Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Meng Zhaowen looked up at the face contorted with pain, at the eyes that once held a mocking smile but were now filled with fear and despair. She spoke slowly, her voice soft, yet it struck Song Mingzhang's last vestiges of consciousness like a heavy hammer.

"But there is no justice, there is something else."

The electric arc lasted for five seconds.

When Liu Zhen withdrew his hand, Song Mingzhang's body was still hanging on the tree roots, his eyes wide open, his pupils completely dilated, his expression frozen between fear and disbelief, his skin charred black by the electric current, emitting a foul burnt smell.

Meng Zhaowen's fingers twitched, the tree roots loosened, and Song Mingzhang's body fell to the ground with a "thud," kicking up a cloud of dust.

In the distance, the first batch of reserve mercenaries had already scaled the wall, their flashlight beams shining densely on the ruins. The shouts grew louder and louder, and the crisp sound of bullets being chambered could even be heard.

"We've found them! They're over there!"

Someone shouted, and several beams of light shone simultaneously into the crater where they were hiding, so bright that they couldn't open their eyes.

Liu Zhen turned around, grabbed Meng Zhaowen's arm with such force that he almost crushed it: "Let's go!"

Meng Zhaowen took one last look at Song Mingzhang's body.

The arrogant smile from seven years ago in court was gone from that face; only a charred,狰狞 (zhengning - ferocious/hideous) expression remained.

He remembered the bruises on his brother Meng Zhaohui's back from when he fought to protect him when they were little; he remembered the bright eyes of his brother when he waved to him at the village entrance on the day his brother was admitted to university; he remembered the clatter of the evidence piled up to a height of seven years being thrown to the ground in court by the judge; he remembered the white walls and cold restraints of the mental hospital.

Worth it.

He said to himself.

The two staggered and ran in the opposite direction. Gunshots rang out behind them, bullets whizzing past their ears and hitting the concrete ruins beside them, scattering fine stone chips.

On the winding mountain road in the distance, the sound of the armored vehicles of the Sharp Blade Brigade grew closer and closer, and the red and blue police lights could be faintly seen, drawing blinding streaks of light in the deep night.

The wind blew by, carrying dust with it, causing Meng Zhaowen's full head of white hair to flutter like a silver flame.

Behind them, Song Mingzhang's body lay on the scorched earth, his eyes still wide open, gazing at the gray sky, never to smile again.

……

The bullet grazed the low wall, and the flying pebbles hit my face, causing a sharp sting.

Liu Zhen crouched behind the cover, reached out and pulled Meng Zhaowen further in.

The latter was barely able to stand; his white hair was stained grayish-yellow by the smoke, his lips were chapped, and each breath was accompanied by fine blood foam.

Liu Zhen looked around, his heart sinking.

Three tactical flashlights shone from the gaps in the ruins to the northwest, and several dark gun barrels peeked out from behind the broken wall to the east. Even on the hillside behind them, the green lights of numerous low-light night vision devices illuminated the scene.

He quickly estimated that there were at least sixty men, advancing in a three-layered encirclement. The front row held heavy bulletproof shields and formed a tight formation, while the flamethrower muzzles in the middle row faintly glowed orange-red. The snipers in the back row had already taken up high ground in the distance, and their crosshairs were slowly adjusting their positions in sync with the breathing of the two men.

He looked down at his condition; the wound on his left shoulder was still bleeding, and drops of blood dripped down his arm, splashing onto the scorched soil and leaving small, dark marks.

The skin on my right arm had cracked countless tiny fissures from the previous overload discharge, and the occasional faint arc of electricity that flashed across the wounds brought a stinging pain.

He had exhausted most of his strength, but the warmth in his palms remained, and the fire of revenge still burned; he could still fight.

Meng Zhaowen leaned against him, her weight almost entirely resting on his arm, her steps unsteady as if she were walking on cotton.

His mental strength was almost depleted, but his remaining consciousness remained clear. He gently pressed his palm against the soil, trying to catch the faintest pulse of the roots underground, like a drowning person grasping at the last straw.

"Can you still walk?" Liu Zhen asked in a low voice.

Meng Zhaowen nodded, squeezing out a hoarse syllable: "Yes."

No sooner had he finished speaking than a sniper on a distant high vantage point pulled the trigger. A specially made ceramic bullet grazed Liu Zhen's head, struck the broken wall behind him, and smashed down a large chunk of concrete.

Both of them shrank back at the same time, dust falling on their faces, mixed with bloodstains, making it hard to open their eyes.

……

Thirty kilometers away, in a signal monitoring vehicle, Zhong Lin stared intently at the night vision images on the screen, revealing his urgency.

The countdown in the bottom right corner of the screen was ticking away rapidly, the red numbers burning his eyes.

"Six and a half minutes left." He turned to look at Wang Hongyuan beside him.

Wang Hongyuan's expression was also grim: "The official armored convoy has already passed the third bend of the mountain road and will arrive soon."

Zhong Lin grabbed the walkie-talkie on the table: "Reserve team, this is Zhong Lin. Hurry up, the officials are almost here. We must take them down before they arrive. Take them away alive, and if they're dead, get their bodies back. Don't leave them even a scrap of clothing."

A short reply came from the other end of the walkie-talkie: "Roger!"

Zhong Lin put down the walkie-talkie, his gaze returning to the two figures leaning side by side behind the cover on the screen, his eyes surging with an uncontrollable fervor.

That electric power, that plant power—these are powers capable of rewriting the rules of war—must be in the hands of the Five Mountains Alliance.

With these two samples, his position within the organization could leap forward significantly, perhaps even...

……

Meng Zhaowen pressed his palms against the soil, closed his eyes, and released the last bit of his remaining spiritual energy.

The root system underground was more active than he had expected. The lingering fragrance of the ancient tree had not yet completely dissipated, and subtle pulses traveled up the roots, like countless eyes scanning every corner of the entire encirclement for him.

Three minutes later, he opened his eyes and pointed southeast: "There. The encirclement is the thinnest. The enemy's positions are scattered, making it easy for them to break out."

Liu Zhen looked in the direction he pointed, and indeed, in the southeast corner, there was a large section of the collapsed load-bearing wall. The pile of rubble and steel bars was half a person high, and several shield bearers stood behind the pile of rubble, with the distance between them almost twice as wide as in other places. It was the weakest point in the entire defensive line.

He nodded, helped Meng Zhaowen to slowly squat down, and the two of them crawled little by little towards the southeast corner under the cover of the ruins.

The broken concrete blocks hurt his chest painfully. Liu Zhen shielded Meng Zhaowen on the inside, leaving his own back exposed to the ballistics. His military uniform had several cuts on the back, and the seeping bloodstains looked like dark flowers in the night.

After climbing nearly twenty meters, the two stopped behind a shell crater, less than twenty meters away from the defensive line in the southeast corner.