Chen Haoran stared fixedly at the hijacked mother and daughter. He slowly bent down, placing his rifle into the mud at his feet, clenching his fists as he straightened his body bit by bit.
His movements were excruciatingly slow, like a silent pantomime, for fear of startling the desperate outlaws whose fingers were tensed on their triggers.
Once steady, he raised his open palms above his head and kicked his gun far away. Rainwater flowed down his face and into his collar; his lips were pressed thin as he signaled his team to follow suit.
The SWAT officers gritted their teeth, disarming and raising their hands one by one. Aside from the drumming rain, the scene was deathly silent.
In that silence, Zhizhi moved.
His soul was that of a fancy rat tempered at the edge of life and death; he did not fear mortality. Moreover, his instincts contained no "compromise", only "Home", It was an obsession he would guard even if it meant crawling back from the depths of hell. Looking at the limp form of Mother Tian on the ground, only one thought occupied Zhizhi's mind:
Anyone who touches her, dies.
"Watch the hostage! Capture it alive!" Cold Snake shrieked in butchered Long Nation dialect, her muzzle swaying.
Before Cold Snake could finish her threats, Zhizhi silenced her.
He dropped flat.
He didn't charge like a human. Instead, like a startled rat, his body constricted, and he "slid" across the slick floor using both hands and feet.
The movement defied human skeletal logic. These CIA agents had practiced killing arts their entire lives, but they had never trained to shoot a 1.6-meter "giant rat" scuttling at high speed.
"He's down low!"
The cry had barely gone up when Zhizhi burrowed through the gaps between the agents' legs. His large hands clamped onto an agent's heel like iron pincers, and he yanked backward with savage momentum.
Crack.
The sound of a dislocated ankle was crisp. Simultaneously, the piece of the puzzle belonging to Zhizhi within the Divine Realm vibrated violently, and a monstrous strength—one that did not belong to humans—flooded this body.
Zhizhi became faster.
Borrowing the force of the pull, he vaulted up, crashing through the crowd like a cannonball. He scooped Mother Tian into his arms with one hand and rolled toward Chen Haoran's direction.
"Fire!" Cold Snake reacted instantly, swinging her gun toward the back of Zhizhi's head.
Just as she was about to pull the trigger, the massive screen of Livestream Room A materialized directly in front of her without warning. On the screen was the face of a dead rat magnified hundreds of times—eyes pinned shut, limbs mutilated, and bloody scissors swaying before the lens.
This "dishonorable" visual assault caused the hearts of these cold-blooded killers to skip a beat. The shot that should have hit drifted wide, only grazing Zhizhi's shoulder.
By the time Cold Snake snapped out of her shock, Mother Tian had already been delivered into Chen Haoran's arms.
"You damn rat! Move again and I kill the woman!" Cold Snake was livid, her gun pointed at Tian Shuangxin, who hadn't escaped yet.
But her efforts were in vain; Zhizhi simply couldn't understand her. This body was that of the Green Pheasant Country man, Sato; aside from beast languages, he only responded to the tongue of the GreenPheasant. Cold Snake's threats were nothing but noise to his ears.
The only thing he could perceive was the opponent's radiating killing intent. Since "human" movements couldn't save his family, he would stop being human.
Zhizhi crouched low once more, completely abandoning upright walking. In the torrential rain, its form blurred as it stayed low to the ground, charging the enemy formation with speed that left afterimages.
In less than a second, it scurried behind the agent holding Tian Shuangxin, leaping and climbing straight up the man's spine. This body was now bursting with explosive power. Zhizhi reached the agent's nape in an instant, opened its mouth to its limit, and bit down on the carotid artery without a shred of hesitation.
This was a beast's way of fighting: no wasted punches, only the lethal, singular pursuit of a killing bite.
Blood sprayed across Zhizhi's face, but he didn't even blink. Fueled by the metallic scent of gore, the bestial nature in his pupils burned to a peak.
"Damn it! Open fire!" Cold Snake screamed in exasperation.
The bitten agent let out a shrill cry but still managed to press his gun against Zhizhi's head.
Lost in a frenzy, Zhizhi ignored the threat entirely. With a savage wrench, it tore a small chunk of bloody flesh from the agent's neck. The agent's entire body convulsed in agony, yet its trained hands remained steady. He squeezed the trigger hard, prepared to shatter Zhizhi's head at point-blank range.
Click.
There was no gunshot, only a faint mechanical tap. The agent froze; Cold Snake was stunned. He pulled the trigger again frantically, but the Glock in his hand felt like a piece of scrap metal. The firing pin was moving, but the gunpowder in the bullets had seemingly turned into wet mud, refusing to ignite.
It wasn't just him—every agent's firearm in the vicinity misfired at that exact moment.
This was "Logic Disconnect".
The people of B.E.N. had crossed the BeastGod's karmic bottom line. In this specific zone, the physical logic of "gunpowder explosion" that supported their killing had been forcibly erased by the Goddess.
Chen Haoran reacted with lightning speed. Seeing the enemy's weapons fail, his eyes sharpened. "Go!" he roared.
The SWAT officers, who had previously disarmed, pounced like tigers descending from a mountain.
Without bullets, these so-called elite agents were mere lambs to the slaughter before the Long Nation SWAT. To help his team as quickly as possible, Chen Haoran moved with maximum speed to settle Mother Tian in the very van the CIA had used for their decoy trick, assigning two previously injured officers to guard her.
By now, Zhizhi stood protectively in front of Tian Shuangxin, its fur drenched and its mouth dripping with blood. A low, guttural "squeak" rumbled in its throat.
That terrifying, uncanny presence caused the knees of several nearby agents to buckle. It fixed a death stare on Cold Snake, its claws carving deep gouges into the concrete.
Next, it was going to tear out the throat of this "lead pest".
Cold Snake's fingers blurred across the leather tactical belt at her waist.
As a leader of a top-tier special ops unit, she knew that gunpowder weapons were now useless. She had been briefed by her country that while the Goddess had erased the logic of "explosion", she had not touched "elasticity" or "impact".
She pulled out an ancient-looking brass ring-pull tube—a secretly developed B.E.N. "Emergency Mechanical Signal Flare". No circuits, no gunpowder; it was filled with highly compressed chemical fluorescent liquid and a spring-loaded firing pin.
The ring snapped.
A piercing orange glow shot into the torrential rain. Though there was no bang, it looked like an unignorable wound across the grey sky.
The moment the signal flared, Zhizhi was already above her. Zhizhi's jumps followed no human pattern; it didn't leap upright but coiled its limbs and "launched" itself like a rubber ball.
Cold Snake tracked the sound, performing a twisted side-roll in the mud. Zhizhi's claws, covered in coarse, rat-like hair, grazed her throat. Its nails even whistled as they sliced through the air.
On the other side of the battlefield, ChenHaoran and his men were seeing red. This was primal violence. Chen Haoran dodged a tactical axe swung by an agent, his left hand catching the wrist while his right palm slammed into the elbow joint.
Crack.
The sound of bone snapping was drowned out by the rain, but the agent's contorted arm said enough. Chen Haoran didn't stop; he spun into a low sweep, knocking another flanking enemy to the ground before flipping over to subdue him.
"Control them! Kill those who resist!" ChenHaoran's voice was hoarse and chilling.
The SWAT teams formed tactical cells. Without bullets, Long Nation grappling and striking techniques became a death sentence.
A few agents tried to fight to the death, but they found their vaunted CQC skills too rigid against these machines of violence.
Blood and mud mingled. Chen Haoran finished his immediate opponent, wiped the mixture from his face, and turned his gaze toward Zhizhi. He realized he couldn't even intervene. Zhizhi was circling Cold Snake at such a high speed he looked like a flickering phantom.
Chen Haoran had barely taken a step forward when Zhizhi snapped its head around. A low, guttural "squeak" escaped its throat, a sound that carried far through the curtain of rain.
Chen Haoran's legs stiffened; he stopped instinctively. This was no longer the pampered cry of a house pet; it was the warning of a predator to an intruder.
Co-operating with a canine requires years of training—how much more difficult was it to face a soul-frenzied freak in a rat's skin?
As a professional, Chen Haoran knew that stepping in now was suicide and would only interfere with Zhizhi. He turned decisively, rushing toward Tian Shuangxin, who stood stranded in the rain.
"Ms. Tian!"
Tian Shuangxin stood in the downpour, her eyes vacant. A deep, long gash on her elbow from the earlier rescue was visible, but under the glow of the orange light orb above, her flesh was crawling and knitting together like a loom weaving cloth. Aside from her tattered sleeve, the wound was nearly healed.
"Come with me! This place has become a battlefield!" Chen Haoran grabbed her shoulders, trying to pull her toward the van where her mother was.
"I'm not leaving! Zhizhi is right there!" TianShuangxin struggled frantically, her nails digging into Chen Haoran's uniform. "I can feel it... It's losing the ability to turn back! To save us, it's truly becoming a beast!"
"It's fighting! You being here only drags it down!" Chen Haoran roared, driven by a SWAT officer's instinct to evacuate civilians.
"No... it's afraid!" Tian Shuangxin wailed, suddenly erupting with staggering strength as she gripped the iron railing of the shophouse corridor, her knuckles turning white.
As they reached a stalemate, the sky seemed to tear open. It wasn't lightning, but dozens of black streaks of light.
BOOM—!
The entire street trembled. Dozens of soldiers encased in matte-black exoskeletons landed firmly. They carried specialized electromagnetic railguns and wore alloy longblades at their waists; their masks were engraved with a dark-red dragon symbol.
The Loong Shadow Sequence had entered the fray.
The lead warrior scanned the area, his voice sounding like heavy metal grinding: "Ordered to eliminate all foreign enemies within the target battlefield. Non-combatants, fall back."
Cold Snake's pupils shrank to pinpricks. She recognized them—Long Nation's top-tier military, specialized in handling "uninvited" foreign special forces like hers. Realizing the gap in power, she shrieked, "Retreat!"
But it was too late; her reinforcements had also arrived.
The metal doors at the end of the corridor were blown open as a team of men in black raincoats charged in. Armed with high-pressure hydraulic crossbows and heavy breaching axes, their eyes were full of B.E.N.'s pathological arrogance.
"Take Cold Snake! Kill all these yellow monkeys!" the lead suicide-squad member roared, raising a heavy gunpowder-primed crossbow.
He pulled the trigger. However, within the karma locked by the Beast God's rules, the bolt merely slid forward a few centimetres before falling pathetically to the ground—gunpowder propulsion logic was dead here.
In the midst of their shock, the LoongShadow warriors moved. The electromagnetic railguns emitted a faint hum—no muzzle flash, only arcs of blue electricity.
The hydraulic crossbows in the enemies' hands were instantly shattered by high-energy electromagnetic rounds. Then, longblades were unsheathed, and black figures turned into a gale, sweeping into the enemy ranks.
Zhizhi let out a sharp, piercing shriek amidst the chaos. It sensed it—a thick, foul stench of decay emanating from these newcomers in black raincoats. It crouched low, its spine emitting a series of tooth-grinding cracks.
It didn't care who was a suicide squad member or who was Loong Shadow. It only knew these "pests" had bullied its Mama and left its Grandma's life hanging in the balance inside that van.
The liquidation had truly begun.