The lights on the ninety-seventh floor remained dead.
In the pitch darkness, Su Jin pushed his speed to the absolute redline, dragging Cheng Du along as they navigated the labyrinth of corridors.
His eyes constantly scanning the shadows, he hissed in a low, tight voice, "Gao Tianfang is encased in bone armor. Standard firearms are useless against him, and his raw strength far surpasses mine. Aside from his eyes, his only vulnerable points are his internal organs. We can't escape him. Killing him is the only way."
"How do we kill him?"
Su Jin halted abruptly, his gaze locking onto the placard for the food storage room. He shoved Cheng Du through the door. "Dust explosion. Tear open every bag of flour in there and saturate the air. The higher the particle density, the better! I'll hold the opposite door. The second he walks into the trap, you ignite it."
"Boss..." Cheng Du suddenly fell silent. "Isn't it a bit early to sacrifice me?"
"Who the hell said anything about sacrificing you? You set up the trap, bait him from the threshold, and then hide beside the doorframe. Wait for the opening, then strike the match."
"He's wary of my weapon. I'll suppress him and force him inside. If he pushes out, I'll shoot him dead. If he stays in, we blow him up." Su Jin raised the Silver Gun. "Hurry up. He's probably heading to the main control to restore power. We have a little time. Just remember—do not start the fire while you're still inside."
"Got it!" Cheng Du scrambled into the darkness, frantically hunting for the flour sacks.
Su Jin took his position at the opposite doorway, pressing his back flush against the wall, both hands gripping his weapon in a tight, white-knuckled hold.
...
Click. Click. Click.
In less than a minute, the main control for the ninety-seventh floor was activated, flooding the entire level with blinding, sterile fluorescent light.
Inside the pantry, Cheng Du was caught mid-throw, violently shaking a massive bag of flour into the air. He froze the instant the lights flared to life.
Reaching out, he grabbed the edge of a stainless-steel rack stacked with heavy kitchenware and gave it a vicious yank.
Metal bowls and heavy ceramic plates crashed to the tile, shattering and clattering in a deafening cacophony.
Out in the corridor, Gao Tianfang had been methodically checking rooms.
Catching the sudden clatter, he let out a cold, predatory grunt and accelerated toward the noise.
The heavy, thundering footfalls of his armored sprint reverberated down the hall. Su Jin’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
With a violent screech of tearing carpet, Gao Tianfang skidded to a halt directly between the two doorways, facing the food storage room.
Staring at the impossibly thick, murky air billowing from the doorway, he took two cautious steps backward, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
At that exact microsecond, Su Jin violently pivoted from his cover, leveled his weapon, and squeezed the trigger!
Three deafening blasts struck Gao Tianfang dead center in his back, right over his heart. Bone armor shattered into jagged shrapnel, sending a geyser of blood and pulverized flesh flying.
Acting purely on monstrous instinct, Gao Tianfang threw himself forward to escape the line of fire, tucking into a brutal, rolling dive straight into the pantry.
"Whoa!?"
Cheng Du, flattened against the wall right beside the doorframe, let out an involuntary yelp.
He immediately used Gao Tianfang’s armored face as a stepping stone and vaulted frantically out of the room.
"IGNITE IT!" Su Jin roared, his eyes bloodshot and bulging.
Hearing the command, Cheng Du, now safely in the hallway, spun around and unleashed a brutally fast, flame-wreathed right hook directly into the room!
The sheer kinetic force of his fiery swing sent a trailing stream of pure ignition straight into the flour-choked air.
The instant the licking flames kissed the edge of the suspended particulate cloud, the ambient air pressure seemed to snap tight like a garrote.
A localized, invisible fuse rapidly snaked its way through the dense layer of floating dust.
Every single microscopic granule in the room seemed to come alive with a latent, violent fury, chaining together in a microscopic flash of blinding light—
BOOM!!!
A catastrophic detonation ripped outward from the doorway!
An apocalyptic flash of fire instantly swallowed the interior, followed immediately by a massive, superheated sphere of white plasma that blew the steel doorframe completely out of alignment, violently ejecting the room's contents.
Iron basins, twisted cutlery, and the incinerated husks of flour sacks became deadly shrapnel screaming through the firestorm. Razor-sharp metal embedded itself deeply into the corridor walls as tongues of fire violently licked the ceiling tiles.
Gao Tianfang’s massive silhouette was utterly swallowed by the inferno, vanishing into the core of the blast wave.
The concussive roar threatened to rupture their eardrums. Su Jin and Cheng Du clamped their hands desperately over their ears, but the invisible overpressure wave still slammed into them, scouring their faces with raw, abrasive force.
It took a full ten seconds for the ringing to recede enough for Su Jin to function. Moving with manic desperation, he charged into the still-smoldering ruin of the pantry, weapon raised.
Confirm the kill! He had to secure the kill!
A thermobaric blast of that yield wasn't guaranteed to kill a freak like Gao Tianfang, but it absolutely had to cripple his mobility.
Thick, acrid smoke choked the room. Su Jin’s eyes darted frantically through the haze, hunting for the target.
In the deepest corner of the charred room, a massive, blurry shadow hauled itself upright through the smoke.
The shadow coughed twice—a wet, heavy sound of someone expelling blood—before a bone-chilling voice cut through the haze.
"You two worthless sacks of shit... I really should have butchered you earlier. Better late than never."
"Stop acting tough!" Su Jin leveled his barrel and fired directly into the silhouette.
CLANG! Gao Tianfang viciously tore a surviving stainless-steel cabinet door off its hinges and slammed it down like a riot shield.
Both rounds flattened against the heavy steel plating.
Even distorted by the smoke, the monster's movements were terrifyingly explosive and precise!
The kinetic transfer alone was proof that Gao Tianfang still retained massive combat strength.
He wasn't acting.
Su Jin's stomach plummeted into an icy void. He rapidly backed out of the room, firing one more suppressing shot to keep Gao Tianfang pinned.
Hitting the doorway, he grabbed Cheng Du by the harness and hauled him into a dead sprint. "Move! He's still alive, we're going back upstairs!"
"Shouldn't we be heading down to ground level?!" Cheng Du yelled in panic.
"His remaining strength is too great, he'll catch us! There's a chemistry lab upstairs! We have to find a way to poison him. Damn it, if I have to, I'll drag him to hell with me!" Su Jin snarled, his voice raw with violent desperation.
The two men scrambled frantically up the stairwell, immediately breaching the laboratory and recklessly tearing through shelves of glass beakers and reagent bottles.
Hot on their heels, Gao Tianfang charged up the stairs like a Peerless, apocalyptic beast.
The moment Su Jin and Cheng Du backed out of the lab, a fully blackened, soot-stained Gao Tianfang was already surging down the corridor, closing the gap to under ten meters!
Without a microsecond of hesitation, Su Jin and Cheng Du hurled their entire armful of unknown chemical jars directly at the monster's face.
The sheer volume of glass was impossible to dodge. Gao Tianfang threw his arms over his eyes and bulldozed straight through the barrage, shattering over twenty thick glass containers with his armored body.
A horrific cocktail of unidentified chemical liquids drenched him, instantly producing hissing white smoke and a painfully pungent stench, but failing to cause any catastrophic damage.
Su Jin raised his weapon and fired again, the impact violently checking Gao Tianfang's momentum.
His final shot... spent.
Separated by a mere seven meters, Gao Tianfang ceased his charge. He slowly lowered his arms, his cold, predatory eyes locking onto Su Jin.
"Nine shots... Judging by my knowledge of firearms, your gun has a maximum of nine bullets. You are out of ammunition."
"Nine shots? This gun doesn't use bullets, haven't you realized yet?" Su Jin laughed, raising the Silver Gun.
Gao Tianfang, who was just about to lunge, froze in his tracks, a flicker of genuine suspicion flashing across his eyes.
He was right!
That gun was incredibly strange, with immense power.
His external armor had been pierced several times, yet he felt no bullet lodged inside.
What exactly was it firing?
Wait... If he still had ammunition, why would he tell me? It's a bluff!
"Trying to bluff me! If you have bullets, shoot them!" Gao Tianfang unleashed a hideous, booming laugh and resumed his lethal charge.
Su Jin and Cheng Du both went completely pale. "He was coughing up blood, he's injured internally..." Su Jin said, his face ashen. "Let's fight him head-on!"
"Let's go!" Cheng Du ground his teeth, and the two men launched themselves forward simultaneously.
A split second later, the three of them clashed in a brutal, flesh-and-bone melee.
Gao Tianfang planted a massive kick into one of them, sending him flying. He stalked forward, his roaring laughter shaking the hallway like a triumphant beast. "Trash! You really are out of bullets!"
"You don't understand the gap in strength, yet you dare to attack me! You two pieces of garbage don't have even a ten-thousandth of a chance of winning!"
"Go to hell!"
Su Jin violently rolled over, pulled out all the quicklime from his back, and threw a handful directly into Gao Tianfang's eyes.
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