Chapter Forty-Eight: Turning Danger into Safety, Part One

Although it was weakened, that terrifying swell still carried enough force that a single crest could drag everyone here down to the seabed. The danger had only lessened a little; it had not been removed.

James seemed to have altered course slightly. After that frantic flight, Zhao Li had long since lost his bearings in the vast ocean. Fortunately, that fellow James was at the controls. Since things had come to this, their lives could as well be left in his hands.

The speed slowed a little, and the jolting eased considerably. With the worst danger now behind them, everyone looked far more relaxed, even smiling at one another.

“Sergeant, thank you!” A prisoner beside him clapped Zhao Li heavily on the shoulder. It was the first time Zhao Li had heard anyone speak words of gratitude. Yet that seemed to be all there was to it; no further display of thanks followed, as if merely saying it had already been enough.

Zhao Li, too, felt deeply moved. One decision of his had almost carried him to the threshold of the underworld and back, and the peril involved was far greater than he had expected. “Thank yourselves. Without James, without everyone working so quickly to lash this raft together, we probably would all have died out there.”

“You were only sentenced to life imprisonment, not death, so you should not have been abandoned, even if you are prisoners.” What Zhao Li said was absolutely sincere. When he made that choice, he had indeed acted on that conviction.

“When we get to land, I hope everyone will stay in line. After all, that is a military base, not a prison. If you do anything that makes those people misunderstand, you might be shot on the spot. You were all soldiers once; I don’t need to remind you of that, do I?”

He spoke the unpleasant truth first, so that once they reached safety these men would not start entertaining other ideas.

“Don’t worry. Our inner energy is sealed, and without a large warship, we have no way of leaving this planet,” said a prisoner nearby. It was plain fact. Even if everyone managed to hide on that patch of land, what then?

There was less than twenty square kilometers of land there in total. Even a carpet search would turn everyone up. As for the single-person aircraft, it could not leave the atmosphere, so escape was basically impossible. And if it had not been for Zhao Li, the only outcome for all of them would have been the same. Now that he had said it aloud, hardly anyone was willing to deny him face at a moment like this.

“Sergeant, well done. If you have any problems in the future, come to me. As long as I know something, I’ll teach you everything I can.” This came from another prisoner, a special forces soldier, and it sounded almost like a hint: if Zhao Li wanted to grow stronger, he could come to them. Although their inner energy had been sealed, their training methods and certain techniques were still perfectly clear to them. If Zhao Li was interested, he could learn from them.

“All right. I’ll come to you if I have questions. Thank you,” Zhao Li replied as well. At the moment, there was no point discussing anything too specific. They still had not escaped danger. No matter how flowery the words, they were only decoration. Better to wait until they were completely safe.

For more than three straight hours, they sped across the boundless sea, with not a trace of land in sight. From the sun’s position, Zhao Li could roughly guess the direction they were heading—perhaps toward that land, perhaps not. In any case, he no longer wanted to think too much about it.

People ahead began to cheer, and Zhao Li hurried to look forward. On the distant horizon, a dark line had appeared, faint but unmistakable in the endless sea.

“Land!” someone finally shouted.

Then everyone erupted in cheers. With just four inflatable rafts and a single-person aircraft, they had actually managed to deliver more than forty people in such a miserable state to land more than a thousand kilometers away.

The raging waves were already out of sight. Even if they could reach here, they would no longer be able to cause any real destruction. After traveling more than a thousand kilometers, the remaining energy could barely raise a half-meter swell. How could it possibly threaten a landmass?

James’s single-person aircraft continued ahead. Before long, several more aircraft rose into the air from that side and came out to meet them. Clearly, the people at the base had already discovered the situation and were sending a team to receive them.

Soon Zhao Li could see the aircraft above them, identical to his own model. They must be their comrades from the prison.

The aircraft overhead circled the rafts below a few times. Then several of them flew alongside James’s craft, while one broke away from the formation and shot straight back toward the base. It was probably going ahead to notify them to prepare.

By this point, no one felt the joy of having narrowly escaped death. No one spoke. They only watched silently as the aircraft used a steady speed to tow the rafts slowly toward the shore.

Waiting on the beach was a squad of armed soldiers, all in full combat gear, as though facing a major threat. Almost every weapon was aimed at the people in the rafts.

“Everyone, hands behind your heads. Sit where you are!” a voice shouted. The speaker wore a standard tactical helmet, and his face could not be seen.

No one would resist now. After finally surviving, only a fool would fight back. Following the soldiers’ orders, everyone put their hands on their heads and remained seated in the rafts, not moving.

“One by one. Slowly!” Starting from the front, the prisoners stepped off the rafts one at a time, then were forced face-down by several soldiers and handcuffed. Over there, James had already been dragged out of the landed aircraft and pinned to the ground.

No one resisted. They let the soldiers do as they wished. Perhaps in the soldiers’ minds, these prisoners were far too dangerous. Even though none of them fought back, the soldiers still remained on guard in the most cautious posture until the men before them were fully subdued.

By the time it was Zhao Li’s turn, the prison guard uniform on his body put everyone at ease considerably, and the muzzles of the guns lowered a little.

“Zhao Li, is that you?” Jiang Hao’s voice came over in surprise and delight. “You’re alive. You’re all right. That’s wonderful!”

Seeing Zhao Li, the other prison guards also rushed over, punching and slapping him in turn. “You bastard, it’s great that you made it back alive. We’ve been waiting for hours and thought you all had been swallowed by the sea!”

“We should check those two first,” someone said. Kang Hongyuan and Professor Hans did not seem to be in good shape, especially Kang Hongyuan. After that swim in the water, he was still looking half dead and rather dangerous.

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