Thunder Like Judgment
1602 Words
The night was deep. Inside a battered canvas tent—
By the dim glow of an oil lamp, Muha Maggi, leader of the so-called “Holy War National Liberation Army,” suppressed a raspy chuckle that leaked between his teeth. With extreme care, he pulled out a dented tin lockbox secured with a combination lock. Almost every night, whenever he had the chance, he opened it to look inside. Otherwise, he couldn’t sleep soundly.
The box was old, its paint chipped and scarred, its surface etched with the marks of countless storms and years of hardship. The edges, handled innumerable times, gleamed with an unnatural oily sheen.
As he did every time he opened it, Muha Maggi split his mouth into a grin, revealing a set of crooked yellow teeth. Chuckling, he lifted out thick stacks of U.S. dollars, gold bars, and gemstones.
He would never let his men see this. That would only invite greed—and trouble. This was a legacy left behind by the previous leader. That unlucky bastard had been killed during an operation, a fragment of shell tearing into his forehead and blowing half his head apart. Otherwise, Muha Maggi might never have discovered that beneath the ragged façade of this so-called “liberation force” lay such immense hidden wealth.
Compared to the men and weapons outside the tent, this was his true capital. If he wished, he could rebuild a force just like this one at any time—perhaps even larger, more formidable.
Out in the wastelands, among scattered tribes, there was only desolation, poverty, and ignorance. With hard currency, it was easy to recruit tribal men willing to risk their lives for a full stomach and access to women. Give them guns, c***k a whip over their backs, and every one of them could be turned into a decent shooter.
The “Holy War National Liberation Army” was nothing more than a false banner—selling dog meat under a sheep’s head. Holy war? National liberation? All naked profit. In truth, Muha Maggi hadn’t even wanted this name. Wouldn’t “Muha’s Guerrilla Force” sound better? But someone needed that label—so he hung it up.
Those so-called agents—men who appeared from nowhere with guns and money—whether they meant him well or not, Muha Maggi didn’t care.
He knew the truth. It was mutual exploitation.
They needed someone to do dirty, deniable work—jobs where heads rolled for money. And he needed cash. More cash. The men and guns were nothing but tools for earning it.
They’d just pulled off a big score. Muha Maggi was already thinking about dumping the old, worn-out rifles with ruined rifling onto poor mountain herders, replacing them with rifle grenades and heavier weapons. Maybe bring in a few women to keep morale up.
Only by expanding could he earn more. He wasn’t like those short-sighted fools who lived only for immediate gain.
—
Fifteen kilometers away.
Altitude: eleven thousand meters.
Navigation data confirmed the aircraft was approaching the target area. The J-10 slipped beneath the cloud layer. Below was pure blackness. The clouds swallowed the sky; not a single point of light was visible. The aircraft cruised at optimal fuel efficiency.
If not for satellite confirmation, Lin Mo might have thought he had missed the target entirely. Even in the other world, night air missions were rare—there simply weren’t effective night-vision methods.
Lin Mo activated Light Mirror again.
After more than a dozen attempts, he finally managed to sustain a shimmering mirror no larger than his palm. A faint image of the ground below flickered into view. He had already begun gathering light elements while above the clouds. Moonlight, after all, was still light—reflected sunlight. Weak compared to daytime, but better than nothing.
Lin Mo unwrapped two military chocolate bars and stuffed them into his mouth, maintaining combat stamina. Flying a fighter was exhausting work. The bitterness of high-purity cocoa, combined with ginsenoside additives, slid down his throat and was rapidly absorbed. His focus sharpened.
“Encrypted communications link verified. Combat data link established.”
The response from the onboard combat computer made Lin Mo feel as though the J-10 had finally awakened as a true weapon.
“Operation begins.”
The hoarse voice in his helmet was cold and lethal, like steel wool scraping glass. Ground forces were already in position—waiting only for the J-10 to fire the first shot.
Lin Mo gently armed the fire-control system.
Through the low-light TV feed, fifteen kilometers ahead, dozens of tents of varying sizes came into view. Eleven heavy trucks, several off-road jeeps. The camp was dark. Only three or four armed men in long robes patrolled the perimeter—sentries.
Livestock wandered inside the camp.
The Light Mirror view shifted. More than sixty black-clad, well-trained fighters advanced in a crescent-shaped skirmish line, bodies low, closing in on the camp. At a certain distance, two squad-level machine guns were set up from the west and north.
Chinese special operations forces.
They knew the J-10 was already overhead, yet made no move. They didn’t know that every step they took was already visible to Lin Mo.
Perfect timing.
Lin Mo slammed the throttle forward.
Boom—!
The J-10 shattered the sound barrier.
The airspeed indicator spiked. The brutal G-forces didn’t discomfort him—instead, they sent a thrill through his veins.
He wanted the strike to land before the engine noise arrived.
The J-10’s black, cap-shaped nose aligned with the camp and dove. Flames burst from both rocket pods as twelve rockets screamed downward, trailing brilliant exhaust plumes.
“What was that sound?!”
Inside the tent, Muha Maggi froze, money still in his hands.
A distant, rolling thunder came from the heavens. Points of light bloomed in the sky. The sentries snapped their heads upward—
Too late.
The rockets slammed into the camp. Fireballs erupted. Tents vanished. Pale, circular shockwaves flashed and ripped through nearly half the encampment.
Screams followed instantly. Gunfire erupted chaotically, like popping beans. Only then did the roar of the fighter’s engines arrive overhead, rolling like thunder.
Lin Mo squeezed the cannon trigger.
The aircraft shuddered. Three or four streaks of light punched downward from beneath the fuselage. By the glow of the burning camp, a tent was torn apart. A militant halfway out was shredded along with everyone inside. The 23-mm shells ripped flesh and canvas into fragments, blood mist blooming clearly in the firelight.
A heavy anti-materiel rifle could tear a man apart—23-mm cannon rounds were in another category entirely.
Lin Mo didn’t waste shots. Two hundred rounds total. A few careless bursts, and the belt would be empty. A fighter without ammo wasn’t a fighter. What then—kill with sonic booms? That would be worse than a paper tiger.
Muha Maggi scrambled, shoving money and valuables from the sheepskin rug back into the lockbox. He grabbed a revolver and peeked outside.
One glance nearly tore his soul from his body.
It was a m******e.
The camp was chaos—explosions, tents flipping, the monstrous roar of the fighter circling above. The cannon boomed like death harvesting lives. People who failed to escape were blown into bloody stains across tent fabric. All sounds merged into a symphony of annihilation.
“Damn it!”
Muha Maggi didn’t even try to rally his men. He dove back into the tent, cursed violently, grabbed the lockbox, and ran. Leaving everything else behind, he vanished into the shadows cast by the flames.
It was over. Completely over.
The force he had built with such effort was annihilated in one night. He didn’t even look for his trusted lieutenants. Without hesitation, he abandoned everyone and fled into the darkness.
One in the sky. One on the ground.
With nothing but assault rifles and light weapons, they were facing a jet fighter. Not even the same league. Bullets couldn’t even catch it. There was no fight—only s*******r.
The camp grew more chaotic. Lin Mo’s initial strike had nearly broken them, but more fighters poured out, spraying automatic fire wildly at the sky.
Lin Mo danced the J-10 through the air with ease. Without anti-aircraft guns, those small-caliber rounds did little more than ping against the fuselage, leaving shallow pits. They couldn’t even penetrate the skin.
The J-10 pulled into a rapid Immelmann turn, climbing to three thousand meters before leveling out. Even during ground attack, Lin Mo remained cautious. Only his physique could endure such extreme high-G maneuvers. Even if the aircraft came apart, he would feel nothing.
Compared to riding a dragon, a fighter jet was downright comfortable—no different from a noblewoman’s cushioned carriage.
Then—a beam of light stabbed down into the camp.
A pinpoint laser spot bloomed on a supply-laden truck, glaringly bright in the pitch-black night.
Lin Mo’s pupils contracted.
Laser designation.
Ground special forces had painted the target.
He immediately rolled into a curving evasive maneuver and released a single Thunder LT-2 laser-guided bomb.
The domestically produced Thunder LT-2—a high-grade copy of Russia’s KAB-500L—carried a 500-kilogram warhead. The moment it separated from the J-10, its tail fins adjusted automatically, locking onto the laser spot below.
The release was almost a low-altitude toss.
A black shadow fell from the sky.
Then—
The earth shattered.
A pale shockwave ring exploded outward like a collapsing mountain, scouring everything within a hundred-meter radius. The ground convulsed. Within five kilometers, everything trembled.
Even heavy artillery over 150-mm caliber couldn’t compare.
- Writer
