Chapter 56: The Blood Mutation of the Rhine
On a small hill a few hundred meters away, under the cover of sparse bushes, nearly twenty dark figures lay in wait, the scene silent as a grave.
The members of the Hyacinth were all clad in special black tight-fitting combat suits and tactical cloaks; among them were colleagues from the Golden River Club that Jiang Yan recognized, with more women than men.
At this moment, Wan Yue was no exception, her already striking figure further accentuated by her tight combat suit, making her look even more alluring.
With long hair cascading down her shoulders, a few auxiliary equipment pieces hanging from her chest and waist, a portable communicator on her head, and a VSS suppressed rifle at her side, together with a flowing cape, she resembled a queen of war in the night.
A few minutes earlier, an information signal sent by Zhao Peng, accompanied by a total power outage in two medical buildings, confirmed that the blood invasion involving the elder Jiang Chunhua was fabricated and that the imaginations of an emergency blood invasion surgery were unfounded.
At this moment, everyone beside Wan Yue knew that Jiang Yan had lost the gamble; Wan Yue had seen through the setup from the start. This was merely a grand scheme to toy with people’s obsessions.
Zhou Ping, with her sniper rifle, cautiously lay flat on the ground, aiming at a searchlight a few hundred meters away. With the vampire clan’s remarkable night vision, shooting from this distance was merely child’s play for her, also her only real specialty.
“Perhaps Xiao Yan has long accepted Sister Wan’s judgment, but deep down she still harbored hope, allowing her to hold on until the end… Alas, to help Xiao Yan let go of her obsession, Sister Wan and Brother Zhao Peng risked so much.”
Quietly observing the Hyacinth leader not far away, Zhou Ping secretly murmured to herself.
“Although the terrain is advantageous, it still exceeds Zhao Peng and Jiang Yan’s abilities… Initiate the cover plan, and keep an eye on the contact line during the skirmish.”
Staring at the medical buildings surrounded by beams of searchlight, Wan Yue saw that the final escape signal from Zhao Peng hadn’t been sent out yet and could only declare the cover plan initiated.
Suddenly, smoke grenades shot forth from hundreds of meters away, trailing long arcs of smoke as they plummeted into the military hospital, instantly inciting tension among the surrounding hidden arrow troops. As searchlights were shattered by sniper fire from hundreds of meters away, the entire encirclement began to loosen.
Watching the somewhat chaotic comrades of the regular action team around her, the members of the Xuanyuan team, serving as the mobile reserve, remained calm, each maintaining their respective combat postures, awaiting Meng Huai’s orders.
“Huanxiao guessed that other vampire factions would rush to join in the chaos, and she was proven right… Tao Qiaoer, take the support squad to reinforce the outer blockade, no need to pursue actively; just disperse them and make sure to record video evidence.”
With a gesture, under Tao Qiaoer’s lead, over a hundred members of the Xuanyuan team support squad swiftly arranged into tactical formations according to pre-planned strategies, moving toward the source of the smoke grenades.
Meng Huai himself took over the on-site command from Han Xiao, leading the assault squad of the Xuanyuan team to stand before the main entrance of the medical building, staring intently at a certain floor above, his brow furrowed.
Tonight, under the strict orders of Chief of Staff Zhen, Meng Huai had not injected himself with the anti-blood invasion immune serum, marking the first time he had not been present on the front lines during a battle. Due to his precarious physical condition, he now needed to cherish every chance for an injection, delaying his forced withdrawal from the front lines.
Two faint glimmers of blade-like dark light flickered as a man and a woman in black crouched down, pressing their blood-oozing wrists to the thin layer of blood-mixed water accumulated on the ground, slowly sending their blood into it.
At the same time, two unfamiliar, wild, boiling blood auras began to expand within the closed medical building, as if the devil had descended.
The automatic fire extinguishing system on the top floor, after a fit of hysteria, had already ceased to function.
On the clean floor of the waiting hall, patches of thin, accumulated water formed, covering a vast area and almost enveloping the entire waiting hall. If lights were on at this moment, one could see that this water surprisingly exhibited an unusual blood-red hue.
Chaotic footsteps, accompanied by the faint beams of dozens of tactical flashlights, began to appear at the upper stairwell. Moments later, the first wave of over forty members of the hidden arrow troops from upstairs rushed into the waiting area.
The pervasive stench of blood and the strange water on the floor made everyone slow their pace.
The leading young lieutenant lightly waved a hand, and dozens of hidden arrow troops quickly spread into tactical formation as they stepped through the water in the vacant waiting hall.
Slowly adjusting their steps, they sensed the peculiar texture of the thin water beneath their shoes, a strange stickiness. The small beam of the tactical flashlight occasionally swept across the ground, revealing abnormal colors fleeting by.
The lieutenant raised his night vision goggles, wary of his surroundings, and slowly crouched down, his fingers touching the water.
Under the direct illumination of the tactical flashlight, a faint red appeared on his gloved fingertips. Sweeping the beam of light further, he discovered that the thin blood water on the ground continued on to the darkness, as if everyone had stepped into a field of blood.
“Retreat! Get out!”
After just a moment’s daze, a horrified thought exploded in the lieutenant’s mind, followed by a heart-wrenching shout.
Too late—countless thin, blood-red spikes suddenly shot up from the blood-red water below, as if red thorns were rising from the blood, piercing through the lieutenant’s body and the nearby members of the hidden arrow troops.
Spikes protruded from the back of his head, face, chest, thighs, and torso, as the blood-red thorn spikes rose steeply from the ground, pinning one hidden arrow troop member after another to the ground.
A hidden arrow squad member pierced through the eye socket screamed in agony, but soon, more spikes rose, piercing through his entire body, fixing him in place like a broken and grotesque blood-stained statue.
Everything happened within just a few seconds, causing the remaining members of the hidden arrow troops to finally snap back to reality, scrambling toward the stairs, only to discover…
They began to rush back, throwing grenades in a desperate attempt to destroy the blood field. Unfortunately, according to pre-battle arrangements, incendiary grenades were prohibited, given the indoor setting. The aluminum thermite munitions were extremely dangerous. Moreover, the buildings’ structures had not been designated as expendable during this operation.
Their combat discipline remained intact. While retreating, they alternated turning around to fire deeply into the hall, but the silver beams of bullets and flickering flames could not stop the relentless slaughter around them, as one after another became swiss cheese from the blood spikes in the crimson water, collapsing onto the blood-soaked ground.
More blood began to flow from the dead or seriously wounded members of the hidden arrow troops, continuing to mingle with the blood-red water on the ground. The blood field received new nourishment, becoming thicker and more viscous, prompting more blood spikes to rise to pierce more bodies.
Again, several squad members were pierced by lateral spikes that abruptly surged from the sides, seeing the walls not far away also smeared with thick blood stains; these spikes had indeed sprouted from those very stains.
Even more terrifying was that several hidden arrow squad members nearly escaping the blood puddle zone suddenly found themselves colliding with an invisible blade-like trap, leading to a gory scene too horrific to bear.
Heads with tactical helmets detached from their necks, bodies split into pieces, or running figures instantly lost their waists or legs.
Broken arms and torsos, amidst the chaotic gunfire and the swaying beams of tactical flashlights, lay scattered and fragmented, finally coming to rest.
Under the glare of the tactical flashlights, a dozen blood-soaked, odd threads spread across the entire hall like blocking nets, sealing off several directions.
Blood was no longer confined to the ground; it flowed freely on the walls and ceilings, a pungent and bloody red liquid everywhere.
From the stairwell, more and more beams of light gradually climbed up, along with a dense sound of footsteps; the assault team on the lower floor was getting closer.
“Don’t come up… retreat… get out… it’s blood mutation…”
Pierced by a dozen blood-red spikes, the lieutenant, propped up at an angle in the blood pool, strained to turn his head toward the stairway, slowly raising his arm as if to signal something. Unfortunately, in the communicator, there was nothing but a cacophony of electronic noise, with no feedback at all.
“Han Team… don’t… don’t come over…”
Blood was still pouring from his mouth, and the dying young lieutenant gathered his last bit of strength to send out a weak warning to the lower assault team led by Han Xiao, but the sound was trapped in his blood-filled mouth and couldn’t find its way out.
In the lieutenant’s final gaze of despair, more members of the Xiuyi Assault Squad burst into the blood-soaked waiting hall, continuing to reenact the bloody massacre that had unfolded just seconds before.
Han Xiao was stabbed in the chest and thigh, but fortunately, two quick-reacting squad members quickly grabbed her, pulling her back after disrupting the blood spikes.
Han Xiao’s tactical helmet had long been lost; now she lay half-sprawled at the stairwell, blood-soaked and despairing, watching as one by one, her close comrades were impaled or suddenly shredded apart in the bloody charge.
“Don’t… don’t… don’t…”
Han Xiao lay numbly in her comrade’s arms, unable to bear watching the last few comrades who had stumbled into the blood zone struggling to their deaths, tears flooded her eyes, burning hot and blurring her vision.
The chaotic gunfire continued to ripple through the vast hall, while the flickering muzzle flames illuminated the surrounding blood.
Moments later, accompanied by the last stubborn figure hitting the ground, the gunfire ceased, and the massacre finally drew to a close.
Amid the heavy smell of blood, only Han Xiao’s sobbing cries echoed.
Over eighty to ninety percent of the over one hundred and twenty hidden arrow Assault Troopers, composed of three teams and a supporting special squad from the Central Monitoring Area, fell within less than two minutes, and most bore little hope of rescue.
Yet, the shadow of the assailants remained unseen.
In the distant dark corner, Zhao Peng and Jiang Yan witnessed this brutal and one-sided massacre in its entirety.
“Blood mutation… no… you cannot do this…”
The shocking news was more potent than ever, and they had lost the will to continue fighting.
The hysterical clamor of war had finally ended, replaced by a different kind of frantic helplessness. The military hospital was once again brightly lit, with crowds surging in.
Countless stretchers rushed in, each bearing unconscious figures clad in black battle suits, some intact, others mutilated, blood covering everything, chaos ensuing.
An hour later, Jiang Yan and Zhao Peng supported each other as they appeared at the edge of a thicket, several thousand meters away from the military hospital, both in tatters, especially Zhao Peng, whose injuries were severe.
“How was it? Fun?”
From the darkness came Wan Yue’s familiar, sharp sarcasm, as a sensual figure slowly emerged.
With a sidelong glance at Zhao Peng’s condition and expression, Wan Yue lightly nodded, while Xiao Ai anxiously ran over.
Jiang Yan remained silent, merely wiping the blood and tears from her face, gently lowering the weakened Zhao Peng, then standing upright.
“You silly girl, I told you on the first day that I sensed something was wrong with you. As the prime source of clues, the hidden arrows should know your potential dangers moving forward. Right now, you are probably already a B-level task target, equivalent to a disturbing bloodline viscount.”
“Did you enjoy today? Surrounded by three entire squads, two of which were legacy teams. Consider this your lesson on how hidden arrows capture a vampire viscount…”
“It’s not just the hidden arrow troops; others are waiting for you to make a move too… Heh, two Rhine bloodline barons scheming to humiliate a child, the Engel family indeed has traitors in the hidden arrows!”
Wan Yue lit a cigarette, watching the chaos in the distance, her smirk becoming more pronounced.
“Their Engel family members?”
Jiang Yan’s heart skipped a beat, quickly looking back, recalling the two mysterious figures in black and another blond youth who had brought even more horrifying pressure.
Is this the realm of senior vampires? Before the massacre began, she hadn’t sensed any solid information from those two, everything felt chaotic and intangible.
This sensation was mirrored in Wan Yue, even though they were close by.
Seeing Jiang Yan still dazed, Wan Yue turned away with an expression of boredom: “The old aristocratic blood families in Europe have also been drawn in by certain events. However, this time, they helped you, preventing you from falling into the hands of the hidden arrow troops, but their intentions are not pure.”
“Listen, from now on, your blood, any living tissue on you, must be provided solely to Jiang Yao for feeding. Absolutely no leaks allowed, even used sanitary pads must be thoroughly destroyed by the me!”
After taking one last glance back at the military hospital, the last searchlight in the night still flickering aimlessly, listening to the helicopters that buzzed around like headless flies, Jiang Yan silently lowered her head.
(End of Volume 3)
