In the Name of Divine Powers, Section 22

"The enemy has firearms. Shots fired, shots fired."

From the perimeter, Zhang Like watched the windows flash with gunfire. Together with the reports of successes coming over the channel, he could clearly see the special response team clearing out the enemy floor by floor.

The gunmen were probably ordinary people, utterly unable to stand against the special response team, whose members were all transcendents.

At present, the most widely inherited fate bone in the Federation was the earth attribute, one of the five elements. It could be traced back as far as the Qin dynasty.

Whether in modern times or ancient ones, the Petrified Body provided by the earth attribute offered a tremendous advantage.

The Petrified Body was like a suit of iron armor, rendering a person impervious to blades and bullets.

Modern body armor combined with petrification could withstand automatic rifle fire. With a shield in hand during an entry assault, one was nearly unstoppable.

In a gunfight, a single shot could often decide life or death, all the more so when the special response team's assault officers carried shotguns with large drum magazines. At close range, almost no one could stand against them.

Soon, the building to the right of the mahjong parlor had been cleared, while the one on the left was pinned down by Zhang Like's third squad, unable to raise their heads.

But no one dared relax in the slightest. The command center kept stressing the need for vigilance.

The enemy's transcendents had yet to appear.

At the command center.

The task force members were already in disarray. If Lin Zhiyan had not remained seated solemnly, issuing orders in an orderly manner, the whole situation would have fallen apart.

"I'm going to the front line."

Lin Zhiyan suddenly made up her mind. Her assistant nearly jumped out of his seat and tried to dissuade her. "Team Leader Lin, we still have the advantage. The special response team has wiped out most of the enemy. There's no need for you to take that risk."

Leaving Lin Zhiyan's status aside, as the commander, she should not have put herself in danger.

"No, the situation is very dangerous." Lin Zhiyan shook her head. "We've already suffered casualties, and the enemy's transcendent forces haven't even made a move. They must have another objective in arranging this. I'm not going to the front to keep fighting, but to cover the retreat of the personnel fighting there."

"But you can't put yourself in danger either. Your daughter..."

The assistant was halfway through his sentence when a cold gaze stopped him.

"If I die, it's no different from them dying."

In a tone that brooked no argument, Lin Zhiyan ordered, "Drive. We're going to the front line."

Flames spread through the building. The second squad's members jumped straight from the second floor. Even carrying dozens of kilograms of gear, they could still run swiftly, at worst with a limp.

At that moment, they were profoundly grateful for the physical abilities Life Development had given them.

Though they could not fly through the sky or burrow through the earth, ordinary people could not compare to them.

On the third floor of a building fifty meters behind the mahjong parlor.

Lao Gao and a brown-skinned Siamese man were watching the battlefield through a window.

Just then, the short Shan Yong ran in from outside, burn marks on his face. "That was fucking awesome!" he said excitedly. "One blast left those cops reeling. A few more and we can send them all sky-high."

He had just used his ability to burrow through the earth to observe from a secluded alley. It was the first time he had seen the police get beaten up so badly.

Lao Gao asked, "How many casualties did the cops take?"

"Judging by the numbers, four or five should be dead. Most of the rest are wounded, and there's one squad that's completely unharmed."

"What about our people?"

"Uh... more than half are dead."

As they exchanged questions and answers, the joy gradually faded from Shan Yong's face as he realized what had happened.

They had gathered dozens of gang members from the gangs in Cangwu City. Though they were all ordinary people, a well-laid ambush should at least have killed a few cops.

Yet in that first encounter, despite catching the police by surprise, they had only killed four or five. In return, the other special response squad that arrived had killed more than half of them.

"Not a bad result."

Lao Gao was not too surprised. How could a bunch of brawling thugs compare with the special response team?

If not for Asan beside him, those cops might not have suffered a single injury.

He turned to the Siamese man and asked, "How many more explosions can you make?"

The Siamese man's ability could produce an explosion, but its range was only a hundred meters, and its power was greatly reduced in open spaces.

"Three."

The Siamese man held up four fingers. Lao Gao folded one down for the illiterate man and said, "Wait for my signal. Use one to cover my approach, one when Yongzi brings you close enough to blast the crowd, and use the last one as you see fit."

"Yongzi, stay sharp. I'm going to make sure none of them get away."

"Fuck! We're going that far?"

Shan Yong said worriedly, "If we kill that many cops at once, we might bring even stronger transcendents after us."

"That's the mission." Lao Gao's tone grew heavier. "If we don't muddy the waters, the iron chain around the border will only tighten, and none of our brothers on the run will be able to slip through."

"Just like us these past few days. Every time we move, the cops can pinpoint our location more accurately."

Across the Federation, the authorities were hunting down the outlaws, dropping teams into local areas and then drawing on local forces to surround and wipe them out.

The cops could get supplies and support anytime, anywhere, while the outlaw heroes were on their own.

Just meeting the metabolic demands of Life Development already took everything they had.

If this continued, not a single one of them would escape.

He had come this time to kill. Only by throwing the border region into chaos and forcing the authorities to divert personnel for support would their brothers fleeing for their lives have a chance to catch their breath.

Lao Gao was the first to burst through the window, his figure disappearing into a dark alley like a ghost.

At the newsstand.

The members of the first and second squads had retreated to the third squad's position, where Zhang Like was. Everyone took a brief rest and waited for further instructions from the command center.

Boom!

An explosion erupted out of nowhere on the street in front of the mahjong parlor. Flames appeared from thin air, and a violent blast wave carrying smoke and searing heat slammed into the newsstand and the people behind cover.

"Cough... cough, cough..." Thick smoke instantly swallowed their field of vision. It choked them so badly they could not open their eyes, and their ears rang.

A figure approached rapidly through the smoke.

Lin Zhiyan's voice came over the channel. "Someone is approaching you from directly ahead."

The moment she finished speaking, the squad's machine gunner opened fire without hesitation, tongues of flame lashing wildly into the thick smoke. In the next instant, something strange happened.

Zhang Like finished changing magazines, his fingertip touching the trigger.

Sizzle!

The barrel of the rifle in his hands melted instantly, as though wrapped in an invisible furnace. Strangely, when the molten metal dripped onto his hand, he felt no heat at all.

"The barrel melted?!"

Cries of alarm rang out around him, and the machine gunner stopped firing too.

The figure had already closed in on the first special response team member. Seeing that he could not escape and had no weapon on him, the latter turned and lunged at him.

"You're asking for death!"

Lao Gao merely swung his hand, and the twisted iron blade in it cut the man in half at the waist.

Seeing this, the other special response team members nearby also lunged at him without hesitation. But deprived of their weapons and faced with a ruthless criminal whose Life Development was clearly more advanced than theirs, they had no advantage in either divine powers or physical abilities.

Even their Petrified Bodies could not stop his iron blade.

Pfft!

Two more men fell.

Lao Gao had just moved to kill the others when his vision suddenly distorted violently.

An invisible surge of mental force rushed into his head. The ground was no longer the ground, and the sky spun and turned upside down.

He could only rely on his hearing, swinging his blade wildly around him.

At that critical moment, another explosion erupted in the open area around the newsstand.

Chapter 27: One Shot to Decide Everything

This explosion was much weaker, enough at most to stun people unconscious.

The special response team and the border guards were blasted in all directions. Life Development kept them from dying, but they lost their ability to fight for the time being.

Lao Gao swung his blade where he stood, all five of his senses plunged into chaos.

The battle had reached a stalemate. The slightest change could tip the scales of victory to either side.

Deep in a dark alley.

Like a shadow merging into the ground, Shan Yong moved swiftly and stealthily, dragging the Siamese man Asan with him. The primary ability of his divine power was burrowing through the earth, and his personal trait was eavesdropping over a wide area through the vibrations of objects.

He picked up the violent explosion from the direction of the newsstand, the chaotic gunfire, and Lao Gao's shout.

"There's a mental-type transcendent! Yongzi, find them for me!"

Fuck, every mission they say they won't send me to the front line, and every time they make me take risks, Shan Yong cursed inwardly. He then dropped the Siamese man Asan in a corner and burrowed underground again, moving swiftly through the earth.

In his experience, mental abilities generally fell into three categories: mental attacks, mental detection, and mental control of objects.

Mental attacks were the most dangerous and had the shortest effective range. If there was a transcendent of that type, they had to be nearby.

Aside from the heart of the battlefield, there was no one in the surrounding buildings. Faint footsteps could be heard several hundred meters away.

Shan Yong moved swiftly through the ground and soon approached the corner at the end of the road. The other party seemed to have noticed him. The footsteps suddenly stopped, and he lost his "vision" as well.

But he had already memorized the location.

Lin Zhiyan stood at the street corner, looking coldly down at the ground. The concrete twisted before her eyes, and an ugly face emerged from the earth.

She did not move. The assistant who had been guarding Lin Zhiyan's side suddenly swelled, his formerly scrawny body transforming into a two-meter-tall giant, his muscles knotted like cast iron.

A fist the size of a casserole pot smashed down, frightening Shan Yong into diving back underground.

Boom!