Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Li Cheng leaned against the window of the command vehicle, looking out at the hell on earth through a layer of bulletproof glass.

Having served as a security officer for decades, rising from the grassroots to the commander-in-chief of the armed security brigade, he believed he had witnessed all types of tragedies.

But never before has it chilled him to the bone like today.

These people were all killed by their own people.

The blood on the ground was mixed together, making it impossible to tell whether it came from the security team or the army.

Fragments of the two uniforms were soaking in blood, and when the wind blew, they emitted a strong smell of rust.

"They're insane! They're all fucking insane!"

Li Cheng slammed his fist into the car window: "That bastard Li Zhengmin really dared to do that!"

Has he gone mad? To bomb a position in a place like this? Does he want to kill us all with it?

Zhou Zhengqing did not answer; he just stared intently at the small energy monitor in his hand.

Three energy signals are flashing on the screen—

Two were on the sixth floor of the Emperor's Club, and one was 30 meters away from the command vehicle.

The third signal perfectly matched the energy waveform of Lin Shen in his memory, but its intensity was nearly twice as high as recorded in the file.

The people who brought the torch have truly arrived.

Lin Shen, the holder of the illusion weaving ability, is dismantling the entire encirclement in his own way.

Meanwhile, the two siblings who had just awakened were still on the sixth floor. They may have already heard the gunshots and explosions outside, and may be taking advantage of the chaos to find a chance to escape.

"Ignore the chaos outside!"

Zhou Zhengqing grabbed the small energy monitoring device on the table and pulled out a tranquilizer gun from the holster on his waist with his other hand.

It was a specially made firearm, with a magazine containing high-concentration anesthetic rounds developed by the General Administration's biological laboratory, specifically designed for Awakened Ones.

The warhead contains a nerve suppressant powerful enough to take down a rhinoceros in an instant, and its outer shell is made of ceramic, which can penetrate ordinary energy defense layers.

He pulled the bolt of the tranquilizer gun all the way back, cocked it with a click, muzzle down, and safety off:

"The first squadron was the closest to the main gate, and their last order was to attack on my command."

Even if communication is cut off, they won't wait indefinitely—

According to regulations, if communication is lost for more than five minutes, the frontline commander has the right to make his own judgment based on the battlefield situation.

They will launch their attack in five minutes at most!

Those two newly awakened brats couldn't withstand the regular army's firepower, so Lin Shen definitely had to take advantage of these five minutes to go in and rescue them!

Let's go straight to the main entrance and block him!

He kicked open the door of the command vehicle.

The car door slammed against the outer wall of the carriage with a bang, and the cold night wind, carrying the smell of gunpowder, rushed in, making people cough.

The gunfire outside grew louder, mixed with the low rumble of exploding grenades and the heart-wrenching screams of the wounded, turning the entire night orange with flames.

The neon lights of the distant Emperor Club still flickered forlornly, casting the sixth-floor windows on and off, like a solitary tower standing in the center of a battlefield.

Li Cheng gritted his teeth, threw the walkie-talkie, now a complete scrap metal, onto the seat, pulled out his pistol, cocked it, and rushed out after Zhou Zhengqing.

Outside the command vehicle.

Lin Shen leaned against the trash can and slowly opened his eyes.

Sweat had soaked through his hair, and the stray hairs on his forehead were wet and stuck to his scalp.

But a very faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He heard Zhou Zhengqing kick open the car door and saw Zhou Zhengqing rush out of the command vehicle with a tranquilizer gun in hand.

With his enhanced mental perception, he could even clearly sense Zhou Zhengqing's emotional fluctuations at that moment—

Anxiety, excitement, anger at being provoked, and a paranoid desire to capture the awakened ones alive.

Zhou Zhengqing was going to block him at the main gate.

well.

Lin Shen raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his face; his fingers were trembling slightly, a sign of mental exhaustion.

The wave of illusions that just occurred—simultaneously disrupting the perception of over two hundred people, creating a fake grenade illusion to deceive Zhou Zhengqing, and inducing artillerymen to self-destruct their ammunition boxes—consumed more mental energy than in any previous battle.

But he can't rest now, because the battle isn't over yet.

Su Wanxing and Su Mingyu are still on the sixth floor.

In Lin Shen's perception, their energy signal was nearly 40% weaker than it had been fifteen minutes ago, at most enough to sustain a moderate-intensity battle.

Outside the main gate, Li Cheng's First Squadron was advancing according to the planned tactics—they had not yet received orders to retreat, and the lack of communication did not mean they would wait indefinitely.

In a few minutes, the riot shield array will break through the main entrance of the Emperor Hotel, and bullets from submachine guns will rain down into the lobby on the first floor, while tranquilizer darts will cover every floor.

He had to get the siblings out before that.

Lin took a deep breath, letting the cool air fill his lungs, suppressing the surging fatigue, and restarted the illusion weaving.

This time, he no longer pursued large-scale disruption, but instead focused all his mental energy on a narrow path—from the back alley to the back door of the Emperor's Mansion, from the fire escape to the sixth-floor office.

He laid out layer upon layer of blind spots along this path, each layer concealing different illusions, so that the soldiers along the way only saw empty alleys and abandoned garbage dumps.

Then, he stood up, bent over, and slid silently into the back alley of the Emperor Club like a cat at night.

------

In the office on the sixth floor of the Emperor Club, Su Wanxing had just kicked Wang Haidong's body away when she heard a burst of gunfire coming from downstairs.

The sound came so suddenly, it was as if someone had torn a hole in the night sky.

What followed was a continuous series of exploding bullets, mixed with the low rumble of grenades and the soldiers' desperate shouts.

Su Wanxing suddenly looked up, and her right hand, which was still covered in blood, instinctively conjured an ice blade.

"It's the security team." Su Mingyu had already walked quickly to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain and looked down, his brows furrowed tightly. "There are armored vehicles and soldiers all around the building."

He had just joined forces with Su Wanxing to kill Zhang Bingkun and Wang Haidong, and his mental energy was depleted by nearly 40%.

The water flowing from my fingertips was much dimmer than before; the original azure light had turned into a pale blue, like diluted ink.

Su Wanxing walked to his side, conjured a shard of ice with her fingertip, and gently tapped the glass.

The street downstairs was in complete chaos.

Looking down from the sixth floor, the entire Zhaoming Avenue looked like a chaotic anthill that had been overturned.

The soldiers fired at each other like headless flies, the tracer rounds of their submachine guns drawing orange-red trails in the night, and the flashes of explosions turning half the sky red.

The searchlights of the armored vehicle swept haphazardly, the beams of light swaying wildly between buildings, and wherever they shone, an even more intense burst of gunfire followed.

But Su Wanxing could clearly sense that, in addition to the chaos, three riot shield arrays were advancing towards the main gate.

The shields were arranged so neatly, and their steps so uniform, that they stood in stark contrast to the soldiers running around in disarray.

Behind the shield array were countless gun muzzles, gleaming coldly under the neon lights.

Their advance was incredibly fast, clearly indicating they were well-prepared.