Super Soldier in the City

During the day, they moved forward, while at night, they stopped to rest. After five days, they roughly searched the first suspected location, which was already at the Huaxia and Vietnam border. They even encountered patrolling border personnel. Fortunately, they had evidence prepared in advance, and orders were issued from above, avoiding misunderstandings. Otherwise, with just the two of them acting like this, border guards might either capture them for questioning or open fire on the spot.

The search yielded nothing, so Li Yifei called Murong Yuanqing and others to report. Then he followed the border guards to the frontier station. After a brief rest, he and Xu Shanshan left to search in Vietnam, according to the plan discussed with Murong Yuanqing and others. Of the three locations, the suspicious point in Vietnam was the most probable. They originally searched the southern region first to avoid missing anything.

That place was now within Vietnam; Li Yifei and Xu Shanshan needed to ride there and enter the rainforest. According to the data found, although the place was rarely visited, it had a beautiful name, Emerald Glen. Even in Vietnam, few people go there. It is a tropical rainforest, even less safe than past battlefields because it’s scary for ordinary people. Nearby places see several or even dozens of people die or completely disappear in the jungle each year.

Thus, this area is marked as dangerous, and local residents nearly never venture there, even though there might be valuable flora and fauna to capture and sell.

Li Yifei and Xu Shanshan first crossed the border into Vietnam, then hired a car and two guides to drive to the area’s outskirts.

The forests here lacked the threat of landmines but had once been a battlefield. Countless locals, American soldiers, and Huaxia soldiers were buried here, with unknown dangers like venomous snakes and fierce beasts.

Vietnam has been part of Huaxia territory since ancient times, like today’s provinces and cities, not as a dependent state or another nation’s temporary tributary. Qin Shihuang first conquered Vietnam, killing the local people and establishing three counties: South Sea County, Guilin County, and Xiang County. Later, the Han Dynasty built the Jiaozhi Province based on these three counties, one of thirteen provinces in the nation (provinces were equivalent to modern provinces). Jiaozhi Province governed nine counties: two in Guangdong, two in Guangxi, two in Hainan Island, and three in Vietnam. In Vietnam, the three counties were Jiaozhi County (now Hanoi, the administrative center of Jiaozhi Province), Jiuzhen County (central Vietnam, Hue area), and Rinan County (Ho Chi Minh City). Huaxia long ruled the Vietnam region as its own territory, and the people there were Huaxia Han. The famous Tang Dynasty poet Wang Bo’s father served in the Jiaozhi area.

In the late Tang Dynasty, the country fragmented. Military governors across the nation established separatist regimes. Soldiers of the Jinghai Army in Jiaozhi also built a separatist regime. The later Song Dynasty was weak and couldn’t reclaim Jiaozhi. Hence, Vietnam gradually gained independence. However, Vietnam of that time didn’t deny being Huaxia like Taiwan today but claimed to be part of Huaxia, considering the era as the Northern and Southern Dynasties: Song Dynasty as the Northern Dynasty and Vietnam as the Southern Dynasty. Vietnam even practiced Greater Han nationalism, assimilating many other ethnic groups.

During the Ming Dynasty, Vietnam destroyed the Champa Kingdom, primarily Indian in culture, assimilating the entire population and renaming Champa’s capital to "Saigon," meaning a place accepting tributes like Huaxia (referring to Vietnam) from foreign barbarians. The Ming Dynasty once reclaimed Vietnam but managed it poorly, leading to Vietnam’s independence. From then on, Vietnam grew apart from China.

From a historical perspective, this area once belonged to Huaxia, which is why the talented Huaxia person left the map, as possibly during his era, this place was still Huaxia territory.

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Li Yifei and Xu Shanshan took two days to reach the destination, standing at the forest’s edge. The guides they hired refused to go further. Li Yifei pulled out some money and sent the guides away.

This time, they didn’t bring much but added more items like guns, bullets, and knives. Having fought across the border with teammates before, Li Yifei knew the hidden dangers of these lush rainforests, which were just ordinary ones, not like the vast and dense one before them.

He made a phone call to his family, informing them that they both would enter the rainforest soon and asked them to await good news.

After hanging up the phone, Li Yifei stowed the phone away and took Xu Shanshan’s small hand beside him. He inhaled and asked, "Are you scared?"

"Not scared because you’re here." Xu Shanshan said with a smile, pointing ahead, "We’ve crossed the minefield, why fear the rainforest?"

"Haha, then let’s go. The sooner we find it, the sooner we return home. Though I should remind you, the interior danger won’t be less than the previous location, be vigilant."

"Mm-hmm."

They were still at the rainforest’s edge, yet already encountered many dangers. After half a day, they had covered over ten miles and encountered dangers several times, including two pythons, over ten venomous snakes, poisonous spiders, and numerous poisonous centipedes.

Li Yifei didn’t harm the large python, merely driving it away, whereas the venomous snakes were killed, and he took the snake gall to swallow while disregarding the snake meat. Parasites abound in these snakes near the forest edge; it’s tough to kill them while barbecuing in the wild, risking illness if consumed.

At first, Xu Shanshan felt it was nothing since she’d visited the Amazon rainforest. But upon entering, she realized the difficulty. Although no landmines, many dangers prevailed, and some poisonous insects weren’t afraid of their Protective True Energy.

After two more days of traveling, they were moving day and night, only resting in favorable spots. These two days’ rains made advancing in the rainforest harder.

The gravest threat isn’t carnivorous animals and poisons but the elephant herds with astonishing destructive power. Their fierceness couldn’t scare them away, and twice during these days, Li Yifei and Xu Shanshan met elephant herds who charged upon spotting them, forcing them to flee.

On the third day, Li Yifei and Xu Shanshan finally reached their destination. It was easy to tell because their communication devices malfunctioned, and the Satellite Navigation System became useless. Li Yifei realized they had entered somewhere enigmatic, like the Kunlun Stone Wall they’d visited before.

This was a good sign, at least indicating something ahead and not a fruitless trip.

After putting away the communication devices, Li Yifei confirmed the direction and continued inward with Xu Shanshan. Every hundred meters, he marked the path, unconcerned about losing his way without devices due to these measures.

They hadn’t gone far before spotting a pile of white bones. The skeleton was huge, with almost no flesh or blood. Li Yifei and Xu Shanshan approached for inspection and deduced it was an elephant’s remains. The bones were covered with fine bite marks, as if brushed many times with a steel brush, but not teeth marks. Instead, they...

Though they observed for a while, they couldn’t figure out what caused it. Judging by the bone’s markings, it seemed recent. Li Yifei instructed Xu Shanshan to wait while he searched nearby, finding several more bodies—not bodies, actually, only white bones, devoid of flesh and organs, leaving eerie bones. These were equally covered with fine bite marks, not caused by large teeth like the elephant skeleton.

The ground wasn’t swampy yet, though soft, wouldn’t trap a person. Li Yifei ruled out the possibility of these animals being trapped and starving to death. He also discovered a python skeleton; this creature wouldn’t be trapped in a swamp yet still perished.

Returning, Li Yifei slightly furrowed his brow, prompting Xu Shanshan to ask, "Did you find anything?"

Li Yifei shook his head and said, "No, let’s cautiously proceed inward."

Continuing inward, mysterious white bones increased in number, while their communication gear remained without signal.

They saw dozens of skeletons, these fierce animals seemingly frozen before being stripped of their flesh and organs, leaving only bones behind. This puzzling phenomenon persisted as they moved further, stopping as night approached to cook, deciding whether to advance after eating.

While Xu Shanshan went to relieve herself, she discovered something strange and hurriedly called Li Yifei to come over.

Putting down his cooking items, Li Yifei hurried over, parting dense branches to see a plane wreckage. It was an old-style plane, from decades ago, presumably a transport plane. Half-buried in the ground, the other half was covered in vines, already corroded to ruins. Following Xu Shanshan’s finger, Li Yifei saw two human skeletons, still wearing aviation gear, in piloting posture.

They moved closer to the airplane; such crashes were few but certainly common in those years. Suddenly, the sound of rustling inside shattered the forest’s quiet, quickening Xu Shanshan’s heartbeat.