Chapter 146: War of Attrition

As time passed, clues related to Baitian and Qin Qing began to emerge over the walkie-talkies carried by the ship's guards. This signaled that the armed forces on board were now aware that their adversaries were infiltrators disguised in their own uniforms. Pretending to be part of the crew was no longer a viable strategy.

The sounds of the firefight between Mo Fei and the ship’s forces reached the other side of the third deck, where Long Er was still searching room by room. He heard the commotion.

"They've found someone."

If those two rookies hadn't found their target, they would have continued masquerading as guards to avoid direct confrontation. The intensity of the gunfire suggested they had certainly located Li Momo. Or, considering the unreliability of those two, it was possible they had merely stirred up a hornet’s nest and were now surrounded.

To Long Er, however, neither of those possibilities was the priority. Where exactly was Li Momo being held?

Officer Xu had been silently trailing Long Er, trying to regulate his breathing without disturbing him. He realized that Long Er was searching for someone, though he assumed it was Mo Fei, as he was the only person they both knew.

"Have you been searching since the first cabin?" Officer Xu asked. They were currently at cabin nine. Since Officer Xu had been rescued from cabin two, it meant they had checked at least seven hundred people. His eyes were beginning to blur.

Long Er, focused on the search, simply nodded.

"You're doing it wrong," Officer Xu shook his head. "You might find others by searching like you're looking for a needle in a haystack, but when it comes to finding Mo Fei, you have to believe in the supernatural."

The rookie officer had dealt with Mo Fei five or six times in his first week on the job—was that a normal frequency for any human being? Could an average person encounter human traffickers, dismembered bodies, active murder scenes, and killers all while just filming a movie? Although Officer Xu was a materialist, he had no choice but to believe in the strange aura surrounding Mo Fei.

Long Er didn't believe in ghosts or gods either, but after a moment of thought, he asked seriously, "What do you suggest?"

Officer Xu pointed toward the source of the gunfire: "He is always where the chaos is greatest within his range of perception."

Long Er fell silent, lost in thought. Finally, he nodded. "That makes sense. He really is a handful."

Long Er realized that this man—who was willing to listen to advice, recognized Mo Fei’s bizarre nature, and possessed quick, decisive combat skills—was a master worth befriending.

Officer Xu reached out his hand. "My name is Xu."

Long Er shoved a handgun into his palm. "Know how to use it?"

Officer Xu hesitated for a second, then nodded. "Yes."

"Then kill," Long Er said, disengaging the safety on his submachine gun without further ado.

He hadn't given Officer Xu a submachine gun not because he distrusted him, but because the officer’s current physical state wasn't suited for a weapon with high recoil. The handgun was a modified piece he had previously given to Mo Fei; its recoil was even lighter than a standard pistol.

"Twenty-two rounds in the magazine. It’s a modified automatic. Aim carefully."

Officer Xu’s face was pale, yet he managed a confident smile. "I had the top marksmanship score in my class."

Long Er’s mouth twitched. Such childish boasting... could this guy be a green recruit too? Shooting at targets and shooting at people were two completely different experiences. If this kid started vomiting later, would he have to provide psychological counseling too? A mercenary giving a cop therapy? Long Er gritted his teeth. Once this job was done, he was going to fly to the other side of the world for a vacation and stay as far away from Mo Fei as possible. He had truly paid back his debt of gratitude in full.

The two prepared themselves and rushed toward the thick of the gunfire. Based on the radio chatter, the ship’s crew only knew that a group of unidentified individuals had infiltrated the ship and opened fire; they were unaware of two more people approaching from the other side. The chances of catching the enemy off guard were high.

Even at this stage, with dozens of guards already dead on the third deck, there was still no order over the radio to retreat or abort. They seemed determined to wipe out these "little insects" and continue their bloody, dark operation.

Before kicking open the door, Long Er gave Officer Xu one final piece of advice: "Don't go soft."

Officer Xu didn't think he would. After his experience in the scam compounds, it was hard for him to feel any sympathy for the Burmese factions. He knew exactly what purpose this ship served. It was no exaggeration to say that every single person on this ship, aside from the captives, would be looking at a sentence ranging from life imprisonment to the death penalty if brought back to face trial.

His resolve wavered slightly when he saw the guards. When Long Er moved to neutralize enemies efficiently, he prioritized shooting for the torso, leaving the cleanup shots to the head for Officer Xu.

Officer Xu saw a guard collapse to the ground—the boy couldn't have been older than sixteen. At that age, he would still be a student back home, but here, he was already carrying a gun for a bloodthirsty cause. He hesitated for a split second.

The boy on the ground, still clinging to life, had grabbed his pistol and was slowly raising the muzzle. Without waiting for a shot, Long Er turned and put a bullet through the boy's head. He didn't care what Officer Xu was thinking; he continued his work, but he stopped asking him to finish off the targets.

These days, he would rather fight with someone useless than a dead weight. If Officer Xu couldn't pull the trigger, so be it—he would just have to work harder and change magazines more often.

After emptying his magazine, Long Er checked his gear and found only one spare left. "If you can't kill, at least you can loot," he said, crouching down to strip a magazine from a guard and tossing it to Officer Xu. "Don't miss a single one."

They had no resupply; if they didn't scavenge the bodies, they would have run out of ammunition long ago. This was a matter of life and death. Officer Xu gripped the blood-stained magazine and nodded with a solemn expression.

On the other side, Mo Fei and his group were facing the same problem: their ammunition was running dry.

Baitian pulled the trigger several times, but the gun remained silent. In desperation, he hurled the submachine gun at the enemy. It struck a guard squarely in the head. Mo Fei saw it clearly—the man’s forehead caved in, and he was clearly beyond saving.

Qin Qing rummaged through the corpses and concluded, "They aren't carrying extra ammo."

The enemy wasn't stupid. They knew Mo Fei and his group were skilled and could keep anyone at bay with firearms, but bullets eventually run out. Once the ammunition was gone, the enemy could resort to hand-to-hand combat, using human wave tactics to overwhelm them. Of course, this required sacrificing enough lives to drain their supply.

More importantly, the people in charge of this ship’s security didn't value human life at all. The guards being sent down without guns were merely there to exhaust their ammunition. Once the bullets were gone, the real nightmare would begin.