All of a sudden, chaos seemed to engulf the world.
The world falling into chaos had nothing to do with Ji Jue, but when the chaos landed right on his doorstep, it became a matter of life and death.
Inside the entire villa, only one person truly wielded the final say now: Ji Jue.
Whether in security procedures or personnel deployment, he held absolute authority. Even Uncle Lin had no intention of interfering, subtly showing his support instead.
To begin with, Chen Yubo didn't care in the slightest. Though devoid of ambition and hopelessly indecisive, the young master’s greatest virtue was knowing his own limitations, and he placed unhesitating, unconditional trust in Ji Jue.
Whatever Brother Ji said went, and no hecklers were allowed to chime in.
As for Blondie and A-Yi, the two gang veterans—one from the White Stag and one from the Mirror—their harrowing experience weeding out the mole had left them utterly awed by the capabilities Ji Jue displayed. Neither dared harbor the slightest resentment. Besides, Ji Jue’s sole demand of them was to stay glued to Chen Yubo's side twenty-four hours a day without taking a step away. That was their job to begin with.
There was no need to even mention Xiao An; whatever Brother Ji Jue said was law.
As for Old Tom, the roving knight-errant who was typically wild, untamed, and full of his own ideas... though he had initially wanted to vie for command, the moment he realized Ji Jue held the authority over the mission's performance evaluation, he was ready to drop to his knees and call him godfather on the spot.
Especially after watching with his own eyes as Ji Jue planted hundreds of landmines right in front of him—in the courtyard, the bushes, the hallways, the floorboards, and even under the sofas...
Over eighty kilograms of phlogiston explosives lay buried beneath their backsides. Eating, sleeping—they were sitting on a powder keg every second of the day, all primed to detonate at a single thought from Ji Jue.
His primary strategy was simple: mutual destruction.
*Damn it, isn't this overkill? Where the hell did this lunatic come from, operating on the logic that 'if I blow up my client first, the enemy can't hurt the target'?*
*Since when did the craftsmen of the Embers become this unhinged?*
And now, the moment Old Tom received the alarm, he hoisted the client with lightning speed, kicked him and A-Yi into the solid-steel safe room, locked the blast door, and immediately heard the violent, continuous roar that seemed intent on launching the entire villa into the stratosphere.
When the first unlucky attacker charged out of the portal and carelessly stepped onto the flowerbed, a crisp click sounded. One, two, three, four, five, six... more than eight daisy-chained landmines detonated in an instant.
Flames shot skyward.
Deafening booms erupted in rapid succession. A mutilated corpse spun up into the sky, shredded into countless fragments, before raining down as a shower of gore that drenched the rest of the charging intruders from head to toe.
"Fuck! There's shit in this!"
One of the men wiped his face, gagging at the foul stench as he felt the sticky mess. Instinctively, he stepped back several paces—and then heard an ominous click.
Immediately after, hidden mines across the entire courtyard lawn detonated in a rolling cascade of concussive blasts.
Yet the expanding shockwaves and blazing inferno suddenly froze in midair.
Right before the old man leading the pack.
At this moment, Lei Yaoxing’s most trusted right-hand man and strategist, a veteran Celestial Chosen steeped in the path of Entropy for decades—Jin Wujiu—slowly spread his arms. The sweeping flames and blast waves surged in reverse.
Under the shroud of his magnificent spiritus fluctuations, thunder abruptly tore across the heavens. Bolt after bolt of lightning crashed down like plows raking across the firmament, sweeping back and forth. In the span of a breath, every single landmine in the courtyard was forcibly triggered. Amidst the deafening roars, waves of fire and lightning cascaded toward the villa mere paces away.
Beneath the villa's exterior, the fragile spiritus circuits surfaced for only an instant before shattering completely. Amid the rumbling collapse, the side wing was reduced to rubble, and the facade of the main building peeled away and crumbled, sending clouds of dust billowing into the air.
"There really is something fishy!"
Inside Jin Wujiu's pupil-less eye sockets, a pale glare blazed. Through energy perception, he had easily seen right through the villa's defenses.
He let out a cold sneer. "Chen Xingzhou prepared quite a few guards for his precious little brother... Don't waste time. Kill them all. We still have a long itinerary ahead."
Behind him, figures filed out one after another from a shrinking, fading gateway.
Climbing over the rubble, they charged into the darkened villa.
Gunfire roared; detonations boomed without pause.
***
"Trouble. This is massive trouble."
In the darkness of the garage where the lights had been cut, Ji Jue looked down at his phone screen. Feeds from hidden infrared cameras in various locations flickered and shifted constantly.
Combined with Gloria’s transcendent vision in her hummingbird form, every development was reflected clearly in his eyes.
Precisely because of this, a headache throbbed behind his temples.
He clicked his tongue in disbelief.
*What kind of mad fit is Lei Yaoxing throwing? Moving against Chen Xingzhou out of nowhere? If you want to kill Chen Xingzhou, go kill him—why fixate on Chen Yubo?*
*No, if they've already moved against Chen Yubo, there's no telling whether Chen Xingzhou is dead or alive right now.*
Uncle Lin still hadn't replied.
All external communication was completely severed.
Not only had they jammed communications, but after learning through informants about the mountain's surveillance and defenses, the enemy had spared no expense to hire a Celestial Chosen of the Eternal Gate!
Among the Celestial Chosen of the Twelve Virtues, those of the Eternal Gate were by far the rarest. They were nearly one in ten thousand, rarer than the black-and-white bears of Shuzhou.
Every Celestial Chosen capable of touching the Eternal Gate automatically became a member of the Star Core Association, landing an iron rice bowl that guaranteed a lifetime of lavish luxury without ever needing to take outside contracts.
To get them to open a single gate generally cost millions or tens of millions, billed by the minute. For them to intervene directly in the internal strife of the Wild Gathering was something money alone could hardly buy... On top of that, over forty people had already poured through the gate, and Gloria's observations indicated that at least twelve possessed the vigorous spiritus of Celestial Chosen...
At this moment, Ji Jue could only count his blessings that Xiao Jiu had sounded an early warning, and that the interior of the villa was cloaked in mist.
Otherwise, had the enemy teleported right onto their faces without any preparation, what would there have been left to fight? They might as well have surrendered on the spot.
Old Tom had indeed moved fast.
Chen Yubo was already secured inside the safe room, still not forgetting to clutch his two damn cats even at a time like this. Beside him, A-Yi had already activated the pre-installed crystal prisms.
Light refracted, angles shifted, and the massive metal safe room vanished without a trace amidst subtle optical distortion.
It wasn't just visual concealment. Once A-Yi’s matrix took effect, the safe room's presence dwindled toward absolute zero, blending seamlessly into the villa as a whole.
Unfortunately, A-Yi’s rank was simply too low. He couldn't even match Ji Jue, standing at merely Tier 1. Even if he strained with all his might, he could only maintain it for about a quarter of an hour.
"A quarter of an hour, huh?"
Ji Jue murmured softly.
Fifteen minutes could sometimes be far too brief, yet at other times, excruciatingly long. It was too short to finish scrolling through short videos on the toilet, yet long enough to fight an entire battle and see hundreds or thousands of people perish.
On his monitor, the feeds winked out one after another. Every exposed camera had been obliterated by sweeping bursts of gunfire.
The enemy moved with frightening speed, as if they had mapped out the villa's internal layout in advance.
*Chances are, they got their hands on the blueprints back when they were staking the place out.*
Right before his thoughts could wander further, what he heard first were footsteps.
A sound transmitted through his Bluetooth earpiece.
That position...
Ji Jue's hair stood on end in an instant—*right above him!*
The ceiling trembled, roared, and cracked open.
A burly figure covered in tattoos plummeted from above!
Clad in heavy armor etched with intricate spiritus circuits, the intruder's eyes burned with familiar blood-fire, drawing an involuntary curse from Ji Jue's lips.
*The Swarm!*
*Why the hell is it always the Swarm?!*
"Why do you bastards turn up everywhere?!"
He didn't dare test his speed against the man. Gripping a sports car parked in the garage, Ji Jue triggered it to surge forward in an instant, dragging him backward along with it to widen the distance.
"Heh—"
A cold chuckle echoed from where the man landed. The Swarm Celestial Chosen's gaze locked onto Ji Jue.
The Swarm was the shadow of war.
Wherever the flames of battle burned, that shadow followed.
"Ji Jue?"
The tattooed warrior locked onto his position and recognized his face, letting out a sigh that sounded almost like pity. "What a shame. Only four point one million—"
*Still, it'll do!*
Drawing two broad-backed sabers from behind his shoulders, he pounced toward Ji Jue!
In his charge, the distance shrank in an instant.
Then he saw what Ji Jue pulled from the driver's seat through the car window... a short-barreled submachine gun, fully loaded with the safety already off.
Aim, lock on, and pull the trigger!
In under three seconds, a torrent of metal poured forth. Every round was zeroed in on the enemy's face, yet every round... struck empty air!
The moment Ji Jue pulled the trigger, the Swarm Celestial Chosen aborted his forward dive. The blood-fire enveloping his body shifted, and he dodged sideways without warning. The bullets chased after him, yet every single one merely grazed past, making Ji Jue's vision go black with frustration.
*Anticipate the Enemy?*
*It's fucking Anticipate the Enemy again?!*
*Can you Swarm bastards even play the game without this blessing?!*
Yet just as no Embers Celestial Chosen would ever overlook Masterwork Nature, every Swarm Celestial Chosen held Anticipate the Enemy in their hearts as their ultimate dream.
Precognition, sensory perception, reflex enhancement, evasion, and assault—such a potent blessing was enough to elevate any fighter's combat prowess to an entirely new realm.
And possessing a mid-tier blessing like Anticipate the Enemy proved that this opponent was at least Tier 4—a bona fide Metamorphosis rank!
Now, having casually dodged the submachine gun barrage, the man accelerated once more mid-stride!
The surge of spiritus across his body grew increasingly fierce and shrill, erupting without limit to comprehensively augment his defense, speed, attack, and even his reaction time.
Yet another standard blessing for brute-force slaughterers—[Raging Flame Tide]!
*Boom!*
Two headlights flared from inches away as a dormant cargo truck roared to life, hurtling forward to ram the assailant. But before it could hit, the Swarm Celestial Chosen's eyes snapped sideways.
Blood-fire erupted along his dual blades, condensing tightly over the edges as his aura skyrocketed!
Ji Jue’s heart sank again.
The ability to enhance weapon lethality using spiritus and killing intent...
This was [Battle-Tempered Edge]!
In a split second, the vehicle was sheared in two straight down the middle. But immediately after, sharp beeping chimed from inside the truck bed. The final red indicator on the plastic explosives flared to life, unleashing a torrent of flame and a sweeping shockwave.
The blood-fire shot out like a meteor, evading the blast.
A violent cough followed.
"You Embers pests are fucking annoying!"
The Swarm warrior ground his teeth savagely, his beard and hair singed, scorch marks marring his battered face. Half of his iron armor glowed red-hot, yet he had suffered only minor injuries.
Ji Jue had already seized that critical window, yanking open a security door and sprinting into the stairwell to flee upstairs.
Unfortunately, it was futile.
Before the security door could even swing shut, the pursuing enemy burst through the opening. Only then did he see...
Ji Jue standing at the landing of the stairs, panting heavily.
He had given up on running.
Almost as if... resigned to his fate.
Yet in that fleeting moment of bewilderment, the bearded Swarm warrior's pupils abruptly constricted. *No, something's wrong!*
Because from the blind spot behind the closing security door, iron fragments shrieked toward him like a downpour.
*Xiao An!*
Within the cramped stairwell, the Swarm warrior's eyes widened. He unleashed a furious roar, reversing his blade to block behind his back, guarding the vitals of his neck.
A harsh, screeching clatter of clashing steel rang incessantly.
Before he could hurl the other saber at the ambusher, he saw the weapon Ji Jue had raised. If one had to describe it, it resembled a revolver, but it looked bizarre and crude.
It seemed like a knockoff machined right off a lathe—blocky, angular, completely devoid of chamfering, with thick silvery-white weld lines still visible on the frame.
The cylinder was starkly octagonal without a curve in sight, and its caliber reached an astonishing 17 mm, rivaling that of an anti-materiel sniper rifle!
Now, that knockoff revolver, milled from more than five jin of solid alloy, was raised. One hand wasn't enough to steady it; Ji Jue pressed his other hand firmly against the barrel.
It aimed straight at the warrior's face.
Ji Jue couldn't hold back his grin.
*You finally stepped within five paces of me, didn't you?*
It was too close. They were practically face-to-face. For a Swarm Celestial Chosen, Ji Jue's neck was already under the blade.
At this distance...
Not even a White Stag could dodge!
What echoed through the corridor was a deafening roar. Bursting from the muzzle flash was an alloy armor-piercing slug used by anti-materiel rifles!
It was worth mentioning that because depleted uranium was hard to come by and high-density tungsten alloy was difficult to machine, Ji Jue had no choice for the penetrator core but to use the payment Uncle Lin had previously provided... pure gold!
Under the violent impact, a jet of superheated molten gold deflected the saber shielding the enemy's chest, blasting a deep notch into the blade.
A second round followed immediately behind, slamming into the breastplate. Spiritus circuits flared to resist the force, but under the jet's penetrating impact, the breastplate cracked, caved in, and sprayed blood.
The Swarm warrior was thrown backward.
*Wounded!*
Ji Jue held his breath. Ignoring the violent recoil rattling his hands, he issued the command once more: [Fire]!
In that final instant, what left the barrel was a gift forged from craftsman Ji Jue’s poured-out hopes for love and peace...
The fragile quicksilver bullet could not endure high heat or long distances, but it slipped deftly through the gap left by the armor-piercing round, sinking deep into the flesh.
Silent. Detonation.
The Swarm warrior crashed to the floor, unable to rise again. What tore from his throat was a horrifying wail of agony, shrieking, and weeping that resounded throughout the entire villa!
It was as if he had been turned into firewood soaked in gasoline and ignited.
Uncontrollable blood-fire erupted from within his body, stripping away his life.
The first thing to spiral out of control was his spiritus, unable to withstand the malicious corrupting venom leaking from the bullet. Next came his blessings, collapsing into chaos and failing to respond to their master's will. Finally, his matrix crumbled, because under the torment and agony, his life force swelled and mutated beyond restraint!
Fleshy tumors erupted across the Swarm warrior's body. Bones grew frantically into sharp spikes, puncturing outward through his armor. Razor-sharp scales surfaced on his face before sloughing off to expose rotting flesh. His skull deformed, sprouting curved horns that twisted, snapped, and fell away.
Convulsing, spasming, squirming.
Despair, and finally...
Death.
Before the man could undergo complete corruption, Ji Jue pulled the trigger one last time.
An armor-piercing round blew his head apart.
Four bullets: two to breach the armor, one to erode and induce corruption, and the last to claim his life.
Destruction was truly that simple.
"Brother Ji Jue, what happened to him?"
Xiao An landed behind him in shock, taking two cautious steps back, thoroughly spooked.
"No idea. Probably sudden corruption. That's how it is with the Swarm—killing and burning every day. When you do too many wicked deeds, retribution comes knocking, doesn't it?"
Moving briskly, Ji Jue pulled a container from his waist pouch, poured quicksilver over the Swarm warrior's corpse, and promptly sealed it with a spiritus circuit so he could recycle it later once the raid was over.
*Look at that—the more bullets I fire, the more I get!*
Granted, using corrupted items without approval was a crime, and using the corpse of a Celestial Chosen to cultivate corruptive venom was strictly taboo...
*But as long as no one finds out, where's the harm?*
*I just picked this up off the ground!*
Neither master nor disciple at the Tide Sound Workshop gave a damn about the Ring of Taiyi's scrap-paper regulations.
Besides, if they actually followed those rules, every living master would have to be lined up and shot—twice on average. As for grandmasters... they were so impressive they'd need to be executed by firing squad for at least half an hour straight.
"Remember to keep this a secret for me," Ji Jue said.
"Okay."
Xiao An nodded in agreement, without hesitation, just like always.
He listened to the tremors and booms echoing throughout the villa, then cast a final glance upward. "It's a mess up there. Someone's coming."
"It's fine. Don't worry."
Ji Jue looked down at his phone, watching the feed from a hidden camera. A squad of masked raiders wearing night-vision goggles and brandishing an assortment of firearms moved in a low crouch through the villa's intricate corridors. They executed tactical maneuvers with practiced precision, pushing open door after door to clear each room thoroughly.
Silent and synchronized, they communicated with only a few sparse hand gestures, operating as a single unit.
Neither booby traps rigged to door handles nor minute irregularities escaped their notice. They advanced smoothly and steadily, spraying any anomaly into a sieve.
*Where the hell did an entire special-ops team come from?*
*Isn't your veterans' club taking this mercenary side hustle a bit too far?*
"Are they acquaintances?"
Ji Jue sighed. His voice, tinged with a Yacheng accent, sounded through the pre-installed speakers in the corridor ceiling: "If there are friends from No. 9 Wanpo Road among you, please back off. Let's not make things too unpleas—"
Gunfire erupted like a sudden storm. The moment the voice spoke, several members of the strike team looked up and pulled their triggers without hesitation, while the others aimed in different directions, standing guard with strict discipline.
Not a flicker of hesitation or doubt.
*Good, probably not locals.*
Ji Jue nodded. At least he didn't need to worry about accidentally killing someone he knew.
With that, his finger tapped on the person leading the squad on the screen, and his cold words echoed through the hallway:
"First one, then—"
*Bang!*
Amidst a tremendous roar, a gaping hole tore through the suspended ceiling without warning. The lead pointman's head exploded violently, spraying blood as he fell backward.
The mangled corpse spasmed on the floor, smearing crimson across the floor like a final stroke of graffiti.
In an instant, the others fell back rapidly, their bullets spraying skyward like a torrential downpour, shredding the plaster ceiling into dust. Unfortunately, it was completely useless.
Ji Jue pressed his finger down. "Second."
*Boom!*
Above the exposed framing, another small fracture appeared. An instant later, the head of the man at the rear of the squad burst apart, painting a gruesome streak across the wall.
Then came—
"Third."
Accompanied by the icy proclamation, death and destruction descended from above. The squad leader at the center of the formation was blasted upward, leaving his lower half behind.
The ballistic shield shattered, and his body armor proved as frail as paper, cut clean in two at the waist!
"Sniper!"
Someone finally couldn't hold back their terror and dread, screaming out—though it was utterly pointless.
Everyone knew there was a sniper, but where the fuck was he?!
Outside the window, the night remained pitch-black, illuminated only by intermittent flashes of lightning and fire. There was no trace of an attacker, and even the windowpanes remained intact.
It was as if the bullets were raining inexplicably from the sky...?!
*Wait, from above?*
When one of them looked up blankly at the bullet-riddled ceiling, he heard the declaration of death: "Fourth."
*Crash!*
Amidst a violent boom, another small aperture appeared in the ceiling. The complex, electronically controlled mechanism anchored to the second floor's concrete slab adjusted its angle once more. The anti-materiel sniper rifle welded to it aimed through the floorboards straight at the pale face below.
The trigger was pulled, the recoil roared, and death descended.
Like a torrential rain, unbroken and relentless.
"Five, six, seven..."
Ji Jue’s finger tapped across the screen one by one. The Deus Ex Machina issued commands, and the weapons installed within the suspended ceilings and crawl spaces across the villa unleashed a storm of death.
Like the invisible hand of the Grim Reaper selecting sacrifices upon an altar, one after another fell. Every time a shot rang out, a mangled figure flew backward and collapsed.
Ji Jue didn't need to split his attention to manually operate dozens of firearms and motorized swivel mounts. Every device was connected via Wi-Fi, networked together through access points distributed across the floors, and routed straight into the server rack separated from Ji Jue by a single wall.
He didn't even need to strain his brain.
A few days ago, acting as the client, he had merely stated his requirements. Within minutes, the server host had rooted the chipboards of various manufacturers and written an entire program—using multiple cameras to calculate the distance and coordinates of moving objects in three-dimensional space, lock onto targets, and direct the nearest weapon to fire.
The penetration of anti-materiel rifles was more than enough to strike through floors and walls against any intruder. In theory, from that moment on, every person inside the villa stood under his crosshairs.
Friend or foe alike.
*I just hope they're still wearing their electronic ID wristbands...*
In less than ten seconds, an entire fully equipped special operations team lay dead in the corridor. Ji Jue stopped manual targeting.
It was too inefficient. Time was short, and relying too heavily on the same trick might not work for long.
Before the enemy could adapt, he had to make full use of it!
Without hesitation, he waved his hand and issued the final command to the server:
[Maximize efficiency. Free-fire authorization.]
In the server room beneath the garage, green lights flickered in unison. The drone of cooling fans suddenly rose to a fever pitch, spinning frantically.
[Calculations complete. Analysis finished. Target acquisition initiated.]
And finally—
[Annihilation Mode: Engaged]!
And so, the rain began to fall.
A torrential downpour.
Chapter 131