Leitao’s combat boots crushed the withered leaves, the humus mixing with the scent of blood as it seeped into the soles. He was kneeling in the dense forest of 1938, wiping down his military knife, when the high-pitched buzzing of the Bagua Spinning Top Space suddenly tore through the silence—the emergency communication light on the edge of the pod flashed frantically like a blood-red pupil. As his fingertip touched the cold metal switch, a vision of the modern world unfolded across his retinas: over the deserts of Central Africa, three beige-painted attack helicopters hovered in a triangular formation, their 7.62mm heavy machine guns spewing tongues of fire that turned the mercenary camp into scorched earth. Ninjas from the Sakura Mercenary Corps stepped over the corpses of their comrades, their Type 30 Bayonets piercing the carotid arteries of survivors with lethal precision, the splashing blood droplets forming eerie totems on the sandy ground.
In the ruins of a steel mill, the graffiti reading "The uranium mine is ours" shimmered with a blinding white light under the scorching sun, while the skull pattern beside it seemed to grin, mocking the slaughter. Anderson, the Blackwater Security commander, crushed his satellite phone; he didn't even notice as the metal shards sliced into his palm. He turned to the electronic sand table, where thirty-seven red dots representing the mercenary strongholds were extinguished one by one within five minutes. "Investigate every relevant …
Chapter 465