The Female General Dominates All After Transmigration-Chapter 349 - 348

Ling Chengyan’s small boat circled to the other side of the large vessel, and her excellent vision allowed her to see, in the pitch-black night, a small cargo barge docked under the big ship.

Such ships, Ling Chengyan had seen at bigger docks, are used to transfer cargo, helping large freight ships to unload. Of course, what’s loaded or unloaded this way is bulk cargo. Nowadays, more regular shipping uses containers, which are loaded using large cranes on the dock.

Upon closer inspection, one could find that there were no cargo handlers moving on the barge, nor were there any loading equipment or machinery, it was just as if the two ships were quietly docked together in the night. But Ling Chengyan’s keen eyes noticed the connection between the two ships—a pipe.

Not your ordinary rubber hose, but a thick pipe, dozens of centimeters wide.

She immediately understood what these people were up to—oil unloading!

Though the country has its own oil fields and many refineries, domestic fuel prices are relatively high compared to international prices. This has promoted illegal importation of fuel from abroad, commonly referred to as fuel smuggling.

Fuel, even if it’s not gasoline but the relatively stable diesel, can easily cause a fire if shot at. Diesel is simply less explosive compared to gasoline, but that doesn’t mean it won’t explode.

Ling Chengyan quickly formed a plan.

She lowered her voice and communicated with team leader Chen Changzheng via radio, then gestured to the team members behind her.

The team members nodded in unison, paddled vigorously, and brought the small boat close to the gap between the large ship and the barge. Ling Chengyan untied a rope from her waist, made a knot, and threw it, successfully latching onto the barge’s railing.

She tugged the rope with both hands, climbed to the barge’s stern in a few swift moves—this position was the furthest from the helm, considered a visual blind spot on the ship. After Ling Chengyan boarded, she gestured downwards toward the others, who one by one followed her lead up the barge using the rope.

Ling Chengyan repeated the trick and climbed onto the large ship once more.

There were obviously more people on the large ship. As soon as she flipped herself onboard, she heard two sets of footsteps approaching, talking to each other as they walked. One was speaking Mandarin with a slight accent from Jiang Province bordering Guangdong Province, and the other spoke authentic Min Nan dialect, apparently speaking slower to communicate with his companion. Ling Chengyan held her breath, listened intently, and grasped the general meaning.

The Mandarin speaker was likely a customer, asking if he could have more, while the Min Nan speaker was probably the ship owner or the smuggling ringleader, airily arrogant, expressing that the fuel was limited and there were other old customers competing for it...

Heh, it seems there are quite a lot of people involved in sharing the smuggled goods.

Ling Chengyan quietly crouched, waiting for the two to approach, then suddenly sprang up, taking them both out noiselessly before they could make a sound.

She gestured down to the barge, where two men remained to search and guard, while also facilitating the others boarding the ship. Ling Chengyan led four people, split into two groups, stealthily moving toward the bow along the ship’s side.

Though no light was visible from a distance, once on the ship, it became clear that the ship did have lights installed atypically, on the inner side of the railing with low brightness. Those onboard could use it for illumination, but from afar, almost no light could be seen, offering high concealment.

Her two teams positioned on either side atop the railings, waiting for teammates to arrive while scouting the ship’s condition: number of people, locations, presence of weapons, and more.

Another crucial priority was locating the oil tanks and assessing their quantity!

People gradually climbed up the ship using the ropes; each team left a third on the barge and two-thirds boarded the large ship. The soldiers moved swiftly and very quietly, by the time most were onboard, no one on the two ships detected anything amiss.

Just when the personnel were about to be completely in place and Ling Chengyan was poised to order a full assault, an unexpected variable suddenly occurred.

A young crew member, who had recently joined the ship, was somewhat homesick.

Since boarding, he’d been adrift for several months without returning home. This time, the ship was close to the shore; taking a boat would get him home within an hour—home where his parents, siblings, and the woman waiting for him to marry were.

He joined the ship because the woman’s parents demanded a large sum as a bride price, refusing their marriage without it.

The young man joined the ship through a distant relative, hoping to earn the bride price and return home to marry his beloved.

The ship had communication equipment, but he, being a new peripheral worker, wasn’t allowed to use it, leaving him only to gaze longingly at his distant home and love.

Moreover, managing personnel was prohibited from seeing, so he could only sneak around.

Unexpectedly, such a person concealed stealthily in a recess of the railings and made no sound, ultimately overlooked by the special operations team.

As the special operations team quietly approached, guns in hand, heading to the bow for the final action, the young man suddenly jumped up and ran toward the stern, shouting as he ran, "Pirates! Pirates!"

While at sea, he had encountered a merchant ship raided by pirates, leaving many crew members killed, their bodies hung on the railings. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

When their ship approached, the pirates had already left, and he saw the corpses hung on the railings firsthand, ingraining the viciousness of pirates into his memory. Now, seeing someone quietly board with weapons, instinctively, he mistook them for pirates.

If he had been on the ship longer and more experienced, he wouldn’t have made such an error—near the coastline like this doesn’t have pirates. There are only two types of people—either rival gangs or, most dreaded by them, government agents.

The shout was too sudden, abruptly breaking the manufactured quiet illusion.

No matter how quickly the nearest special operations team responded, rushing over to subdue and knock him out, his shout had already alerted everyone onboard.

Dozens of people, startled, dashed out of the cabin, many wielding harpoons and spearguns!

A speargun is somewhat similar to an ancient crossbow arrow type, less common domestically, but popular abroad for shooting fish at sea. With a crossbow-like firing mechanism, its lethality is considerable, able to pierce through a fish weighing fifty pounds—hitting a person can be fatal.

Hearing the shout, Ling Chengyan realized the trouble, quickly reacting, issuing orders. The team abandoned stealth, charging directly ahead to take down the emerging people in the shortest possible time.