Chapter 393: The Operation Near Its End

The darkness behind the door wasn't ordinary black.

It was the kind of black that smelled of blood and felt alive.

Dozens of grim‑green eyes hung at various heights—some clinging to the ceiling, some crouched atop filing cabinets, some perched less than two meters behind the doorway. They neither moved nor made a sound, just stared uniformly at the entrance.

Jiang Yuan's hand was still resting on the door handle.

His first reaction was not to draw his sword.

He raised his hand to check the curved device behind his left ear.

The device had already come loose, though he didn't know when it was knocked off—perhaps when the door of dormitory 150 was forced open and hit the frame, or perhaps vigorous movement loosened the snap.

In short, the cognitive‑signal shielding was no longer functioning.

—Jiang Yuan realized, it was over.

The Fake Person's cognitive rules are bidirectional. When you realize it isn't human, it simultaneously knows that you know. The shielding device's purpose is to build a wall in the middle of that two‑way channel, letting you see it while it cannot see you watching.

Now the wall is gone.

Dozens of Fake Persons simultaneously received the cognitive signal from the doorway— even though Jiang Yuan pressed the shielding device back into place and secured it in time, it was already too late.

Because Mo Shu had already, through their recent Mutation, recognized their non‑human nature, and she had no shielding device.

She stood less than one and a half meters behind Jiang Yuan's side, a tactical short blade held horizontally before her, her almond eyes reflecting the grim‑green specks deep within the Data Room.

The nearest Fake Person—its employee number showing Civilian Analyst of the Intelligence Division—splits open at the torso, white muscle tissue gushing from beneath the skin, coalescing in the air into a grotesque flesh mass four times its original volume. It had no fixed shape; its surface was covered with writhing suction cups and irregular Bone Spikes, each spike's tip bearing a small piece of still‑fresh 'human skin'.

A shrill, piercing screech erupted simultaneously from dozens of directions.

【7】 That frequency could not be produced by human vocal cords. It was the sound of metal being forcibly bent, amplified a hundredfold, pouring straight into the ear canals.

That frequency isn't something human vocal cords can produce. It's the screech of metal being forcibly bent, amplified a hundredfold and poured straight into the ear canal.

Jiang Yuan's eardrums ached numbingly.

"Step back!"

He drew an entire deck of Poker Cards from the Card Bag with his right hand, while his left hand simultaneously yanked Mo Shu's shoulder backward. Both stepped out of the doorway together, and the first wave of flesh mass slammed into the iron door, blasting the whole door, frame, and hinges outward.

To avoid startling the others in the Investigation Bureau and affecting the operation, Jiang Yuan used Shadow Ghost's power to catch all the flying objects.

At the same time, the Dark Shadow Court enveloped the surroundings, greatly dampening the massive noises.

Metal shards brushed past Jiang Yuan's cheek, carving a thin slit.

No time to deal with it.

Jiang Yuan flicked his wrist; twelve Poker Cards fanned out, each infused with Shadow Ghost's power, their metal edges trailing black arcs of light. The cards pierced the first flesh mass, passing through and exiting its back, trailing a spray of gray‑white fragments and black smoke.

The first one shattered.

The second immediately lunged down from the ceiling, its body splitting into three tentacles during the fall, each bristling with dense barbs.

Jiang Yuan sidestepped the main attack; the Shadow Legion surged from the shadows beneath his feet, black silhouettes coiling around the tentacles, tightening and snapping them off.

The third. The fourth.

The Corridor was too narrow.

This wasn't an open battlefield, so the Shadow Legion couldn't fully deploy. The Fake Persons' volume had swollen severalfold after the Mutation; two or three could block the entire Corridor.

Jiang Yuan pressed his back against the wall; the Spinal Sword sprang from the Magnetic Snap Buckle, his right hand gripping the hilt in reverse, the ivory blade tracing an arc of light in the cramped space. Sword qi sliced the oncoming flesh mass, and a plume of black smoke billowed from the cut.

But there were more behind.

They kept streaming out of the Data Room, crowding into the Corridor, piling forward.

From the corner of his eye, Jiang Yuan saw Mo Shu already backed into the Corridor's corner, her short blade held before her, tip aimed at the passage. Her position was sound, but she couldn't block impacts of this magnitude.

He had to be quick.

The Shadow Legion went all out. Black shadows seeped simultaneously from walls, floor, and ceiling, dense enough to swallow the lights. The Corridor's illumination vanished within two seconds, leaving only the grim‑green specks in the Fake Persons' eyes flickering in the darkness.

Jiang Yuan stepped forward. The Spinal Sword sliced horizontally.

The fifth shattered. The sixth was torn apart by the shadows. The seventh—

When the seventh lunged, Jiang Yuan's right hand hesitated.

Only 0.2 seconds.

But in a fight of this intensity, 0.2 seconds was deadly.

It wasn't a stamina issue. Shadow Ghost's power suffered a brief lapse.

He had used it for too long. From three o'clock in the morning until now—nearly two hours—Shadow Ghost had been running at full power, suppressing heart rate, controlling breathing, locking pupils, driving the Shadow Legion, and sustaining the biological signals needed for the shielding field. It was not only combat consumption but a relentless mental tug‑of‑war.

Shadow Ghost's power could keep up, but his will could not.

That 0.2‑second blank was a taut string in his brain finally loosening.

Just for that instant.

The seventh Fake Person's Bone Spike swept in from the right; Jiang Yuan couldn't turn in time, and his back slammed into the wall.

Dead angle.

On the left was the wall; on the right, two partially shattered Fake Person remnants blocked the retreat, while three frontal Bone Spikes formed a triangle, sealing every escape route.

The nearest spike was less than twenty centimeters from his throat.

Jiang Yuan could see the pores on the piece of 'human skin' hanging from the spike's tip.

His Shadow Legion was rushing back, but it needed 0.5 seconds.

He didn't have 0.5 seconds.

Then he heard a short, tearing‑fabric crack.

Mo Shu's figure surged in from the left edge of his vision.

She didn't run in; she lunged. Her whole body left the ground, feet pushing off the wall for leverage, her torso nearly parallel to the floor as she flew forward. Her right hand gripped the short blade, tip down, and she drove it precisely into the base of the nearest Bone Spike; the blade sank in deep, forcibly deflecting the spike's trajectory by fifteen degrees.

At the same time, her left hand pushed against Jiang Yuan's chest.

The force wasn't great, but the angle was clever. Jiang Yuan's body was shoved away from the wall, shifting thirty centimeters to the right—just enough to evade the attack zones of the remaining two spikes.

But she didn't have time to withdraw her hand.

The barbs of the second Bone Spike scratched across her left forearm.

It wasn't an abrasion. It tore from the spot just below the elbow where the four fingers lie, along the outer side of the forearm, all the way to the wrist.

The hoodie's sleeve was instantly ripped open with a long slit, the fabric edge stained dark.

Blood splattered onto Jiang Yuan's combat uniform.

It was scalding.

Jiang Yuan's pupils snapped shut.

The loose string in his mind never tightened again. It snapped. After it snapped, what emerged beneath was not fatigue, not hesitation.

It was anger.

Pure, unfiltered anger.

The Shadow Ghosts could not suppress his emotions in that instant—kill them all.

The Spinal Sword's white bone blade lit up.

It wasn't the precise arc of energy used before. The entire sword, from hilt to tip, ignited with a grim white Bone Flame, sword qi spilling from the edge, whipping a scorching wind through the narrow Corridor.

Jiang Yuan's grip on the sword was absurdly steady.

First slash, a horizontal sweep. Three groups of Fake Persons on the left side of the Corridor were cut at the waist; their upper halves were shredded into dust by the sword qi before they could hit the ground.

Second slash, a vertical cleave. The Fake Person crouching on the ceiling was split from head to toe, spilling gray‑white liquid across the floor.

Third slash, fourth slash, fifth slash—

He stopped counting.

The Shadow Legion, coordinated with the sword qi, seeped in from each Fake Person's blind spot, strangling, piercing chests, crushing the Core. Jiang Yuan's figure moved through the darkness so fast only a afterimage remained, the Spinal Sword's trail leaving streaks of white ash in the air.

Ten seconds.

The Corridor fell silent.

The floor was littered with gray‑white debris emitting black smoke, the air thick with the acrid stench of burnt plastic, choking to the throat. Three ceiling light tubes had been sliced off by the sword qi, and the exposed Electric Wires crackled with sparks.

Jiang Yuan sheathed the sword.

He turned faster than he had in combat.

Mo Shu leaned against the wall at the Corridor corner, her left hand covering the wound on her right arm, liquid trickling between her fingers. Her complexion was poor, her lips pale, yet when she saw Jiang Yuan rush over, she still tugged at the corner of her mouth.

Jiang Yuan crouched before her, reaching out to pry the finger she was using to cover the wound.

"Let me see."

Mo Shu let out a hiss and shifted her hand slightly.

The hoodie's sleeve was soaked with blood, clinging to the skin. Jiang Yuan carefully lifted the fabric, revealing the wound that ran from elbow to wrist.

The wound was deep. Muscle was torn outward, the edges ragged, ripped open by barbs rather than cut by a blade.

But Jiang Yuan's gaze did not linger on the wound's shape.

Because in his right-hand pocket, the True Sight Eye was still active.

The filter stacks automatically. He neither deliberately turned it on nor off.

So he saw.

What oozed from deep within the wound was not red.

It was white.

A viscous, slowly rolling, white, fluffy mass specked with fine signal noise seeped out between the torn muscle fibers, its edges shedding extremely fine gray particles upon contact with air.

Those particles' shape was identical to what emerged when the wreckage on Zhang Deming's bed evaporated.

Jiang Yuan froze completely.

Mo Shu's left hand covered the wound again, blocking the white substance. Tears of pain glistened in her almond eyes, yet she still smiled at Jiang Yuan.

A weak, barely sustained smile with two shallow dimples.

"I'm fine, just a superficial skin injury… looks scary, but it's not deep."

She gasped, bracing the wall with her uninjured hand, her short boots clicking softly on the gray‑white debris.

"Jiang Yuan, shall we finish cleaning up quickly?"

Jiang Yuan gave no reply.

He stood there, still gripping the Spinal Sword, the gray‑white liquid clinging to its tip dripping drop by drop.

Only one name remained on the list.

Jiang Yuan didn't look at the list.

Because he didn't need to.

He had memorized it long ago.

Only in those brief dozen‑plus seconds just now did he completely forget that fact.

Now, recalling it, his heart began to throb.