Act.8: The Sound of Battle, Sadly Lost

[Part 1: The Wrong Person Wasn't Killed]

Xue Ming felt a lightness in his body, and in the instant the mist dissipated, his vision cleared, and he arrived at the thermal power plant of [KINGDOM].

He was positioned at the chemical storage area, along the central road for wet desulfurization products. The power plant's feed and discharge points were located here, facilitating truck access. Behind him, on both sides, were neatly constructed rock walls, and in front were the storage silos and the desulfurization unit's machine room.

Walking along the road for no more than fifty meters, we arrived at the first checkpoint.

Xue Ming gave the security personnel the code word to indicate his purpose, and then a manager came to greet him. In less than two minutes, a Land Rover military vehicle drove up from a small market further away, and four well-dressed hunters got out of the vehicle. They were the leaders of the War Gang under the Mercy of Eros, three men and one woman.

The tall man at the head of the group extended his hand, wanting to shake hands with Xue Ming as a gesture of goodwill, and began speaking in Japanese.

Why didn't Mr. Ishimura come in person today?

Xue Ming looked closely--

--This man was broad-shouldered and burly, seven feet tall, with a fair complexion and no beard. He was bald and fully equipped, with a suit jacket draped over his shoulders as a decoration, showing great attention to detail.

He responded in Chinese: "Shi Cun Tuozhen asked me to do something for him; he wants me to send the students out."

The bald man immediately switched to Chinese and replied, "That's not how it was said before."

In the environment created by [KINGDOM·], it is impossible to contact the outside world, and news can only be transmitted through letters or recordings. At this moment, the employees of the flesh and blood processing plant do not know what is happening outside.

Xue Ming: "If you want a promotion, then do as I say."

Upon hearing this, a flash of anger crossed the eyes of the four guests, but it vanished instantly.

Xue Ming walked straight to the passenger side of the vehicle, ignoring the minor leaders of the Zhan Gang.

He knew that most of the leaders of these fighting gangs were Shi Cun Tuozhen's godson.

Just like Lawrence Madison and her six children, most criminal gangs manage their subordinates through family rather than written contracts, as this form of management is the least costly.

The phrase "[If you want a promotion, do it]" clearly touched a nerve with these hunters, striking at their Gate of Death.

The bald man climbed into the car with a disgruntled expression, but didn't say anything. This agent of unknown origin seemed to have a very good relationship with his godfather. The blood on his military uniform hadn't even dried yet, so it seemed he had just finished a fierce battle and rushed to the amusement park to do business.

They can't afford to mess with such ruthless characters.

The amusement park was a gathering place for hunters kept by Shi Cun Tuozhen, so there weren't many opportunities for real-life training. When they recorded programs for the TV station, the director would write the script, and occasionally an unlucky guy would actually be killed by his hostage. That was just because he was not strong enough and had to accept the consequences of his gamble.

"How many people are left in the camp?" Xue Ming, looking out at the market street scene.

The bald man immediately said, "About fifty people. The rest of the armed forces have gone to surround the students. Mr. Ishimura said not to touch them, but I was afraid they would run away, so I set up machine guns at the sentry posts around the entrance and exit. As long as these little brats behave themselves and don't come looking for trouble, everything will be fine."

Xue Ming pointed to the small sign at the market. "No rush, just drive up to the canteen and stop."

The bald man had no idea what this important person wanted to do, so he had no choice but to do as he was told.

Xue Ming first glanced at the terrain. The area around the power plant was mostly filled with towering cooling towers and coal conveyors. This place was the workers' canteen, and there were also some free supermarket counters, which were employee benefits for the Armadillo Hunters.

A group of about twenty hunters gathered outside the fire station's large water tower to watch a movie and eat sunflower seeds.

Xue Ming's eyes swept over--

From the fourth floor to the first floor of the dormitory building, the night patrolmen were still asleep. With the canteen as the midpoint of the coordinate system, there were four card tables on the southwest side of the dormitory building, with sixteen people around them.

After reading all this, Xue Ming asked the bald man to extend his hand, and smiled as he shook hands with him.

"I'm sorry, I was impolite just now."

The bald man was surprised, but also a little embarrassed, as if he was flattered.

"Oh, it's okay."

Xue Ming looked closely and saw that the other person had a peregrine falcon tattoo on their arm, a secret agent of the Mercy of Eros.

He then shook hands with two other men to show goodwill.

"--Hello everyone, I just came off the front lines and my nerves are still on Matsushita. I apologize for being impolite."

The two men got out of the car and shook hands with Xue Ming one by one to show their goodwill.

A man with a scarred face and a lemur tattoo on his hand.

A one-eyed man with a viper tattoo on his hand.

The last woman seemed to be pushing her luck a bit.

She tossed her blonde hair and extended her right hand, with a flippant air of demanding a kiss on the hand.

Xue Ming glanced at the tattoo design; it was Arctic Fox. It matched the gang flags in the cafeteria and dormitory, confirming that all the junior leaders were here.

The woman waited for a long time, but Xue Ming still didn't come to kiss the back of her hand, and she finally started to get a little angry.

Her breathing became rapid, as if she had been insulted.

Xue Ming walked straight towards the cafeteria and spoke to the bald man beside him.

"How about we go grab something to eat first?"

The three men exchanged smiles, their gazes towards the woman now tinged with amusement. They followed Xue Ming into the cafeteria.

The woman was the last to go in, her face contorted with anger, her fists clenched.

Pushing open the cafeteria door, a wrench fell from Xue Ming's body.

It crashed onto the concrete floor, its jarring echo reverberating through the empty hall.

The peregrine falcon and the lemur were both stunned.

The viper and the Arctic Fox immediately became alert.

Because [KINGDOM] has a rule that no one is allowed to bring weapons here except for Mr. Ishimura personally escorting them.

Xue Ming bent down, picked up the wrench, and grumbled inwardly that the equipment he had picked up was indeed ill-fitting. He was also thinking of reciting a couple of lines.

"I was actually an engineer."

The bald peregrine falcon chimed in, "So it's understandable that you always carry a wrench and screwdriver, right?"

Xue Ming: "Hahahahahaha!"

Lemur: "Hahahaha! I've seen this movie! It's really interesting! Kung Fu! Kung Fu plus soccer! That's got potential!"

Hearing the laughter, the last two people, a man and a woman, entered the cafeteria, just as the doors were closing—

--The moment the soft rubber windproof mat covered the door.

Xue Ming smashed the peregrine falcon's head with a wrench, the immense force almost bending the old antique he'd salvaged from the distillery's tool shed.

He immediately discarded the destroyed worker's artifact, grabbed the peregrine falcon's massive, lifeless body, and charged forward, snatching a Nepalese scimitar from its warm corpse. He then slashed fiercely at the nearest lemur.

The Arctic Fox, positioned slightly further away, tried to draw its gun, but was knocked unconscious by the peregrine falcon's corpse.

Almost simultaneously, the lemur used all his strength to parry the deadly blade aimed at his head. He felt his jaw twist and his cheek burn – a vicious punch had struck his left cheek, smashing his skull into his parrying right arm, tearing his stab-proof vest open.

The blade of the scimitar sliced the arm in two, embedding itself into the lemur's brain tissue.

The hilt of the knife couldn't withstand the heavy blow and snapped in two. Just before it hit the ground, a kick like a thunderclap erupted.

It flew and struck the one-eyed viper in the forehead, piercing through its intact eye socket.

Everything happened too fast, too fast--

--When the Arctic Fox pushed aside the corpse of the head, the gunsmith was still groping the woman's body.

Seeing the steaming, still-convulsing corpse beside her, and sensing that the ruthless man before her was searching for something, groping around in a clumsy manner, the Arctic Fox immediately began to fawn and smile, desperately trying to survive.

"What are you touching? You... you want me?"

Xue Ming has finally been found.

"Yes, may I borrow your flame suppressor?"

In front of the Arctic Fox, he stepped on the woman's chest, telling her to stay put, and quickly screwed the flash suppressor into the muzzle of his secondary weapon, a pistol.

Like the explosion of a firecracker, a subsonic pistol bullet struck the squad leader in the head, and she finally breathed her last.

Xue Ming turned around, walked to the peregrine falcon whose brain had been deformed, and fired a final shot.

He walked up to the lemur with the broken knife embedded in its skull and fired the final shot.

Walk up to the imaginative viper and finish it off with a shot.

He stopped timing the watermelons by the gate when they had all split open, their flesh spilling all over the ground. He glanced at his watch and stopped the timer.

-- eleven seconds.

"You've slowed down."

He thought about it and realized that he couldn't calculate it that way. The captains of these Armadillo Hunters were elite warriors, and they couldn't be compared to the small fry he had fought before.

"But you're still a gunsmith."

[Part ②: We must also look back at the explosion]

Xue Ming lifted the windproof mat in the cafeteria to see if anyone had followed him. As soon as he opened the door, he saw a nosy hunter lurking outside—it seemed he was used to killing people, as the sound of the subsonic bullet reminded him.

The hunter felt a weight on his neck and was pulled into the house. Just as he was about to call for help, he heard a cracking sound.

His head and body were thinking independently, and Xue Ming twisted them apart—

--The body was laid down, and gunshots rang out again. A pile of watermelon pulp lay on the ground.

The gunsmith was covered in more and more blood. A kitchen helper had just pushed a food cart out of the kitchen. The cook, wearing a tall hat, was struggling to push the cart with his head down. Two frozen human legs fell from the kitchen cabinet. He hurriedly picked them up, and when he smelled the blood, he felt strange.

It's clearly frozen, how could it possibly taste like blood?

He licked the frozen meat and finally realized that the fishy smell wasn't coming from the kitchen cabinet.

What he didn't know was that with that one lick—the neutral icon above his head turned into a bright red in the eyes of the gunsmith, who was about twenty meters away.

Xue Ming raised his gun and fired a burst of bullets, emptying the magazine and riddling the kitchen helpers with holes.

He retrieved eight boxes of spare ammunition and two knives from the body. He quickly moved to the back of the kitchen.

Two staff members were still secretly eating human flesh, while a top chef was savoring the authentic Nine-Turned Intestines. Suddenly, a figure pushed open the door and entered, shooting him twice in the chest and once in the head. Even Hua Tuo couldn't save him.

Xue Ming climbed out of the kitchen window and crawled into the photography studio.

The television station in Eureka Volcano City is also producing an NC-21 rated adult program called "Bloody Weekend Night," which includes various escapade games with bizarre, erotic, and violent elements.

Because the guests didn't show up and Galahad's students were absent, director Trofovsky was still worrying about the next episode.

He called his young and pretty female assistant to keep him company while he grumbled on the fourth-floor balcony. The props and film crew had all been given a holiday—or rather, sent to another location to work overtime—because of Kang Que Connor's transfer order.

He now has no one to rely on and is a lone commander.

"Director, it's not your fault. It's all that stupid Ishimura's fault. He doesn't understand art."

The female assistant slowly took off her clothes and lay naked next to the director.

"If Shi Cun Tuozhen knew what was good for him, he could easily hire another film crew, and we could film something else!"

The renowned director Trofovsky glared angrily, grabbed his female companion's head, and yelled, "Do you know how furious I am right now?!"

Before he could finish speaking, the gunsmith climbed over from the adjacent balcony.

He was covered in blood and had a gun in his hand.

Before the female assistant could scream or shout --

--Xue Ming instinctively fired a shot to the head.

"Excuse me, did I kill the wrong person?" the gunsmith asked calmly.

The famous director covered his steaming face, pulled out a few artificial ceramic teeth and fillers from his beard, and wiped away the blood.

"No."

The gunsmith turned his gun around. "This building is clean now, you're the only one left."

The famous director. "Who the hell are you?"

Gunsmith: "I heard this place is full of damn scum, cannibals, and excellent employees of Human Meat Factory, so I came here."

The renowned director said, "Then you've come to the right place."

Gunsmith: "I went to the warehouse but couldn't find them, and the film studio was empty too. Can you help me find them?"

The famous director pulled two business cards from his clothes and pushed the naked, headless female corpse away.

He shuddered, his eyes filled with terror, his Madness Index already off the charts, but a strong will to survive kept him conscious. He handed over the contact information of the two groups that had asked for leave to slack off, along with their contact details, to this strange man of unknown origin.

The gunsmith accepted the business cards, looked at both, and wrote down the address and phone number.

"Thanks."

The renowned director. "You're welcome."

The gunsmith asked, "What's your name?"

The great director: Trofovsky

Gunsmith: "Russians?"

The renowned director shook his head. "Stage name. Actually, I'm Germany. But using a Russian stage name always gives off a kind of tragic, melancholic artistic vibe, which is quite captivating."

Xue Ming tilted his head--

--He seemed to be thinking.

The renowned director immediately asked, "Did you record it?"

Xue Ming remained silent.

"I mean! You must have recorded it! Right! You killed everyone in this building? You must have recorded it!" The director, as if Inspiration, was ready to sacrifice himself for art. "That multimedia center, that red dot!"

He pointed to the FOB radio on the gunsmith's shoulder.

The gunsmith tilted his head to look at the combat log screen; indeed, everything had been recorded.

"That's right."

The renowned director spread his arms wide, speaking with a rather ceremonial air.

"--Then shoot. You didn't kill the wrong person."

Xue Ming raised his hand and pulled the trigger, taking another life.

He removed the FOB bag, wiped the blood off his face in front of the camera, and looked utterly incredulous.

"Boss, I really don't understand what these guys are thinking—why they can be like that."

Xue Ming gestured with his hands, his expression resembling that of Grandfather on the subway looking at his phone, his nasolabial folds bulging out.

"Why is it like that? I can't explain it. Never mind, I'll get back to work."

He reinstalled the FOB into the MOLLE system and observed the movement of soldiers in the market center from the water pipes down the studio building.

Some people have already noticed the tragedy that occurred in the cafeteria.

--The soldiers have lost their overall commander, but they still have squad leaders or dormitory leaders to command and coordinate the troops.

"The leader has been killed!"

"Quick! Get to the armory!"

"Arm yourselves! Arm yourselves! Prepare for battle!"

"Where is the enemy?!"

All this jumbled information poured out of the earpiece. The gunsmith, lurking around the building area, followed more than twenty active soldiers in circles and finally found the armory.

When soldiers are not on duty, they are not allowed to carry weapons. For example, the pistol that Arctic Fox carries becomes a command flag that holds the power of life and death.

As the soldiers arrived at the armory and began donning their armor and taking the HK416s from the wall, Xue Ming squeezed into the crowd, marveling at the hunters' sophisticated equipment and expensive weapons.

In order of arrival, they took armor from the front hall, guns and ammunition from the central hall, and explosives from the inner room.

The group of over twenty people didn't suspect anything; they just felt there was an unfamiliar face that seemed a bit off.

There were six high-value targets, similar to dormitory leaders or squad leaders, directing order on site. However, the overall commander was dead, and these hunters were currently disorganized, without clear team divisions or roles, and in complete chaos. They were mechanically taking away equipment and gradually equipping themselves with armor and ammunition according to their usual drills.

The gunsmith ducked aside, shouting to his brothers in broken Japanese, "Make way, make way!"

He squeezed into the inner room and spoke to the military leader in charge of explosives at the very back.

"Some brothers have started fighting; you'd better go out and see."

That one sentence was enough to make the two managers lose their composure under pressure, cursing and saying, "Damn it! What time is it?!"

Xue Ming arrived at the explosives warehouse, his eyes scanning eight different types of bombs. He quickly considered in his mind how to delay the detonation of the fuses and their kill radius.

In just a few seconds--

He pulled out fourteen hand grenades from the cabinet, and with his Five Fingers holding the Five Fingers of [Fragrant Dream], he pulled out ten of the rings.

Then quickly and evenly toss them into the other two rooms, using different force and throwing distances.

After doing all this, Xue Ming did not leave immediately.

--Fragrant Dream led him through the wall, ran back to the side, raised his gun and aimed at the entrance and the pit at the back door, ensuring that the field of fire could cover the armory entrance and exit.

Some of my brothers had just crawled into the armory to get their guns and were anxiously waiting at the outermost edge of the line when someone in the line saw a grenade and shouted for help, trying to squeeze out.

Those inside want to get out, and those outside want to get in. They are both anxious, and they are both right, but they can hardly explain what happened.

The shock wave generated at the moment of the explosion shook the entire [KINDDOM·Kingdom Land].

Xue Ming only glanced at the severed limbs flying out of the room. Then, a tenacious hunter ran out, his clothes tattered, using his companions as cover to shield himself from most of the grenade fragments.

"[SweetDream· Fragrant Dream]"

The gunsmith loudly called out Soul Might's true name—

--The Iron Knight, his cat ears standing erect, answered the call.

It kept pace with Xue Ming, firing its gun.

The HK416 rifle in his hand roared as a survivor emerged from the room, only to be instantly killed by a double volley of bullets that shattered the bulletproof steel plate and pierced his helmet.

Xue Ming and SD pulled the pins on the last four thermite grenades, and the armory burst into flames. The ammunition and explosives created a deafening commotion, waking the survivors in the dormitory.

--The glass shattered on the floor, and the towering flames outside the window resembled the breath of a demon from hell.

In the abandoned buildings of the distillery--

--Takuma Shi Cun Tuozhen suddenly straightened his legs.

His soul power let out a burp, exhaling a cloud of thick smoke accompanied by a deafening explosion.

Mr. Ishimura's face turned ashen, as if he had been punched in the stomach, and he suddenly coughed up blood.

The boss, half asleep, turned over and muttered a curse.

What's going on?