383: Chapter 181: The Early Bird Catches the Worm 383: Chapter 181: The Early Bird Catches the Worm At four in the morning, Li Mumu opened her eyes and saw Chen Yan and Jiang Xiaotang quietly changing their clothes.
She sat up and glanced outside, noticing that the sun had not yet risen.
“Oh!
Did I wake you?”
When Chen Yan saw her getting up, she hurried over to push her back into bed, “It’s nothing, we have to go out and take care of some things today, just keep sleeping, and when we return in the evening, I’ll bring you something tasty!”
[They are hiding something from you]
[They do not want to take you along]
Li Mumu lay quietly in bed, silently waited for a while, sat up, and walked to the window, where she saw a group of people assembling downstairs, sneaking toward the back of the building.
“Brother, are we not leaving someone at home?”
Youtiao, with his helmet on, whispered to Wang Yunxiao, “What if those people still harbor ill intentions and come after Li Mumu?”
“There are security guards at the school, what are you afraid of.”
Although we didn’t leave anyone, didn’t we leave a ghost?
Wang Yunxiao was very clear that the best way to deal with these utterly unscrupulous cultists was to kill them before they could act, giving them no chance to cause trouble.
There’s only the saying “a thief can’t have a thousand days,” not “a thousand days of guarding against a thief.”
Military trucks raced and roared through the streets, and since there were few people on the streets early in the morning, the driver pushed the accelerator deeply.
The focus of this operation was to catch them off guard and seize the initiative.
Qin Xiangdong had exhausted all resources to secure all possible support, including a mobile squad from the Special Service Bureau, a battalion of regular army soldiers, and three tactical teams from Qianjin Church.
Qianjin Church was particularly enthusiastic about this cooperative operation; after all, their factory’s female workers had also been attacked.
If it weren’t for the pressure of public opinion lately, they would have started their own investigations much earlier.
Now with officials leading, they were certainly willing to cooperate proactively.
The forces accompanying the Special Service Section included a tactical team, and two senior officers from the Special Service Bureau, Qi Bing and Liang Dao, even bringing the Sword of Impermanence with them.
The church’s tactical team was known for being well-equipped, consisting of young women in their early twenties with tall and long-legged physiques like athletes, wearing metal forged heavy armor that looked to weigh at least thirty or forty pounds.
Their weaponry was diverse, with standard-issue short and long guns, some wearing belts full of hand grenades, and others with tanks on their backs and flamethrowers in their hands…
So, designating you as a priority surveillance target really makes perfect sense!
Wang Yunxiao covetously viewed the equipment, while his colleagues envied the girls’ robust physiques.
Everyone had complex feelings.
The objective of this morning’s first operation was to verify Veronica’s “Hexagram” theory; confirming one den would essentially determine the locations of other dens.
Conversely, if they couldn’t uncover this den, there likely wouldn’t be any more victories today; everything would have to be started over, and the search for clues would continue.
Therefore, Veronica and Qin Xiangdong stayed at the police station while Ulan Tuya, the captain of this tactical squad, came along.
Unlike Veronica, this sister’s name might not sound like it belonged to someone of Han nationality, but she had a completely Eastern face—if one didn’t mention her name, it would be impossible to tell she was a foreigner… nonsense, she wasn’t a foreigner at all.
Although she was the captain, she did not possess Veronica’s bold and skillful personality; she seemed rather quiet, gentle, and even somewhat easy to bully.
She just nodded and agreed to any of Wang Yunxiao’s commands, without a hint of her own opinion, making one wonder how she became a captain in the first place.
But for a woman with such a name, Wang Yunxiao wouldn’t easily trust any of her seemingly weak behaviors before they had drinks at the table.
Veronica marked a spot on the map.
This mark couldn’t be precise to an individual household; they could only bring the surrounding area into suspicion, first by blockading the streets, then investigating them slowly.
However, simply blockading the streets might not be effective; Wang Yunxiao hadn’t forgotten that beneath Old Tianmen lay a network of Underground Civil Air Defense structures constructed who knows how many years ago.
Upon arriving at the scene, he took out a notebook, preparing to scout, while Ulan Tuya had already put on her goggles, ah no, they should be called the Multi-Dimensional Periscope; the deluxe version used by the Church’s own tactical squad.
“Target spotted at the two-story residential building in the 12 o’clock direction, a large amount of contaminants hidden in the basement,” she declared.
Wang Yunxiao looked up in the direction Ulan Tuya was pointing: “Just the basement?
Are there any secret passages or hidden doors?”
“None detected.”
“Good, Youtiao, take your team to cut the phone lines!”
The operation was all about creating a time gap, and it was also crucial to block any messages to prevent the other side from reacting.
In an era without the internet, cutting phone lines was the most effective way to block communication.
Whether they had a more secret way of communicating, something like that Secrecy Pact, was something they couldn’t solve with their current experience.
Violence was the only solution to the problem.
Wang Yunxiao turned to Qi Bing, who was holding the Sword of Impermanence: “Comrade Qi Bing, you will be responsible for suppression, alright?”
Qi Bing laughed heartily: “Of course I should go first, what, you expect these young kids to do it?”
“Two on the second floor, three on the first floor, two in the basement…”
Approaching the building entrance, Ulan Tuya clenched her pistol and whispered the count.
Just as Qi Bing was about to kick the door, Wang Yunxiao pulled him back and used a slim iron pick to jimmy the lock in no time.
Qi Bing gave Wang Yunxiao a thumbs up, then pushed the door open and rushed in, with the tactical squad following in single file right behind him.
“Don’t move!”
“Get down!
Hands on your head!”
“Bang—!”
A figure broke through the window from the second floor, frantically jumping down.
Chen Yuguang, seeing the figure land in front of him, instinctively moved to pounce but, in that instant, his world turned upside down.
“Bang—!”
A gunshot rang out as Liang Dao, who was prone on the opposing rooftop with his rifle, pulled the trigger.
The figure attempting to run past Chen Yuguang suddenly staggered; a spray of blood burst from his shoulder.
Gangtou caught up from the side, swinging the Wolf Fang Club at the man’s back.
The man fell silent and face-first.
Fortunate that the blow hadn’t landed on the head; otherwise, there would have been no need for any rescue efforts.
“All clear!”
Qi Bing, his Sword of Impermanence dripping with blood, emerged from the house and informed Wang Yunxiao, “Everyone inside is subdued.
Confirmed, it’s the site for the sacrifice ritual, and there are survivors…
well, survivors, sort of.”
What does “sort of” mean?
Wang Yunxiao followed him into the basement and, as expected, was met with a grisly scene of carnage and decay.
The Fleshly Holy Grail, identical to the one he’d previously encountered… and some “survivors.”
The girls were hung upside down from the ceiling beams, their innards gutted, literally embodying the term “corpses,” yet they were somehow still alive and even reacted to their presence.