Chapter 226: Xiaoxiao

The smoke from the abandoned warehouse in Chengxi had completely cleared, and the news of the Iron Hand Group colluding with external enemies

and betraying their allies spread through the survivor camp like a plague.

Small factions that had previously relied on the Iron Hand Group publicly drew a line, and those forced to join packed their bags overnight and fled the stronghold.

In just half a day, the Iron Hand Group's personnel had plummeted by seventy percent. The entrance to the temporary stronghold was piled high with discarded standard-issue weapons and group badges,

and the once-arrogant guard posts were empty, leaving only tattered flags flapping in the cold wind.

【System Prompt: Only twelve core members of the Iron Hand Group remain; all external forces have disintegrated, posing no further threat.】

Lin Chen stood by the window of the insulation room, listening to the reports coming through his communicator,

his face devoid of any expression. He turned to look at Lin Guodong, who was slumped on the floor,

the man still convulsing as sensation returned to his right leg, his swollen face unrecognizable,

blood scabs and saliva mixed at the corner of his mouth, looking utterly wretched. Beside him, Lin Xiaoxiao remained unconscious, her small body curled on the floor, her chest rising and falling slightly.

"The Iron Hand Group is finished."

Lin Chen's voice was light, as if stating an insignificant fact,

"Zhou Bao has been captured, Zhao Hu has surrendered, and the rest have either run away or been caught. You bet wrong; you bet wrong from the very beginning."

Lin Guodong's eyeballs moved, and he struggled to lift his head to look at Lin Chen.

A rattling sound came from his throat, but he still squeezed out a few garbled words: "You... you will face retribution..."

Lin Chen laughed, his laughter lacking a shred of warmth. He took two steps forward,

crouched down, and looked into Lin Guodong's eyes: "Retribution? I faced that long ago.

When I was nearly starving to death in the snow, when someone snatched away my last bag of biscuits, retribution had already come. Now, it's your turn."

He stood up, no longer looking at Lin Guodong, and turned to look at Lin Xiaoxiao nearby.

Unbeknownst to him, the child had already woken up and was staring at him with wide, terrified eyes, tears swirling in her sockets, though she dared not cry out.

Lin Chen's gaze turned abruptly cold. He raised his hand, and the air around him instantly froze,

a powerful force gathering in his fist. This was his trump card, like the legendary One Punch Man, enough to shatter the toughest steel plate.

"No!"

Lin Guodong roared, struggling to crawl over, but was held back by the numbness in his right leg,

forced to watch helplessly as Lin Chen's fist swung toward Lin Xiaoxiao.

The fist landed, but there was no deafening sound, only a slight, dull thud.

Lin Xiaoxiao's body shuddered violently, and then, as if all her strength had been drained away,

she collapsed limply. Lin Chen reached out and precisely extracted the still-beating heart from her chest, fresh blood dripping from his fingers and pooling into a glaring red puddle on the floor.

Lin Xiaoxiao's eyes remained open, the terror within them frozen for eternity, her small body no longer rising or falling.

"Xiaoxiao!"

Lin Guodong let out a heart-wrenching cry; he finally broke free from the numbness,

scrambling over to embrace Lin Xiaoxiao's body. It was ice-cold to the touch,

the temperature of life having slipped away. He looked at the hole in his daughter's chest,

looked at the heart still weakly beating in Lin Chen's hand, and went completely mad,

"You killed her!

You killed my daughter!

I'm going to kill you!"

With red eyes, he lunged at Lin Chen, only to be kicked to the ground. Lin Chen casually threw the heart onto the floor and stepped on it, crushing it, blood splashing onto Lin Guodong's face.

"Didn't you want to be my dog?

" Lin Chen looked down at him, "Now that your puppy is dead, do you still want to be?"

Lin Guodong lay on the ground, looking at his daughter's cold body and the crushed heart on the floor,

and suddenly let out a shrill wail. The cry didn't sound human, like a wounded beast howling in despair and pain. He pounded the ground, his fingers digging into the cracks of the floor, his nails breaking and bleeding, yet he felt nothing.

Lin Chen ignored his wailing. He walked to Lin Xiaoxiao's corpse, raised his hand, and activated Absolute Zero. An extreme chill instantly wrapped around the small body, frost spreading rapidly until it quickly froze her into a crystal-clear ice sculpture. Inside the sculpture, Lin Xiaoxiao's eyes remained in their terrified expression, and a trace of undried tears seemed to linger at the corners of her mouth.

Lin Chen called out to the outside, and two clone soldiers immediately walked in. "Move this ice sculpture to my office." Lin Chen's voice was without a ripple, "Place it opposite my desk; I want to look at it every day."

The two clone soldiers responded and stepped forward, carefully lifting the ice sculpture and turning to walk out. The sculpture shimmered with a cold light under the illumination, stinging Lin Guodong's eyes with pain.

He watched the sculpture being taken away, watched his daughter's blood on the floor, and his wailing gradually faded into suppressed sobs. His eyes became hollow, as if he had lost his soul. A perfectly good home, once poor but complete, with him, Liu Mei, and Xiaoxiao. Now, Liu Mei had been frozen into a shattered ice sculpture by Lin Chen, and Xiaoxiao had been killed and turned into an ice sculpture by Lin Chen, leaving him alone to live like a joke.

News of the Iron Hand Group's collapse continued to arrive, reports coming one after another through the communicator. Lin Chen leaned against the doorframe, listening to the news and Lin Guodong's suppressed sobs, his face devoid of any expression. ===== CHAPTER 227 =====