Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Four bullets were hit head-on by the sound waves less than two meters away from him.

The warhead deformed and shattered under high-speed vibrations, the copper jacket was torn apart, and the lead core was crushed into dust by the sound waves.

The shards grazed Shen Qinghou's right shoulder and left forearm, cutting several bloody grooves, and blood immediately gushed out, flowing down his elbow.

The remaining fragments were all driven into the soil behind them, making a series of thuds.

Su Wan crouched behind him. The moment the shockwave swept over her head, the bushes behind her were completely leveled, and the branches and leaves flew into the air before falling down and crashing onto the muddy ground at her feet.

She herself was crouching in a blind spot where the sound waves were spreading, and was not injured.

The shockwave knocked all four gunmen to the ground.

The two men in the front row hit the back of their heads on the steps of the building entrance and fainted on the spot. The rifles in their hands fell to the ground, the butts hitting the corner of the concrete steps, and the plastic dust covers flew off.

The two men in the back row lay on the ground, their guns flying far away and sliding into the muddy ditch in the green belt. They struggled to get up, but their hands slipped on the ground and they fell again, their knees hitting the cement pavement, making them wince in pain.

Gu Mingyuan was hit in the chest by the aftershock that passed through the gap in the human wall, and his whole body crashed backward into the wall of the power distribution room, with the back of his head hitting the metal casing of the meter box.

My ears exploded with a buzzing sound, and the scene in front of me shook twice before refocusing.

He tasted blood in his mouth; he had bitten his tongue.

He saw Shen Qinghou stand up straight from the muddy ground, panting heavily.

The zither was broken; the dark brown old paulownia wood was broken in two, the tuning pegs were blown off, and the strings were scattered on the muddy ground, covered with wet mud and grass clippings.

Shen Qinghou's right hand gripped half of a string pulled from the broken body of the zither. Blood dripped from between his fingers onto the broken wood of the zither, making it impossible to tell whether it was from the string cutting or from the bullet fragments that had grazed it.

Gu Mingyuan's mind was buzzing.

He spent a whole month planning every step of tonight—Zhou Chenghai was the first knife to be pushed out, so that he could transfer the outer guards under the pretext of checking for abnormal signals and let Zheng Hongwen go upstairs.

The knife broke.

The Sharp Blade Squad's firepower network was the second weapon, sealing off the building and encircling the enemy, with seven guns firing at full power in the confined space.

Shen Qinghou climbed out of the second-floor window and went around to get past.

Four gunmen formed a human wall to protect him outside the apartment building. They opened fire the moment the three men were most relaxed after landing. This was the third knife, and the one he was most satisfied with.

Shen Qinghou had just jumped down from the second floor, carrying a woman on his back, with a zither hanging in front of him. His teammates were using their abilities to cover the window, their attention entirely focused on his back—the timing was perfect.

He calculated the distance, angle, and bullet dispersion range.

The four guns were spread out in a fan shape, their crossfire covering the entire open space. Even if Shen Qinghou could deflect the bullets coming from the front, he couldn't handle the bullets coming from both sides at the same time.

He even calculated Shen Qinghou's ability limit—he had already released four sound waves in the corridor, and his mental energy was more than half depleted, so it was impossible for him to have any spare energy to launch a large-scale precise deflection.

But he didn't expect that Shen Qinghou didn't need to pluck the strings at all.

No need to select strings, adjust the dynamics, or aim; simply smash the entire instrument on the ground, and all six strings snap simultaneously, unleashing six sound waves that shatter all four bullets in flight.

Faced with overwhelming power, his schemes seemed utterly ridiculous.

The fragments of his son Gu Yanzhi's gold medal were still stuck in his inner chest pocket.

He originally planned to wait until Shen Qinghou died, then squat down and stuff the shards into the mouth of that lowly musician, so that he would die with the medal he had stolen in his mouth—just like his son died in the alley.

Shen Qinghou is standing now, while he has fallen against the wall, the shards still pressed against his chest, causing him pain through the fabric.

Shen Qinghou stared at Gu Mingyuan in the doorway of the electrical room and plucked the broken string from his zither.

This time it's not a wide-area impact.

The sound waves condensed into a visible band of air distortion, like a red-hot steel wire, passing through the gaps between the fallen gunmen, through the shadow of the electrical room door frame, and precisely into Gu Mingyuan's forehead.

The moment Gu Mingyuan saw the distorted air hurtling towards him, he instinctively tried to dodge to the right.

But there was a wall behind him and an electrical meter box to his left, leaving him nowhere to retreat.

His back was still pressed against the cold casing of the electrical box, and the back of his head had just hit the metal casing, swelling up with a purplish-blue bump, making it impossible for him to even bend his head down.

The instant the sound wave struck his skull, the astonishment and hatred on his face froze simultaneously.

His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, as if they were about to burst out of their sockets, and his open mouth made no sound.

Something on the chest of his suit jacket was shattered by the sound waves, making a faint cracking sound—it was a fragment of his son Gu Yanzhi's gold medal, which was pressed against his heart and shattered into even finer pieces by the sound waves, embedding itself into his skin through the shirt fabric.

He slid down the wall and sat down, leaving a long, bloody scratch on his back against the metal casing of the meter box.

His eyes were still open, staring at the few pieces of gold that had fallen from his chest, his expression one of resentment.

At the same time Gu Mingyuan died, two of his four subordinates in the back row had just gotten up from the ground.

Their ears were still ringing, their brains, dazed by the shockwave, felt like they were filled with mush. They shook their heads, trying to regain focus, and frantically reached for the guns they had thrown.

Lin Shen did not give them a chance.

He took two steps forward and picked up the nearest pistol, its handle still covered in mud and bits of grass.

He fired a shot into each of their chests, and two muffled thuds echoed in the narrow alley, only to be quickly absorbed by the walls of the old buildings on either side.

Blood gushed from their chests, their bodies swayed, and they crashed face down onto the concrete pavement, where they lay still.

The two people in the front row were still dizzy on the steps, their bodies curled up in the gap between the steps of the unit door and the wall of the electrical room.

Shen Qinghou played a second sound wave. The broken string vibrated in the air with a piercing shriek. The sound wave swept across the ground, killing the two struggling henchmen on the spot.

Lin squatted down and checked the carotid arteries of several people.

The pulse under my fingertips had stopped.

He stood up and gestured to Shen Qinghou: Let's go.

The gunshots from inside the unit door and the shockwave explosion had alerted the Sharp Blade Squad, who were chasing the phantom on the third floor.

Yue Sheng stopped in the stairwell and listened for a moment.

The dull thuds of bodies falling to the ground came from downstairs, one after another, at a rapid pace; it couldn't possibly be team members taking down the target.

He realized what was happening: "Downstairs! The target climbed out of the window! Everyone, get downstairs!"

The Sharp Blade Squad abandoned their pursuit of the phantom and turned around to rush downstairs.

Tactical boots pounded on the concrete steps, the dense sound of footsteps rolling down from the fourth floor like a drumbeat.

Han Qiming followed closely behind, the beam of his tactical flashlight crisscrossing and swaying in the stairwell again, the white light sweeping across the bullet holes in the walls, the shattered light tube fragments on the ground, and the team member who had been stunned by the sound waves on the third-floor landing.

Shen Qinghou carried Su Wan on his back again.

Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her fingers were cold, and her fingertips were trembling slightly from gripping him tightly for so long.

Lin Shen led the way, and the three of them moved quickly along the edge of the green belt.

After going around to the back of the residential building, Lin Shen's second car, which he had parked in advance, was parked at the entrance of the alley.