Chapter 131.2: Long Night (2) (2) |
The very moment Ji Jue pulled the trigger, the Swarm Chosen One’s diving momentum halted abruptly. Blood-red flames flowed across his body as he shifted sideways without warning, weaving and dodging in impossible motions. The bullets pursued relentlessly, but every one of them merely grazed past him.
Ji Jue was overwhelmed by frustration.
First Strike?! It’s First Strike again?! Can you Swarm bastards not function without this blessing or what?!
Just as no Ember Chosen One could resist the allure of Flawless Craft, every Swarm Chosen One likewise held the same favor in their hearts for First Strike.
Predicting enemy movements, enhanced perception, neural reflexes, evasion, offense—this was what First Strike offered. Such an overwhelmingly powerful blessing was enough to qualitatively transform any Chosen One’s combat ability. Possessing a mid-tier blessing like First Strike proved that the opponent was at least level four or higher, definitely within the Metamorphosis Realm.
After casually dodging the submachine gun barrage, the enemy accelerated again mid-charge. The spirit matter surging from his body grew increasingly violent and intense, erupting outward continuously to enhance his defense, speed, attack power, and reactions across the board.
It was another standard blessing for a brute-force killing maniac—Blazing Fury!
BOOM!
Two headlights flared to life at point-blank range. A dormant cargo truck abruptly roared into motion, speeding forward and slamming toward the attacker, but before the collision could happen, the Swarm Chosen One’s eyes had already snapped toward the side. Blood-red flames surged along the twin blades in his hands, condensing tightly over their edges as his aura exploded upward.
In the blink of an eye, the vehicle was split cleanly in half down the middle. Only then did the shrill beeping start from the cargo compartment. The final red indicator light on the plastic explosives lit up.
Flames burst forth, and shockwaves swept outward. Wrapped in bloodfire, the Swarm Chosen One shot out like a meteor, evading the blast. A violent coughing fit followed.
“You Ember bastards are fucking annoying!” The Swarm Chosen One bared his teeth viciously. His beard and hair had curled from the heat, scorch marks spread across his battered face, and half his iron armor had been heated, glowing red. Even so, he had suffered only light injuries.
Meanwhile, Ji Jue had seized that crucial opening. Tearing open the security door, he rushed into the stairwell and fled upstairs.
Unfortunately, it was useless. Before the security door had even finished swinging shut, the pursuing enemy had already charged through the opening. And then he saw Ji Jue standing at the stairway corner, breathing heavily. Ji Jue had already given up running, as though he had accepted his fate.
But, in that split second of confusion, the pupils of the bearded Swarm Chosen One dilated.
No, something’s wrong!
On the security door closing behind him, hidden within the blind spot at his back, metal fragments came screaming through the air like a rainstorm. It was An Ran!
Inside the narrow stairwell corridor, the Swarm Chosen One’s eyes widened as he let out a furious shout. He spun the blade in his hand and brought it behind his back, protecting the vital point at his neck. The shrieking sound of steel collisions rang out nonstop.
Before he could hurl the other long blade in his hand toward the ambusher, he saw the weapon Ji Jue had raised. If one had no choice but to describe it, it resembled a revolver, but it looked bizarre as hell and crude beyond belief. It was like some bootleg monstrosity machined together on a lathe by hand, blocky and square without even basic edge finishing. Thick silver welding paint still clung heavily to the frame.
The cylinder was octagonal and sharp, the complete opposite of smooth. As for the caliber, it had actually reached seventeen millimeters, and was comparable to an anti-materiel sniper rifle.
The crude alloy revolver, weighing more than five kilograms, had already been raised. But even one hand was not enough. Ji Jue’s other hand pressed firmly against the barrel, aiming straight at the man’s face. He could not stop himself from grinning.
So you finally stepped within five paces of me, huh? It’s too close, practically point-blank.
Ji Jue’s neck was already beneath the Swarm Chosen One’s blade. At this distance, not even a White Deer could dodge it!
The deafening roar that reverberated through the corridor shook the entire passageway. From the muzzle flash burst forth an alloy armor-piercing round used by anti-materiel rifles.
Because depleted uranium alloy was hard to obtain and high-density tungsten alloy was too difficult to machine, Ji Jue had been left with no choice for the bullet core material. He had used the payment Mr. Lin previously gave him: gold!
Under the violent impact, the molten gold jet blasted aside the long blade the opponent had raised before his chest, carving a deep notch directly into the weapon’s edge. The second shot followed close behind, slamming into the chest armor. Spirit matter circuits flared into existence to resist the impact, but beneath the force of the penetrative jet, the armor cracked apart and caved inward as blood burst out.
The Swarm Chosen One was blasted backward and suffered injuries.
Ji Jue held his breath, ignoring the violent trembling and recoil tearing through both his arms. He issued another command. “Fire!”
What emerged from the chamber was a gift forged by Ji Jue from all his hopes for love and peace—a fragile mercury bullet. Unable to withstand extreme heat or long distances, it lightly slipped through the opening torn open by the armor-piercing rounds and embedded itself in the opponent. Silently, it detonated.
The Swarm Chosen One crashed to the floor, unable to rise again. What came from him instead were horrifying screams, shrieks, and wails that echoed throughout the entire villa.
As though he had turned into a bundle of burning firewood, the kind drenched in gasoline, uncontrollable bloodfire erupted outward from inside him, devouring his life. The first thing to spiral out of control was his spirit matter, unable to resist the malicious cursed toxin flowing from the bullet.
Then his blessings descended into chaos, no longer responding to their master’s commands. Finally, his matrix collapsed as well, because he, wracked by agony and destruction, began swelling and mutating beyond all restraint!
One grotesque lump of flesh after another burst from the Swarm Chosen One. His bones grew wildly, sharpening into spikes that burst through the armor. Layer after layer of razor-edged scales surfaced across his face before peeling away again, exposing the rotten flesh beneath.
His skull twisted and expanded during the mutation, growing one curved horn after another, only for them to snap off and fall away. He twitched, convulsed, writhed, and fell into despair, and in the end, he met his death.
Before he could fully descend into aberration, Ji Jue pulled the trigger one last time. The armor-piercing round blew apart the opponent’s head. He fired four bullets in two armor-piercing rounds, then one corrosive aberration-inducing round.
The last took his life. Destruction, in the end, was really that simple.
An Ran landed behind him in shock, instinctively taking back two cautious steps, every hair on his body standing on end. “Ji Jue, what happened to him?”
“No idea. Maybe he suddenly became corrupted or something. That’s just how the Swarm Chosen Ones are. Killing and burning people every day, doing too many bad things. Karma catches up eventually, right?”
Ji Jue moved briskly, pulling a container from his waist pouch and pouring mercury over the Swarm Chosen One’s corpse. He quickly sealed it with spirit matter circuitry, intending to recycle it later if they survived the assault.
Wouldn’t that mean the bullets would just keep multiplying the more he fired?! Of course, using aberration-related items without authorization or approval was a crime. Cultivating aberration toxins using the corpse of a Chosen One was an even greater taboo.
But as long as nobody found out, then nothing happened, right?
I picked this up!
Deep down, neither master nor apprentice from the Tidesound Workshop had ever taken the Taiyi Ring’s useless regulations seriously. Besides, if those regulations were truly enforced, every existing master craftsman would already deserve execution. On average, each person would have probably been shot twice over already.
Meanwhile, grandmasters were on another level entirely. At minimum, they deserved to be executed continuously for half an hour.
“Remember to keep this a secret for me,” Ji Jue said.
“Okay.” An Ran nodded in agreement, just as always, without the slightest hesitation. He tilted his head, listening to the tremors and explosions spreading throughout the villa, then glanced once more toward the ceiling above. “There’s chaos upstairs. Someone’s coming.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Ji Jue lowered his head, scrolling through the footage transmitted by hidden cameras on his phone.
A squad of masked attackers wearing night-vision goggles and carrying all kinds of firearms moved through the villa’s maze-like corridors in crouched tactical formation. Their movements were practiced and precise as they pushed open door after door, conducting careful searches. Not a single unnecessary word passed between them. Just a few hand signals were enough for perfect communication, as though they were a single entity.
Tripwires hanging from doorknobs and every subtle flaw or irregularity failed to escape their notice. They advanced rapidly and methodically, and anything suspicious along their path was immediately riddled with bullets.
Ji Jue thought, Where the hell did an entire special operations squad come from? You retired veterans moonlighting on the side are taking this way too far, aren’t you?!
“Acquaintances?” He sighed. Then, through the speakers embedded beforehand in the corridor ceiling, his voice rang out in a Cliff City accent.
“If there are any people from No. 9 Baymoor Road here, please withdraw now. Let’s not make things too hard for everybody—”
Gunfire erupted like a torrential storm. The instant the voice was heard, someone from the tactical squad raised their weapon without hesitation and opened fire at the ceiling, while the others immediately aimed in different directions, standing ready for an ambush without the slightest hesitation or wavering.
Good. Probably not locals then.
Ji Jue nodded. At least now he did not have to worry about accidentally killing acquaintances. He tapped the man at the forefront on the screen.
His cold voice echoed through the corridor, “Then you’ll be the first one—”
BOOM!
With a resounding explosion, the suspended ceiling burst open without warning. The head of the gunman walking at the very front exploded instantly, blood and brain matter spraying everywhere as he collapsed backward onto the floor.
The mangled corpse twitched violently, smearing crimson graffiti in its final spasms.
The others retreated rapidly. Bullets poured like a storm toward the ceiling, shredding the plaster panels into dust. Unfortunately, it was completely useless. Ji Jue tapped on the screen once more.
“Second one.”
BOOM!!!
Another tiny crack appeared in the exposed ceiling above where the suspended panels had shattered. The man at the rear of the squad had his head burst apart in an instant, leaving a savage streak splattered across the wall.
And then—
“Third one.”
Along with the cold declaration, death and destruction descended from above once more, blasting the squad leader into the air. His lower body, however, remained standing where it was. The ballistic shield shattered, and the bulletproof vest tore apart like tissue paper. His body was severed cleanly in half!
At last, someone could no longer suppress the fear and horror and shouted, “It’s a sniper!”
But it was meaningless. Everyone already knew there was a sniper. The problem was, where the hell was he?!
Outside the windows, the night remained pitch black. Only flashes of lightning and fire illuminated the darkness. There was no trace of any attacker anywhere. Even the windows had remained perfectly intact. It was as though the bullets were simply appearing out of nowhere or… falling from the ceiling?!
Wait. From above?
As realization dawned on them, a fighter stiffly looked up at the ceiling riddled with bullet holes, only to hear yet another declaration of death.
“Fourth one.”
BOOM!!!
With the fourth deafening blast, a tiny crack split open in the ceiling once more.
Above it, a complex electrically controlled mechanism bolted into the second-floor ceiling adjusted its angle again. Welded onto it was an anti-materiel sniper rifle, aiming through the floorboards directly at the pale face below.
The trigger was pulled, and violent recoil thundered. Death descended, again and again, like a rainstorm.
“Five, six, seven...”
Ji Jue’s finger tapped across the screen one target after another, issuing commands through his Deus Ex Machina. The weapons hidden within ceilings and wall cavities throughout the villa unleashed a storm of death, like the invisible hand of the Grim Reaper selecting sacrifices upon an altar one after another.
Every time the gunfire rang out, another mangled body was blasted into the air before collapsing backward. Ji Jue did not even need to divide his attention to control dozens of different firearms and mechanical rotation mounts. Every device was linked through Wi-Fi, connected through AP panels spread across the building’s floors, and ultimately routed into the network server located just behind the wall next to him.
He barely even needed to think.
Several days earlier, after he had simply explained his requirements as the client, the server mainframe had rooted the chipsets and motherboards from multiple manufacturers within minutes and written an entire control program on its own.
Using multiple cameras to calculate the distance and coordinates of moving objects in three-dimensional space, he took aim and locked on, then controlled the nearest weapon to fire. The penetrating power of anti-materiel rifles was sufficient to strike any intruder through walls. Theoretically speaking, from that moment onward, everyone inside the villa stood beneath his gun sights, friend and foe alike.
Hopefully they were still wearing their electronic identification wristbands...
In less than ten seconds, a fully armed special operations squad had been turned into corpses sprawled across the corridor. Ji Jue no longer needed to operate manually anymore. It was far too inefficient. The window of opportunity was short, and if this trick got used too many times, it could stop working.
So before the enemy could react, he had to squeeze every bit of value out of it!
Without hesitation, he waved a hand and issued the server its final command. “Maximize efficiency. Attack as you wish.”
Inside the server room beneath the garage, rows of green indicator lights flashed one after another. The hum of cooling fans suddenly rose higher and higher, screaming as they spun at full speed.
[Calculations complete. Analysis complete. Lock acquisition beginning.]
And finally…
“Extermination mode activated.”
It began to rain, but this was no average rain. It was a torrential downpour.