Severed Hand

Midnight.

Gu Qing woke from his sleep.

A burst of gunfire rang out from outside.

It was followed by chaotic footsteps and screams.

His brows furrowed slightly.

Vanessa beside him was awakened as well.

"Lehnsherr, it might be McConnell's men!"

Labib McConnell.

The head of another Mafia family in Sicily.

His power was only slightly weaker than that of the family Gu Qing had taken over.

He had always lived in the shadows.

But now, McConnell had finally seen a glimmer of hope to surpass the family now renamed Lehnsherr.

Tonight was an operation he had planned for a long time.

He had to wipe out the Lehnsherr Family in one stroke, so that he could monopolize all of the family's businesses.

If smoking was a symbol of a man's maturity, then dealing cigarettes was a symbol of the Sicilian Mafia's maturity.

However, the Mafia of today was no longer satisfied with the meager profits from selling cigarettes.

For profit, humans were often capable of doing many things.

Such as killing one another.

The McConnell Family had endured for a long time.

Now, their moment to rise had arrived!

Four core family members each led a team to encircle the entire Lehnsherr estate.

Samir Schroeder, the McConnell Family's Family Executioner, led an elite squad he had personally trained, plunging straight into the enemy's heart like a sharp blade!

Along the way, the few remaining Lehnsherr Family members were no match for them at all.

Amid the gunfire, they were quickly on the verge of being wiped out.

After Samir Schroeder subdued the few survivors, McConnell walked in with a laugh.

"Hahahaha! From now on, there will be only one Mafia in Sicily—the McConnells!"

"You interrupted my sleep."

The calm words carried immense force, like an icy arrow striking McConnell.

A chill ran through his heart. His excitement instantly cooled, and an uncontrollable sense of danger surged up within him.

He looked at the figure in a robe slowly descending the spiral staircase.

McConnell raised a hand to stop the restless Schroeder.

"You must be Mr. Erik Lehnsherr, I presume? I think we can be friends.

"As long as you hand over all of the Lehnsherr Family's businesses, as well as control of those family assets, the people you need to find will also become the people my McConnell Family seeks.

"I'm sure we'll be far more efficient than that woman by your side, who only knows how to exert herself in bed."

Vanessa, who had come out with Gu Qing, changed expression.

"McConnell, these belong to Mr. Lehnsherr. They are not yours to covet. I advise you to turn around and leave while you still can!"

McConnell burst into laughter. "Leave? How can I leave without taking what I want?

"Vanessa, you're still too young to lock horns with me. If it were your father, perhaps he could."

As he spoke, he looked at Gu Qing.

"Mr. Lehnsherr, the dispersal of your family's main forces was an absolutely confidential matter, yet I found out about it so quickly. Don't you find that strange?"

Gu Qing merely looked at him calmly, with no intention of replying.

Vanessa's expression, however, suddenly turned even uglier.

McConnell said, "That's because someone deliberately leaked it to me. The method was clever, but it could not fool these wise eyes of mine.

"Why don't you guess who did it?

"And what her purpose was?"

Just as Vanessa was about to lose her composure, Gu Qing suddenly spoke. "Are you finished?"

McConnell froze. "You..."

"Then die."

Before McConnell could react to Gu Qing's decisive response, Schroeder, the Family Executioner, had already raised his gun.

But he had not expected that his finest partner in slaughter would no longer obey his orders today.

It turned uncontrollably and aimed at his own head.

Bang!

Then a barrage of gunfire erupted.

Every man McConnell had brought with him used his own gun to kill himself!

McConnell was stunned by the sight before him.

Before he could say anything, Vanessa raised her gun and shot him dead.

As the remaining Lehnsherr Family members began cleaning up the battlefield, Gu Qing and Vanessa had already returned to their room.

Thud!

Vanessa dropped to her knees.

"Please forgive me..."

Gu Qing looked at her coldly.

"Vanessa, I told you not to use your cleverness on me.

"You have disappointed me greatly."

"Please, don't kill me!"

"Then give me a reason not to."

Vanessa actually rose to her feet and took down a sword hanging on the wall.

She was not attacking Gu Qing. Instead, she swung the sword and cut off her own left hand!

Blood immediately gushed out. Vanessa's face turned deathly pale, and she bit her lip until it bled, yet she did not make a sound.

The coldness in Gu Qing's eyes suddenly shifted somewhat.

"Interesting."

He activated his Magnetic Field Power and Cellular Recombination.

Vanessa's wound healed instantly, but her severed hand could not be reattached.

"Absorb McConnell's forces as soon as possible, then devote yourselves to the matter I assigned."

Vanessa could not help but breathe a sigh of relief.

She knew she had gambled correctly!

Although she had not known the man before her for long, she understood deeply that even if they had shared the same bed the moment before, he would not hesitate to kill her for betraying him!

That was why she had staked everything on severing her hand to survive!

That decisiveness attracted Gu Qing.

At the same time, Vanessa could better control and command the family members, so she was still quite useful to him.

Thus, he spared her life.

For the time that followed.

Gu Qing remained in seclusion, cultivating.

After absorbing the McConnell Family, the Lehnsherr Family's power expanded even further.

Gu Qing passed down Schmidt's portrait and name. Even the name Sebastian Shaw, as well as the Hellfire Club, were included among the targets of their search.

The search area gradually expanded, eventually covering more than half of Europe.

Italy, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Greece...

Lehnsherr Family members could be found in all of them.

Yet even now, there had not been the slightest result.