“Clang.”
The heavy rolling shutter door slammed onto the ground, its internal latch locking tight.
William stood in the mud of 22 Lake Street.
Rain lashed down frantically against his black trench coat.
At both ends of the alley, over twenty dark figures blocked his path.
Lightning tore across the night sky, illuminating the uniform thompson submachine guns in their hands, along with several rugged Remington military shotguns.
“It’s him!
That back-alley doctor!”
Someone in the crowd howled.
No negotiations.
No nonsense.
Gang wars in Gotham East District never bothered with opening remarks.
“Fire!
Turn him into mincemeat!” Fith, the boss of the Rat Gang, stood at the rear of the crowd, wiping rain from his bald head and roaring maniacally.
More than twenty barrels simultaneously spat out blinding, dark-red tongues of flame.
“Da-da-da-da—!”
A dense storm of brass bullets instantly tore through the curtain of rain.
Red brick walls on both sides of the alley were pulverized into flying debris, and trash cans were shredded like paper, with scrap metal flying everywhere.
Absolute fire suppression.
Never mind a man—even an elephant standing there would have been torn into raw meat within a tenth of a second.
But the bullets passed through nothing but air.
One point five seconds before the firing started.
William flicked his wrist.
He yanked the [Optical Camouflage Medical Blanket] from his system space and pulled it over his head.
The moment the silver thin blanket touched the rain, the light underwent an incredibly eerie refraction.
William’s slender frame, along with his black trench coat, seemed to be erased by an invisible eraser.
He took a half-step back, his back pressing against the cold brick wall.
He blended perfectly into the night.
Bullets grazed the tip of his nose, and the scorching airflow ruffled the stray hairs on his forehead.
The first round of the volley ended.
The gunfire stopped abruptly.
Only the sound of shell casings hissing in the puddles remained, emitting white smoke.
“Where is he?!” Fith pushed aside the lackey in front of him and strode into the alley mouth.
The alley was empty.
Aside from the trash cans riddled with holes and the bricks scattered across the ground, there wasn’t even a drop of blood.
“What the hell—Boss, that kid vanished into thin air!” A lackey holding a gun said, his teeth chattering.
“Search!
He couldn’t have gone far!
Even if you have to dig three feet into the ground, find him!” Fith’s eye twitched violently, making the scar running through his rat totem look even more hideous.
The thugs held their guns and advanced into the depths of the alley in a fan formation.
Their combat boots splashed through the puddles.
The Carnage began silently.
William hugged the base of the wall, moving like a ghost in the rainy night.
His breathing was suppressed to an extreme low; his Master-level Combat Instincts kept his muscles in a state of absolute relaxation, yet ready to explode with terrifying power at any moment.
On his left hand, an ultra-thin black Kevlar cut-resistant glove.
In his right hand, an Osborn Group High-carbon Titanium Alloy Blade.
He swallowed hard, just about to turn and speak to a companion.
In the darkness, a hand wearing a black glove reached out from nowhere, firmly covering his mouth and nose.
The thug’s eyes widened suddenly, and he instinctively tried to pull the trigger.
Too late.
The dark gray titanium alloy blade cut in at an incredibly tricky angle just below his earlobe.
The carotid sinus.
This area is rich in nerve endings.
The moment the blade sliced through the blood vessel, his blood pressure plummeted, and his brain instantly fell into a state of deep ischemia and hypoxia.
No scream.
No struggle.
The thug’s body went limp as if his bones had been removed.
William caught him by the armpits and silently lowered the twitching body into the standing water.
Blood gushed out, only to be washed away instantly by the torrential rain.
The first one.
William stepped over the corpse, his footsteps as light as a cat’s, as he locked onto two targets on the left.
The first rule of surgery: Avoid hard bone and find the most vulnerable tissue gaps.
He lowered his body and slid close.
A flash of blade-light flickered in the rainy night.
“Squelch!”
The hamstring tendon of the thug on the left was instantly severed.
Losing his support, the thug screamed and fell to one knee.
Before he could react, the blade had already stabbed straight into the depression above his collarbone.
Ruptured subclavian artery.
A high-pressure jet of blood sprayed over two meters, drenching the companion next to him.
“Aaaah!
He’s here!
Fire!” The companion, covered in blood, completely broke down and pulled the trigger frantically with his eyes closed.
“Da-da-da—!”
The thompson submachine gun fired wildly.
But the moment William severed the artery, he used the momentum to roll aside and vanish into the shadows on the other side.
The bullets didn’t hit William, but instead mowed down several other Rat Gang members opposite him.
“Cease fire!
You idiot!
You’re hitting our own men!”
The alley descended into total chaos.
Fear of the unknown was more terrifying than Death.
They couldn’t see their enemy; they could only see their companions falling in various grotesque positions.
Some had their wrists slashed; others had their necks cut open.
Every fall was accompanied by an incredibly precise, fatal wound.
This wasn’t a gang war at all.
This was a one-sided slaughter.
A live dissection carried out in the pouring rain.
In just three short minutes.
Half of the twenty-plus members of the Rat Gang had already fallen.
The remaining ten or so were completely broken; they began firing blindly into the rain, even shoving each other as they tried to flee this cursed alley. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“Everyone stay the hell calm!”
Fith roared.
He used his gun stock to knock down a lackey trying to run, his eyes staring intently at the rain ahead.
He was a hardened character who lived his life on the edge of a blade.
Fear didn’t crush him; instead, it stimulated a Beast-like intuition.
The rain.
The downpour was too heavy.
Fith narrowed his eyes.
He noticed that less than five meters away in mid-air, the trajectory of the falling rain showed a tiny anomaly.
Water droplets hit an invisible curved surface and slid off strangely.
In the momentary flash of lightning, an incredibly blurred, human-shaped water outline was revealed.
A physical flaw of the cloaking device.
“Got you, you piece of trash!”
Fith’s eyes nearly split from rage.
He suddenly raised the Remington shotgun, its wide barrel locking onto that water outline.
The distance was too close.
The spread of the shotgun was massive; once he fired, countless steel pellets would turn that invisible monster into a honeycomb.
His finger pulled the trigger.
Under the cloaking blanket, William’s pupils constricted.
He couldn’t dodge it.
The distance was too short, and the shotgun’s spread had already blocked all routes of evasion.
But William had no intention of dodging.
At the base of his right index finger, the dark silver Storage Ring suddenly flashed with a faint light.
“Bang—!”
The Remington shotgun erupted with a deafening roar.
A huge fan of fire spat from the muzzle.
In the same ten-thousandth of a second the firelight appeared.
“Clang!!!”
A heavy, ear-piercing sound of metal hitting the ground exploded in the alley.
A massive object appeared out of thin air between William and Fith without any warning.
It was a three-hundred-pound stainless steel Multi-functional Surgical Bed equipped with a complex hydraulic lifting system!
“Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang—!”
The dense shotgun pellets slammed into the thick metal base and stainless steel surface of the surgical bed like a violent storm, erupting in a large burst of dazzling sparks.
The hard steel pellets were all deflected, leaving dense clusters of impact craters on the brick walls.
The surgical bed didn’t budge an inch.
At that moment, Fith’s brain completely short-circuited.
His eyeballs almost bulged out of their sockets.
A surgical bed?
Where did it come from?!
Did it fall from the sky?!
Or had this thing been hidden in the alley all along?!
This completely exceeded the cognitive limits of a Gotham gang boss.
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