Acupoint Sealing and Meridian Severing, A Silent Purge!

Command center rooftop.

The night wind howled.

Lin Xuan's figure blended into the darkness, perfectly still.

Below the floor, the building's structure and every person's location were all mapped in his mind.

Hallways, guard posts, offices.

And the top-floor suite filled with a brutal aura.

His ability activated.

Countless infiltration routes exploded through his mind, only to be discarded in an instant.

Ventilation ducts, infrared sensors.

Third-floor windows, pressure alarms.

The main entrance, thirty submachine guns.

Possible outcomes flashed by one after another.

Very quickly.

The only path with no losses emerged.

Fourth floor, storage room.

A window with no additional defenses.

Directly below it lay a blind spot between the patrol routes of two squads of soldiers.

One minute of absolute safety.

Lin Xuan leaned forward and drifted down from the rooftop.

He landed without a sound.

His finger traced the edge of the glass window.

The sturdy reinforced glass was silently cut into a circle.

He removed the glass and set it aside.

Then he slipped into the storage room.

The entire process was incredibly fast.

The corridor was brightly lit.

The polished floor reflected human silhouettes.

Two fully armed sentries stood back to back, guarding the route to the core area.

Their positions had been carefully calculated, their fields of vision overlapping with no blind spots.

"Hey, John, don't you think the colonel's being a little too nervous?"

The sentry on the left lowered his voice, his lips barely moving.

"Who knows, Nick."

The sentry on the right swept his gaze toward the end of the corridor.

"Ever since they started searching for that treasure or whatever, the whole base has been wound tight."

"True enough. With defenses like ours, not even a fly could get in."

Nick curled his lip, his tone carrying the pride of an elite.

"I'd really like to see what kind of idiot would come here to die."

John did not respond.

His pupils contracted.

Had the corridor lights just dimmed?

A shadow flashed beneath the lights.

He was just about to warn his companion when his throat suddenly tightened.

He could not utter a single word.

An icy stab of pain came from the back of his neck and instantly spread through his entire body.

His body stiffened. His mind was still working, but his limbs had completely lost control.

He watched helplessly as his companion Nick crumpled to the floor.

That face still wore its contemptuous pride.

Nick's eyes rolled back, and he went silent.

What was happening?

Where was the enemy?

John's pupils contracted sharply.

He tried with all his strength to turn his eyes and see behind him.

A calm face appeared in his field of vision.

A completely unfamiliar Eastern face.

The man had appeared out of thin air, standing right in front of him.

"You..."

John's lips moved soundlessly as his consciousness sank into eternal darkness.

Lin Xuan withdrew his joined index and middle fingers.

Daoist acupoint technique—Meridian Severing, Soul Breaking.

He caught the two collapsing bodies, propped them against the corner wall, and arranged them into napping poses.

From his appearance to the end, no more than three seconds had passed.

There had not been a single unnecessary sound.

He was about to continue onward.

Then suddenly, he halted.

His gaze passed through the wall and locked onto a room deep in the corridor.

A thought flashed through his mind.

An image surfaced in his head.

Twenty seconds later, in the communications room, a soldier would pick up the red telephone and make a routine report to headquarters.

Once the call went through, without the preset passcode, the base would immediately enter maximum alert.

The infiltration would be over.

He could not let the soldier pick up the phone.

Lin Xuan left an afterimage where he stood.

He had already drifted toward the communications room.

Inside the communications room.

A soldier wearing headphones stared at the radar signals, looking rather bored.

The second hand on the wall clock ticked steadily toward twelve.

"Ah, another boring night."

The soldier yawned, stretched, and looked at the red telephone beside him.

Regulations required him to report to headquarters once every fifteen minutes.

Less than half a minute remained until the next report.

He picked up his coffee, planning to finish it before making the call.

Just as the cup reached his lips, he sensed a figure behind him.

The soldier stiffened.

As a veteran, he knew he had been targeted.

Without a second thought, he reached for the alarm beneath the desk.

His hand had barely risen a centimeter before it could no longer move.

At some point, a hand had settled on his shoulder.

That hand did not seem to exert much force, yet it pinned him firmly to his seat.

"Don't move."

A calm voice sounded beside his ear.

Every hair on the soldier's body stood on end. He turned his head with difficulty and saw a face he would never forget for the rest of his life.

"Y-you... who are you?"

he asked tremulously.

Lin Xuan did not answer.

His gaze passed over the soldier and fell upon the red telephone.

"It's time to report."

Lin Xuan spoke calmly.

The soldier's heart pounded wildly.

He thought the other man intended to force him into reporting false intelligence.

But in the next second, Lin Xuan's actions completely caught him off guard.

Lin Xuan extended his other hand. Instead of picking up the phone, he grabbed the entire bundle of cables connecting it to the wall.

The muscles in his arm bulged.

Riiip—

A piercing tearing sound rang out.

A composite cable thicker than a wrist, along with the metal connector embedded in the wall, was ripped straight out of the wall by Lin Xuan.

Sparks flew everywhere.

Electrical arcs crackled wildly.

The communications soldier stared in stunned disbelief.

Was that human strength?

Was this man a monster?

Yet this was only the beginning.

Lin Xuan tossed aside the severed cables and swept his gaze over the complex, blinking equipment in the room.

He did not bother figuring out which was the main server and which was the backup power supply.

He simply raised his foot and circled the room at an unbelievable speed.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Dull impacts rang out in rapid succession.

The casings of the large servers were kicked inward.

The radio console's control panel was punched through.

The battery pack of the backup power supply was crushed underfoot, bursting and spraying pungent acid.

In less than ten seconds.

This enormously expensive communications hub had become a pile of smoking scrap metal.

A physical shutdown.

That was true, absolute silence.

After finishing all that, Lin Xuan turned around.

He looked at the dumbstruck soldier and flicked a finger.

A gust of force struck the back of the soldier's neck.

Without even a grunt, the soldier collapsed unconscious.

At the same time.

The other departments in the command center noticed something was wrong.

"Outpost Three in Area A calling Command Center. Respond if you can hear me. Damn it, still no signal."

"Intelligence Department, contact Colonel Light immediately. Our regional network is down."

"What's going on? Why can't we reach the Communications Department? Even the internal lines are dead."

One abnormal report after another rang out from every corner of the command center.

But no one could offer an answer.

Because in that instant, all external and internal communications had been cut off.

The entire base had become an isolated island.

Panic began spreading through the hearts of these soldiers, who were usually so arrogant and untouchable.

The unknown was the most terrifying thing of all.

In the chaotic corridors, soldiers ran back and forth, shouting loudly.

No one noticed.

A figure was walking against the flow of people, unhurried and calm.

Lin Xuan's steps were composed.

The soldiers around him were too frantic with panic to notice this unfamiliar man who so clearly did not belong.

Just like that, he passed through the chaotic corridors and arrived at the top floor.

At the end of the corridor stood a pair of luxurious wooden double doors, tightly shut.

From inside came a woman's furious roar and the sound of porcelain shattering.

"Useless! Every last one of you is useless! The communications are down, and none of you even know why! What the hell am I keeping you pigs around for?"

Colonel Light was flying into a rage over the communications blackout.

The office door was pushed open by a hand.

Light spun around, about to curse out whichever blind fool had dared enter without knocking.

But her voice caught in her throat.

An unfamiliar man she had never seen before stood in the doorway.