Chapter 89: Phantom (2)
In the night, under the flickering spotlights of the splendid high-rise buildings in the city, three black helicopters were rapidly approaching the Wanqueli Commercial Plaza.
Inside the cabin were fully armed soldiers from the Dark Arrow Western Inspection Zone’s Armored Squad Assault Team, all of them with serious expressions. The lead officer, a female captain, was particularly anxious, constantly checking her tactical watch.
The team leader, Meng, was on site today and had encountered the Blood Clan. Why did he send a message but not answer the phone? Please don’t let anything happen!
Tao Xiaor’s hands trembled as she reached for the semi-automatic shotgun in front of her, biting her lips tightly.
“Lieutenant Tao, we have reached the target coordinates, preparing to land!”
The helicopter beneath them was already in a hover, and the pilot’s voice came through the cabin communicator. Tao Xiaor glanced around at her eight subordinates, took a deep breath, and forcefully swung open the cabin door.
The noise of the rotor blades increased severalfold, and a thick night breeze rushed in. Tao Xiaor lowered her helmet’s night vision goggles, tightened her grip on her weapon, and was the first to grab the rappelling harness, descending vertically from the hovering helicopter.
……
In a narrow corridor of the nightclub, it was pitch black except for emergency lights; ordinary people couldn’t move normally at all.
In the shadows, a burst of gunfire erupted, echoing painfully in the confined space.
The Blood Clan came rushing in, and in an instant, their heads exploded, splattering thick blood and flesh onto the ground, creating a grotesque picture. A charred neck emitted foul black smoke, and the body fell forward a few meters before crashing to the ground.
Tearing open and fastening the remaining part of her black skirt revealed her long, slender legs clad in black stockings and low-heeled red-soled shoes, which she lightly stepped over the twitching Blood Clan corpse.
Jiang Yan continued walking towards the end of the corridor, her footsteps resonating steadily in the oppressive darkness.
Another frail black figure burst out from a side room, its emaciated arms distorted and reeking of something indescribable. However, the girl before it swiftly dodged, leaving the attacker to miss completely.
Before the ambushing Blood Clan servant could stabilize its body, a powerful gust of wind accompanied by a shimmering dagger struck hard at the back of its head.
The tremendous impact smashed the Blood Clan servant’s entire body against the glass wall, half of its head sinking into the glass.
The acrid stench of burnt flesh from the silver ions permeated the dim corridor as Jiang Yan expressionlessly pulled out her dagger, kicked away the twitching Blood Clan servant, and turned her gaze towards the adjacent room.
Inside, a strong odor of blood and a chaotic, weak pheromone disturbance indicated that the Blood Clan must have descended into a state of blood thirst shock.
After ejecting the empty magazine and inserting the last one into her handgun, Jiang Yan slowly stepped into the dark room.
On the sofas, coffee tables, and even the floor, four men and two women lay sprawled in blood, unconscious, mixed with the acrid smell of vomit and the stench of urine from shock incontinence.
Of the six, four died instantly from immune collapse due to blood invasion, their pupils dilated and faces contorted. The remaining two were still recovering from the initial rigid responses to the blood invasion and were now shivering, their chests rising shallowly, clearly breathing out more than in.
“Help… help me…”
With eyes gradually turning red and saliva foaming from his mouth, a middle-aged man lay on the ground, weakly mumbling as he raised an arm towards the girl, who was nothing but a dark silhouette before him, trying to grasp the last opportunity for life.
Meanwhile, a sensually dressed bar girl trembled, propped herself against the wall, struggling to stand, her own eyes red and gasping heavily as dark blood erupted from her mouth and nose.
“I’m sorry, I can’t save you.”
Jiang Yan sighed softly and raised her handgun.
In the room, brilliant flashes erupted, two gunshots rang out, and the dying commotion abruptly ceased, returning everything to silence. Having dealt with the two afflicted individuals, Jiang Yan exited the room and turned toward the corridor leading to the final destination, the last hiding place of the Blood Clan’s scent.
Moments later, she entered the nightclub’s working area, and an aluminum door appeared before her. Beyond the door, the same chaotic, violent, and cruel aura lingered, crude and savage, as if the Blood Clan had been waiting for Jiang Yan’s arrival.
To this point, three attendants and eight blood servants had been neutralized by Jiang Yan. From start to finish, she hadn’t encountered a Blood Clan member of knight level or higher.
These heavily blood-thirsty beings, appearing in groups and committing frenzied attacks, seemed to be mind-controlled, carrying out various futile suicidal assaults, devoid of the usual cunning demeanor typical of the Blood Clan, as if they had no intention of leaving alive.
Baffled, Jiang Yan pushed open the aluminum sliding door.
Her vision widened, revealing a dazzling urban nightscape. This area, backed by the glass wall of Wanqueli Commercial Plaza, was irregularly shaped and had been classified as part of the nightclub’s kitchen area, belonging to a cold food processing room.
The entire room was filled with the distinctive stench of rotten eggs from natural gas.
A scruffy middle-aged man exuding the aura of an upper-tier blood servant lay on the ground, seemingly unconscious.
Another young man in a security uniform was crouched among several liquefied natural gas tanks, his face a twisted blend of madness, fear, brutality, and despair.
Under the distant glow of city lights, the upper-tier Blood Clan servant trembled, a strange plea in his eyes, fixating on the dark-haired girl in a black dress outside the door, and the blood dripping continuously from her left hand’s dagger.
Noticing that the dark-haired girl had not taken another step forward, the pleading look in the middle-aged man’s eyes vanished, replaced with a reddened bloodlust as he suddenly tore open his security uniform, revealing a bomb wrapped in complex wires underneath.
Jiang Yan’s pupils constricted, her blood boiling at once, and she lunged back just as she closed the door.
“Hehe… I don’t want to die… Haha, let’s all fly together…”
The middle-aged man stuttered, raising the bomb detonator, a strangely serene smile spreading across his face.
Spotlight beams swept back and forth across the surface of the massive commercial plaza building when suddenly a corner of the glass exterior exploded into a rapidly expanding fireball, followed by a deafening roar.
The terrifying shockwave tore apart the exteriors of the two floors above and below, spewing a shower of collapsed building materials and flaming debris, while thick smoke writhed in waves from the heat gusts.
Surrounding the blocked street, whether on the crowded ground or the distant skyscrapers, sounds of terrified screams erupted, as countless citizens raised their phones to capture this rare sight of terror in an age of peace.
A squad of Dark Arrow troops, entering from the rooftop and descending to the seventh floor via the stairs, was jolted by the thunderous internal explosion, with several members accidentally tumbling down the staircase.
“Quick! Team one and two, go to the explosion site on the sixth floor, team three follow me to the fifth floor. Watch out for fire and toxins, and be quick!”
Tao Xiaor yanked the gas mask from her waist and donned it, then kicked open the emergency exit door on the sixth floor, a wave of heat rushing out, prompting one of her team members to bow and charge inside.
Meng was on the fifth floor, at the cinema… Tao Xiaor’s heartbeat quickened, but despite the unexpected explosion, it didn’t distract her from what she was most concerned about.
The remaining eight soldiers of the Armored Squad closely followed their acting team leader, moving quickly in a single-file line downward.
However, in the following tactical communication channels, whether on the sixth floor or the fifth floor before them, apart from a few scattered unconscious individuals and obvious corpses that didn’t look good, not a single living vampire remained.
Under the oscillation of tactical flashlights, at the entrance of the cinema corridor, a tall young man in military uniform appeared, staggering.
“Hao!”
Tao Xiaor instantly recognized his silhouette, hurriedly slinging her weapon across her chest, and rushed a few steps to support the swaying Meng Huai.
She immediately shined her tactical flashlight into his eyes, and when she saw his slightly dazed black eyes come into view, the weight in her heart finally lifted.
“When did you arrive? There are vampires here…”
Meng Huai glanced at an unconscious cinema staff member not far away and weakly said, “Check for ordinary people who’ve been blood-infected and any injured civilians… Quickly let rescue personnel in to carry them out… Check all floors, lock all mall entrances and exits…”
“Meng, we’re already doing that! I brought the first squad here by helicopter, and the other teams are moving in on the ground, they’re almost here too!”
Supported by Tao Xiaor, Meng Huai slowly sat down on a long bench, gripping her arm with one hand: “Jiang… Jiang Yan… why isn’t she here? Go save her!”
Jiang Yan? The girl who had once stayed by Meng’s hospital bed? What was she doing here?
Tao Xiaor was stunned, a beautiful, tall, and cold figure flashed across her mind along with a string of questions.
The air in the emergency stairwell was slightly warm and increasingly pungent, while Jiang Yan descended, opened the corridor door on the third floor, and stood in the elevator hallway.
Her thigh was adorned with belts for weapons, her dagger, a few remaining bullets for her handgun, and all sorts of items that were clearly not what a normal woman should carry. In fact, her phone had long been discarded into the flames after the explosion on the sixth floor.
Taking a deep breath, Jiang Yan shook her head at the uncomfortable smell. Crouching down, she extracted two small syringes from her hair bun and injected them directly into her thigh.
Looking at the various bloodstains splattered all over her body, Jiang Yan managed a bitter smile, adjusting her skirt slightly before lying down in a fainting position, side-lying at the elevator entrance, then closing her eyes.
She began to regulate her endocrine and plant nerve control; this was one of the required subjects for every knight.
Gradually, Jiang Yan felt herself entering a state of shallow sleep, her consciousness blurring, very relaxed and comfortable…
“Jiang Yan! Jiang Yan!”
Jiang Yan sensed slight movements beneath her, as if she were lying on a fast-moving stretcher, and familiar voices called out nearby.
Opening her eyes, she found herself being carried by several firefighters on a stretcher, an oxygen mask covering her face, surrounded by the broad nightscape of the street and a sea of police lights. It was clear she had been discovered and transported during her act of feigning unconsciousness.
Turning her head in the direction of the voice, she saw Meng Huai in disheveled military attire, a tense expression on his face as he held her hand, worry and a hint of confusion in his eyes.
“There was a gas leak and fire in the building, and the police and firefighters are working hard. Team leader Meng, thanks to your vigilance and timely message, we wouldn’t have known the disaster it would have caused otherwise.”
Tao Xiaor stood to the side, quickly reciting a handful of hastily thought-out phrases while smiling and nodding at the waking Jiang Yan.
“I sent you a message?”
Meng Huai just then came to himself, reaching into his pants pocket, only to realize that his phone was missing, likely left behind somewhere in the cinema.
“Yes, that.”
Tao Xiaor was also taken aback, quickly pulling out her phone and presenting the text message content to Meng Huai.
Once a person’s body enters the third phase, all sorts of strange discomfort responses may arise; in extreme cases, there can even be memory confusion and hallucinations. Meng Huai had no recollection of sending a text message and could only attribute it to his physical condition.
After glancing at Tao Xiaor’s phone screen, Meng Huai fell silent, instead crouching down by Jiang Yan’s stretcher. After hesitating for a few seconds, he gently stroked her hair, “There are too many injured, ambulance capacity is limited, just hold on a bit longer.”
“I’m fine… I remember someone saved me, and there were gunshots… was it you?”
Jiang Yan spoke softly, sounding somewhat weak.
Looking back at Tao Xiaor, Meng Huai sighed gently and shook his head slightly, “It wasn’t me, I didn’t bring a gun.”
“It was the firefighters who found you on the third floor; you were disoriented, and that’s why you thought you heard gunshots.”
Tao Xiaor quickly stepped forward, taking over the conversation.
Hehe, Meng Huai’s skills in lying and weaving stories were far inferior to Tao Xiaor’s, no wonder every team needed an intelligence unit. Besides providing intelligence support, they were responsible for managing aftermath and crafting plausible scenarios and excuses for the public to accept – it truly was not a simple task.
At this moment, Jiang Yan felt an urge to laugh, but the memory of the two blood-invaded individuals she had dealt with darkened her expression.
In half an hour, more ambulances arrived as many still unconscious or injured civilians were swiftly carried away. Now mostly back to normal, Jiang Yan, under Meng Huai’s insistence and company, boarded the ambulance heading to the Army General Hospital.
In the early hours, a major safety incident erupted at the sixth floor restaurant of the Wanqueli Commercial Plaza due to a gas pipeline leak, leading to severe explosions and fires, all laid bare before the public eye.
