Rout

*Rat-tat-tat-tat!* Blood sprayed everywhere. Caught under the rifle's relentless barrage, the bodyguards shielding the burly man had nowhere to hide, reduced entirely to living targets. While steering the guard's rifle with one hand to spray the crowd, Yaoguang drew a handgun with his other and aimed it at the guards sent downstairs to scout. *Bang! Bang! Bang!* Three consecutive shots rang out, hitting with pinpoint precision. Compared to ordinary people, a Grandmaster at the pinnacle of human physical capability possessed lightning reflexes, razor-sharp vision, and rock-steady hands and feet, making it easy for one to be trained into a master marksman. Over the past year, Yaoguang had inevitably crossed paths with gun-wielding Martial Masters while hunting demons, so he had naturally taken the time afterward to undergo professional firearms training. Before long, a magazine was emptied. Yaoguang shoved the guard's corpse aside and stepped forward, handgun raised. In an instant, he arrived before the two-meter-tall, suit-clad giant. By now, the giant no longer resembled a polished, successful businessman. Riddled with countless bullet wounds, he was drenched from head to toe in crimson blood. Yet, sustained by a demon's tenacious vitality, he had not died. Straining to open his eyes, he looked up at Yaoguang and wheezed feebly, "Whatever you want... I can give you... Money... women..." Yaoguang gave him no chance to finish. Advancing toward the giant, he squeezed the handgun's trigger. *Bang! Bang! Bang!* Bloody spray erupted from the giant's body once more. He struggled, his frame swelling and mutating as he tried to stand. But the bullet holes riddling his body drained the last of his strength away. Looking at Yaoguang standing right before him, his expression twisted into a savage sneer. "The Chief... won't..." Before he could finish, Yaoguang pressed the muzzle directly against the demon's forehead. *Bang!* The final bullet discharged. Having barely managed to manifest even ten percent of his demonic form, the giant fell silent instantly. Having executed the final demon, Yaoguang swiftly swapped in a fresh magazine. Glancing at the guards collapsed across the stairwell, he didn't care whether any were still breathing; he aimed straight for their heads and delivered follow-up shots one by one. *Bang! Bang! Bang!* After emptying another magazine, he heard the commotion spreading in the distance. He quickly slung two of their modern assault rifles across his back, looted all the magazines from their bodies, and retreated upstairs. Before departing, however, he seemed to notice something and stripped a wristwatch and a ring set with an enormous gemstone from the demon's hand. As for the others, time didn't permit a thorough search. Yaoguang moved quickly up the stairs to the fourth floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced down below as he climbed. Dozens of men were rapidly converging and flooding into the building. His expression remained calm as his gaze swept around, committing the layout of the corridors to memory. Along the way, a few guards quartered on these floors came out upon hearing the noise, but almost the instant they appeared before Yaoguang, they caught a bullet. Reaching the fourth floor, Yaoguang calculated silently. Once he estimated that enough men had poured into the building, he found an open window and leaped down. From such a height, even an ordinary person could survive with proper technique, let alone a Grandmaster. Upon landing, he slipped back inside through a ground-floor window and headed straight for the first-floor stairwell. At this moment, the guards in the stairwell were focused primarily on the floors above. Moreover, Yaoguang was wearing clothes similar to theirs. Under these circumstances, when Yaoguang appeared, their reactions were involuntarily a beat too slow. And that single beat, against modern, highly efficient instruments of slaughter, was enough to decide the life or death of several—or even a dozen—men. *Rat-tat-tat-tat!* Muzzle flashes erupted. Crimson blood sprayed from the guards directly in front of him. Under a baptism of more than a dozen rounds a second, the armed guards collapsed like wheat before a scythe. Soon, gunfire also echoed from the stairwell as spinning bullets slammed into the walls, kicking up a shower of concrete chips. But Yaoguang had already slipped out of the corridor, aiming his rifle squarely at several guards outside the building. Amidst muzzle flashes, several guards collapsed into pools of blood. With the kill complete, Yaoguang darted forward in a sudden burst of speed, reaching the opposite side of the building. Less than a second after he moved, gunfire erupted, pulverizing the stone where he had stood moments before. By then, however, he was already over a dozen meters away. He even broke away from the building entirely and charged toward the structure across the way. Gunfire soon echoed from that building. The disturbance forced the guards who had climbed to the fifth and sixth floors of the main building to scramble back downstairs and converge on that second structure. Yet before they could complete their encirclement, gunshots rang out from another direction. A Grandmaster's greatest advantages were astonishing physical stamina, terrifying explosive power, and razor-sharp reflexes. As long as he avoided head-on slugfests against dozens of riflemen at once and took them on in groups of three to five, he could rely on his superior reaction time and agility to gun them down before they could even align their sights—even face to face. Swift and lethal. Furthermore, a Grandmaster possessed exceptionally acute hearing; at close quarters, he could hear the enemy's breathing with absolute clarity. This gave him the equivalent of an all-seeing map in urban combat. Relying on this ability, if guards were clustered in large numbers and on high alert, meaning an ambush might result in injury to himself... He could simply slip away unseen. Those men wouldn't even know that the Grim Reaper had just stood inches away from them. No human could maintain peak alertness forever. Nor could complex terrain allow a dozen armed guards to sweep while maintaining tight formation indefinitely. The moment they relaxed, what awaited them was Yaoguang's thunderous strike. Such was the terror of an unconstrained, fully armed Grandmaster! Against ordinary armed personnel, it was nothing short of a dimensional strike. ... When this one-sided slaughter—where the enemy was scarcely seen, yet every appearance brought certain death—dragged on for over half an hour, the guards of Qingyu Industrial Park finally broke. Shouts in the Feiyu tongue broke out across the crowd in waves. Even without understanding the language, the terror in their voices was unmistakable. A man who appeared to be a captain or higher-up barked orders, trying to rally the guards to fight back. But when Yaoguang seized an opening to slip close and shoot him dead, the remaining guards scattered in total disarray. They were merely armed men with basic training, not true professional soldiers; their will to fight was nowhere near as resilient as that of a real army. Meanwhile, inside the industrial park, many of the captives and imprisoned laborers saw hope. They broke out and fled toward the compound's perimeter. Once the first group ran, a second naturally followed. Especially upon seeing that no guards were pursuing them, the rest couldn't sit still any longer and poured out en masse. Some who had been brutally oppressed even scavenged the fallen guards' guns, turned back into the buildings, and vented their fury by gunning down several industrial park managers on the spot. Others hastily grabbed phones to record videos or make calls, either assuring their families of their safety or dialing the police. In just ten minutes, the industrial park spiraled completely out of control. Only then did Yaoguang realize that the park likely held several thousand people. Yaoguang did nothing to stop the chaos. He didn't step forward to take charge, either; instead, he continued to drift through the shadows of the compound like a ghost. Soon, he returned to the two-story infirmary. Whether the infirmary guards had fled or scattered, he didn't care to hunt them down. He walked straight to the basement and pushed open the heavy door. Inside... There were still the women, filled with numbness and lingering fear. Yet some, having heard the noise outside, seemed to have their will to survive rekindled, a faint glint of light returning to their eyes. Yaoguang said nothing. Drawing his sword, he began chopping through the locks of the iron cages one by one. *Clang!* Sparks flew. Crisp ringing echoed through the basement. Hearing it, several women trembled in fright. Yaoguang paid no heed, simply cleaving through the chains, one after another. Used this way, his short sword's edge quickly dulled and rolled. Yet Yaoguang didn't care. Throughout the entire process, he didn't utter a single word, merely repeating the action of severing the iron chains on cage after cage. After finishing this room, he moved on to the next. As he hacked through the chain of the final cage, the short sword that had cost hundreds of thousands reached the end of its life, snapping on the spot. Looking at the ruined, twisted blade, Yaoguang tossed it to the ground. Only then did he raise his head and speak his first words since entering the basement to the people who remained fearful, not daring to step out of their cages: "You are free."