Fifty meters away from the anonymous hospital, in a dilapidated alley transformed from a forsaken mining tunnel, the miner who was lying on the ground, as if he had drunk too much wine to stand up, was in fact “Shadowless” Duan Rui, one of the best assassins from the peripheral worlds of the Imperium.
His invisible and unpredictable blades were even more volatile than the shadows in a mist. The queer saber that Li Yao had carefully forged for him could even pierce through the tiniest gap on the joints of the crystal suits.
Twenty meters away from “Shadowless” Duan Rui was a woman in sexy clothes and heavy makeup, but her face and her body were both old and flabby. At first look, she appeared to have been exhausted in the oldest trade of mankind, and she could barely do anything with her legs anymore except for opening them.
However, under the disguise of sloppiness and weakness, it was the healthiest and most perfect slaughter machine named Zhu Linglong that the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils had trained with the secret techniques that had been passed on for a thousand years. As an expert in the Nascent Soul Stage, she was Yue Wushuang’s most trusted subordinate and ranked top on the “Seven Devil Huntresses”.
In order to break the limits of the body and even the soul, the super warriors of the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils would even intentionally guide countless devils to invade their bodies and then grit their teeth to resist the intruders, until they drove the devils away from their bodies or even swallow them as the nutrition to develop their minds.
The Seven Devil Huntresses who had been polished through such a cruel secret technique were all specialists in mental attacks and the most brilliant “Meditation Healers”.
Take Zhu Linglong for example. As long as she glanced at the target, she would be able to plant an uncanny seed inside the head of the target, making the target’s spiritual energy lose control and body burn on its own!
Before her, the muscular man, whose upper body had expanded abnormally and with three enormous lumps on the back and arms that were thicker than the waist of a normal person, seemed to have come to the place for physical pleasure, but he was in fact the most fearless captain in the Astounding Thunder Fleet named “Iron Head” Ran Xiong. He was a lunatic who truly had the courage to charge at the Covenant Alliance’s battle formation on his own at the cost of his own life.
The brothers in the army called him “Iron Head” not because he had practiced any secret technique that made his skull extremely solid, but because everybody thought that there was nothing but a cold iron block inside his head, and he had absolutely no fear of anything!
There were a lot of other experts from the civic circle, the Tribunal of Extraterrestrial Devils, and the army such as “Shadowless” Duan Rui, “Fiery Sorceress” Zhu Linglong, and “Iron Head” Ran Xiong.
After meticulous investigations beforehand, they had pretended to be miners, prostitutes, dealers, fighters, gamblers, patients, thieves… and any other kind of people that could be seen in this place as they moved to the nearby of the anonymous hospital and entered their positions, locking onto their targets.
The reconnaissance on the twenty-seventh district had been conducted far too many times, and the virtual battlefield had long been established. Everybody had rehearsed in the virtual battlefield for so many times that they could reach the gate of the anonymous hospital with their eyes closed.
Even so, those slaughter experts, who were experienced, ruthless, and audacious, couldn’t help but feel a little bit nervous the moment before the operation started.
It was because the targets who seemed to be locked onto by them were also experts who considered slaughter their job. Those people were even more professional and brutal than them!
Dongfang Renxin was the biological brother to Dongfang Wang, who was the leader of the Dongfang family and the Prime Minister of the Imperium. His marvelous, evil techniques were the sources of Dongfang Wang’s power.
It was not hard to imagine how heavily he would be defended when the techniques were performed.
For the sake of confidentiality, Dongfang Renxin did not trust the warriors of his family or the special agents of the Association of Demon Hunters. Instead, he established a tactical squad named “Thirty-Three Limits” which was only loyal to him alone.
Thirty-Three Limits was a weird name, but it represented thirty-three abnormal, strong experts.
They used to be experts who were notorious in the entire Imperium. When they were dying after some dangerous battles, they were delivered to Dongfang Renxin for treatment.
Dongfang Renxin did not replace their body parts with artificial limbs made of metals and crystals or synthetic organs through the regular approach. Instead, he transplanted tremendous organs, bombs, and limbs of the alien beasts onto those lunatics and beasts who did not care about their own lives but only wanted to grow stronger for their vengeance.
The universe was a vast place full of mysteries. Although mankind had never encountered an advanced civilization of the same size during the hundred thousand years of governance on the three thousand Sectors, a lot of strong alien beasts could be found lurking in the remote space zones.
Many alien beasts had absorbed powerful radiations and high-energy particles. Their cells also had abnormal changes in the extremely harsh environments, or as the ancient Cultivators put it, they “absorbed the essence of nature”. They were a hundred times stronger than the animals that human beings had domesticated!
In the Great Dark Age when the demons had reigned over the universe for thirty thousand years, since demons focused more on biotechnologies, alien beasts were slaughtered to be studied on a large scale. Almost all the alien beasts in the three thousand Sectors were butchered.
But the Star Ocean Imperium collapsed very soon after human beings reclaimed the leadership of the universe. The whole universe was in fact mired in chaos and darkness in the ten thousand years that followed. The fire of civilization died out in many worlds, and the alien beasts took the opportunity to proliferate again.
From the Star Ocean Republic to the Imperium of True Human Beings, an important training method for the human experts had always been to execute the alien beasts.
However, the experts in the past only swallowed the flesh of the alien beasts and purged their “cores” at best. Few of them directly transplanted the organs and limbs of the alien beasts onto human beings as creatively as Dongfang Renxin did.
With the wealth of Dongfang Renxin as an elder of the Imperium and the Dongfang family, he could naturally gather the strongest and freshest organs and limbs of the alien beasts.
The heavily-wounded experts who had been transplanted with the organs of the alien beasts, as long as they could survive the painful periods of conflicts, would not only recover and even improve their combat ability but also be influenced by the brutality of the alien beasts, which would turn themselves into the worst nightmare of any enemy.
According to the files that Li Linghai had secretly collected, when those “animalized experts” went back for their revenge, there were indeed bloody cases where they tore the hundreds of people in their opponent’s family apart on their own. However, Dongfang Renxin simply suppressed those cases from leaking out using his power and considered those revenge as live tests for the “animalized experts”.
Such terrifying beings who were half humans and half alien beasts were strong enough to deal with one tactical squad even if there were only one of them. It was needless to say what would happen when there were thirty-three!
At the periphery, the elite soldiers of the Dongfang family who stayed alert all the time were there. Inside the building, it was the unparalleled brutal men like “Thirty-Three Limits” who were responsible for the defense. Below the ground, it was a whole volcano of crystal bombs. No wonder Dongfang Renxin was bold enough to continue his evil tests below the ground when a storm of blood was blowing in the capital because of the clash between the Dongfang family and the reformists!
It was 1:55 in the afternoon.
In a world of darkness where sunlight was nowhere to be seen, “afternoon” seemed to be a meaningless word.
However, according to the latest intelligence, it had been more than two hours since Dongfang Renxin and his companions entered the anonymous hospital through a secret channel. If he was indeed performing any wicked surgery, it must’ve reached the most critical moment that was not to be interrupted!
The members of the arrest team that had taken their positions one after another could not dawdle any longer either. It would be unreasonable if a prostitute and a customer flirted with each other for a long time in the alley without finding a place to get the job done, right?
Quite a few tough men, who were wearing crimson leather armors with iron nails embedded in them, had already grown suspicious of them. Cursing, they walked to “Fiery Sorceress” Zhu Linglong and “Iron Head” Ran Xiong. They seemed to be complaining that the whore looked rather unfamiliar and that she was bold enough to not pay any protection fees to them.
At first look, they looked like gangsters who occupied the twenty-seventh district, who were anything but unusual in the dark world.
But according to the intelligence, they were actually the experts of the Dongfang family and Dongfang Renxin’s most trusted nephews. They were here to protect Dongfang Renxin while pretending to be local gangsters.
No more waiting.
All the communication chips on the eardrums of the members of the arrest team received three long and two short beeps.
It was a signal asking them to take action when they were ready.
“Fiery Sorceress” Zhu Linglong suddenly exclaimed, as if her breasts had been pinched hard by the pleasure-seeker that was pretended by “Iron Head” Ran Xiong.
“Iron Head” Ran Xiong burst into laughter.
It was exactly the signal to attack.
At this moment, the few warriors of the Dongfang family who pretended to be gangsters were walking by “Shadowless” Duan Rui who was lying on the ground. Their attention was entirely distracted by Zhu Linglong’s exclamation and Ran Xiong’s laughter, and they did not notice that the “dying” drunkard on the ground was slowly opening his clear and cruel eyes.
Right after the last warrior of the Dongfang family walked by, “Shadowless” Duan Rui stood up without a sound and delivered his blade that almost did not have any thickness into the heart of the warrior from his back softly.
The warrior of the Dongfang family bulged his eyes before he had any time to let out an exclamation or summon his crystal suit.
The other warriors of the Dongfang family, including the main troop at the edge and the “Thirty-Three Limits” in the anonymous hospital, were more alarmed than ever.
Although “Shadowless” Duan Rui’s assassination was a textbook method, it was still noticed by them at the earliest time.
However, the moment Duan Rui pushed the shadow blade forward softly, all the lights within several hundred meters from the anonymous hospital died out, turning the place into a pitch dark swamp.
The hospital, where the lights were still on, became the most eye-catching target. Bombarded by thousands of flying swords and crystal cannons, it was also swallowed by darkness after abnormal fireballs burst out one after another!