“Get in!”
Luo Yang didn’t waste words. As an external expert for the Yuanxing City Ability Bureau, he used the internal communication channel to forcibly commandeer a heavy tactical off-road vehicle parked at a duty station in the block next to the hotpot restaurant.
Chu Zimo dived into the passenger seat, his hands gripping the seatbelt tightly.
Yan Zhi obediently climbed into the back seat, clutching her half-finished bottle of cola, and watched the streetscape blur past the window with a calm expression.
The off-road vehicle’s V8 engine let out a roar like a prowling beast.
Luo Yang jerked the steering wheel, the heavy chassis letting out a shrill tire screech against the asphalt as he forced his way through the traffic on the main road, racing toward Southern New City.
The atmosphere inside the cabin was suffocatingly tense.
Chu Zimo’s chest heaved violently, his breathing heavy and erratic.
He had only just become a member of the Academy’s No. 1 Seed Team, standing on the threshold of a bright future.
Now, he had suddenly received news that his parents were in grave danger.
The feeling was no different from falling straight from heaven into hell.
Yujing Garden, the residential complex where his parents lived, had suddenly become the eye of the storm for the mutant beast rampage today.
“Don’t scare yourself. The Ability Bureau’s reinforcements will be there soon.”
Luo Yang kept his eyes on the road, his hands steady on the wheel. His voice was calm, without a hint of a tremor.
In the distance, the southern sky had already been stained a desperate gray-black by billowing columns of smoke.
As they drew closer, the air began to fill with the pungent smell of gunpowder, the acrid stench of burning rubber, and the nauseating, fishy odor of mutant beast fluids.
In less than twenty minutes, the off-road vehicle came to a screeching halt at the blockade line, three blocks away from the Yujing Garden complex.
The scene before them was like a living purgatory.
The once wide and clean intersection had been completely transformed into a chaotic ruin.
Hundreds of private cars were smashed together in a tangled mess, blocking all escape routes.
The blaring of car alarms, the desperate cries of the people, the screams of children, and the dull thuds of distant explosions—every sound hammered against Chu Zimo’s soul.
He was a Punisher, but one who had never truly seen blood, never witnessed such a scene with his own eyes.
Countless civilians were surging out from the depths of Southern New City, dragging their families along in a state of sheer terror.
A handful of blood-soaked police officers and low-level Punishers—only at the Awakening or Sublimation rank—were shouting at the top of their lungs, waving their equipment in a desperate attempt to maintain the last shred of order amidst the tide of panic.
Before the vehicle had even come to a full stop, Chu Zimo kicked the door open and sprinted into the crowd of refugees like a madman.
“Move! Everyone move!” He pushed forward against the flow of people, his eyes frantically scanning every terrified, distorted face, searching for two familiar countenances.
He grabbed a Punisher who was directing the evacuation, whose left arm hung limp at his side, and spoke with a voice so hoarse it nearly broke.
“Yujing Garden! Have the people inside Yujing Garden been evacuated?! Did you see a couple in their forties? The man usually wears a gray shirt, and the woman has a mole on her left eyebrow! Did you see them?!”
The low-level Punisher was startled by the madness in Chu Zimo’s eyes. He wiped a smudge of sweat and blood from his face and shook his head with a look of bitterness and despair.
“Brother, look around! There are people everywhere! The mutant beasts are advancing too fast. We didn't have enough people on the defensive line, and it’s been torn open in several places. We’re doing everything we can just to push people out!”
“In a mess like this, how could I possibly remember two specific people?!”
Those words were like a heavy hammer smashing into Chu Zimo’s chest.
He staggered back half a step, releasing the man’s collar, his face turning ashen.
He couldn't find them.
In this sea of tens of thousands of fleeing people, communication had been completely cut off due to magnetic interference and the destruction of infrastructure.
Trying to find two specific individuals was no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.
But Chu Zimo didn't break. Or rather, the moment his panic and despair reached their peak, they were forcibly replaced by a cold, violent rage.
The assassin who specialized in stealth finally bared his sharp fangs.
He snapped his head up, his eyes now filled with a chilling murderous intent as he stared at the Punisher.
“Tell me, where is the nearest front line?!”
The Punisher was intimidated by the aura radiating from Chu Zimo and instinctively pointed south.
“Two… two blocks away, at the Changhong Avenue intersection!”
“The brothers there used abandoned vehicles and building debris to set up a temporary defense line. They’re holding the main thoroughfare.”
“But don’t go there! There are at least a hundred Level 1 and Level 2 mutant beasts over there, and there might even be Level 3s wandering around. It’s a total meat grinder!”
Chu Zimo didn't even listen to the rest of the warning. The moment he had the location, his body blurred into a dark shadow as he sprinted toward the battlefield, heedless of the tide of people.
“Let’s go, A-Zhi.” Luo Yang stepped out of the off-road vehicle and hung Night Owl-Slash at his waist.
He didn't try to stop Chu Zimo. When a person’s family’s life is on the line, any rational persuasion is nonsense.
Yan Zhi walked obediently to his side and reached out with her slender, pale fingers to tug at the hem of his jacket, just as she always did.
A distance of two blocks was nothing more than a fleeting moment for a Punisher.
When Luo Yang led Yan Zhi through the smoke-filled streets to the Changhong Avenue intersection, a scent of blood so thick it felt tangible washed over them.
The battle was horrific.
A dozen or so Punishers bearing the insignia of the Ability Bureau were holding their ground behind overturned buses and piles of concrete debris, desperately guarding this vital passage to the safe zone behind them.
Before them was a tide of mutant beasts.
Level 2 bone lizards with pitch-black bone armor and mutated behemoths the size of heavy tanks were snarling and roaring, slamming into the swaying defense line again and again.
“Hold! Damn it, everyone hold the line! Reinforcements are coming! If this line breaks, the tens of thousands of civilians behind us are dead!”
A Clear Heart rank squad leader, clearly the one in charge, swung his warblade and shattered the skull of a beast trying to leap over the barricade. But in its death throes, the beast managed to tear a large chunk of flesh from his arm.
Severed limbs were scattered around the defense line—some belonging to beasts, others to Punishers.
These guardians, usually respected in Yuanxing City, were now being treated like tragic expendables, using their own bodies to fill the gaps in the line against the beasts' claws and fangs.
Just as a Level 2 mutant beast three meters tall was about to smash through a bus being used as cover, a cold voice like a whisper from the god of death rang out abruptly over the battlefield.
“Shadow Bind.”
Accompanied by Chu Zimo’s voice, which was thick with suppressed rage and anxiety, his battle finally erupted in full force on this bloody field.
With his landing point as the center, the light within a five-meter radius seemed to be swallowed by an invisible force in an instant.
Chu Zimo immediately entered a state of complete optical stealth. He was like a drop of ink merging into the night, vanishing entirely from everyone’s sight.
Even the mutant beasts' keen sense of smell and thermal perception were completely blocked by this eerie domain.
His feast of slaughter had begun.
Pfft!
A roaring Level 2 bone lizard suddenly had its hardened throat armor explode from the inside without warning.
A sharp dagger condensed from pure shadow lunged out from the shadow it cast on the ground, accurately crushing its throat.
Before the surrounding beasts could react, the shadows on the ground began to churn violently like boiling water.
Dozens of pitch-black chains erupted from the shadows in all directions, acting like indestructible steel pillars as they instantly skewered the bodies of seven or eight Level 1 beasts.
Chu Zimo didn't stop for a second, moving like an asura walking through the shadows.
Every time he appeared, it was accompanied by the dull sound of a cold blade slicing through flesh.
He made no defensive movements whatsoever, completely abandoning the coolness and patience expected of an assassin.
Chu Zimo had channeled all his extreme terror for his parents' safety and his overwhelming fury toward the monsters into the purest, most violent form of attack.
Blood sprayed, and beasts shrieked.
In less than a minute, Chu Zimo alone had cleared a vacuum zone with a ten-meter radius at the very front of the defense line.
The dozen or so Punishers behind the barricade were all dumbstruck.
They even forgot to breathe as they watched the young figure flickering through the shadows, harvesting the lives of the mutant beasts like he was cutting through grass.
Luo Yang stood behind a broken wall less than thirty meters from the defense line, watching Chu Zimo’s near-manic outburst. He didn't immediately draw his blade to join the fray.
Having just broken through to Clear Heart Level 3, the brilliant golden tree within his Sea of Consciousness was rotating slowly and steadily.
His mental power perception, which had a maximum coverage range of eight kilometers, spread out silently like an invisible web over this chaotic district.
Chu Zimo looked formidable right now, but this was a pure release of extreme emotion. It wouldn't be long before his blood energy ran dry.
Luo Yang stayed there to observe the situation so he could step in to back Chu Zimo up at any moment.
But as his mental power swept across the right flank of the defense line—a dark area composed of several unfinished buildings and an abandoned commercial street—his brow suddenly furrowed.
Luo Yang stopped his intended step forward and reached out with his left hand, gently blocking Yan Zhi from following.
“Don’t move.”
Luo Yang’s voice was very low.
In that direction, he sensed many presences. But those presences were definitely not mindless mutant beasts that only knew slaughter and destruction.
It was a type of energy fluctuation that was extremely restrained, cold, and even followed a certain disciplined formation.
They were like venomous snakes hiding in the dark, making no sound and even deliberately suppressing their killing intent.
They were currently using the chaos of the main battlefield to quietly flank the weak point on the right of the Punisher defense line.
That nauseating lingering energy, which felt as if it could distort the physical rules of the surroundings, caused a term to instantly pop into Luo Yang’s mind.
Heterosequence.
And it wasn't just one; it was a group.
Furthermore, in the center of this group of Heterosequences, there was an extremely dangerous energy source that caused even Luo Yang’s vast mental power to feel a slight sting.
“Interesting...”
The corners of Luo Yang’s mouth slowly curled into a cold smile, and his right hand lightly rested on the hilt of Night Owl-Slash.
“It seems tonight isn't just a simple mutant beast riot.”
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