. Using her fingers to gauge the distances between them, she mentally simulated bullets slicing through the leaves and striking their targets.
Five minutes later, the situation had grown even more chaotic.
Some of the candidates on the outer perimeter had joined the fray. A handful of others, unable to find an opportunity to break through, chose to retreat.
Cheng Feng had no interest in being a mere spectator. She preferred being the stick that stirred up muddy waters.
After confirming the general situation, she adjusted her goggles, hunched forward, and pulled a smoke grenade from the small of her back. Taking aim at the corpse lying not far away, she threw it over.
White smoke rapidly billowed out, spreading through the air and obscuring everyone’s vision.
Countless gun barrels immediately turned toward where the body lay.
Cheng Feng waited silently for a few breaths. When the smoke drifted far enough to reach her position, she abruptly sprinted in the opposite direction. Counting her steps, she stopped, dropped into a half-crouch, and decisively raised her gun, firing – and following up – at the positions she had memorized.
One!
Everyone assumed she was using the smoke as cover to rush over and loot the body, so they immediately unleashed a wave of blind fire into the thickening cloud.
Gunfire erupted from all around, and for the moment, no one noticed what she was doing on her side.
The recoil from her weapon left a faint numbness in her shoulder. After sweeping a wide area with over a dozen rounds, she charged forward again. Reaching the edge of the smoke, she pivoted lightly on her toes, twisting her upper body about ninety degrees. Aiming straight ahead, she stared into the hazy scene and pulled the trigger.
The entire sequence flowed as smoothly as running water, as if she had rehearsed it countless times, without the slightest hesitation.
Just as she had predicted, the bullet shot out with a sharp whistle, tearing through the vast white fog and striking at a target exposed within the range of her ambush.
Two!
Just as the smoke around her was beginning to thin, Cheng Feng calculated every second to maximum effect. She pulled out another smoke grenade and hurled it forward once more.
“Holy…” a clear-voiced boy shouted. “There are only two smoke grenades in total, and someone’s using both? That’s extravagant! Who is that?”
The loudspeaker barely managed to carry his voice over the deafening gunfire.
Another voice called out from a different direction, “That throw was in the wrong direction, wasn’t it? Where exactly is this person trying to go?”
Even as they said that, they didn’t stop firing. After all, no one could be sure this wasn’t a feint.
Cheng Feng heard the gunfire to her side growing denser, while a few scattered follow-up shots also rang out from directly ahead. Though she had no way of knowing whether her earlier attack had successfully killed the target, she still charged forward without hesitation.
Relying on memory, she leapt over a rock. Reaching forward, her hand found exactly what she expected – a tree.
She then groped around on the ground and quickly found the candidate she had shot down.
No problem.
Cheng Feng let out a breath of relief.
Just in case, she fired another shot to finish them off – demonstrating the basic professionalism of a military university student.
A sudden gust of wind swept down from the mountaintop, making the dense branches groan like they were about to snap.
One of the candidates, frustrated by the obstructed visibility, gritted their teeth and hurled a grenade in the direction the wind was coming from, trying to blow the smoke away faster.
Cheng Feng glanced up, then swiftly unstrapped the backpack from the body. Digging inside, she found smoke grenades. Using the same tactic as before, she tossed another one ahead of her.
The white smoke in midair had not yet dispersed. Just as the raging wind had begun to clear the view enough to reveal the faint outline of trees, an even denser cloud of smoke swallowed everything once again.
The people in the melee zone immediately lost their composure.
“The third grenade! They got it! That person definitely looted a backpack! Everyone focus fire and drive them out!”
“Shut up – drive who out? At least tell us where they are!”
“It has to be team coordination, right? How else can someone move around in smoke that thick?”
“I’m begging you, these aren’t cheap knockoffs! Stop throwing them already – it hurts me just to watch!”
Amid all the shouting, Cheng Feng had already followed her planned route and reached the second candidate she had ambushed.
She slung her micro submachine gun behind her back and drew a dagger from her waist, gripping it in her palm. If anything unexpected happened, she could immediately suppress them in close combat.
For someone like her, who had the terrain memorized, close-quarters fighting was just as much her domain.
Fortunately, this candidate had also been hit by her earlier blind-fire barrage. Their body lay on the ground, and the person had already been kicked out of the system.
Looks like my aim really is incredible!
Cheng Feng felt a little pleased with herself. Bending down, she grabbed the opponent’s backpack and pulled out two grenades. Finding the pins, she yanked them free with force.
The remaining candidates were spread out, with tall, straight trees around them serving as cover. Cheng Feng wasn’t confident she could hit them with gunfire.
Better to just blast the whole area.
Using the positions of the trees to estimate the general direction, she swung her arms and hurled the grenades with all her strength.
Explosions rang out as dirt and shredded grass sprayed everywhere.
Although the grenades weren’t especially powerful, and the candidates wore protective gear, at close range they were absolutely capable of delivering a lethal blow in a single hit.
Cheng Feng could practically hear the delightful sound of points dropping into her account.
That should make three kills now.
But the shock among the remaining candidates was beyond words. It surged through them like a tidal wave, nearly drowning out all rational thought. After a brief stunned silence, they erupted into even louder chaos.
“Holy hell! Who even is that? They’re so ruthless! Throwing grenades inside the smoke?”
“Stop firing blindly! We’ve obviously been played! You’re wasting ammo!”
“Bro, how are you moving around freely inside the smoke? Aren’t we all using the same gear? My detection goggles can’t see anyone!”
“Looks like we’ve got an expert here.”
“No shit!”
Cheng Feng silently commented, So noisy.
Meanwhile, Jiang Linxia’s nonstop chatter was still coming through her comms in the same style, making it feel like a hundred birds were screeching inside her head.
She was just thinking about how to use the looted gear to make Jiang Linxia completely bow down in admiration when her hand had already pulled the striker from the second grenade. With full confidence, she swung her arm and threw it.
Reality proved that getting too cocky could backfire.
This time, Cheng Feng’s throw was slightly off target. Extremely unfortunately, the grenade struck a tree trunk and exploded mid-flight.
Inside her head, Cheng Feng also yelled, Holy crap!
Before she could duck for cover, the blast wave shoved her backward, sending her rolling onto the ground. Dirt and sand rained down over her, pelting half her body.
A dull pain flared in her chest – she had probably slammed into a rock on the hillside. She endured it without making a sound, quickly scrambling to her feet and shaking off the dirt.
Abandoning her grand mission of stealing more kills, she grabbed the candidate’s backpack again, slung it over her shoulder, and hurried back the way she came.
The people in the melee zone were still completely unaware of what had happened. They were urgently discussing the locations where those two grenades had appeared, trying to reverse-engineer Cheng Feng’s possible position from them.
Just as they rapidly adjusted their strategy and began sweeping the entire area with indiscriminate fire, Cheng Feng had already successfully looted two backpacks and quietly withdrawn from the melee zone.
She pushed through knee-high grass, still not daring to relax her guard. Moving cautiously the whole way, she eventually found a hidden spot. Only after confirming no one was around did she crouch behind a rock and some weeds to sort through her spoils.
As expected from early-game loot, the backpacks were extremely rich. All the explosive weapons those candidates had been reluctant to use had now ended up cheaply in Cheng Feng’s hands.
There was too much for her to carry. She could only stash some of it and come back later when she needed more supplies.
Cheng Feng put the smoke grenades and hand grenades into her own backpack, along with a box of submachine gun ammo. The rest of the items were hidden in the grass. She carefully erased all traces around the area to make sure no one would discover them.
Once everything was done, she pulled out water and biscuits from her backpack and quickly replenished her character’s hunger bar.
There was no such thing as enjoyment when eating on the battlefield – she stared at the interface while gulping down a bottle of water. The ears that had been ringing from explosions slowly returned to normal, and the sudden quiet surroundings felt strangely unfamiliar.
Fortunately, the people on the team channel were still complaining, which gave her a sense of familiarity.
Jiang Linxia sighed, “I can’t loot the bodies… I’m too scared to go loot them. I can’t see anything, can’t touch anything, it’s driving me crazy.”
Yan Shen clicked his tongue and followed, “I’ve been watching for over half an hour and still no one’s gone to loot. Have people really stopped falling for this now?”
“Stop watching,” Xin Kuang said. “Hold back. Now isn’t a good time to loot.”
Cheng Feng swallowed the bread that was stuck in her throat with difficulty and chuckled. “I got two backpacks.”
“Nice one, Cheng Feng!” Jiang Linxia said. “Is it fun over there?”
Cheng Feng replied, “It’s okay. Actually… I can’t see anything at all.”
“Give us the details.”
“Too tired. No.”
Xiang Yunjian gave a quiet reminder, his voice clearly lowered, suggesting the situation wasn’t suitable for talking. “Everyone be careful. Don’t mess this up.”
Cheng Feng finished packing up, pushed herself up with her knees, patted her backside, and said, “I’m going back to take another look. There are still a few backpacks over there.”
At that moment, the thick smoke in the mountains finally began to disperse. With the help of detection goggles, the people in the melee zone were finally able to see the scene that had been obscured earlier.
At the first location they had focused fire on, the corpse and military backpack were still lying intact on the ground.
The innocent corpse, after being riddled with more than a dozen blind shots, now bore even more wounds. After the unfortunate candidate’s early death in the team match, they had suffered yet another round of utterly merciless “posthumous damage.”
Truly, a pitiful sight.
The people in the mountainous melee area still hadn’t realized what was happening.
Their gaze dropped downward, and as expected, they discovered two bodies – both missing their backpacks.
“Over there, the bags are gone. That was a really clumsy feint-and-diversion tactic… and we actually fell for it. Where’s our dignity, brothers?”
“Clumsy? This isn’t even scientific, okay?! Do smoke grenades recognize their owner now? Why can that person move freely inside the smoke and still get two kills?”
“This is a fight about fists – why are you talking about science?”
“It must be a coordinated squad! They’ve probably already run!”
“Shh – there are still at least four or five backpacks here. I don’t believe they won’t come back! First confirm a common enemy, everyone stay quiet!”
With that, they reached an agreement and held their breath, waiting for Cheng Feng to return and strike again.
The entire mountain forest fell into silence – but even that silence carried an unseen killing intent.
