Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Lin Shen came to Jeolla Province to investigate the secret base of the Five Mountains Society. Before he could figure out the clues about the base, he was suddenly led to the most bustling entertainment district in the city center. Anyone would find this suspicious.

But Lin Shen couldn't possibly not go.

Last time, when he was surrounded and attacked in Lieyang Province, it was this resonance that guided Xu Suyuan to arrive in time and pull him out of the pool of blood.

This feeling was exactly the same as Xu Suyuan's description, or even stronger—meaning that her companions over there were in great danger.

Wen Yan sensed Lin Shen grabbing his coat and pushing the door open to leave, and a barely perceptible smile appeared on his lips.

Now is not the time to expose himself. He only needs to stay in the shadows and be the one handing over the rope; as for the fighting on the front lines, someone else will take care of that.

The nine seeds felt slightly warm between my fingers, like nine sparks waiting to be ignited. Each seed represented a supernatural ability, and each seed was connected to a soul struggling in despair.

He closed his eyes and continued to monitor the situation in Zhaoming City through the soul connection.

------

As Lin Shen drove towards the Emperor's Club, he was still full of doubts.

The roads in Zhaoming City are difficult to navigate at night, especially in the old town area. The streetlights are broken one after another, the road surface is full of potholes, and the wheels splash mud when they drive over puddles.

He slowed the car down to 40 mph, one hand gripping the steering wheel, the other unconsciously tapping the gearshift, his mind replaying the sudden sense of guidance he had just experienced.

too weird.

That wasn't his own idea; he was 100% certain of that.

He was squatting in front of the folding table in the safe house, going through the financial records of the Five Mountains Society, his mind filled with account codes and fund flows, and he hadn't even thought about leaving the house.

The sense of guidance came suddenly, as if someone had gently patted the back of his head and inserted a coordinate into his consciousness—the Emperor's Club, top floor, where two of his kind were, and he had to go there immediately.

But the problem is that he is now alone in Jeolla Province, hundreds of kilometers away from his companions.

Xu Suyuan and the others are still in Chenxi City dealing with the final work of the Wuyue Society branch. Liu Zhen and Meng Zhaowen have returned to Guangyang City to retrieve the evidence materials hidden there. Shen Qinghou is recuperating in an abandoned research institute in the suburbs. Shen Hanzhou has disappeared, but he is definitely not in Jeolla Province.

Of the six members of the Fire Seed Squad, he's the only one here now. If he encounters any serious trouble, he won't even have anyone to help him.

Lin Shen gritted his teeth, pressed the accelerator a little harder, and the engine emitted a deep roar, bringing the speed up to sixty miles per hour. No matter what, he couldn't just abandon his companion.

The person who can resonate with his soul must be an awakened being chosen by the seed, just like him, a "kindred spirit".

He parked the car in an alley three blocks away from the Geely Emgrand, turned off the engine, and opened the car door.

The moment his toes touched the ground, his body froze.

Not right.

It's too quiet.

The nights in late autumn shouldn't be this quiet.

This is the beginning of the nightlife; the streets should be filled with the smell of barbecue fumes, drunken pedestrians singing arm in arm, and the ringing of automatic doorbells at convenience stores.

But at this moment, the whole street was as quiet as a ghost town, and there was no smell of cooking oil in the air.

Instead, there was a faint smell of engine oil and metal, mixed with an indescribable sense of tension, like a taut string that could snap at any moment.

The streetlights were deliberately vandalized; bullet holes remained on the lampposts, and broken glass was scattered all over the ground.

Only the neon lights of the distant Emperor Club were still on, flickering lonely in the darkness, casting an eerie red glow on the road, as if the entire street had been soaked in blood.

Lin Shen activated [Illusion Weaving] almost instantly. A faint cognitive blind spot spread out from his body like ripples on water, enveloping his entire being.

This isn't true invisibility—his body is still in the same place, but the brains of those around him automatically ignore his presence, just like ignoring background noise.

He crept along the base of the wall toward the Emperor Hotel, each step landing on clean, unbroken floor, his breathing extremely low.

The moment he turned the corner, his heart sank.

All the shops on both sides of the street were closed, their roller shutters drawn tight, and not a single light could be seen.

Every ten meters, there was an armed security guard in a black combat uniform, holding a standard submachine gun with all safety off, the dark muzzle pointed at the main entrance of the Emperor Club.

They wore helmets and bulletproof vests, with badges on their chests bearing the number of the Zhaoming City Armed Security Brigade. Their facial expressions were mostly obscured by night vision goggles, revealing only their tightly pursed lips, making them look like a row of emotionless machines.

Behind the trash can at the alley entrance, two soldiers carrying grenade launchers were hiding, lying behind a makeshift bunker made of sandbags. The angle of the cannons had been adjusted, pointing directly at the main entrance of the Emperor Club.

One of them was reporting something on a walkie-talkie, his voice extremely low. Lin Shen, who was more than twenty meters away, couldn't hear what was being said, but could see his lips moving.

All three roads leading to the Emperor Hotel were blocked by riot shield arrays.

The riot shields are military-grade, 1.8 meters high and half a meter wide, covered with black bulletproof ceramic plates. Behind each shield stand two security guards holding submachine guns.

The shield formations were arranged in neat rows, like a moving steel wall, completely surrounding the Emperor's Club.

They even blocked the fire escape.

Two wheeled armored vehicles blocked the alley behind the Emperor Club. Machine gunners on the roofs were already in position, and searchlights illuminated the alley as bright as day, so bright that even a rat on the ground could not escape their notice.

Next to the armored vehicle was a camouflaged communications command vehicle with a dense array of antennas on its roof. Several people in civilian clothes were pointing and talking around a laptop screen; they looked like technicians.

Two small reconnaissance drones were also flying in the air, their propellers humming softly, like two circling vultures.

An infrared camera is mounted on the bottom of the drone, with the lens pointed at every window of the Emperor's Club, monitoring the thermal signals of the people inside in real time.

Such an action could raze the entire building to the ground.

Lin Shen leaned against the cold wall, a layer of cold sweat seeping from his back and trickling down his spine.

He had witnessed how the Bureau of Abnormal Affairs dealt with Awakened Ones—when Li Rui was besieged in Yunxiao Mansion, the other side deployed armored vehicles and drones, using infrasound generators to tear through his flame defenses, forcing him into a desperate situation.

But that time it was at least a precise strike against Li Rui alone. This time, however, more than two hundred people blocked off the entire street and even brought in mortars, completely disregarding whether there were any survivors inside the Emperor Hotel.

No, there must still be living people inside the Geely Emgrand.