Night in the basin came especially early and light was absent in the forest at six in the evening. The darkness descended earlier and the group stopped on an empty patch of ground to eat, drink and rest. They had not had a good sleep for three consecutive days and even the strongest men were unable to take it. Kabir and Tang Yu-Yan ordered a man each to keep guard while the rest slept on the grass.
Xia Lei fell asleep under a blanket in under a minute and he was deaf to the rustling of the forest and calling of the insects. He had a dream of his father and himself chatting at home but he could not clearly hear what they chatted about. He then dreamt of Tang Yu-Yan. She stood topless before him. Those two snowy peaks were entirely exposed in front of him and the pretty little red nibs...
“Put your clothes on,” mumbled Xia Lei in his sleep,
“Pervert. What the hell are you dreaming about?” came a woman’s voice.
“Yu-Yan, don’t you hear what I’m saying? Put your clothes on. I know yours are very big but you don’t have to expose them, do you?” added Xia Lei.
“What? It’s me?! And you’re saying I’m exposing them?” The woman who was talking grew angry from embarrassment and slapped Xia Lei’s cheek.
This slap had not so much strength behind it but it still startled Xia Lei awake. He opened his eyes to see Tang Yu-Yan squatting next to him, glaring angrily at him with reddish cheeks.
“You... Why are you here?” Xia Lei was more or less awake now.
“What were you mumbling about?” Tang Yu-Yan recalled Xia Lei’s dream-speak and her jade cheeks reddened again.
“Did I say something?” Xia Lei fuzzily recalled that he had seen Tang Yu-Yan in his dream, and topless too. He was definitely not going to admit it though.
“Humph! Stinking man.” Tang Yu-Yan snorted. “I’m not going to bother to expose your lie. Go stand on guard - it’s your turn.” She yawned. “I should sleep for a bit too. I’m sleepy.”
Xia Lei crawled out from under the blanket and was about to put it away when Tang Yu-Yan grabbed his hand. “Don’t put it away. I’ll sleep in yours.”
“I’m a stinking man. Do you want to sleep under a blanket where a stinking man slept?”
Tang Yu-Yan burrowed into his blankets and planted herself solidly in them. “This is a battlefield. I’m going to sleep in your blankets but this doesn’t change the fact that you’re a stinking man.”
Xia Lei shrugged and left, carrying the sniper rifle.
Tang Yu-Yan shut her eyes and went to sleep. She entered dreamland and dreamt of a muscular butt. She was squatting behind that man and she sneakily looked between his legs...
Thoughts during the day and dreams at night - there was no avoiding this for her.
A White Rock Tribe militant stood on guard duty with Xia Lei and he very respectfully handed a cigarette to Xia Lei. Xia Lei shook his head to indicate that he did not smoke and the militant did not insist; he lit his own cigarette.
Xia Lei started a conversation in halting Pashtun and the militant was very surprised that he was able to use Pashtun to chat with him. He started talking excitedly to Xia Lei, correcting his mistakes as he went. Xia Lei asked several questions about the White Hun tribe but the White Rock Tribe militant knew not much more than he did.
Chatting in Pashto and having someone correct his mistakes helped Xia Lei learn at a speed comparable to Lamborghini zooming on an airport runway.
The White Rock Tribe militant chatting with Xia Lei was stunned. Xia Lei had begun the conversation in halting Pashto, unable to speak a simple sentence fluently and also had grammatical mistakes. The more he chatted with Xia Lei, however, he discovered that Xia Lei’s Pashto had become increasingly fluent and mistakes made became few and far between.
“Mr Yang, you’re good! Have you learnt Pashto in the past?”
“I did. I learnt it for a year,” said Xia Lei with a smile, “Adil my friend, I just forgot it for a while. See, I remembered the things I’d learnt while chatting with you.”
Adil was this militant’s name. He gave Xia Lei a thumbs-up. “Mr Yang, you’re the most impressive gunman I’ve ever seen. I am in awe.” After a pause, he added, “Can you keep guard for a bit? I need to answer the call of nature.”
“No problem, go ahead,” said Xia Lei.
Adil walked off towards the depths of the forest, plucking at the leaves of the shrubbery as he went.
Xia Lei smiled wryly and looked away from Adil. He kept watch for a bit and was then struck by a thought. He looked for a sky-scraping, ancient-looking tree and climbed up.
This ancient tree was at least a thousand years old and it was about 80 to 90 metres tall from root to crown, like a gigantic umbrella blocking out the sky. Xia Lei climbed up to the treetop. This height and this flat expanse made it easy for his left eye to see everything clearly within the radius of 4,000 metres.
The forest stretched before him, tree after tree with no start or end. Far off in the distance, peaks poked through the night sky, rarely-seen gleaming snowcaps visible under the cool moonlight. This great basin surrounded by mountains was like an otherworldly paradise written by a great poet, Tao Yuan-Ming, giving one the impression of a dreamscape.
The whole of Afghanistan was in the fires of war, except this place.
‘No tribe, no temples and no female White Hun warriors. What’s this situation? We’ve travelled in this forest for a whole day - if there really are female White Hun warriors then they should have turned up already, right?’ Xia Lei could not figure out why.
“Unh...” A dull sound came from Adil’s direction.
This was just a very soft sound, but it was carried by the wind to Xia Lei’s ears. He looked over to the sound and the treetops and trunks in the way quickly disappeared. He saw Adil almost two minutes later, and what he saw startled him so much he almost fell from the tree!
Adil had been impaled on a tree trunk with a spear. The spear had pierced through his chest and out his back, and the entire spearhead had been embedded in the tree trunk!
A woman walked into Xia Lei’s field of vision.
She was a fairly strange woman - she had naturally wavy, wine-red hair, and her pointed face was painted. He was still able to tell that her eye colour was blue and as intimidating as cat eyes. She was big, tall; roughly the same as caucasian people. Her skin was not the pale white of caucasians but a yellow not unlike the skin of Asians.
The White Huns were Eurasian. This woman had two-thirds caucasian and one-thirds Asian blood. This interesting blend also fit Kabir’s description.
‘She’s a female White Hun warrior? She’s strong indeed!’ Xia Lei did not hesitate; he raised his gun and took aim. However, he discovered a problem after he lifted the gun - his left eye could see her through X-ray vision but the sniper rifle bullet could not go through all the forest between them and kill the target!
A new situation developed just two seconds later. More female White Hun warriors appeared out of the thick forest behind the first. Their faces were all painted and they were all clothed in simple cloth and animal leather skirts. Almost every one of them were tattooed with guardian spirits, dancing flames, savage beasts - these tattoos made them appear fierce.
The female White Hun warriors went towards the campsite, one by one. Some carried spears, some blades or swords, some with strung bows and some held AK47s.
They were not all gunpower-free - the female White Hun warriors knew how to use guns too!
Female warriors walked out of the darkness one by one, fanning out and closing in on the campsite. They numbered over a hundred!
Xia Lei did not have the time to consider much more. He raised his gun again, chose a target with no trees in the way and pulled the trigger.
They had killed Adil upon their arrival, not asking why nor giving him any chances so this meant that there was no room for negotiation. Their aim was obvious, and that was to kill everyone!
How could Xia Lei be soft-hearted in a situation like this?
Bang! A gunshot shattered the silence of the night. The anger-driven bullet pierced through the chest of his target and blood, flesh and gristle splattered. Her corpse was thrown by the impact against the trunk of a tree.
“Enemy attack! Attack!” Tang Yu-Yan bellowed in alarm.
Blankets were thrown off in the campsite and the Bureau 101 agents and White Rock militants jolted from sleep to alertness. They grabbed their weapons and started firing. Unfortunately, it was blind shooting and they did not see where the enemy was.
Rat-tat-tat...
Bang bang bang...
Gunshots sounded and the trees in the way of the bullets were tattered by the onslaught.
“It’s the White Hun women! It’s them!” yelled Kabir in panic.
Sst! A feathered shaft flew from behind a trunk and went viciously into Kabir’s throat. Kabir fell to the ground, grasping his bubbling throat. He did not die right away - his legs pushed against the ground and flailed about but these actions were in vain.
Over ten female warriors rushed toward the towering tree Xia Lei was in. They were familiar with this land and had easily deduced where the person who had fired the stone-cold shot was hiding.
They could have killed everyone in the camp silently if it weren’t for Xia Lei, but it seemed like they had to pay a certain price now and they hated Xia Lei for this reason.
These warriors were quick and they were also good at hiding themselves but all these were useless to Xia Lei’s eye. He had already discovered them when they started going in his direction and had slid down the tree in time.
Xia Lei slung the sniper rifle across his back and ran in Tang Yu-Yan’s direction, handgun in hand. He needed to be with Tang Yu-Yan!
“He’s there!” A female White Hun warrior had spotted Xia Lei. She roared in anger and the spear in her hand sprang forth, straight at Xia Lei’s back.
Xia Lei suddenly flattened himself to the ground and turned around. He pulled the trigger at the same time that the spear was flying past his head.
Bang bang bang!
Three shots, all centered in the chest of the White Hun warrior who had thrown the spear at him.
The White Hun held her chest as she collapsed to the ground. She was strong but her strength was not greater than bullets.
Xia Lei did not dally. He rolled over and crawled to his feet, then dodged behind a tree.
Tat-tat-tat! Xia Lei had just dodged a spray of bullets aimed at the ground he’d been on. AK47 bullets hit the ground, spraying up dirt and withered leaves.
A light suddenly flashed past and it stopped in the forehead of the female White Hun warrior who had shot at Xia Lei with the AK47. It was a throwing knife - a straight blade with no handle!
“Come with me!” It was Tang Yu-Yan’s voice.
Xia Lei ran towards her voice.
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