Chapter 44: Capturing the Bandit Leader

"Li Shi!"

Tian Miao rushed forward, but suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.

Under the dim light, she saw Li Shi's horrifying condition. His entire body was covered in dried blood, his arm was visibly broken and bent outward at an unnatural angle. A couple of clumps of his hair had been ripped out, exposing his bloody scalp.

Tian Miao's tears welled up, but she forcibly held them back.

"Li Shi, I need one minute to take your photograph. Your photo will serve as undeniable ironclad proof to condemn those inhuman demons. Are you willing?"

Li Shi gave a weak nod.

"Go ahead."

Tian Miao shoved the camera right up to Li Shi and snapped several close-up shots.

The filthy background, the gruesome wounds, the inhuman torture, the dying victim.

Tian Miao suddenly wore a conflicted expression, and finally couldn't help asking, "Li Shi, can you make your expression a bit more distorted? Add a touch of desolation. I want to capture a tight close-up."

Li Shi radiated a profound sense of utter despair. Tian Miao was always like this—she forgot everything else when working, and he had long since gotten used to it.

So, he squeezed out two tears with a deadpan, soul-crushed expression.

*Click.* As the frame froze, the moment became art.

Tian Miao could finally hold back no longer. She squatted down abruptly, trembling as she grasped Li Shi's hand, muffled sobs escaping her lips.

"How could they torture you like this? Are they even human? How can such things still happen in this era?"

Li Shi suddenly raised his still-functional hand and waved it weakly at Tian Miao.

"Go. Continue your mission. Don't let anyone cover up these atrocities, and don't let my suffering be in vain. I'm begging you."

Li Qi felt a surge of profound respect. The journalists of this era truly risked their lives to expose the evil hidden among men.

He continued to shield Tian Miao as they walked out.

Naturally, People's Liberation Army soldiers stepped forward to carry the injured miner out. The walkie-talkie crackled with a response from the hospital—the ambulance had already departed.

Unawares, the battle was over. It had been a truly crushing victory.

In reality, shots had only been fired three times in total. The violent resistance Li Qi had anticipated almost never happened.

Under the deterrence of the People's Liberation Army, over ninety percent of the thugs chose to surrender on the spot.

A few others were so scared they pissed themselves.

Zhou Guodong walked into the mining area when an officer suddenly hurried over to him and reported anxiously, "Report! Three suspects have escaped. One of them is suspected to be the primary culprit, the mine owner. The three vanished into the mountain forest. Two cave entrances were found at the scene, leading very deep underground with a complex layout. Requesting instructions."

Li Qi, who happened to be passing by, felt a thunderclap go off in his head.

"Four-Dragon has fled! He ran into the Bat Cave!"

Caring nothing for Tian Miao at the moment, he immediately rushed over to Zhou Guodong's side.

"That man is very likely Four-Dragon, the owner of the illegal coal kiln. The place they entered is called the Bat Cave. I'm familiar with it. I can lead the way for you."

Zhou Guodong looked at the masked Li Qi, stunned for a second, before an expression of understanding washed over his face.

Far from finding Li Qi's attempt to protect his identity improper, he actually felt a sense of relief.

After thinking for a moment, he gave the order, "Pick a few agile men to go with this comrade and make the arrest. Someone strip off a set of clothes and give it to him, and find a black hood for him too."

The officer immediately chimed in, "The Special Operations Second Team is here for field training. They can go with him."

Zhou Guodong was slightly startled. "Why are they here?"

"They haven't been on a mission for three months; their bones are rusting. They were making a fuss, demanding to come stretch their muscles."

Zhou Guodong nodded. "Since it's the Second Team, there will definitely be no problem."

Li Qi added, "There are five exits from the Bat Cave leading down the mountain—three near Little Thermos Village, one at Tuobei Gully, and another near the Central Mine. Have some of those thugs lead the way and block the exits first."

Zhou Guodong quickly arranged for it.

Soon, Li Qi was brought to the edge of a wooded area—this was where Four-Dragon had escaped.

Seven soldiers were already waiting for him, and Li Qi spotted Lu Yan at a glance.

"Old Lu, it's you."

Recognizing his voice, Lu Yan sneered. "Don't try to cozy up to me. I don't talk to ugly people."

"Quite the petty one, aren't you?"

While exchanging barbs, Li Qi had already changed into camouflage gear, put on a police balaclava, and folded his discarded clothes into a backpack. Then, he led Lu Yan's squad into the Bat Cave.

As they walked, Li Qi whispered to Lu Yan, "The Bat Cave is a linked system of seven caves with quite a few hidden trenches. If that bastard really hides deep in one of them, it's going to be tricky. They definitely have hunting rifles or old muzzle-loaders. We have to be very careful."

Lu Yan nodded.

No matter how skilled in martial arts one was, it couldn't beat a gun—especially old-fashioned scatterguns like muzzle-loaders, which blasted a handful of iron pellets with a single pull. Taking a close-range hit meant injury was virtually guaranteed.

Following the route provided by Li Qi, the group descended into the Bat Cave.

Li Qi waved his hand to signal for silence. There was almost no light in the cave, and a faint sound drifted from the front right.

"That's the direction of Tuobei Gully. We'll trail behind them and make sure they don't slip away through a side tunnel halfway."

Lu Yan nodded.

After walking in the cave for ten minutes, their eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness, Li Qi suddenly felt something was amiss.

The fork ahead looked different from his memory. There was clearly someone squatting behind a boulder.

In the fraction of a second before disaster struck, he kicked off his legs and directly knocked down Lu Yan, who was right behind him.

"Hit the dirt!"

"Boom!"

The blast of an old muzzle-loader and Li Qi's shout rang out almost simultaneously.

Li Qi felt a wave of heat wash over him, followed by a slight sting on his thigh.

Damn it, even from this distance, he still got grazed by iron pellets.

After firing one shot, that kind of old muzzle-loader took a long time to reload. Lu Yan knew this, so the moment the shot echoed, he sprang back up and lunged forward directly.

Following a miserable shriek, the gunman collapsed to the ground unconscious.

The soldiers behind hurried over to help Li Qi up. "You alright?"

Li Qi shook his head. Just a graze; it wouldn't hinder the operation.

They tied up the unconscious bandit and left him where he was.

The eight men dispersed, maintaining distance between each other. The sounds in the cave had stopped; Four-Dragon and his remaining two men were hiding somewhere ahead, completely still now.

Li Qi looked up to observe the structure, then leaned close to Lu Yan's ear.

"There's a utility tunnel above that can flank around to their front. You want to do this?"

"Do it!"

Lu Yan instructed the remaining six men to make some noise from time to time to deter the fierce bandits ahead. He and Li Qi used hands and feet to climb into a small cavern at the roof of the cave, slowly crawling forward. Suddenly, Li Qi's hand brushed against something slightly soft and elastic.

His body instantly stiffened.

He had grabbed a hibernating bat...

With goosebumps breaking out all over his skin, Li Qi gritted his teeth and shoved the creature aside, pressing on.

Soon, looking down from a vantage point, Li Qi spotted the other two men.

Four-Dragon and his henchman were hiding in a sunken recess, both clutching firearms—looking like single-shot rifles.

Li Qi communicated with hand gestures to Lu Yan.

Lu Yan glanced below, then at the side wall. To Li Qi's shock, he pushed off with his legs, using another protruding rock in mid-air to cushion his momentum, and hurled himself fiercely straight at Four-Dragon.

Overcome by a surge of adrenaline, Li Qi followed suit and dove down.

Old Lu, you reckless madman, let's do this!

Using his momentum, Lu Yan threw a punch that landed squarely on the head of Four-Dragon's henchman, dropping him instantly.

*Bang!*

A panicked Four-Dragon pulled the trigger, but the barrel had already been forced upward by Lu Yan. At this moment, Lu Yan looked utterly heroic.

Suddenly, Four-Dragon fished another pistol from his waist!

Four-Dragon fired without hesitation, while a heavy thought flashed through Lu Yan's mind.

*Swimmers drown in water, stubborn men die in battle. I was too careless after all. Am I going to go meet my ancestors?*

With a sharp *crack*, Four-Dragon's hand was pinned down by Li Qi at the very last second, the bullet ricocheting off the rock face and sending sparks flying.

The bulky Four-Dragon glared fiercely at the masked man wearing the black hood, trying to discern from details who had ruined his plans.

Unfortunately, Li Qi was wrapped up tightly from head to toe, and with the cave being so dark, he couldn't see a thing.

Li Qi delivered a karate chop to Four-Dragon's neck, but the man didn't go down; instead, he lunged forward to rip off Li Qi's hood.

With a heavy iron fist from Lu Yan, the opponent finally slumped softly to the ground.

Lu Yan's fierce eyes widened. "Brother, you've saved my life twice now."

Li Qi landed a resounding slap right across the back of his head.

"A fierce tigress doing a handstand—what kind of reckless hothead are you? You almost got me killed!"

Lu Yan took the hit without a care in the world. "A slap squares us up. You're the biggest hero this time, so I won't hold it against you. Rest assured, capturing the ringleader and saving a comrade's life—I'll report every single bit of credit without holding anything back."

He skillfully tied up the two bandits and shouted to the soldiers behind, "Bring that other bandit over, it's settled."

With the eight of them hauling three captives, Li Qi led the way out through the Tuobei Gully exit, where public security officers were already waiting.

After handing over the captives, Lu Yan took Li Qi away to a secluded spot so Li Qi could change back into his own clothes.

Li Qi's thigh had a gash torn open by the muzzle-loader's iron pellets, though fortunately, the pellets hadn't embedded themselves in the flesh, sparing him the need to dig them out.

At this point, influenced by his bizarre post-resurrection constitution, the wound had already stopped bleeding.

He simply wrapped it with the black cloth he had used as a mask, stood up, and Lu Yan used the radio to contact the headquarters before leading him back to Zhou Guodong.

Spotting Zhou Guodong in the distance, before Li Qi could even speak, a petite figure suddenly lunged at him.