Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Old Wu removed his left eye from his goggles, his tone regaining its previous businesslike composure: "Don't stand where there's concrete under his feet. The report says he only removes concrete. We're standing on profiled steel sheets; it's safe."

Shen Hanzhou walked out of the stairwell.

His bare feet made no sound on the terrazzo floor, and his right hand, with its five fingers spread, revealed eyes behind the crack in his glasses staring straight at Lao Wu and Xiao Zhou.

Xiao Zhou saw the figure first.

His pupils contracted sharply, he opened his mouth to call for help, and his right hand instinctively raised a submachine gun.

Shen Hanzhou's ability had already been activated before he pulled the trigger.

The submachine gun began to crumble into powder from the muzzle, the iron-chromium alloy metal bonds were forcibly broken, and the barrel, slide, receiver, and magazine all disintegrated into iron-gray powder within a second, falling down between Xiao Zhou's fingers.

Xiao Zhou looked down at his empty hands, and a pile of gray powder, still warm from the metal, lay on his knees.

He slid off the chair and collapsed to the floor, his lips trembling as he managed to squeeze out a few words: "The gun—he turned the gun to ashes—"

Old Wu reacted much faster than Xiao Zhou.

He grabbed the binoculars tripod and used it as a weapon, turning around to smash it at Shen Hanzhou.

With a flick of his right fingertip, Shen Hanzhou disintegrated the aluminum alloy legs of the tripod in mid-air as he swung it, and silvery-white powder flowed down from between Lao Wu's hands like a cloud of dust.

Old Wu looked at his empty hands, his pupils suddenly contracting.

He opened his mouth to call for help, but the steel sheet beneath his feet suddenly shattered as soon as the sound reached his throat.

Shen Hanzhou's power blasted directly into the profiled steel sheet, tearing through the sheet in a fraction of a second, with jagged metal cracks curling up at the edges.

Beneath the profiled steel sheet lies a cement floor slab—calcium carbonate, silicate, and iron oxide—whose molecular structure he knows by heart.

Driven by the force, the cement floor slab turned into powder, and iron-gray powder surged up from the cracks in the steel plate, covering Lao Wu's legs, knees, and waist.

Old Wu looked down as cement dust gradually engulfed his body.

He braced his hands on the steel plate, trying to pull it out. When he pressed down, the serrated edge of the steel plate cut his tiger's mouth, and blood dripped onto the iron-gray powder, turning into a dark brown mud.

As cement dust filled his chest, he jerked his head up and roared at Shen Hanzhou, "The report says you don't disassemble metal parts—"

Shen Hanzhou looked down at him, his tone flat: "The report was wrong."

The cement powder continued to spread upwards, engulfing Lao Wu's neck, mouth, and head.

Old Wu was completely sealed off on the ninth floor, with only his face, which was crooked at the edge of the crack in the steel plate, visible.

His mouth was wide open, his eyes were bulging out, and his tongue was sticking out.

His face was frozen in shock at the moment the intelligence was proven false—the report said Shen Hanzhou could only dismantle cement, and he believed it.

He worked in Xiongbei for fifteen years and never believed any false intelligence.

This was the first and last time he trusted the wrong person.

Shen Hanzhou turned to look at Xiao Zhou.

Xiao Zhou struggled to back up, his back hitting a concrete pillar.

He reached for the walkie-talkie at his waist with his left hand, but as soon as his fingers touched the plastic casing, the walkie-talkie disintegrated at his fingertips—the plastic shattered into black fragments, and the metal contacts reformed into three thin needles that pierced his palm.

Xiao Zhou screamed in pain, tears and snot streaming down his face.

He slumped to the ground, his right hand covering his left palm, which was pierced by a fine needle, blood seeping from between his fingers.

"Don't kill me—" Xiao Zhou's voice was shrill and urgent, trembling with sobs, "I'm just a lookout—I've only been in Xiongbei for two years—I've never killed anyone—I was just sent here to stake out the place—"

Shen Hanzhou looked down at him.

Xiao Zhou's face was a mess of tears and snot, and his lips trembled as he kept begging for mercy, looking almost exactly like Jiang Yi before he died.

He suddenly remembered the question Xiao Zhou had asked Lao Wu earlier—"If Shen Hanzhou really comes, can we defeat him?"

At that time, Xiao Zhou's fingers had already touched the grip of the submachine gun.

If an ordinary person without awakened abilities were standing here tonight, would Xiao Zhou have fired the gun?

Will do.

His gesture of touching the handle already answered the question for him.

Shen Hanzhou squatted down to be at eye level with Xiao Zhou.

Xiao Zhou stopped begging for mercy, his lips were still trembling, and his eyes were full of fear.

Shen Hanzhou spoke, his voice not loud: "You just asked Lao Wu, if Shen Hanzhou is that strange, would he still care about a woman?"

Xiao Zhou froze.

"I care."

Shen Hanzhou said in a completely calm tone, as if stating experimental data, "That woman is my life."

He pressed down with his right hand.

The profiled steel sheet beneath Xiao Zhou collapsed along with the concrete floor slab, causing him to fall into the sinkhole.

Cement powder surged up from the bottom of the pit, enveloping his legs, waist, chest, neck, mouth, and head from all sides.

Five seconds later, Xiao Zhou was trapped at the bottom of the pit, with only his head sticking out at the edge.

His face was frozen with fear and traces of tears that hadn't yet dried.

Shen Hanzhou stood up, took out his senior sister's photo from his inner pocket, and glanced at it.

In the photo, Shen Yanhui stands in front of a fume hood, her goggles pushed up to her forehead, a faint smile playing on her lips.

He turned the photo over to the back, where there was a line of faded writing: "Serving the Five Sacred Mountains Society is not a long-term solution; we must find a way to get rid of it."

He whispered to the photo, "Senior sister, when they talked about how you died, they sounded like they were giving a weather forecast. Now they can't say anything anymore."

He put the photo back in the inner pocket and turned to walk towards the stairwell.

As I descended from the ninth floor to the seventh, I heard hurried footsteps and hushed conversations in the stairwell.

"There's movement on the ninth floor—Xiao Zhou called out once and then stopped—" a person's voice trembled as they spoke.

"Old Wu—Old Wu replies—Old Wu!"

Another person was holding down the walkie-talkie, but there was only static coming from it.

He dialed Xiao Zhou's number again, but the phone was immediately switched off.

"We can't contact either of them—he's here—Shen Hanzhou is here—" The first person's voice was already trembling with obvious sobs.

Shen Hanzhou stopped at the corner of the eighth floor, his senses locking onto the two people in the corridor on the seventh floor.

One was wearing a brown jacket, and the other was wearing dark work clothes. Both of them were holding submachine guns, with the muzzles pointed towards the stairwell.

The man in the jacket was shaking, and the gun was wobbling violently.

The man in work clothes was pale, but his lips were pressed tightly together, and his mind was still working.

"Old Wu said Shen Hanzhou can only dismantle cement."

The worker lowered his voice and spoke quickly, "The ground beneath our feet is corrugated steel sheet; he can't dismantle it. But what if the report is wrong? What if he also dismantled Fang Li's missing gun?"

The jacket didn't answer.

He fired three shots directly towards the stairwell.

The bullets struck the walls of the stairwell, sending brick fragments flying and the spent cartridges clattering as they fell onto the corrugated steel sheets.

All three shots were fired into the darkness, hitting nothing.

The man in work clothes grabbed the barrel of the gun in the jacket and yelled, "Don't shoot! Giving us cover is suicide! Run—run downstairs—"