Chapter 212: The Ace Arrives

The rain started to fall, and it fell harder and harder.

Dense raindrops struck the anti-riot shield, crackling, as if drumming for the slaughter about to begin.

"Chen Shao! You're already surrounded!"

The voice from the loudspeaker, processed by electric current, sounded distorted and harsh, reverberating in the narrow alley: "Put your hands on your head and kneel down immediately! This is your last chance!"

The black muzzles of dozens of automatic rifles formed a wall of iron thorns, tightly blocking both ends of the alley.

Red laser beams wove into an impenetrable net, each line converging on the man wearing a torn raincoat.

Chen Shao stood in the rain.

He lowered his head; no one could see his expression.

Only his body trembled violently, the amplitude as if he had been electrocuted.

"Are you afraid?"

In his mind, that gloomy voice carried a teasing tone.

"Afraid......"

The surface persona's voice was mosquito‑fine, trembling: "We'll die...... Yao Yao is still waiting for medicine......"

"Good-for-nothing."

Li Renge snorted coldly, his tone full of the frustration of hating iron for not becoming steel: "Since you're afraid, then get lost and go back to sleep. This body is now mine."

The next second.

Chen Shao stopped trembling.

He slowly raised his hand.

"Don't move! Move again and I'll shoot!" The Special Forces Captain's nerves were stretched to the limit, his fingers locked tight on the trigger guard, his knuckles whitening from excessive force.

However, Chen Shao merely extended his hand toward the bridge of his nose.

That hand was long and pale, its nails neatly trimmed, looking nothing like the hand that had just forced a tycoon to his death a short while ago.

He took off those glasses.

The frames were twisted and deformed, one lens half‑broken, yet this did not affect the elegance of his motion, as if he were attending a banquet.

He casually tossed it.

The broken glasses traced a parabola in the air and fell into a puddle of accumulated water.

Plop.

A very faint sound.

Yet it was like a signal that some seal had been broken.

Chen Shao lifted his head.

His former refined and timid expression seemed to have been wiped away by an invisible giant hand.

In its place was a chilling calm.

Mud speckled his face, rainwater trickled down his chin, his good right eye slightly narrowed, exuding a languid air.

And his left eye......

That could hardly be called an eye.

It was a spinning crimson vortex, the pupil dilated to the extreme, almost filling the entire socket, with no sclera, only a thick black‑red mixture that could not be dissolved.

It was a gaze from the Abyss.

"You......"

Chen Shao spoke.

His voice was hoarse, carrying a metallic grit.

His gaze swept over the fully armed Special Forces members, the corners of his mouth slowly spreading to reveal a mouthful of stark white teeth.

"Did you get my permission before pointing this kind of fire‑stick at me?"

The Special Forces Captain's heart jumped violently.

An indescribable sense of danger surged up his spine straight to the Heavenly Spirit Cover.

It was the intuition honed from over a decade of crawling and fighting on the battlefield—the feeling of being locked on by a top‑tier predator!

"Fire! Eliminate the target!"

The Captain roared the order.

Without any hesitation, even though the order to take him alive was in his ear, he knew that if they didn't fire now, they would be the ones to die.

Dozens of members pulled the triggers simultaneously.

This was the disciplined elite: orders followed without question, muscle memory outpacing thought.

However.

The expected gunfire did not sound.

The alley fell dead silent, only the rain continued.

What's going on?

The Captain stared in shock at his own right hand.

His index finger was on the trigger, his brain frantically issuing the command to "pull it down," yet that finger was like a rusted iron rod, utterly immobile.

Not just the finger.

His wrist, arm, and indeed his entire upper body were as if filled with cement; only his eyeballs could still move, not a single hair on his body could budge.

"Anchor Point" suppressor had no effect.

Chen Shao's strength...... seemed to have grown stronger.

Fear.

He was engulfed like a tide.

He frantically rolled his eyes, looking at the teammates beside him.

Everyone kept a shooting stance, standing like statues in the rain, each face filled with extreme terror and bewilderment.

Chen Shao took a step and walked forward at a leisurely pace.

He carefully cradled the shabby backpack in his arms, wrapping it with two extra layers of Raincoat for fear that the medicine inside would get soaked.

Yet his steps on the ground were extremely swaggering.

It was a gait that seemed to dance on other people's faces.

He approached a Special Forces member, extended his pallid finger, and gently brushed aside the barrel pointing at his own brow.

Chen Shao smiled faintly.

There was not a hint of warmth in that smile.

"Since you all love to play with guns..."

His scarlet left eye snapped shut sharply, and several dark‑blue veins bulged around the socket, making it look especially ferocious.

"Then let's play with each other."

The moment the words hit the ground.

The invisible force that restrained everyone suddenly changed.

It turned into the string of a marionette being pulled with great force.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

The sound of bones grinding made one's teeth ache.

The Special Forces Captain, terrified to the extreme, discovered that his arms involuntarily lifted, and the barrel was no longer aimed at the demon but slowly turned toward his assistant.

Opposite him, the assistant's barrel was also slowly aligning with his chest.

"No... no!!!"

The Captain let out a desperate roar from his throat.

He struggled desperately to resist that force, the veins on his forehead about to burst, but the force was so overbearing it seized his nervous system outright.

This is not hypnosis at all!

It is a violent intrusion! A forced tampering!

"Bang!"

The first gunshot shattered the silence.

It was followed immediately by the second, the third...

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

Flames spewed, and shell casings flew wildly.

The previously orderly encirclement instantly turned into a human inferno.

These comrades who usually coordinated flawlessly now seemed possessed, pointing their barrels at each other's most vulnerable spots, frantically pulling the triggers.

Fresh blood spurted.

The screams were swallowed by the rain.

Chen Shao stood at the center of the hail of gunfire.

The bullets seemed to have eyes; even stray ones eerily missed him.

He was like a conductor, standing at the center of the stage, waving an invisible baton, savoring the symphony performed by blood and death.

"Devil..."

A leg‑broken squad member collapsed in a pool of blood, gazing at the Raincoat Man's silhouette, his eyes unfocused as he muttered.

Federal Weird Investigation Bureau, Command Center.

The image on the big screen plunged the entire hall into a death‑like silence.

The analysts who had just been typing at keyboards now turned pale one by one, some even couldn't help but cover their mouths and rush to the restroom.

It's too tragic.

This is not a battle at all.

It is a one‑sided massacre, a cruel, perverse trampling of humanity.

In front of the Second Floor floor‑to‑ceiling windows.

Wei Gong still held the purple‑clay teacup, steam curling from its rim.

There was no anger, no panic on his face, not even a furrowed brow.

That expression was as if he were watching a little white mouse bumping around a maze, or a swarm of ants gnawing each other.

"Spiritual Pollution index has gone off the charts."

The secretary's voice trembled, "Director, this is beyond the scope of regular agents... Special Forces Third Squad, total annihilation is only a matter of time."

"Hmm."

Wei Gong took a sip of tea and replied lightly.

He turned around, his back to the screen.

"Initiate the 'Tianqin' protocol."

"Deploy the artillery regiment stationed in Dongcheng City to conduct precision strikes on the Old Crow Alley area, driving him toward the target location."

"'Ace' has already arrived; there's no need to sacrifice ordinary squad members."

Old Crow Alley.

Chen Shao suddenly halted his steps.

A sharp pain surged in his left eye, as if a red‑hot iron pickaxe had been thrust inside.

A strand of black blood slipped down the corner of his eye, clouding his sight.

"Damn......"

He staggered, nearly falling, but the hand that clutched the medicine box to his chest stayed perfectly still.

"My body has reached its limit."

The terrifying dominance was waning.

The few surviving Special Forces members broke free of the control, collapsing on the ground, gasping heavily, their gazes at Chen Shao like they were looking at an Evil Ghost crawling out of hell.

At that moment.

In the distant sky, a low, rumbling howl sounded.

It was the sound of the Grim Reaper passing.

Chen Shao jerked his head upward.

In the night sky, a dozen or so meteors with trailing tails ripped through the rain, using this spot as the center, and fell rapidly.

"Heh......"

Chen Shao's face showed no fear, but instead a wildly insane grin.

"Can't play like this anymore?"

"Patriarch... you truly are ruthless."

He knows exactly what this is.

He intends to scour this entire piece of land, leaving not even a speck of ash.

Chen Shao clenched his teeth, squeezing the last of his spirit power into his legs.

The muscle fibers were on the verge of tearing.

But he didn't care.

He was like a wounded lone wolf, sprinting through the ruins.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The first volley of artillery struck the ground.

The earth trembled, flames shot up, turning the night a blazing red.

The pressure wave, laden with debris and shrapnel, slammed onto his back like a tsunami.

Chen Shao was hurled away, crashing heavily into a broken wall, a spray of fresh blood spurted out, staining the Raincoat on his chest red.

But the first thing he did was lower his head to look inside his chest.

The Raincoat was torn.

But the backpack inside remained dry.

The medicine box was intact.

"That's... good."

He twisted his mouth into a grin, blood spattering his lips.

"Yao Yao... brother will be back soon..."

He got up, dragging his right leg, which had a piece of flesh cut off by shrapnel, stumbling and charging into the chaotic sea of fire.

He must return to the Air-raid Shelter.

Even if he has to crawl, he'll crawl back.

Behind him were continuous explosions; the firelight stretched his Shadow extremely long, twisted, ferocious, yet it also revealed a moving solemnity.

Five minutes.

These five minutes felt longer than a century.

When Chen Shao finally saw the familiar Air-raid Shelter entrance, he was already a bloodied man.

The Raincoat had long since been burned into a tattered strip hanging on his body; countless wounds covered him, his left eye swollen shut, barely able to glimpse a slit.

But he smiled.

He smiled like a child.

"We've arrived..."

"Yao Yao... take the medicine..."

He staggered forward, trying to dive into that dark cave that gave him a sense of safety.

However.

His steps suddenly halted.

Right at the pitch‑black entrance of the Air‑raid Shelter.

A person stood there.

The figure wore a black training robe and carried a long, black cloth sack on his back.

He simply stood there, motionless.

The surrounding raging explosions, flames, and pressure waves, up to three meters before him, seemed blocked by an invisible wall, sinking into the Abyss.

Chen Shao's raging, overconfident Demon Eye, the moment it saw this man,

actually trembled.

It was the instinctual fear of a subordinate toward a superior.

The man slowly lifted his head.

His eyes were as cold as a pool of dead water, showing no hint of emotion.

He stared at Chen Shao as if looking at a corpse.

"This path is blocked."

He spoke.

His voice was not loud, yet it drowned out the cannon fire filling the sky.

Chen Shao's heart gave a thump.

That suffocating sense of oppression made him even forget to breathe.