A Narrow Road Brings Foes Together

Maiweia Club, 16th floor.

Ji Huaishu smashed the head of a bear-shaped beast with her light hammer, then kicked the headless corpse aside. The body twitched a few times before turning into a shriveled, desiccated human shape. Such malformed corpses lay piled all along behind her. Every one of them was a fugitive burdened with blood debts; even the most merciful judge would have sentenced them to death without hesitation.

She could name every one of them and tell where they came from, because she had once dug three feet into the ground and still failed to find these fish that had slipped through the net. Maiweia had sheltered these thugs, placing them on the upper floors as enforcers ready to be called upon at any time. Now, punishment had finally come. It was a little late, which was why Ji Huaishu showed them no mercy.

"Girl, aren't you going to leave anyone alive?!" Jie An was nearly losing his mind on the other end of the communication crystal. "If you kill them all, how are we supposed to find the children?"

"We'll use elimination," Ji Huaishu said.

She raised her light hammer and casually struck. The door at her side, together with the wall, shattered at once. The enforcer waiting behind it to launch an ambush was knocked to the ground by the utterly unexpected blow. He struggled to rise, only to see a flash of golden light. Maintaining that stance, Ji Huaishu began to run. Empowered by overwhelming strength, her light hammer plowed through walls like a bulldozer, pulverizing doors and dismantling the entire floor in the most violent way possible.

She truly had no idea how to find where the children were hidden, nor did she intend to waste time forcing information out of anyone. When searching for something in an emergency, elimination was the way to go. As long as she smashed open every door, that would do!

Guests greedy for flesh, enforcers lying in wait, scattered Relics. All manner of things hidden behind the walls flashed through Ji Huaishu's eyes as she focused, refusing to overlook any suspicious clue in her surroundings. At every fork, she turned toward the direction she had not yet smashed through. Armory, empty rooms, unknown beasts... piles of Relics whose purpose she could not discern, strange ritual arrays, children in cages...!

Ji Huaishu came to an abrupt stop and whipped her head around. It was a large room like a storage chamber, its floor covered in iron cages used for holding animals. Thinly clad girls were locked inside them, their hands and feet bound and their mouths sealed with tape. Each of them trembled like a chick.

Ji Huaishu dismissed the light hammer and revealed her shadow blade. Within a few breaths, she had severed the iron cages and cut through the ropes. Her swordsmanship was actually quite good, but her usual fighting style was too brutal for her to have much chance to display it. She tore off the tape over the girls' mouths and forced out the gentlest smile she could. "Don't be afraid. You're safe now."

Seeing this blood-soaked killing god enter with a blade in hand, the girls were instantly terrified and retreated again and again. "Don't come closer! Don't come any closer!!"

Ji Huaishu sighed, then barked with a fierce expression, "Shut your mouths and follow me!"

The room fell silent. The girls gathered at the door faster than the next, terrified that any lack of cooperation would turn them into ghosts beneath this murderous fiend's blade. Recalling the layout of the floor, Ji Huaishu took out her communication crystal. "Set up a ladder. Rescue operation on the west side of the sixteenth floor."

"On our way!" Jie An replied from the police car.

Below the high-rise, bullets crisscrossed the air, while the cries of men and women mingled with police sirens and gunfire. As the two inspectors broke into the enemy ranks, the clearing operation outside began simultaneously. Jie An personally led the convoy in, launching a multi-pronged siege against the Maiweia Family. Team members in white combat uniforms charged into the building through a hail of bullets, precisely taking down the gray-clad enforcers with Water Bullets.

On the club's first floor, the lobby manager directing the enforcers was drenched in cold sweat. He discovered that these people's equipment was terrifyingly sophisticated. They looked like they wore the same old white combat uniforms, yet even the Black Workshop's brass bullets could not penetrate them. Worse still, the enemy had clearly come prepared. Every key observation point on the outer defensive line had been removed within half a minute of the battle beginning. He had no idea how many people the City Lord's Manor had sent, nor even how many vehicles were outside the city.

Watching the specially equipped police vehicle at the side of the building raise its ladder, the lobby manager felt dizzy. He clutched his communicator and frantically pleaded for help. "Young Master! Patriarch! We're about to be overrun!!"

But there was only static in the communicator. Chu Hengkong's decapitation operation, coupled with Kaning's move of pulling the firewood from beneath the cauldron, threw the club's upper ranks into chaos. The enforcers, having lost command, could not stand against the Resurrection Corps at all. When the lobby manager looked up, he found that even the enforcers guarding him had been knocked unconscious by Water Bullets, while a masked team member pressed a gun barrel against his head.

"How could this be?" the lobby manager said in disbelief.

"Guess how often we drill?" Lü Xing gritted out. "Guess how many people want to blow your heads apart?"

He swung the gun stock and smashed the lackey unconscious with a single blow, then directed the team members into the next stage of the operation. "All squads, evacuate civilians in an orderly manner. Take care not to injure anyone by mistake."

Most of the catgirls followed the team members' instructions and evacuated. A small number of women showed extreme resistance. They had grown used to life inside the club and could not imagine how they would survive after leaving it. Pitiful and tragic.

Lü Xing sighed soundlessly, feeling that this too was a sin created by the club. At that moment, his communicator flashed red. He had only just assigned the squads their tasks when a new order came through. He listened carefully.

"Lü, take a few people to the sixteenth floor as well, just in case," Jie An instructed.

"Understood." Lü Xing gestured to his colleagues. "Squads Three and Four, with me! Take the stairs up!"

By then, the aerial ladder had barely reached the breach smashed open on the sixteenth floor. Jie An took out several specially made Flow Pearls and stuffed them into a special opening in the vehicle. He turned the water valve inside the car, and the sound of circulating water rose from within the ladder. Blue water filled the gaps in the ladder, while arched protective barriers formed on either side, turning the aerial ladder into a slide-like waterway.

This made the rescue far more secure. Holding the crystal, he notified Ji Huaishu to begin, hoping they were not too late.

"It's ready, it's ready! Line up and go down one at a time! You won't fall to your deaths!" Ji Huaishu shouted.

She had chosen a banquet hall on the west side as the rescue point. It was spacious enough to hold all the children, and more importantly, it was by the windows for easy evacuation. She directed the girls down the ladder one by one, but most of them were too scared to move. Ji Huaishu was frantic inside but could not rush them. This was the sixteenth floor of a high-rise, after all. Forget children—even adults could not simply close their eyes and jump.

One girl with twin ponytails had been born bold. Gathering her courage, she stepped forward. But after only two steps, Ji Huaishu yanked her back. The banquet hall ceiling exploded apart with a thunderous crash, and a massive, burly shadow dropped down from the floor above, blocking the escape route like a small mountain.

The little girls cried out in terror. They all recognized the burly man. Maiweia clenched a gigantic fist as hard as rock, his voice reverberating through the room like the tolling of a bell.

"Ji Qiufeng's adopted daughter, where do you think you're taking my daughters?"

"Back to their real home," Ji Huaishu said.

She set up a light shield to protect the children behind her, then slashed diagonally at Maiweia with her shadow blade. Maiweia countered with a giant fist swollen several times larger. The massive panes of glass in the banquet hall shattered instantly under the shockwave, and in the scattered fragments, the killing intent in both their eyes was reflected.

They began to fight, like a knight battling a demon.

One floor below, Chu Hengkong extended his tentacles and thoroughly killed Carmel, the second daughter. His gaze shifted to Visaf, grievously wounded in the distance. The hideous Fallen let out a miserable howl and rolled away in utter misery toward the doorless stairwell.

He knew that begging and resisting were both useless. This man called an "inspector" was, at his core, a killer through and through. Such a person would not waste time forcing information out of anyone. He only killed, slaughtering everyone he deemed a mortal enemy. Visaf did not even dare turn back to see what was happening. He only prayed that he could move faster than the wounded Chu Hengkong. Yet the instant that thought arose, he heard the wind. Chu Hengkong flashed behind him like a ghostly shadow, his white blade already thrusting toward the corrupted heart.

The blade struck cold steel. Another longsword had appeared midway, blocking Chu Hengkong's blade!

"Master Yan!" Visaf cried like a helpless child.

It was a blade as rough as stone, wielded by a man in a suit whose face, hidden behind sunglasses, revealed no expression. He had narrowly saved the dying Visaf, having climbed up from that pitch-black stairwell.

With a twist of his wrist, Chu Hengkong slid his blade down along his opponent's sword, changed moves, and slashed at Visaf on the ground again. The man in sunglasses merely gave his wrist a slight shake, and an irresistible force surged from his blade, forcibly knocking away Chu Hengkong's white sword. Chu Hengkong launched a killing move with a thrusting kick, but the man in sunglasses bent his knees, lowered his body, and sheathed his sword, actually intercepting the kick with the hilt.

With a flick of his finger, he pushed the sword guard and drew a dazzling arc of blade light with an iaijutsu strike. Yet the target of that strike was Visaf between them. The slash cut off only a small portion of Visaf's flesh, and the corrupted heart—the core of the Fallen—happened to be within that piece of flesh.

The man in sunglasses caught Chu Hengkong's slash with a backhand guard, then knocked the corrupted heart into the stairwell with a tap of his heel. This brazen rescue came at a price. He had no choice but to take the tentacle's lash across his side, yet his stance did not shift in the slightest, as steady as an old tree rooted in the earth.

Chu Hengkong pulled back and switched to a two-handed grip. Their exchange, swift as lightning and sparks from flint, had been enough to prove this man's strength. He did not know where this opponent had come from, but he was not someone who could be easily defeated.

The man in sunglasses raised his blade level over his head in a high guard. His posture was precise, upright, and calm, like an instructor in a swordsmanship dojo.

"Steel Edge Style, Du Muyan," he said. "Please enlighten me."