Jiang Dongjun cautiously inspected the room. He found mechanisms that looked like Alarm Devices on the bases supporting all three mechs, so he did not immediately use his storage belt to secure them.
He did, however, collect plenty of things from the workbench and the piles around it: replaced mech components and newly manufactured ones that had yet to be calibrated, books about mechs, several engraving knives, mech design blueprints...
Thankfully, Delong had prepared a high-capacity storage belt for him. With only the half-cubic-meter storage device he had acquired two days ago, he could have done nothing but gaze at the ocean and sigh.
Jiang Dongjun left all the Thousand Refinement raw metal and the mech components that had merely been stamped into shape, without any Soul Guidance Arrays engraved on them, untouched.
Soon, after confirming that nothing else in the workshop held any value for him apart from the three mechs, Jiang Dongjun turned his gaze toward Li Fu in the cage and felt a headache coming on.
He had boasted earlier that he would rescue him, but he really had no good way to do it.
His Yin Spirit could not carry a living person through walls, and Li Fu was alive, so he could not be put into a storage device either.
"Luckily, this cage is set into a hollowed-out section of the wall. When I make a big commotion later, you won't have to worry about a huge falling rock crushing you to death. I'll go slaughter that bastard upstairs first, then come back and figure out what to do with you."
His Yin Spirit slipped through the wall and went to the restroom to retrieve the storage bracelet he had left in the ventilation opening.
Afterward, he floated up outside the window of an office on the building's fourth floor. Suppressing his presence as much as possible, he watched the pale, gaunt middle-aged man inside diligently drawing blueprints.
Delong!
He took out Horror. All five chambers were already loaded with bullets condensed using the full strength of his Spirit Sea Realm Spiritual Power.
Without aiming, he raised the gun and fired.
Bang!
No gunshot sounded in reality. This shot rang out on the level of the mind, carrying an effect that stunned the spirit.
The invisible bullet passed unhindered through the window screen and struck Delong in the head as he worked at his desk.
Instantly, Delong's gaunt body stiffened. His head felt as though it had been struck by a heavy hammer. Blood spurted from all seven orifices, and he collapsed onto the sandalwood desk, his consciousness reeling.
Clatter-
The field of Spiritual Power rotated the cylinder, stopping precisely at the chamber containing Fear.
Bang!
Without mercy, without pause, he fired again.
Delong had only just recovered a little awareness and forced himself upright to activate Martial Soul Possession and search for the source of the attack when his head lurched sideways again. Blood poured from all seven orifices.
Fear rose from the depths of his heart. The futures he dreaded most surfaced one after another, disrupting his thoughts until he could no longer think coherently.
"It's over! I've been exposed! The federal authorities have come to arrest me!"
At that moment, only that single thought remained in Delong's mind, and he believed it utterly.
Terrified and unsettled, with his mind wavering, he was even easier to invade through the breach.
Outside the window, a ghostly gleam flashed across the gemstone on the fox-eared top hat worn by Jiang Dongjun's Yin Spirit. It had clearly been activated by his formidable Spirit Sea Realm Spiritual Power.
-Illusion Imbuement!
Delong felt a chilling sensation envelop his entire body. The thick darkness outside the window dispersed, turning as bright as day, as though a dazzling "sun" had risen.
A blurred mechanical monster painted purple stood behind the "sun," seemingly embracing it, poised to strike.
"No! Why? Why are they going straight to leveling this place? No capture? No interrogation? Is someone trying to silence me?"
"I have to survive! My mech! I have to pilot my mech! I can break through the encirclement!"
Within the illusion.
The "sun" outside the window exploded. The window and walls shattered instantly, and the office became a sea of brilliant gold.
Whatever Delong thought while trapped in the illusion, his body in reality acted out.
Thinking he had to withstand the first wave of annihilation, he lit up the fourth of the four Soul Rings encircling him-one white, two yellow, and one purple. As that purple Thousand-Year Soul Ring shone, his body abruptly burst apart into dozens of palm-sized blood-shadow bats, which scattered toward the room's corners.
Survive!
The explosion would destroy the building's structure, but it couldn't destroy a mech's steel bones!
As long as he survived, re-formed in front of his mech, and entered the cockpit, everything would start turning around.
From Jiang Dongjun's perspective, however-
The fourth-floor office remained perfectly peaceful. Delong, his face covered in blood, suddenly roared like a madman. His fourth Soul Ring lit up, and his body abruptly burst into a swarm of blood-colored bats that scattered toward the office's corners.
Strange. How could any mental cultivator dislike playing with illusions?
This was what a mental cultivator's methods ought to look like: toying with the enemy like a clown, tricking him out of even his underwear.
"Heh, I knew it. You blood-playing types all have some kind of lifesaving trick like this. One little scare, and out comes the ace you kept buried at the bottom of the chest."
"Now, to fight you, I'll need this."
Jiang Dongjun pulled a shotgun from the storage bracelet, as though returning to where it had all begun.
It was not the one he had used to kill Li Qing. His father, Jiang Ming, also owned one of the same specifications: a Level Five Soul Tool equipped with the same assortment of ammunition.
After making a few minor modifications during the day, he had attached an external Level Five Milk Bottle to supply energy, using a switch to control the flow of Soul Power and triggering that switch mentally.
Boom!
Golden light blossomed at the muzzle, and the fired round punched through the window screen.
The specially treated iron pellets, each engraved with miniature Soul Guidance Arrays, scattered outward and ignited into golden flames in midair. Linking together, they formed a golden storm that ravaged the entire office, leaving no blind spots.
The golden flames roared, seeking to boil away every trace of evil.
Hiss! Hiss! Hiss-
Amid the raging golden flames, palm-sized blood-colored bats burned away without leaving even a trace of ash, like water evaporating dry.
In a sense, reality and illusion overlapped at that moment.
Delong could no longer tell them apart.
His agonized wails came from the swarm of blood-shadow bats. All he knew was that once their total number dropped below ninety percent, his death would come.
This attack left no blind spots and gave him no room to cling to life. Scattering had instead left each bat poorly defended, ensuring they would all be exterminated. He had to merge back together and withstand it head-on!
As soon as that thought arose, the surviving blood-shadow bats swiftly converged.
Outside the window, Jiang Dongjun raised Horror once more. The cylinder rotated and stopped at the chamber representing Wound, where a fresh bullet had already condensed.
Amid a large mass of burning blood-red light, Delong's desiccated-corpse-like figure appeared and fell from the air, golden flames covering his body.
Bang!
His head lurched sideways. This time, there was no blood left to flow from his seven orifices. His consciousness reeled, and he slammed heavily onto the floor.
Boom!
This time, the Level Five shotgun fired an ordinary shotgun shell. A pure storm of metal engulfed the spot where Delong had landed, instantly sending great sprays of wood splinters, stone chips, and shredded flesh flying.
Eject the shell, reload.
The Yin Spirit's field of Spiritual Power operated the Soul Guidance Shotgun as smoothly as drifting clouds and flowing water.
Boom! Boom!
Two more shots followed in rapid succession.
Jiang Dongjun did not begrudge ammunition that cost over ten thousand Gold Soul Coins per round. With an unceasing storm of metal, he invited Delong to experience how ground meat felt inside a meat grinder.
The Jiang Family had considerable wealth.
In a fight to the death, if I could bury my opponent under shells, why should I step into the arena and fight him with my life on the line?
Eject the shell again, reload.
Only when he sensed Light of Time and Space beginning its work, harvesting fortune and merit, did Jiang Dongjun stop pulling the trigger.
The Evil Soul Ancestor, Delong-dead!
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