Hit him, hit him, a dramatic conclusion

A massive boulder, weighing well over a thousand pounds and boasting an intimidating appearance, completely sealed off their retreat. If this wasn't falling right into a trap, what could it possibly be?

Mad Power, who fancied himself a paragon of strength and went by the title of King of Might, stepped back a few paces, walked up to the thousand-pound rock, crouched down, took a deep breath, and looked as though he intended to give it a try. Wild Wolf made no attempt to stop this seemingly foolish endeavor.

"Hah! Open!"

Planting his hands firmly into the narrow crevices beneath the heavy stone, Mad Power strained every muscle, his face turning crimson as he roared, yet the massive boulder didn't budge even a fraction of an inch.

"That's enough, Mad Power. That is not something you can shake." Walking over with quick strides, Wild Wolf reached out to stop him from trying again. Giving his comrade a deep, lingering look, Wild Wolf shook his head helplessly. Then, his gaze shifted toward the passage ahead. He pulled down the night-vision goggles resting on his forehead, fixed them over his eyes, and gently pressed the switch with his index finger. A pale green glow immediately flickered to life, illuminating the objects stretching out through the dark corridor.

Naturally, Mad Power and Gunpowder were equipped with the same gear. Looking through the green light, Wild Wolf's expression grew a few degrees heavier when he spotted Fang Muren watching them intently from the bend in the tunnel. Yet, deep down, he was rapidly formulating a strategy; he certainly didn't believe that a cunning old fox like Fang Muren would foolishly wait around for them to rush up and tear him to pieces.

A sudden, spine-chilling sensation rippled through him from afar. Having survived fierce battles where tigers, wolves, jackals, and leopards tore each other apart, Wild Wolf possessed an extraordinarily acute instinct for danger. Just as he traced the source of that perilous feeling back to the front, an utterly inconceivable scene unfolded before his eyes.

A smile—a cold, sneering smile. Fang Muren, standing right at the corner, was actually grinning coldly at the three of them. His disdainful gaze carried the unmistakable mockery of someone looking down on fools attempting the impossible.

"Can he see the three of us?" That was the first question to pop into Wild Wolf's mind, but he quickly dismissed it. Of course he could; this secret passage was built by the man's own people, so he naturally knew every detail of its layout. For all they knew, surveillance devices capable of operating in complete pitch darkness might be installed everywhere. After all, the man was a bureau director; setting up things like this was hardly a difficult task for him.

Regardless of whether the enemy could see them or not, the three men could no longer afford to sit passively and wait for death. Ever since they let themselves be led by the nose by that scoundrel Fang Muren, the dynamic between them had undergone a dramatic reversal, leaving them feeling like helpless lambs awaiting slaughter inside someone else's prison.

He moved. Wild Wolf launched the counterattack first. Drawing his bow, nocking an arrow, pulling the string, and releasing—the entire sequence of archery actions flowed in one continuous, seamless motion. It was easy to see that Wild Wolf's archery skills had been practiced to absolute perfection.

Fang Muren remained completely indifferent, not even blinking an eye. This left Wild Wolf, who watched the arrow fly straight toward its target, deeply puzzled.

The mystery in Wild Wolf's heart was cleared up the moment a sharp clanging sound rang out.

Bulletproof glass. That was Wild Wolf's immediate conclusion the moment the arrow collided with the transparent barrier. Now he understood why Fang Muren hadn't dodged when he clearly saw the arrow coming, but instead grinned with contemptuous mockery—the man had simply been watching his counterattack like a spectator enjoying a monkey show, full of derision.

"Hahahahaha! Even a rocket launcher wouldn't necessarily blast through this piece of bulletproof glass. You actually thought a single arrow could shatter it? Sheer delusion!" Watching the three men's shifting expressions, Fang Muren laughed uproariously, his tone dripping with sarcasm. The final four words were practically spat out through clenched teeth in a show of arrogance.

Wild Wolf paid no attention to Fang Muren's voice, which had clearly been amplified and distorted by a loudspeaker. He turned his head to look at Gunpowder standing behind him. Without a word or a hand gesture, just a brief exchange of glances, Gunpowder understood exactly what Wild Wolf had in mind. Such extraordinary coordination could only be forged through long years of life-and-death partnership.

Catching Wild Wolf's stare, Gunpowder understood instantly. He glanced over at the sealed bulletproof glass in the distance, lowered his gaze to measure the distance between himself and the barrier, then looked up at Wild Wolf and shook his head helplessly. Though no sound escaped his lips, his mouth twitched subtly a few times, yet his meaning was perfectly clear to Wild Wolf.

Fearing that the passage might be bugged with high-tech wiretapping devices, the three men tacitly refrained from speaking aloud, resorting instead to sign language. As for Fang Muren, he dismissed their whispered consultations entirely. Shielded by the bulletproof glass that even a rocket launcher couldn't scratch, he truly had nothing to fear.

Gunpowder's message was simple, and for two veterans who had cooperated for so long, it was easily understood.

The distance was too great; the destructive radius of the high-explosive compressed bomb might be compromised. Furthermore, throwing it manually across such a distance in a passage that was too narrow and had too low a ceiling made hitting the target extremely difficult. Any slight miscalculation might even catch them in the blast radius. That was Gunpowder's analytical verdict, and they dared not take blind risks.

Having grasped Gunpowder's assessment, Wild Wolf turned his gaze toward the narrow corridor—no less than twenty meters away—and weighed his options.

Clueless as to what the three men were chattering about, Fang Muren grew impatient with the status quo. Gesturing wildly over there, he taunted them with a continuous barrage of insults that popped like firecrackers.

After a brief planning session, the three men executed an unexpected maneuver: Mad Power took the lead, Gunpowder stayed in the middle, and Wild Wolf covered the rear.

"Hahahaha! Come on, charge! Charge! I'll make you wish you were dead! Hmph, you had the gall to try and ambush me? You must have eaten the courage of a leopard!" Although he was somewhat puzzled as to why the trio would dare to make such a reckless move, Fang Muren, brimming with confidence in his bulletproof glass, felt no fear at all as he loudly vented the terror they had instilled in him just moments before.

As the three men rushed forward, Mad Power clearly saw Fang Muren raise a hand to flash a gesture of contempt and a cold sneer. The man then pressed down on a control panel cluttered with various buttons—doing so deliberately slowly, as if he wanted to savor the helpless agony of his enemies walking blindly to their doom.

Because the secret passage was built within the structural joints of the building, fearing that the shockwaves of a massive explosion would deal catastrophic damage to the architecture, the corridor lacked any heavy, high-powered firearms among its traps. Perhaps Fang Muren also harbored a strange obsession with cold weapons; consequently, the mechanisms consisted entirely of primitive hazards like iron swords, steel spikes, falling rocks, and sulfuric acid.

First, the entrance had been blocked by the heavy stone, followed by an initial volley of gunfire, and then a barrage of various cold weapons. Although the three men possessed extraordinary martial skills, their talents were stifled in the cramped confines of the corridor. They could only fight desperately to block and dodge, yet even so, all three sustained varying degrees of injury.

The most severely wounded was undoubtedly Mad Power, who had charged at the front. Even with his hardened physique and a reputation for having a body like a wall of bronze and iron, he had been slashed repeatedly by sharp iron swords and steel spikes. The worst injury was a through-and-through wound on his left arm, where a sharp arrow had pierced clean through his upper arm, blood spraying out in a relentless stream.

As men who lived on the edge of a blade day in and day out, their self-rescue skills were often more professional than those of regular nurses. Disinfectant, hemostatic powder, gauze, and bandages were all prepared in advance, just in case an accident occurred and they needed to treat themselves on the spot.

Only a madman could be that merciless to himself, and Mad Power clearly fell into that category. Without batting an eye, he reached out and forcefully yanked the arrow straight out of his arm, not even flinching. He swallowed a dose of coagulant in one gulp, splashed alcohol directly onto the bleeding wound, and then wrapped it tightly in bandages—a flawless sequence executed with uncanny proficiency.

"You okay, Mad Power?" asked Wild Wolf, his role as captain showing in his concerned tone as he watched the large beads of cold sweat roll down Mad Power's forehead, though the man refused to utter a single groan.

"Hahaha, I'm fine! What is this, a mosquito bite? Haven't we survived worse before? I'm good." Clenching his teeth and enduring the piercing pain radiating through his nervous system, Mad Power even managed a grin and a joke. You had to hand it to him—he was truly a madman.

"Good to hear." Wild Wolf didn't say much more, simply offering a look of deep concern before turning his head to shoot Gunpowder a subtle glance.

Understanding the signal instantly, Gunpowder executed a rolling dive—tumbling and leaping forward until he landed less than five meters away from the bulletproof glass. This precise distance was one the trio had calculated beforehand.

The high-explosive compressed bomb was extremely small—at first glance, no larger than a pigeon's egg. Yet its destructive power could not be judged by its size. When planning the deployment, the three had agreed to use a strategy of luring the tiger away from its mountain.

Because of its tiny size, the bomb was virtually invisible in the pitch-black corridor, especially since Fang Muren's attention was fully occupied by Mad Power and Wild Wolf. Naturally, he failed to notice the miniature explosive mixed in among the gunfire. Moreover, the spot where Gunpowder tossed it was exceptionally tricky—right in the corner where the bulletproof glass met the wall. This allowed the dark-colored bomb to blend seamlessly with the structure, maximizing its concealment.

After successfully planting the explosive, the three men showed no signs of triumphant joy. Instead, feigning defeat by the traps, they put on a convincing show of retreating while fighting back. Within a few breaths, they had fallen back to the thousand-pound boulder near the entrance.

"Hahaha! Attack! Why aren't you attacking anymore? Weren't you so tough? Hahaha!" Watching his enemies fall back in defeat before his meticulously designed traps, Fang Muren was completely intoxicated by his own triumph. Pressing his body against the bulletproof glass, he shrieked frantically. He failed to notice Gunpowder, positioned between the other two, flashing a cold smile and gently pressing a finger down.

Thud. There was no world-shaking roar or earth-shattering tremor as one might have imagined—just a muffled thump accompanied by the crisp sound of shattering glass, followed immediately by Fang Muren's terrified, disbelieving screams echoing through the corridor, trailed closely by a thick pall of smoke and dust filling the tunnel.

When the haze finally cleared, the three men looked forward. Aside from rubble, shards of glass, and Fang Muren's mangled, unrecognizable remains, there was nothing left.

A dramatic conclusion. No one could have anticipated that after all their arduous struggles, the old fox Fang Muren would meet such a wretched end to his sinful life.

While this drama concluded, the two guards standing watch outside Fang Muren's bedroom were having a miserable time. Facing twenty opponents with just two people was a hopelessly lopsided ratio.

Meanwhile, the surgery Lin Yang was performing on Zhang Zifeng wasn't going as smoothly as expected either. The stubbornness of the invading toxin far exceeded Lin Yang's initial projections; after exhausting an entire cycle of true qi, there was still very little progress to show for it.