Chapter 959: Night of the Bayonet!

Chapter 959: Night of the Bayonet!

A single person’s strength has its limits after all.

Moreover, this was an opponent who broke promises and stopped at nothing.

“Bang—!”

Seeing that Lassi was about to scatter the gangsters like birds and beasts, Udi recalled the order of “kill them all” and still raised the muzzle with his arm.

Those were special bullets.

Not to mention Lassi hadn’t worn body armor when heading to the airport; even if he had, the outcome would have been the same.

Shot in the chest, Lassi staggered, propping himself against the stone-paved alley with his saber, one knee hitting the ground.

The wolves and jackals, gnashing their teeth and licking blood, saw their chance and grabbed their weapons to swarm him, but a single glare made them shrink back, too afraid to advance.

Lassi grinned savagely, blood seeping from the corners of his mouth and dripping onto the ground.

“You finally pulled the trigger…”

Under those eyes, Udi felt a chill run through his entire body, as if the bloody hole might appear on him the next second.

But Lassi was only human, at most an Awakener, and certainly no magician.

Lassi looked at him, breathing lightly as he spoke.

“I just remembered—was it Shawa or your superior Akman who told me you were an orphan he picked up from a village by the Tasan River…”

Udi stared at him coldly.

“So now you’re curious why I betrayed you?”

Lassi chuckled softly.

“Did I ever ask you that?”

Weren’t all the children in the Stormtroopers orphans like him? Weren’t they all made orphans by war?

If there was hatred, it could always fall on him; he’d been fighting since Alayan was still around.

He had always raised them as his own children and indeed never guarded against them much.

Whether it was Akman, whom he’d disciplined in the mountains of Mazhou, or the most loyal Shawa, they were to him not just subordinates but family… or children.

Udi was stunned for a moment, his brow furrowing.

Seeing he said nothing, Lassi slowly sat down on the ground, using his remaining time to continue.

“I do owe them a life. I wanted to go down and apologize to them, but your parents urged you so urgently…”

Leaning his head against the alley wall, he let out a soft sigh.

“If only you’d given me another ten years, or even five… I would have given you an explanation—what happened that day, why it happened, and what came after. Whether you believe it or not, look at that dam; you’ll know I meant to atone while alive. After I’m gone, the next one might not own up to it.”

Udi’s eyes reddened, the hand holding the gun trembling slightly. For a moment, he forgot his mission and roared hysterically.

“Damn it! Stop playing the hero! How many people have you killed? Is an explanation enough to fix that? And what’s the point of saying all this now… Can the dead come back to life?”

“They can’t come back. The living have no choice but to move forward!”

Lassi shook his head, coughed, and suddenly laughed freely.

“You have parents. I had them too, once, but the Empire killed them. At first, I thought it was just the law of the jungle, the rule of the wild. Then a man named Niyang shouted and woke me up.”

“He said… if we don’t destroy the Empire, destroy feudalism, destroy those thousand pillars pressing on the hearts of the Boro people, generation after generation of Boro will die one after another for this.”

“You have parents. You should avenge them. Now I give you my life, but you have to finish what I left undone… Do you have the courage?”

“…”

Udi couldn’t answer and didn’t want to listen anymore.

He felt his mission wavering.

He even thought that when he went down, his parents might not praise him… they might even feel their deaths were in vain.

Weren’t they?

Everything seemed to have returned to the starting point, to the day before the great flood.

But now there was no turning back.

He didn’t want to imagine what came after; he could only grit his teeth and see it through to the end.

Yet just as he was about to fire, two blinding lights burst open at both ends of the alley, turning the whole alley into daylight in an instant!

Flashbang!

It was the Stormtroopers!

“Bang!!”

Startled by the lost vision, Udi fired hastily on instinct and reflex, emptying the entire magazine by pulling the trigger!

But because of his inner turmoil and his arm having been raised too long, those last six bullets all hit the wall barely a palm’s width from Lassi, even wounding a teammate by mistake.

The gangsters trapped in the alley panicked.

They were just bullies who usually picked on students and honest folk—how could they face off against special forces?

Every little mouse panicked, dropping their weapons and trembling before the fight even began, turning from wolves back into cowards, already scheming in their minds how to beg for mercy when they were pinned down.

Udi knew well that the thugs around him were unreliable; to complete his mission, he had to rely on himself!

Using the tactics his superior had taught him, he steadied his mind, retreating while quickly reloading, but before he could chamber a round, a whistling rifle butt nearly smashed his jaw.

“Aaaah!”

Akman roared in fury, this youth not much older than Udi, pinning the soldier he had personally trained hard to the ground.

He had once been a child soldier in the Yue tribe’s resistance, following Lassi north long, long ago.

He remembered in Mazhou, the Empire’s nobles kept them penned up in the mountains like pigs, using them as bandits for drills every now and then!

Those Yue tribe elders shouted about leading them to overthrow the Empire, spending money from overseas laborers, yet the fighting grew more pathetic, forcing them all to dig wild vegetable roots and mix them with red clay in the mountains!

It was Lassi who forged their backbone!

To this day, he still remembered that ruthless man slapping the commander who led them in stupid battles into the dirt, beating him so badly he didn’t dare utter a peep!

That was their leader…

How dare this bastard!

Akman, eyes bloodshot, raised his rifle butt, staring at Udi, who was nearly knocked out, wishing he could mash that insipid face into pulp and feed it to the dogs!

But Udi was still his soldier. After a furious roar, he finally dropped the gun and swung his fists.

“I’ll kill you!!!”

“You beast! You killed all our families! You doomed us all!”

With every roar, he threw a punch, bruising the face purple and blue, swelling it into a pig’s head.

Udi woke and passed out, then woke again from the beating, until he heard a faint “Enough.”

Akman, still swinging his fists, was pulled up by two Stormtroopers and held aside.

Only then did Udi see clearly that the one who had punched him was the very youth who had once thrust an LD-47 rifle into his hands…

Back then, he had picked up the unwanted boy standing by the river, saying that from then on, he would be his soldier.

So much had happened that he had almost forgotten what Akman had said to him at that time.

Yet there had indeed been a period when the helpless boy regarded him as his own elder brother…

Apart from the traitor Udi, thirty other gang members were pinned to the ground.

Shawa, his eyes red-rimmed, helped Raxi to his feet, intending to lead him out of the alley.

But the latter shook his head after rising, then extended a trembling hand, drew a blood-stained notebook from his bosom, and handed it to the former.

“I have no time left… Everything I want to say to you is in this notebook. Calm yourself and read it slowly.”

“As for my funeral, no need for grand ceremonies. Just bury my remains on the banks of the lower Tasan River… If floods come again, let them drown me first, and blame no one else.”

“This life of mine was borrowed; it's time to return it… Alayan probably hasn't closed his eyes yet. I hear him shouting from below, waiting for me to fight three hundred rounds… Cough… Indeed, I must go down to keep him company.”

“Oh, and my sidearm… Please return it to Mr. Fangchang, thanking him for all he has done for us living on this land.”

“I'll repay this debt in my next life.”

Shawa said nothing, only supporting him with his body, listening with reddened eyes, then nodded with tears glistening in his eyes.

Pressing his hand on the blood-stained notebook, he spoke in a choked voice.

“I promise you…”

“I'll throw away this damned life of mine if I have to… but I will finish what you left undone!”

By the end, he was nearly shouting.

A gratified smile appeared on Raxi's face; he reached out and brushed the child's bangs aside.

He had neither children nor parents, yet he never expected to have so many people to entrust with his last wishes.

“With your words, I am at ease…”

“The Mammoth Kingdom… I leave to you.”

It was already the limit to have held on this long; this little time was not enough for him to lie in a hospital.

That bullet was probably laced with something 'foolproof'.

Having uttered his last words, Raxi finally closed his eyes peacefully, dying standing as he had wished.

Shawa held his body upright, standing still for a long time, then looked up at the night sky, cool as water.

He thought of the profound advice the old gentleman had given him at the Great Rift.

Every citizen of the Alliance is Chuguang, every Brahmin is Lowell—

If this phrase is also seen as a riddle, then there is another solution to the problem.

Want to change the world?

You'll have to kill until the very breed is replaced!