The Mysterious Soldier of the Anti-Japanese War

Chapter 442: "7 Star Sword" transforms into a hidden weapon, killing the enemy invisibly

Lei Tao squatted on the rocks beside the waterfall and said to Chen Feiyang, "Keep watch for me. I'll give the Japanese some hope." He rubbed the Mitsubishi bayonet at his waist with his fingertips, his eyes scanning the turbulent water and the overgrown intersection. Chen Feiyang immediately half-knelt and raised his gun, the muzzle slowly turning as the forest moved. "Brother Lei, that bastard Gochi Ichiro must be bringing reinforcements to encircle us from the east."

Lei Tao's knee thudded as he stood up, a dull ache from an old injury from days of running. He scurried along the rock face, his boots crunching over pine needles. He suddenly stopped at a weed-covered intersection—the ground was sunken, and the brush on either side acted as a natural barrier, perfect for an ambush. "Here it is." He knelt on one knee, pulling aside the weeds, and retrieved an anti-personnel mine from the Bagua spinning top. The fuse made a subtle click as his finger flicked it.

"Brother Lei! There's a bayonet flash in the southeast!" Chen Feiyang warned in a low voice. Lei Tao quickened his pace, burying the mine in the leaf litter, camouflaging it with gravel. He then drew his dagger, cut through the vines, and set a tripwire ten meters away. He set another one over thirty meters away. As he retreated to the waterfall, the sound of Japanese footsteps could be heard, mingled with Gochi Ichiro's hoarse roar: "Search thoroughly..."

"Boom!" A ball of fire suddenly exploded on the left. Lei Tao's pupils shrank suddenly—a Japanese soldier had stepped on the booby trap he had set earlier, and a severed limb mixed with mud was thrown into the air. Gochi Ichiro waved his sword and commanded, "Hold! Engineers, clear the mines!"

Taking advantage of the enemy's panic, Lei Tao dragged Chen Feiyang back into the jungle shrubs on the banks of the waterfall. Wet vines entangled their ankles, and the rustling of insects came from the pile of rotten leaves.

Chen Feiyang slid down, his bandages soaked with blood, his back against the tree trunk. Lei Tao crouched down, noticing Chen Feiyang's wound still bleeding. He said, "Let me tend to it. Don't move." His voice deepened, and with a flick of his right hand, a first aid kit materialized from the Bagua Top's space. As the scissors cut through the bandages, the stench of rotting flesh, mixed with the smoke, filled his face.

The wound was covered with rolled-up flesh and had blackened edges—obviously infected after being burned by shrapnel.

"Bear with it," he said, thrusting a branch into Chen Feiyang's hand. As he bit it, Lei Tao thrust a pair of tweezers into the wound, extracting a small piece of shrapnel embedded in the flesh. Chen Feiyang groaned, his knuckles white from pinching. "Brother Lei... leave me alone. The Japs could catch up any minute." "Stop talking nonsense." Lei Tao poured half a bottle of alcohol into the wound, then took out first aid clotting powder from his first aid kit, sprinkled it on the wound, and bandaged it directly with gauze.

Lei Tao had just tightened the bandage when he heard the distant beeping of a metal detector. Chen Feiyang struggled to stand, "They've started clearing the mines," but Lei Tao held him down, "Don't get excited. If the wound opens again, it'll be over." Before he could finish his words, four Japanese scouts crouched by. The sound of their boots crushing dead branches brought both of them back against the trunk of a large tree.

Lei Tao made a gesture, asking Chen Feiyang to hide on the spot.

Lei Tao crouched in the shadows of a rock crevice. Ten meters away, four Japanese vanguards advanced in a triangle formation. The crisp sound of their boots rolling over dead branches was particularly clear in the mist. Chen Feiyang clung to the back of a broken tree, his Adam's apple rolling, his right hand unconsciously stroking the grenade safety pin at his waist.

As the leading Japanese soldier kicked aside the rubble blocking their path, Lei Tao's gaze swept over a cluster of seven-star swords and several wolfsbane plants at the edge of the crevice. He pressed the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, held his breath, and broke off two stems. As his fingertips exerted force, the muscles in his forearms tightened like bowstrings.

Lei Tao half-knelt in the damp humus, his dagger slicing diagonally along the stem of wolfsbane. The blade split into three beneath his blade. His fingertips whirled, slicing the tough stem into a three-inch blade. The sharp tip gleamed coldly, the barbs still wet with dew. This poisonous weed, native to the malaria-ridden southwestern regions, secretes a corrosive sap when its stems and leaves are broken. Now, it oozed slowly along the grain of the stem, emitting an eerie bluish-black hue in the sunlight.

He thrust his dagger upside down into the rotten wood for support, slithering along the ground like a snake. Bushes scraped against his back, and the smell of blood mixed with the acrid smell of wolfsbane filled his nostrils. The footsteps of the Japanese troops ten meters away grew clearer.

As the first bird song pierced the forest's stillness, the Japanese troops entered the third ditch. Just as the soldier in the middle bent to pick up something from the ground, Lei Tao's body suddenly tensed like a bowstring. With his left hand, he slashed aside the vines blocking his path with his dagger, and with his right, a grass stalk was already released. The sound of the piercing air was drowned out by the waterfall. The first stalk pierced the gap between the helmets with pinpoint precision, sinking into the soldier's ear canal with a teeth-grinding thud. The second stalk pierced his throat like a javelin, cracking cartilage and spraying blood. The third stalk, however, traced a strange arc through the air, its barbs tearing through the back of the rearmost soldier's neck, the flesh pulled up like a slipknot, blocking the scream that was about to escape.

Three Japanese soldiers fell to the ground almost simultaneously. The sergeant in the front spun around, his bayonet still unsheathed, when he saw Lei Tao's ghostly figure disappear into the bushes. He was about to sound the alarm when Chen Feiyang's silenced submachine gun suddenly rang out from the other side. The moment the bullet pierced his gas mask, the sergeant finally saw the deadly dark blue mark on the grass stems.

After Lei Tao and Chen Feiyang eliminated the vanguard group, they quickly retreated. Once they were far enough away, Chen Feiyang unloaded the magazine from his Scorpion submachine gun, only to discover it was empty. He called out, "Brother Lei, bullets!" Lei Tao instantly understood and reached into his shoulder bag (contained in the Bagua Gyro space) to pull out two egg-shaped grenades and five specialized high-capacity magazines, which he then handed over to him.

The thud of the sergeant's fall still alarmed the entire Japanese squad. When Goike Ichiro brandished his sword and called for his men to investigate, they discovered that three of their brave soldiers had been killed with straw stalks. Their screams startled the birds in the forest. "Chase! Skin them alive!" Over twenty Japanese soldiers fanned out, the rustling of bayonets parting brushwood drawing ever closer.

Lei Tao dragged Chen Feiyang into the miasma-filled bamboo forest, kicking away a venomous snake that suddenly darted from beneath the rotten leaves. The footsteps of the Japanese soldiers behind them grew closer, and Chen Feiyang's palm, gripping the grenade, broke out in a cold sweat. "Brother Lei, where should we retreat?" Lei Tao's gaze swept across the frost condensing on the bamboo joints and pointed to the deep ravine on the right, where steam was rising. "There!"

As the two men leaped into the waist-deep stream, the sound of metal clashing emanated from the other bank. Goike Ichiro, his binoculars locked onto their position, his neck veins bulging. "Machine gunners, block the river!" The roar of the Type 92 heavy machine gun shattered the water's surface, the spray of bullets nearly engulfing the two men. Lei Tao suddenly pushed Chen Feiyang into the water, then leaped up from the hidden reef at the bottom of the stream, hurling three poisoned locust rocks at the machine gun position on the other side.