A Magnificent Slaughter

By the beach, standing alone. Truth be told, Pang Jinghe really wanted to go over to Han Qingyu and the others to say hello and tell them it had been a long time. But he had no time for that right now—he needed to help them keep Alphonse suppressed. *Didn't expect such a massive battle right after arriving... Alphonse, damn you, who knows how much stronger you are than Qu Zongxing, or if I can even chop you down.* Pang Jinghe thought worriedly. A bit of nervousness was unavoidable, but the demeanor of an expert he had cultivated over the past year or so allowed him to maintain a calm posture. For more than a year, Old Pang had had no contact with the Sole Witness Legion in the Huaxia Front. The Council's administrative apparatus had finally chanced upon a super combat power with no ties to Chen Buer—and who didn't even seem to idolize Chen Buer—so they hid and guarded him like a precious treasure. Even the promised assignment to Squad 1777 was ultimately denied by high command. Only this time, after Super Pang received some unconfirmed news, did he repeatedly apply on his own initiative to come to the City of Iniquity, saying his friends might be here. They couldn't stop him. During this past year, Old Pang had cultivated the demeanor of a true master, a sense of responsibility, and the mysterious, posturing air of a super combatant... *Oho, does Old Dog Alphonse know about me?! He really didn't budge.* Pang Jinghe realized he seemed to have suppressed them. All by himself, he was keeping an entire fleet at bay, suppressing Alphonse. The dozen or so officers and soldiers he had brought along thought the exact same thing... Across the water, the fleet anchored in the distance. At the prow of the flagship, Alphonse still stood, eyes dark and somber. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, tightening and loosening repeatedly. He had been so close to avenging his descendants. And even more important than revenge, he could have obtained Han Qingyu's corpse—perhaps even him alive. Now he could only count on Theodore fighting his way out with the body... *That person is definitely a Yanxiu...* Yet Alphonse knew someone was waiting for him on shore. His more than one hundred and twenty years of life experience had allowed him to see, while sailing in earlier, that a large force and formidable experts were lying in ambush around the outer perimeter of the battlefield. There was only one answer: Shu You. The sole surviving soldier from that ship of the past was now his mortal enemy. And barring any surprises, he was also a Yanxiu... *To think I missed it back then.* *Why! Why wasn't I the one?!* *What fate didn't grant me, I can only seize myself. You can't blame me.* He craved that gift... Right now, Alphonse had the chance to obtain at least two Yanxiu corpses, yet he dared not disembark. He didn't know why Shu You's people had arrived so quickly, but he was certain Shu You was waiting for him to step off the ship... The lowly soldier of that year had now grown into someone terrifying. Perhaps Shu You was still slightly inferior to him, but that slight margin could not stop a peak super combatant willing to perish together. And Shu You would gladly drag him down to death. Ever since that day, when he had cowered in a corner, grinding his teeth to powder as he watched Alphonse's men seal the corpses of his brother, captain, and girlfriend into a life source energy extraction device. And this was his turf. *And who is that man? What is he doing standing there? A Huaxia super?!* Alphonse watched, slightly bewildered. Yet undoubtedly, Pang Jinghe standing so calmly alone on the beach reinforced his resolve never to set foot ashore. At the same time, Shu You was wondering the exact same thing: *Who is he? What is he doing? A Huaxia super?!* *If you want to deal with Alphonse, let him come ashore!* Frustration and urgency nearly brought Shu You to tears, but he could do nothing for the moment, let alone go out and drag the man back. He didn't care in the slightest about the fierce battle raging on the sands. *** *Boom!* Once again, Han Qingyu was blasted down from midair. In a four-on-one fight, they were still at a heavy disadvantage. "Every time, it's him." "Yeah." Every time, it was The King enduring the lethal strikes concealed within Theodore's storm-like offensive. By all appearances, his condition should have left him unable to stand long ago, yet time and again he rose, threw himself forward, and was blasted back. Had it been Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, or the Little Prince blocking those killing moves, they would have died. "Does he want to crater out a lake here? Haha!" The sand pit on the ground was indeed growing larger and larger. A richly dressed, middle-aged man pointed and joked, laughing loudly. "You should show respect to a warrior like that," said a somewhat youthful voice nearby. The one speaking up to reprimand the middle-aged man was one of three raggedly dressed teenagers. Quite a few children had come to watch the fireworks tonight, and much of their psychology and worldview was being reshaped by this desperate struggle. Especially these three—from a tall building beside the Third District, they had witnessed The King's initial performance that had shocked this city. Tonight, he was even more worthy of their worship than when he had seemed invincible. "Hey, where the hell did you come from, you little brat..." The middle-aged man instantly flared with anger, reaching out to grab the boy's collar. The teenager didn't dodge, staring stubbornly back at him. Around them, cold, menacing glares turned his way. "He's right," someone said. Many chimed in. The middle-aged man awkwardly pulled his hand back and shrank into the crowd. The minor episode caused no widespread stir, because right then, the eyes of many onlookers had already turned elsewhere. There, another performance unfolded—one that bewildered and shocked them even more than the clash between a super and four top-tiers. A gun?! The figure standing on the sand slope had a cigarette dangling from his lips; spectators caught the occasional glow of its tip. A black sniper rifle with cold, metallic lines was cradled in his hands. He had just told the thousand men opposite him: *You cannot move, because you are not permitted to.* A gun?! The people of this world hadn't feared guns for a very long time. Even when news spread of Azure's source energy firearms, people had panicked only briefly. Once they learned of the firearms' scarce numbers and limitations, they began to mock and dismiss them. It was much like when people heard an expert had emerged somewhere, and they would scoff: *Heh, an expert? Can he beat Shu You?* They strutted with arrogant logic like that, even though they themselves couldn't actually survive a single shot. "Fifth shot!" someone recalled carefully and counted out. "Why is there a fifth shot?!" More people were bewildered. Could the previous information have been wrong? Just then, opposite the three-hundred-man formation, someone finally spoke up. "Impossible! There's no way he can still—" The speaker was standing behind two men. *Bang!* The man in front collapsed. The second man darted left; the speaker hesitated for half a second before darting right. *Bang!* He died. The one who had narrowly survived just breathed a sigh of relief. *Bang!* ...Down he went. When Milla had taught Wen Jifei how to shoot, she had demanded that his bullets first weave precisely through the crowds of their own battle formation, then accurately strike the center of gravity of a moving Great Spike... ...In that instant, the entire area fell dead silent. Until: "Which shot was that?" "Lost count." "That gun... that guy..." "Remember? When those people arrived earlier, they called him Second Lieutenant Wen... I think I've heard of someone named Wen." "Never mind the car washing—I think I bought cigarettes from him." "Huh? Where?" "A convenience store in the Third District." *Wen Xiaoji? Second Lieutenant Wen?!* The proprietress of the grocery shop stood in the crowd, her mind blankly conjuring images of him helping behind the counter, utterly shameless and grinning cheekily, and the way he had smiled that day, saying: "Me? Sis, I'm an expert..." "Don't let someone who's talking stand behind you," Wen Jifei said, lifting his head as he addressed the opposing crowd. *Bang! Bang! Bang!* The very instant the words left his lips, he whipped around and fired three consecutive shots at Theodore. Turning back, *clack*, he locked the magazine into place. The sound wasn't loud, but strangely, it sent a shiver through everyone. "We may need to speed up," Wen Jifei said in a low voice from behind his scope. "Mm." Zhe Qiuhong nodded, clutching an empty magazine. The cartridge casings discharged by source energy lacked even a shred of warmth. At that moment, aided by Wen Jifei's three bullets... Han Qingyu finally managed to carve another cut across Theodore. Falling back on his shoulders, for once he wasn't in utter disarray, but moved with composed ease... His blood-smeared face looked somewhat ferocious, yet wore a triumphant grin. *** "If we don't kill them, we're all going to die! We have no—" In the Black Hand's ranks, there were naturally fearless men who did not dread death; that was only normal. *Bang... Bang!* The shouting man had spoken while moving at top speed. Down he went, the second shot's bullet catching his twisting trajectory. Yet his message had been delivered. Having come out this time, they could not return to the city. The fleet was right over there, and Boss Theodore still held an absolute advantage. *Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...* In an instant, source energy apparatuses roared furiously to life. From the front ranks near where that man had fallen, nearly thirty people surged forward together—some leaping into the air to shift trajectories, some ducking low as they charged, others sprinting straight ahead. *Bang!* The first man to leap had barely taken off, less than a meter off the ground, when he seemed frozen in place... Then a rain of blood erupted. In the next instant, his entire body was blasted backward, crashing back into the crowd. The image was startlingly clear. People began to feel the sudden, overwhelming sensation of power radiating from that rifle. *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* Anyone wielding a gun should have panicked in the face of such a charge, but Wen Jifei did not. He could not kill everyone at once, but shot after shot, with every crack of gunfire, whoever was in the very front inevitably fell. Rules that human nature could not defy began to take hold; the enemy's mass charge strangely began to slow. Rains of blood burst continuously. A trail of corpses lay scattered across the sand. *Here they come!* Black Tooth drew his blade, preparing to slash out— *Bang!* As this wave of assault reached its end, the closest man collapsed less than three meters in front of him. "...Watch out for the two top-tiers opposite us," Black Tooth warned tensely after a brief daze. *Clack!* Once more snapping a magazine into place under the incredulous gazes of the entire crowd, Wen Jifei lit another cigarette. As the tip flared red, he looked up. "I've sniped down supers before."