Chapter 58: Possession

Clang!

The hotel's heavy revolving door was kicked out of shape by Lin Fan, glass shards flying everywhere.

The moment he stepped into the lobby.

Hum—!

The entire lobby was instantly bathed in an eerie purple light!

Dozens of high-power ultraviolet disinfection lights on the ceiling, walls, and floor all switched on at once, a dense infrared grid flashing briefly in the air.

The piercing alarm was enough to tear eardrums!

High temperature!

Extreme high temperature!

Moisture in the air instantly evaporated, Lin Fan's soaked clothes hissed with white steam, his skin feeling a burning sting.

His internal power source, in this dry, scorching environment, became extremely sluggish.

And that wasn't the end of it!

"Fire!"

With a roar, dozens of fully armed SWAT officers popped out from the second-floor corridor, behind the bar, and behind the support pillars.

They weren't holding ordinary firearms, but a special shotgun with thick barrels!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The deafening gunfire merged into a continuous roar, spitting out not ordinary pellets but high-explosive rounds wrapped in orange-red flames!

Boom! Boom!

Where Lin Fan had just stood, the marble floor was blasted into one fist-sized crater after another, fire spraying and shrapnel flying.

Lin Fan's body instinctively lunged toward the nearby bar.

The high-explosive rounds chased his silhouette, blowing the solid bar to splinters!

He tried his old trick, turning liquid to escape through the sewer, only to find that all the building's pipes had been filled with fast-drying cement!

Heaven-Earth Net!

The targeted deployment left Lin Fan battered, forced to constantly use cover to avoid the dense fire suppression.

"Tsk, boring."

In the top-floor suite, Mo Zixuan watched the monitor showing Lin Fan pinned down by fire, and yawned boredly.

His thoughts drifted back a few years.

In the Middle Eastern desert, he had once tracked a target for three days and three nights by a faint scent of blood in the air, finally snapping the man's neck when his guard was down.

In the Congo rainforest, he had also once stormed a warlord's compound bare-handed, though its security was ten times tighter than here; in under ten minutes he hung the warlord's head from a flagpole.

He was the mercenary world's top 'hound,' a living legend.

His formidable dynamic vision and judgment let him dodge bullets.

He even possessed a keen battle intuition that had twice let him evade sniper shots.

Speaking honestly, a security setup like this.

He could break through it head-on alone in just a few minutes.

Meanwhile.

Just as the SWAT team captain, via communicator, asked whether they could move in to capture him alive.

Mutation struck suddenly!

Lin Fan, hiding behind the shattered bar, suddenly hardened his gaze and clutched his chest.

A semi-transparent female apparition with disheveled long hair was literally squeezed out from his back!

That apparition's face was twisted, its eyes two black holes endlessly shedding bloody tears.

It was Ling Xinyu!

Ling Xinyu emitted a piercing shriek beyond human hearing.

A wave of resentment, ten times stronger than in the underground garage, surged like a tsunami and instantly engulfed the entire lobby!

In an instant.

All the SWAT officers clearly heard a woman's underwater struggle 'gurgle' and the cries of utter despair.

Everything before their eyes began to warp and spin.

The solid ground beneath their feet turned into murky river water, icy and bone-chilling, rising past ankles, knees, chest...

Suffocation!

Intensive suffocation!

"Cough... cough cough!"

A young SWAT officer flung his gun away, hands gripping his own throat in terror, his face pure fear.

He saw his comrade beside him, face now deathly pale and swollen, the seven orifices oozing murky river water, grinning at him with a split mouth.

Hallucination!

It's a hallucination!

But the drowning sensation felt all too real!

His will was slowly being overwhelmed!

【Target: Zhou Meng】

【Sanity: 70/100】

【Sanity: 60/100】

【Sanity: 50/100】

At that moment, Ling Xinyu's illusion turned into a black wisp and surged violently into his body!

The young SWAT officer's body suddenly stiffened.

The next second.

He assumed a Weird posture, rotating his head more than ninety degrees to glance at the teammate beside him reloading.

A stiff, alien smile spread across his mouth.

"Ho ho ho......"

He raised his gun.

Bang!

Flames spewed from the muzzle, and the nearby teammate's leg erupted in a spray of blood, collapsing in disbelief.

"Point C lost! Zhou Meng! You're fucking crazy!"

"Suppress him!"

Chaos erupted on the scene.

L's cold voice rang through the entire comm channel: "The target Weird displayed a new ability! Our personnel have been infiltrated! It is hypothesized that the ability works by lowering the opponent's mental defenses to perform mental manipulation!"

"Stay calm, do not let yourselves be affected!"

However, fear spread like a virus.

Once the first person was possessed, the entire defense was doomed to collapse.

More and more SWAT officers lost their minds in hallucinations; Ling Xinyu weaved among them, the possessed appearing like bamboo shoots after rain.

They swung their guns around, firing at former comrades.

They precisely destroyed the preset infrared sensors, ultraviolet lights......

The meticulously arranged "perfect cage" was torn open from the inside, one huge gap after another, in just a few dozen seconds.

Here it became a self‑destructive arena of beasts.

Amid a chaotic hail of gunfire and mournful screams.

Lin Fan moved.

He stepped out of the cover, strolling between flames and chaos, as if a king patrolling his own realm.

Those lethal high‑explosive shells brushed past his coat hem.

The possessed SWAT officers ignored him.

Step by step, treading on a floor littered with shell casings and blood, he walked unhurriedly up the stairs leading to the Second Floor.

Lin Fan kicked open the door to the last corridor leading to the top‑level presidential suite.

One side of the long corridor was a massive floor‑to‑ceiling window, beyond which the dazzling nightscape of Jiang Hai City spread.

The corridor was empty, eerily quiet.

In the center, a luxurious single‑seater sofa faced the doorway.

A youth dressed in trendy streetwear, with striking silver hair, sat there.

He held a piece of snow‑white silk in his hand, leisurely polishing an exaggeratedly designed silver Desert Eagle.

He didn't even look up.

He spoke softly in a tone slightly tinged with regret and amusement.

"You're thirty seconds slower than I imagined."