Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Shen Hanzhou raised his hand and rubbed his left shoulder, his fingers pressing on his shoulder blade through his coat, causing him to wince slightly in pain.

He squatted down and took out a walkie-talkie from the side pocket of Zhang Desheng's backpack, then tuned it to the old middle school group's channel.

Liu Wei's voice came through the walkie-talkie, low and visibly tense: "Brother Zhang, where are you? We're almost at the alley entrance, and we should be at the main gate in three minutes."

Shen Hanzhou did not reply.

He put the walkie-talkie in his pocket, stood up, turned around, and left the old factory.

He did a mental calculation: the two men at the water tower were dead. The two men from the old middle school were rushing towards the main gate. They chose a small alley—the area around Cui Ting Yuan was full of old brick-and-mortar buildings with peeling paint, wooden planks nailed to the windows, and cracked cement roads. That was the area with the densest concentration of cement in the vicinity.

He doesn't need to go to the old middle school to block them; they'll walk into the alley and into his territory on their own.

Liu Wei and Sun Hao came out of the back gate of the old middle school and went into the old alley that was to be demolished.

The alley is less than two meters wide, with old brick and concrete buildings on both sides. The plaster has peeled off, revealing the red bricks and mortar inside. All the windows are nailed shut with wooden boards, and the word "demolish" is sprayed on the boards in red.

The ground was a cracked cement road, with withered yellow weeds growing in the cracks.

Moonlight filtered through the gaps between the buildings on both sides, casting crisscrossing shadows in the alley.

In the distance, there was the sound of a stray cat darting through a pile of garbage, its paws crunching on the broken bricks.

Sun Hao walked while panting, the muzzle of his submachine gun pointing towards the ground, his finger resting on the trigger guard.

He kept looking back, and each time he looked back, he saw the street lamp at the alley entrance flickering in the night wind.

He turned back and whispered to Liu Wei, "Brother Zhang isn't responding. There were no gunshots from the direction of the water tower either—I think I heard Brother Zhang shout just now, but it was too far away to hear clearly."

Stop listening.

Liu Wei didn't turn his head, walking quickly, his words broken by the night wind, "Hurry up. We'll talk when we get to the tool truck."

Liu Wei suddenly stopped halfway through the alley.

Ten meters in front of him, a fresh crack appeared on the cement ground of the alley.

The crack is extending forward at a visible speed, with gray powder falling from the edges.

The powder gleamed with an iron-gray sheen under the moonlight, exactly like the thing he had imagined in his mind after Lao Wu went missing.

The crack stopped at his feet, like a dead line drawn on the cement floor.

"Run back—" Liu Wei drew his pistol and turned to rush back.

The walkie-talkie in his left hand suddenly disintegrated.

The plastic casing shattered into black fragments, and the metal contacts reformed into three thin needles that pierced his tiger's mouth.

He screamed as the wreckage of the walkie-talkie fell from his hand, bounced once on the concrete ground.

The fine needle pierced the web of the hand, its tip emerging from the back of the hand, glistening with blood and reflecting a dark red light under the moonlight.

Sun Hao turned and ran back.

After running five steps, the concrete ground beneath my feet collapsed completely.

He fell into the pit, his right leg getting caught in the cement debris at the bottom, and his knee made a dull thud as bone protruded from the inside of his knee joint.

White bone fragments, with bits of meat clinging to them, were particularly glaring in the moonlight.

Sun Hao screamed in agony, his hands clawing wildly at the pit walls, his nails splitting and blood staining his fingertips.

Liu Wei dragged his pierced left hand and fired wildly in the alley with his right hand, holding a gun in one hand.

He fired four shots in quick succession. The bullets hit the brick wall, sending up brick fragments, and hit the wooden window panel, sending up wood chips. He missed every single one.

The muzzle flashed four times in the narrow alley, illuminating his pale face and the beads of cold sweat on his forehead.

Shen Hanzhou walked out of the door of an abandoned shop on one side of the alley.

He had just taken a shortcut from the old factory to the middle of the alley and was waiting on the path the two of them would inevitably take.

There were no streetlights in the alley, and the moonlight shone from behind him, casting his long, thin shadow onto the cracked cement ground.

Liu Wei threw down his empty gun and knelt down.

His left hand hung limply at his side, blood dripping from his fingertips and pooling into a small dark red puddle on the cement floor.

He raised his right hand above his head, looked up at Shen Hanzhou, and squeezed out the words with trembling lips: "My wife is newly pregnant—I've only been transferred to Lieyang Province for less than three months—I used to work as an escort in the three northern provinces, not in field operations—I beg you—"

Shen Hanzhou looked down at him.

The cracks in his glasses reflected the moonlight streaming down from above, completely obscuring the emotions in his eyes.

He spoke, his tone flat: "When Zheng Daoyuan sent you here, didn't he tell you your wife would become a widow?"

He pressed down with his right hand.

The concrete ground where Liu Wei was kneeling collapsed, and he fell down, his kneeling position frozen at the bottom of the pit.

Cement powder surged up from the bottom of the pit, covering his knees, waist, chest, neck, mouth, and head.

Liu Wei was forced into a kneeling position, with only his head tilted to the ground, his face facing the night sky.

The moonlight shone on his face, where a pleading expression was frozen, his lips were still slightly moving, and the light in his eyes slowly faded.

Sun Hao saw Liu Wei trapped in the pit and struggled frantically.

His fractured right leg left a trail of blood at the bottom of the pit. He tried to climb out by pushing off with his left leg and bracing himself against the pit wall with his elbows. Each effort caused the broken bone fragments to churn inside his flesh.

He let out a piercing wail, the sound echoing through the narrow alley: "I don't want to die—I'm just a wiretap operator—I didn't even fire a gun—I was seconded here—my specialty is communications technology—"

Cement dust surged up from the bottom of the pit and engulfed his chest.

His cries were squeezed out, becoming increasingly shrill and shrill, turning into muffled bubbles as they engulfed his neck, and leaving only a pair of eyes staring at the sky as they swallowed his mouth.

Five seconds later, Sun Hao was trapped at the bottom of the pit.

His eyes were still open, his pupils dilated, and there were still tear stains at the corners of his eyes.

Shen Hanzhou stood in the alley, looking at the two corpses sealed in cement.

The night wind blew into the alley, stirring up cement dust on the ground, which swirled in the moonlight.

He took Zhang Desheng's walkie-talkie out of his pocket, pressed the call button, and didn't speak, only letting the walkie-talkie transmit the sound of the wind in the alley and the sound of cement powder falling to the ground to the tool vehicle.

Release the call button, crush the walkie-talkie, and the fragments fall through your fingers, clattering onto the concrete floor.

"Two water towers, and two old middle schools."

He said to the depths of the alley, "Two at the main entrance of Cui Ting Yuan, two in the garage. The six outside have all been cleared, four remain."

Inside the utility vehicle, Lao Ding's walkie-talkie received a signal without voice.

The signal lasted less than three seconds, consisting only of the sound of wind and a fine rustling sound, like sand slipping through your fingers.

After hearing the signal, he gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white.

"What was that sound?"

Liang Wei asked.

His voice was strained, and his hand gripped the stun gun handle so tightly that his knuckles were so white you could see the outline of his bones.