CHAPTER 95: CHAPTER 95 IDIOMS

The sound of the suicide drone killing the sniper startled the gang members barricaded at the sixth-floor stairwell entrance.

They had somehow brought up a large pile of sandbags and stacked them on the corridor floor. Crouching behind this makeshift fortification, they had a light machine gun poised on either side. One of them even had a long, thick Individual Rocket Tube at his feet, apparently loaded and ready to fire.

They were truly panicked. Radio signals from their walkie-talkies were disappearing one after another, silently, as if an invisible, intangible black hole was moving through the lower floors, engulfing every living soul that stepped into it.

Explosions could still be heard from the floors above, yet they had blocked every entrance to the sixth floor and hadn’t seen anyone come up. Could there be people upstairs too?

While the gang members were in the throes of suspicion, Li Ang’s five-man squad had already stealthily approached the stairwell entrance, hugging the wall.

In a corner unseen from the floor above, Li Ang signaled his teammates to crouch slightly and stay quiet. He aimed his SCAR-H rifle at the ceiling for a moment, then pulled the trigger of its FN40GL underslung grenade launcher.

BANG! The cylindrical stun grenade hidden in the launch tube struck the sixth-floor ceiling.

BOOM—

The intense flash, equivalent to eight million candles, instantly blinded the gang members ambushing them at the sixth-floor stairwell entrance. The 170-decibel roar from the stun grenade also left them temporarily deaf.

The few closest to the stun grenade were knocked unconscious and collapsed. The others were dizzy and blinded, unable to grip their weapons steadily.

Some of the more cunning gang members had a trick up their sleeve. Instead of crouching at the stairwell entrance to ambush, they hid inside the residential apartments on either side of the staircase, their gun barrels poking out of wooden doors, aimed at the hallway.

These individuals were unaffected by the stun grenade but didn’t dare make any rash moves. They remained squatting in their rooms, waiting.

On the fifth floor, Li Ang, having just fired the stun grenade, skillfully reloaded the launcher. He then gestured for Brother Shield, who was leading the squad, to move forward.

Brother Shield held a Handheld Light Shield in one hand and a silenced handgun in the other. Watching the path ahead through the Shield’s transparent visor, he crouched and cautiously moved up the stairs.

Reaching the landing between the fifth and sixth floors, Li Ang aimed again. He fired a grenade toward the left side of the sixth floor and, yanking a hand grenade from his belt, tossed it to the right.

BOOM—BOOM—

Double the explosions, double the joy. Li Ang listened with an emotionless face to the screams coming from the apartments on either side of the sixth-floor stairwell entrance, signaling Brother Shield to continue upstairs.

Before they even fully reached the sixth floor, the operator second in line raised his submachine gun. He fired several more shots into each of the downed gang members on the ground, ensuring no enemy survived.

Upon reaching the sixth floor, Li Ang gestured again. The five-man squad split into two groups—two on the left, three on the right. Their lines of fire crossed at a 160-degree angle, covering each other’s backs as they sniped gang members rushing out of the rooms.

Afterward, Li Ang led the squad as they stormed the apartments on both sides, ensuring no one was left alive. They then picked up the enemy’s abandoned Individual Rocket Tube from the ground and placed two smartphones in the center of the sandbag pile. Following the original plan, the team members hid in one room, barricading the door with various objects, leaving only a narrow slit as a firing port.

The enemies at this point were temporarily cleared, but the junkies from other parts of the sixth floor would likely rush over soon.

Brother Shield looked at the Individual Rocket Tube on the room’s floor, sweat dripping from his forehead. He couldn’t help but curse, "These lunatics... using an Individual Rocket Tube here? Aren’t they afraid of blowing up the hallway and sending themselves sky-high too?"

"Junkies are among the dumbest creatures on this planet. Nothing they do is surprising. Addiction doesn’t just mar their wits; it also invades their nervous system, causing irreversible and severe damage to the brain."

Li Ang nonchalantly snarked, "I even saw a news report last time, where some guy got high, cut off his own ’little brother’ with scissors and glued it to his head with superglue, pretending to be a Unicorn and streaking down the street."

"...."

The other four operatives exchanged speechless glances. After a long moment, one managed to ask, "Then what happened?"

Li Ang casually replied, "No dick, no talk; head down, nowhere to dock; secrets exposed, completely shocked. With his ’friend’ gone, of course he bled to death."

Are you some kind of idiom master?

The four operatives, full of retorts they didn’t know where to begin with, could only hold it in and started checking their gear.

When players carry out scenario missions, the System not only helps cover up the incongruity of taking items from the inventory but also assists with language translation to solve communication issues.

Therefore, the string of pun-filled idioms Li Ang recited probably sounded like equivalent proverbs to the four operatives.

Ignoring his companions’ awkward discomfort, Li Ang took out his smartphone. He started a WeChat video call, connecting with the two smartphones he had placed among the sandbags in the corridor, using them to monitor the hallway.

THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.

A dense clatter of footsteps approached from the distance. Gang members were running from both ends of the corridor.

Li Ang, dual-wielding SCAR-H rifles, stuck their barrels through the door crack. Guided by the images on the smartphone screens, he began firing down both ends of the hallway.

The muzzle flashes were blinding and the gunfire deafening. Seven or eight gang members instantly fell, while the rest retreated in panic to the L-shaped corner of the stairwell, not daring to show their faces again.

Seeing this, Li Ang smashed a gap through the wooden door with his elbow, took the Individual Rocket Tube from Brother Shield, and launched a rocket down the left end of the corridor.

The first five floors of this apartment building housed ordinary residents, but from the sixth floor up, they were all occupied by Tama Riyadi’s men, so there was no need to worry about collateral damage.

The rocket flew down the corridor at high speed. At the corner, a junkie, seeing it, turned pale with fright. He scrambled in his slippers towards the far end of the L-shaped corridor, screaming, "R-P-G!"

BOOM—

The rocket’s deafening explosion drowned out his shouts as it blew a hole in the corridor wall, scattering rubble and limbs.

How many enemies did that rocket eliminate? Eight? Ten?

Li Ang casually calculated the kill count, stowed the Individual Rocket Tube back into his inventory, and tossed a grenade down the right-side hallway.

With his Strength and Agility Attribute both at eight points, he could throw like an Apex baseball player.

The grenade soared across the entire hallway, struck the far wall, bounced a few times, and landed right in front of a junkie at the right-hand corridor corner.

Another explosion roared.