Chapter 146 - 111: Shoot, Kill!

Chapter 146: Chapter 111: Shoot, Kill!

After changing his clothes, Lu Jing’an soon arrived at the Water Patrol Bureau, accompanied by Chen Xuan.

At this moment, the Water Patrol Bureau was already shrouded in a chilling aura of murder. The men Bai Lang brought surrounded the entire gray-brick government office, forming an ironclad blockade as tight as a drum. Even the two dim kerosene street lamps in front of the building seemed to dim a bit under this oppressive presence.

Including Bai Lang, there were forty-six men in total. They didn’t stand in neat formations; instead, they were scattered around the government office in a seemingly casual manner. Yet, the positions where each person stood faintly sealed off all angles of entry and exit.

These men wore neat uniforms, and the ferocious wolf heads on their chests directly exposed their origins—the Wolf Camp. However, the most eye-catching thing about them was the Evil Qi and Death Qi surrounding them, which had almost solidified into physical substance. It wasn’t the killing intent accumulated over years by veterans on the battlefield, but a coldness seeping out from their very bones, as if their internal organs were slowly decaying. Standing a bit closer, one could even faintly smell a strange, elusive odor, like the dregs of medicine mixed with rust.

They stood there in silence, their eyes hollow and numb. They looked like a horde of Evil Ghosts that had just crawled out of their graves, barely draped in human skin.

Lu Jing’an paused slightly, his gaze sweeping over the group. He instantly made his judgment. Today, he wore a crisp, well-ironed uniform under a thick woolen overcoat. This sharply contrasted with the dead, lifeless attire of the men opposite him, further accentuating his handsome features and outstanding temperament. He looked as if he didn’t belong at the entrance of this government office, which was currently permeated with the invisible smoke of gunpowder.

Determining the identity of the Wolf Camp was simple. Aside from their uniforms, one only had to look at the Death Qi wrapped around them. This Death Qi wasn’t a bloody aura stained by excessive slaughter, but rather something seeping out, thread by thread, from the inside of their bodies—from every inch of their Tendons and Bones, and Flesh Body.

According to what Lu Jing’an had seen in Leopard One’s memories, the Wolf Camp’s Cultivation path was completely different from that of the Leopard Camp. The Leopard Camp pursued Mechanical Martial Arts, combining the special technology of the Void World with the Flesh Bodies of Martial Cultivators. The Wolf Camp, on the other hand, strictly practiced Krypton Martial Arts.

From the day they joined, every person selected into the Wolf Camp became a test subject for the Voiders’ bizarre potions. Those oddly-colored, pungent potions were euphemistically called potential stimulants, but in reality, they worked at the cost of overdrawing one’s life essence. By forcibly extracting the body’s potential, they allowed Martial Arts Cultivation to advance by leaps and bounds in a short period.

This method was somewhat similar to the Fate Cultivator techniques previously controlled by the Li Family. Both traded lifespan for power. The difference was that Fate Cultivation wasn’t selective; under its manipulation, anyone could unleash a near-death strike. The Voiders’ potions, however, were extremely picky. Those who took them faced near-certain death; not even one in a hundred survived. Even if they were lucky enough to pull through, their lifespans were drastically shortened because their potential had been prematurely exhausted.

For ordinary Cultivators, once they stepped onto the path of Cultivation, their lifespan would increase even if they had only just scratched the surface. But the men of the Wolf Camp were the exact opposite; they were doomed to be short-lived ghosts among Cultivators. Anyone who lived past forty was considered a rare anomaly of longevity within the Wolf Camp.

As a result, the position of Commander Bai Lang changed frequently. The one who lived the longest in the previous generation of the Wolf Camp, outlasting all his peers, would automatically succeed as the new Bai Lang. The Wolf Camp suffered the most severe non-combat personnel attrition among the three major camps. Most didn’t die in battle; they died of old age.

Although the drawbacks were so obvious, their combat prowess was truly formidable. Wolf Camp Martial Artists started off as experts who had Broken the Blood Barrier. Among them, the proportion of those who had reached the Copper Skin Realm was extremely high.

Lu Jing’an only needed to sense them briefly to know that all forty-six men Bai Lang brought possessed vital energy and blood far exceeding that of ordinary people. They were all Martial Artists who had Broken the Blood Barrier. At least a dozen of them had deeply condensed auras, their skin faintly gleaming with a pale copper luster—clearly, they had already reached the Copper Skin Realm. Though this squad was small in number, its destructive power was enough to make anyone who knew the inside story’s blood run cold.

Lu Jing’an stepped forward, the soles of his boots striking the bluestone slabs with clear, steady sounds. Instead of making way, the Wolf Camp members tacitly stepped forward in unison. Like a wall of human flesh, they firmly blocked him and Chen Xuan outside the gates of the Water Patrol Bureau.

Several cold, numb gazes landed on Lu Jing’an, carrying scrutiny as well as an imperceptible indifference toward vibrant life. Lu Jing’an halted. His expression remained utterly calm, and he didn’t even utter a word of reprimand. At a time like this, there was no need to engage in direct conflict with this group of doomed, short-lived men. He knew that a complete falling out between the Lu Family and the Bai Family was exactly what the Hu Family wanted to see the most. There was no way he would grant their wish so easily.

A crowd of dockworkers, petty vendors, and passersby had already gathered in the surroundings. Watching from a distance, they pointed and gossiped in low voices. Seeing Director Lu—who was usually majestic but never mistreated his subordinates, and who had even made great contributions to the peace of the docks—unable to enter his own government office, blocked by a group of murderous strangers, many in the crowd wore expressions of bewilderment and indignation. ℴ

A moment later, the somewhat chaotic sound of footsteps echoed from within the government office. Bai Lang led the way out, followed by the hundreds of original staff and Patrol Officers of the Water Patrol Bureau. Many of them had pale faces and evasive eyes, clearly having been forcibly driven out. This move by Bai Lang was not only a declaration to everyone of his absolute takeover of the Water Patrol Bureau, but also a public, undisguised humiliation of Lu Jing’an, the former director.