dhibooks Chapter 61 Buying the Entire Building as a Coffin
Chapter 61 Buying the Entire Building as a Coffin
The entire conference room was completely silent. Only the whooshing sound of the air conditioner vents in the corner could be heard.
Sparks were still flying from the wreckage of the instrument, which was billowing black smoke. Half of the large screen was shattered into shards of glass.
The scarred man remained standing, his left hand gripping the edge of the solid wood round table tightly. Splinters from the broken wood dug into his palm, but he didn't even flinch.
A bead of cold sweat trickled down his forehead, slid down his nose, and dripped onto the expensive carpet.
Images of the bald, burly man having his right arm pinned down by a single finger flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. It was a crushing defeat that was completely beyond his comprehension.
"Seal off the building."
Scarface squeezed out four words through his teeth.
The white man sitting next to him was still in a daze. His ten fingers hovered above the keyboard, but he didn't type anything for a long time.
"I'm telling you to seal off the building!"
Scarface suddenly kicked over the swivel chair behind him.
"Activate the S-level defense matrix. Weld all the alloy isolation doors on the three underground levels shut. Activate the Omega contingency plan."
The white man snapped back to reality as if he'd been electrocuted. His hands slammed a string of gibberish onto the keyboard, then he quickly pressed the backspace key to delete it.
"Executive... Omega Plan... you mean to release 'Number Zero'?"
He swallowed hard. His Adam's apple trembled violently.
"Zero's gene fusion rate is only thirty percent. Its central nervous system is completely out of control. If we release it now, all three hundred-plus security personnel in the building... will become its food."
Scarface walked over, grabbed the white man by the collar, and lifted him off the chair.
"Three hundred perimeter security guards are nothing! You really think a few bulletproof windows can stop that living devil?"
He roughly shoved the white man back into front of the computer.
"Activate Zero immediately. Have it guard the lobby on the first floor. If we can hold that kid off for five minutes, we can escape in the stealth helicopter on the rooftop. Once we get back to overseas headquarters, we can hire more security guards no matter how many die."
The white man dared not say another word. He gritted his teeth and pressed the enter key.
A piercing red alarm sounded over the intercom system throughout the entire World Expo building.
Layers of titanium alloy armor plates, each half a meter thick, slid off the exterior walls, sealing off all the windows and doors.
The outer perimeter of Yunding Mountain Villa.
Lin Zhen, dragging his still-recovering left leg, was holding a high-pressure water hose, frantically washing away the grayish-white powder from the asphalt road.
The powder, mixed with brain matter and blood, was smeared on the uneven ground. It couldn't be washed away completely.
All he wanted to do now was to clean up this chaotic mess and make it look presentable before Lu Qingxue left.
I heard a very faint rustling sound of slippers behind me.
Lin Zhen's back hairs stood on end instantly. He quickly turned off the water gun and kicked the blood-stained hose into the nearby bushes.
Lu Qingxue was wearing that oversized nightgown and pink bunny slippers. She peeked halfway out from the half-open villa door.
She was still holding a half-finished cup of soy milk. Her long hair was already dried and draped smoothly over her shoulders.
"Director Lin, what are you doing squatting on the ground? Where is my brother?"
Lu Qingxue blinked. Her gaze passed over Lin Zhen, looking at the potholed road and the grass frozen into ice crystals.
"It was so noisy outside just now. Is someone causing trouble?"
Lin Zhen forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. He rubbed his hands together in front of him.
"Miss, you're joking. Who would dare cause trouble here? Just now... just now the municipal department came to repair the sewer pipes. They made a bit of a racket. Mr. Lu thought they were too noisy, so he went down the mountain to buy groceries himself. He said he'd stew pork ribs for you for lunch."
Lu Qingxue said "Oh" and took a sip of soy milk through the straw.
She glanced down at her fair, delicate arms, which seemed almost translucent. Something felt off.
While she was taking a shower, she clearly heard bursts of gunfire outside. There were even screams.
But now, apart from a faint smell of disinfectant, there's nothing unusual in the air.
"Then I'll go back to my room and watch TV. Director Lin, please don't work too hard."
Lu Qingxue waved her hand, turned back, and closed the door behind her.
Hearing the door lock click shut, Lin Zhen's legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the muddy ground.
He was breathing heavily, wiping the cold sweat from his face.
If Lu Qingxue had just taken a couple more steps, she would have seen the dozens of empty, shattered bullet casings in the grass.
Lin Zhen took out his phone and glanced at the time.
Fifteen minutes have passed since Lu Yuan descended the mountain.
He turned his head and looked towards the city center.
There, the outline of the World Trade Center was faintly visible in the morning mist.
"Those foreign devils from the S.H.I.E.L.D. conglomerate... their days are numbered."
The streets of Jiangnan City were completely jammed with traffic during the morning rush hour.
A yellow taxi was stuck between two buses. It had been stationary for five minutes.
The taxi driver was a middle-aged man in his forties. He was honking the horn impatiently.
Lu Yuan sat in the passenger seat, resting his chin on one hand, watching the slowly crawling traffic outside the window.
He didn't fly directly there.
The Mahayana cultivator's divine sense had long since locked down every corner of the Universal Building. Even the heartbeats of the two living people in the top-floor conference room were under his surveillance.
He needs some time to sort through the fragments of memory in the bald, muscular man's mind.
The S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gene serum. Its core ingredient comes from an ancient site recently unearthed overseas.
It not only contains the blood of the green-haired water ape, but also some more advanced substances.
Lu Yuan gently rubbed the fragment of the demon beast he had brought from Kunlun in his pocket with his fingertips.
Earth has been sealed off from the world for so many years. People outside can't get in, and people inside can't get out.
How did the remains of these monsters fall to Earth?
Could it be that in some corner, unnoticed even by the Heavenly Dao, lies an extremely hidden spatial rift between Earth and the cultivation world?
If that's the case, then things will get interesting.
"Young man, you're going to work at the Huanyu Building?"
The taxi driver was incredibly bored. He turned around and started a conversation.
"That place has very high entry requirements. It's full of elites from foreign companies. I heard even the cleaning ladies there have to know a few words of English. But something's weird today. The radio just said that the Huanyu Building is having some kind of fully enclosed fire drill. They've sealed off the whole building."
The driver smacked his lips, pulled a mint from the storage compartment, and popped it into his mouth.
Lu Yuan looked away, focusing on the traffic light directly ahead.
"Go collect a bad debt."
The driver paused for a moment, then chuckled dryly twice.
"Collecting debts, huh? Those places aren't easy to collect from. I advise you to be polite when you get downstairs. Those security guards are carrying real weapons."
Lu Yuan didn't reply.
The red light turned green. The traffic began to move slowly.
Ten minutes later, the taxi stopped on the curb opposite the Huanyu Building.
Lu Yuan pushed open the car door. He took out a hundred-yuan bill from his pocket and threw it on the passenger seat.
"Keep the change, please."
He stepped across the street.
The driver looked at the banknote and shook his head.
"These days, debt collectors are all so arrogant."
The main entrance on the first floor of the Huanyu Building.
The once transparent glass curtain wall is now completely covered by a thick layer of titanium alloy armor plating.
Not even a fly can get in.
The once bustling crowd of white-collar workers and passersby outside the building were all dispersed two streets away by the conglomerate's security detail.
Behind the yellow police tape, stood four burly men dressed in black, fully armed.
They were carrying electromagnetic rifles. The muzzles were intentionally or unintentionally pointed towards the road.
Lu Yuan, hands in his pockets and wearing white canvas shoes, leisurely crossed the road and stopped outside the police line.
One of the burly men in black, his face full of scars, frowned. He took a step forward, gun in hand.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. internal drills. All unauthorized personnel, get out of the way. Take one more step, and I'll shoot you dead on the spot for endangering public safety."
The burly man's voice came through the megaphone on his helmet, carrying a strong warning.
Lu Yuan glanced at him.
He didn't speak. Nor did he stop walking.
The white canvas shoes stepped right through the yellow warning tape. They continued walking.
"court death."
The burly man's eyes turned cold. He pulled the trigger immediately.
Three dark blue electromagnetic pulse projectiles shot out in a triangular formation, heading straight for Lu Yuan's chest and face.
At that distance, let alone a person, even an elephant would be riddled with bullets.
But the expected scene of blood and gore did not appear.
The three bullets stopped about half a foot from Lu Yuan's nose.
It was as if it had crashed into an invisible wall. The warhead spun rapidly, scraping against the air and producing a piercing buzzing sound, but it could not advance even an inch further.
The big man's pupils suddenly contracted.
Before he could even shout, the three bullets hovering in mid-air suddenly changed direction, flying back at ten times the speed at which they left the barrel.
"Pfft pfft pfft"
Three dull thuds of flesh being pierced rang out.
The burly man's helmet, bulletproof visor, and head were all blasted into a cloud of blood mist by those three bullets.
The headless corpse swayed twice before crashing heavily onto the steps.
The remaining three security guards were completely terrified.
They screamed at the top of their lungs, their electromagnetic rifles firing wildly. The eerie blue flames illuminated the open space in front of the building as bright as day.
Lu Yuan didn't even try to dodge.
He braved the hail of bullets and walked step by step to the tightly closed titanium alloy door.
All the bullets hovered eerily three feet in front of him, then turned back the way they came.
Two seconds later, the gunfire stopped.
Three more corpses, beaten to a pulp, appeared at the entrance.
Lu Yuan raised his right hand and flicked his finger against the half-meter-thick titanium alloy armor plate.
"Du"
A very dull sound.
next second.
The entire armored door, strong enough to withstand the bombardment of a main battle tank, was riddled with countless spiderweb-like cracks starting from the point of impact.
Then, it collapsed with a deafening roar.
The shattered metal fragments crashed to the ground, causing the entire street to shake three times.
Behind the main entrance was a luxurious hall, roughly the size of half a football field.
At this moment, two hundred heavily armed scavengers stood in the hall.
The dark muzzles of guns were all aimed at the boy in canvas shoes standing outside the door.
At the very front of these scavengers squatted a disgusting mountain of flesh.
It was a stitched-together monster, pieced together from countless severed limbs and mutated organs. Dark green slime flowed from its surface, and it emitted a nauseating stench of decay.
The monster raised its head. Three murky eyes stared intently at Lu Yuan. A hissing sound, like fingernails scraping a blackboard, came from its throat.
Lu Yuan frowned in disgust.
"I came all the way here early in the morning. And this is the kind of low-quality garbage you serve me?"
He stepped over the scattered metal fragments and entered the hall.