Chapter 270 is over, we've been exposed! Under the leadership of Chen Xiaocao and Liu Landi, the two "field experts," the raiding team made their way through the dangers without any real incident.
The team's morale, which had just plummeted due to the quicksand incident, has now rebounded to its peak, and each member's steps have become much lighter.
Just then, Wang Xiaoya, who was standing next to Su Tang, suddenly twitched her small nose twice.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks.
"etc!"
Her voice wasn't loud, but it sounded exceptionally clear in the silent line.
Everyone stopped instinctively and looked at her with confusion.
"What's wrong, Xiaoya?" Chen Xiaocao asked in a low voice.
Wang Xiaoya didn't answer immediately. She closed her eyes, her long eyelashes trembling slightly, like a wary fawn, and sniffed the damp mist in the air again. In that fishy smell mixed with rotting water plants and silt, there seemed to be something faint and completely out of place.
After a while, she opened her eyes and pointed uncertainly to the left front.
"Sister Su An... I think... I smell tobacco."
The smell of tobacco?
These two words made everyone's hearts jump into their throats instantly.
Gao Kai was the first to react, his body tensing instantly. He instinctively raised the rifle in his hand an inch higher, and lowered his voice, his tone full of disbelief: "Impossible, right? There's not a soul in sight for miles around in this godforsaken place, how could someone be smoking? Little girl, are you sure you're not mistaken? The wind smells like mud."
"I...I don't know either." Wang Xiaoya was getting anxious. She was always very confident in her sense of smell and tried hard to distinguish it. "It's just a very faint smell, mixed with the fishy smell of water plants, and it disappears in a flash. But it's definitely not the smell of the swamp! To me, it smells like those 'Daqianmen' cigarettes that we use in our camp! The kind that's strong and pungent!"
In those days, the cheapest cigarettes were the ones issued in military camps.
Su Tang's eyes sharpened instantly.
She didn't doubt Wang Xiaoya's words, but immediately squatted down and made a shushing and concealing gesture to everyone.
The twenty-odd team members immediately spread out with practiced ease, using the surrounding dead trees and grass to perfectly blend themselves into the environment. For a moment, the area seemed to return to its deathly silence, with only the rustling sound of the wind blowing through the dead grass remaining.
Su Tang's gaze swept across the ground inch by inch.
Soon, her gaze settled on a patch of lush ferns.
There was an inconspicuous branch there, with fresh creases and a little bit of sap seeping from the break, indicating that it had not been naturally dried and broken.
More importantly, beneath the branch, on a thick layer of moss, there was the edge of a very, very shallow footprint.
The mark is the smooth indentation left by the soles of their military boots after they've stepped on them.
Someone has been here! And stayed here!
Su Tang made a decision in her mind instantly.
She stood up, gave Wang Xiaoya an approving look, and then took out a seemingly ordinary military binoculars from the side pocket of her backpack.
She didn't make a sound, but inwardly sighed with relief that she had been prepared, having aged her 22nd-century high-transparency multi-coated military binoculars to resemble those of this era. Otherwise, in this thick fog, ordinary lenses would have revealed only a white image.
Following the direction Wang Xiaoya had pointed, she carefully parted the branches and leaves in front of her.
The lens pierced through the thick fog, and about seventy or eighty meters ahead, there was a huge rock protruding from the ground. To the average person, the rock was just a clump of shrubs blending seamlessly into its surroundings, piled high with dead branches and moss, disguised perfectly.
But in Su Tang's view, through the layers of camouflage, a dark gun barrel was faintly visible, pointing in the direction they had come from! A well-disguised sentry!
Su Tang's heart sank slightly.
She put down her binoculars, turned to look at Gao Kai, and said, slowly and deliberately, in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Ahead, there are sentries from Battalion Number Two."
Gao Kai's breathing suddenly stopped.
A chill ran from his tailbone straight up to the top of his head, and he felt as if his scalp was about to explode.
"Damn it!" Gao Kai gritted his teeth, squeezing out a few words through gritted teeth. His voice trembled slightly with extreme shock and fear. "Those sons of bitches from the Second Battalion! They actually set up hidden sentries here! That bastard Yuan Bao is too meticulous!"
Su Tang quickly conveyed the message to her teammates behind her through gestures and lip movements.
Panic, like a plague, spread instantly through the ranks.
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