Chapter 61: Broken Spear

Command Center.

L lifted his hand, and his fingertips typed a dazzling string of afterimages on the keyboard:

"The nearby standby 'Hummingbird' No. 3 micro‑drone has been activated."

"It is entering the target building's elevator shaft."

The screen had switched to another view at some point.

It was the drone's real‑time footage.

The shaking camera was descending rapidly.

Darkness.

Endless darkness.

Only the drone's built‑in spotlight cast a pale halo in the bottomless elevator shaft.

Everyone, including the elite of Jiang Hai City police, stared intently at the screen.

They saw a segment of broken Reinforced Steel Bar.

They saw on the bar the dried, dark‑red bloodstain.

The camera continued downward.

The halo illuminated a wrecked bottom of the shaft.

Then, everyone saw.

The shattered body.

Legs clad in trendy work pants were twisted and snagged mid‑air by several protruding Reinforced Steel Bars.

His torso had fallen several meters away; his distinctive silvery short hair was now stained a filthy dark red by spurting blood and dirty dust.

His face still bore the shock, resentment, and regret of his final moment.

The eyes that once constantly glittered with madness and excitement were now wide open, completely devoid of any spark.

Decapitated.

The Ninth Division's sharpest individual weapon, the Mozi Pavilion code‑named "Mad Dog", was brutally severed in this pitch‑black Abyss.

Silence fell over the command center.

Especially Nie Yang, whose expression was as silent as his words.

The police elite now wore disbelief on their faces.

Ninth Division!

It was a being they had just encountered, towering over all systems, as mythically powerful as a legend.

And the Mozi Pavilion was the sharpest spear in that myth!

But now, this spear had been brutally snapped in such a tragic manner!

They finally gained the most direct—and terrifying—understanding of that thing called "Weird"...

At that moment.

"Report! Report!"

"Top‑floor suite, status confirmed!"

An anxious voice cut in from another channel.

"Bait... the bait is dead!"

L expressionlessly switched the view.

On the screen, several fully‑armed SWAT officers faced a corpse lying on an expensive Persian carpet, helpless.

It was Li Shao.

His body bore no external wounds; only his eyes bulged, and his face was twisted a bluish‑purple from extreme terror and suffocation.

He, like the previously deceased Huang Mao and Zhang Shao, was literally drowned by being forced to drink water in this dry luxury suite, whose air‑conditioning system had even been physically severed.

The scene was left with large, unknown water stains and a few damp black strands of hair.

And the boy named Lin Fan and the ghost named Ling Xinyu had long vanished.

The bait is dead.

The ace is broken.

The target escaped.

Everything lost.

And they lost utterly, their bodies left scarred.

After a long silence, Nie Yang finally spoke, his voice stripped of any warmth, leaving only extreme gloom and coldness:

"L."

"Immediately contact Team A responsible for transferring Qin Yu."

"Change the route!"

"Do not go to any transfer stations, abandon all planned schemes, and send directly back to the Ninth Division facility!"

Nie Yang's tone carried undeniable resolve.

He stared fixedly at the lifeless face of the Mozi Pavilion on the screen, the depths of its eyes raging with torrent‑like fury and murderous intent.

He underestimated the enemy.

He admitted that he had underestimated the enemy from start to finish.

He thought that with the Ninth Division's powerful Intelligence and the Mozi Pavilion's unrivaled solo combat capability, this was merely a simple hunt.

He was wrong.

"Lin Fan..."

Nie Yang forced this name out between his teeth.

"Next time..."

"I will give you no more chances."

"I will mobilize all resources of the Ninth Division, lay down a real Heaven-Earth Net, and make you pay... a price worse than death for what you did today!"

As for now, he must keep Qin Yu as the final "bait".

Meanwhile.

At an altitude of thousands of meters.

A medium transport helicopter belonging to the military was gliding smoothly beneath a thick layer of clouds.

Inside the cabin, the engine emitted a low hum.

Qin Yu was tightly shackled with a custom-made chain, locked onto the cold metal seat.

He wore a loose prison uniform, his complexion pallid, his body trembling incessantly from fear.

He did not know where he would be taken, nor what his fate would be.

All he knew was that his father, who had once been able to smooth everything over for him, had fallen.

And he had become a pawn in some sort of transaction.

Around him stood four armed special police, faces stern.

They were the elite of Team A responsible for this escort mission.

"Team A received, repeat order, abandon planned route, change heading."

The Captain in charge of the escort calmly replied into the encrypted communication in his earpiece.

He was about to stand and convey the latest orders to the cockpit when his expression suddenly stiffened.

Something was wrong.

An inexplicable, indescribable chill, like an invisible virus, spread rapidly through the cabin without warning.

The cabin temperature was clearly steady at 24 °C.

Yet everyone, in that instant, felt as if stripped of clothing and instantly immersed in ice‑frozen river water!

The bone‑piercing cold surged from the soles of their feet straight up to the Heavenly Spirit Cover!

"What's happening?"

A young special police officer shivered and instinctively gripped his special rifle tighter.

He saw his exhaled breath suddenly condense before his eyes into a puff of white mist.

A thin layer of white frost quickly formed on the cabin's side window.

"Gulu... Gulu..."

An extremely faint sound began to echo at everyone's ears.

It was the sound of a woman underwater, desperately blowing bubbles because she could not breathe.

Immediately after came a suppressed, intermittent sobbing.

The cries were filled with endless resentment and unwillingness.

"Stay alert! Initiate the Spiritual Protection Protocol!"

The Captain shouted harshly, trying to disperse the Weird atmosphere with his voice.

He himself felt his head hazy, double images beginning to appear before his eyes.

As elites of the Ninth Division, they had all undergone the highest‑intensity Spiritual Resistance training.

But this Spiritual Pollution was so overbearing that it ignored all reason, bypassed all their defenses, and forced its way into their minds!

The Captain shook his head abruptly, trying to stay clear‑headed.

He called the command center again through his earpiece.

"Command Center! This is Team A! We are under a spiritual attack! Request..."

His words halted abruptly halfway.

He terrifiedly realized that the voice coming through his earpiece was not L's cold, flat tone at all.

Instead it was a malicious, resentful, hoho laugh.

The laugh was like a ruptured vocal cord being forced out of the throat, making the scalp tingle!

"Who?! Who are you?!"

The Captain broke out in cold sweat.

However, no one answered.

Only that hoho laugh grew louder and clearer in his mind.

He jerked his head up.

His gaze passed over the trembling Qin Yu and landed on the empty seat opposite.

Then his pupils suddenly contracted to the extreme!

On the vacant metal seat, a pool of water was spreading rapidly without warning.

It was not ordinary water.

It was the murky Black Water, reeking of river stench!

Immediately after.

In the horrified gazes of all the special police.

Countless wet, ink‑black hairs, like the most poisonous seaweed spawned in hell, surged wildly from that pool!

A pallid, swollen, feminine ghostly silhouette slowly coalesced among the writhing black hair!