Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Zhou Yan stood there, stunned.

He pointed his gun at the back door, his finger on the trigger, but the muzzle was shaking.

Team Leader Duan is dead.

Old Li and Xiao He are dead.

Team Leader Fang is dead.

Eight out of nine people died.

He was only twenty-five years old and had been in Xiongbei for three years. This was his first time participating in a high-risk target elimination mission.

He doesn't want to die.

Zhou Yan turned and ran, sprinting westward along the narrow alley behind the bathhouse.

He ran less than twenty meters.

The concrete ground beneath my feet suddenly collapsed.

Shen Hanzhou pressed his right hand against the wall in the bathhouse, and his power extended along the foundation to the ground outside the back door.

Zhou Yan fell into the pit, his gun flew out of his hand, hit the pit wall, bounced, and fell into the cement powder.

Cement powder surged up from the bottom of the pit.

Wrap your legs up.

Wrap it around your waist.

Wrap it around your chest.

Zhou Yan burst into tears as cement dust engulfed his chest, his face streaked with tears and snot.

"I don't want to die—"

His voice was shrill and urgent, tinged with sobs, echoing through the narrow alley: "I'm just a soldier—I work for money—my mother is still back in our hometown—"

Cement dust engulfed his neck.

It swallowed the mouth.

It swallowed the head.

Zhou Yan was trapped in the alley behind the bathhouse, with only his head lying on the ground.

His face was covered in a gray mud mixture of tears and cement powder, his expression frozen in the moment of wailing—his mouth was wide open, his eyes were squeezed into slits, and his nostrils flared.

Shen Hanzhou walked out of the back door of the bathhouse.

He looked down at Zhou Yan's sealed body, then took out his senior sister's photo 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.

Nineteen.

The entire rapid response team of nine was wiped out.

Fourteen people from Cui Ting Yuan, four people from the Commercial Complex, and nine people from the Rapid Response Team.

There are twenty-seven in total.

"Your mother is in your hometown."

Shen Hanzhou spoke to Zhou Yan's corpse, his tone devoid of sarcasm or pity, simply stating a fact: "Senior Sister didn't even have a hometown. Her home was a laboratory, which was bombed by the Five Mountains Society. Your life was bought with money, her life was taken away by someone else for money. Whose life was more valuable?"

He paused for a second.

"In Zheng Daoyuan's eyes, your lives are just consumables."

He put the photo back in his inner pocket, turned around, and walked back to the main entrance of the bathhouse.

Jiang Yubai and others waited outside the main entrance of the bathhouse.

She carried a bag of experimental data, leaning against the white tiles of the bathhouse's outer wall. When she saw Shen Hanzhou emerge from the bathhouse, he was covered in an extra layer of dust.

Congealed bloodstains could be seen in the tear in the cuff of his left arm, left by a bullet wound inflicted by Duan Peng.

"Are all the pursuers dead?"

Jiang Yubai asked.

"They're all dead."

Shen Hanzhou said, "The rapid response team has nine members: two in the alley, three in the building, and four who just died. That makes a total of twenty-seven."

"Twenty-three lives."

Jiang Yubai said softly, "How much interest did you collect on Zheng Daoyuan's debt to Yan Hui?"

"The principal hasn't been repaid yet. Zheng Daoyuan is still alive."

"Then let's keep going."

Jiang Yubai picked up his bag and followed him eastward.

Xiongbei Lieyang Sub-district Office.

Zheng Daoyuan sat at his desk.

The communication signal of Team Leader Fang in the encrypted channel had been silent for ten minutes after it went out in the direction of the bathhouse.

The communications officer pushed open the door and entered, his face pale.

"Mr. Zheng, the rapid response team is completely silent. Duan Peng's team's infrared signals are all off. The last reported location by Team Leader Fang's team was the abandoned bathhouse on the east side of the old middle school alley, after which communication was lost. Assessment—all nine members of the rapid response team are dead."

Zheng Daoyuan did not answer immediately.

He stared at the photocopy of the Fang Li factory site photos on the table, which he had obtained through internal channels of the Five Mountains Association, and remained silent for a full ten seconds.

In the photo, Fang Li is trapped in the factory foundation, with only his head lying on the cement ground.

"Fourteen people from Cui Ting Yuan. Four people from the Commercial Complex. Nine people from the Rapid Response Team."

Zheng Daoyuan said in a very low voice, "Twenty-seven people."

"Mr. Zheng—should we request tactical support from the headquarters in the three northern provinces?"

"Headquarters is already asking about the results for Cui Ting Yuan."

Zheng Daoyuan interrupted him, "How am I supposed to answer? We sent twenty-seven men, and all twenty-seven died. The target escaped with his men?"

The communications officer dared not respond.

Zheng Daoyuan stood up and walked to the window, his back to the communications officer.

Outside the window was the hazy skyline of Gwangyang City, now fully illuminated by the dawn.

"I made three mistakes."

Zheng Daoyuan spoke, his voice regaining its previous composure, but each word carried a suppressed coldness. "The first mistake—installing a tracking device on the motorcycle. I thought he was just an ordinary defector technician, so I made two preparations. If he survived to the cement factory, we would make the deal; if he died on the way, Xiong Bei would suffer no loss. But he didn't die. He squatted by the roadside, pried open the mudguard, and removed my tracking device. From that moment on, the window of cooperation was completely closed."

"The second mistake—thinking he could only dismantle concrete. The people in the commercial complex stood on the corrugated steel sheets thinking it was a safe zone, and the people in the Green Garden used metal guns thinking he couldn't dismantle anything. Now we know—he can dismantle metal. This intelligence was obtained at the cost of thirteen lives."

"The third mistake was thinking the rapid reaction team could stop him. I prepared ceramic bulletproof plates, all-polymer firearms, and liquid nitrogen sprayers for him. I thought that by limiting his capabilities, we could win. In the end, all nine of them died."

The communications officer's lips turned pale: "Mr. Zheng, we are now—"

"We can't chase after them now."

Zheng Daoyuan interrupted him, "He wiped out the entire rapid response team in the alleys and bathhouses, so there are no more pursuing troops. Sending more people would just be suicide. His next step will definitely be to the abandoned biological agent factory in the eastern suburbs—that's the largest chemical raw material storage site in Chiji, with ventilation and explosion-proof facilities. He will convert it into a laboratory to complete Shen Yanhui's drug."

"We can do it before he finishes the potion—"

"How do we intercept them? Who should we send?"

Zheng Daoyuan turned around and stared into the communications officer's eyes. "The rapid response team is the strongest force in the Lieyang Division, and they're all dead. We can only transfer more people from the headquarters in the three northern provinces, which will take at least two days. Two days is enough time for him to make the medicine."

The communications officer was speechless.

Zheng Daoyuan sat back down at his desk, opened the encrypted communication terminal, and began writing a report to be sent to the headquarters in the three northern provinces.

"Report: Operation at Cui Ting Yuan in the Lieyang District failed. All 27 people—14 on the perimeter, 4 in the commercial complex, and 9 in the rapid response team—were killed. Target Shen Hanzhou's abilities have been confirmed—he can dismantle cement and metal, and his actions are extremely fast; all witnesses are dead. It is recommended that the threat level be raised to the highest level, and that a professional analysis team be dispatched from the headquarters in the three northern provinces to the south to locate his hideout before he completes the synthesis of the drug. At the same time, I request Level 1 security clearance—I want to access all the original files of the Shen Yanhui laboratory incident to find the true boundaries of Shen Hanzhou's abilities."

The communications officer hesitated for a moment: "What about headquarters—"