Chapter 32: Thirty-six Stratagems, One Can Always Be Used
Without a shred of hesitation, Liu Xiaona struck first. Channeling his power, he unleashed a crushing, high-velocity torrent of water directly at Song Yuqing.
She made a frantic attempt to throw up a defense, but her combat reflexes were far too weak. The pressurized stream slammed into her chest, knocking her instantly unconscious before she could even formulate a counterattack.
Liu Xiaona cast a calculated glance out the open door, effortlessly scooped her limp body into his arms, and marched past the threshold.
“Outstanding!” Perched along the low brick wall, Lin Han clapped his hands and cheered in pure triumph. He gestured to Chen Ke and a vanguard of over a dozen elite psychics, and the entire squad leapt over the perimeter wall, converging rapidly on Liu Xiaona and his captive.
Liu Xiaona knelt down, gently laying the unconscious store manager onto the asphalt as he subtly focused on stabilizing his erratic breathing.
“Flawless execution, Liu Xiaona. You did a fantastic job,” Lin Han smirked, snapping his fingers sharply. On his cue, the surrounding mercenaries surged forward, each channeling lethal, high-tier elemental strikes to violently obliterate the defenseless girl.
Down on the pavement, Song Yuqing’s fingers twitched ever so slightly as she discreetly scratched an itch. She had recently run a series of clinical trials on her parallel-world gear and discovered a massive design feature: her high-tech protective suit didn’t just render her completely immune to zombie bites—it functioned as an absolute kinetic buffer against supernatural energy strikes as well. Her only real regret was that she hadn’t uncovered the feature sooner!
At this exact millisecond, even though Lin Han’s mid-to-high-tier mercenaries were burning their full elemental reserves to violently bombard her form, the concentrated energy barrage felt like nothing more than a mild, ticklish massage to Song Yuqing.
Growing impatient with the lack of immediate blood, Lin Han bared his teeth, wrenched a razor-sharp tactical knife from his utility belt, and lunged forward to drive the blade through her throat himself.
But before he could even take two steps, Liu Xiaona whirled around and fired a condensed whip of water, violently cracking the steel right out of Lin Han’s grip. Simultaneously, a chorus of thunderous footsteps roared down both ends of the alleyway as Little Meat Bun, Gaha, Xie Hao, and Xie Zetian came charging out from the shadows. Well before the logistics detail had officially left the shop, Song Yuqing had quietly briefed her team on the strategy, instructing them to orchestrate a mock departure, conceal themselves just beyond the block, and wait out the perfect tactical window to spring the trap.
Xie Hao slammed his single palm down, instantly erecting a towering concrete-hard earth wall that boxed the dozen mercenaries into a tight, inescapable ring. He rapidly punctured two small firing ports through the structure, and alongside Xie Zetian, the cousins began systematically raining down elemental barrages onto the trapped squad. Thanks to the dense, nutrient-enhanced rations they had been devouring at God’s Supermarket over the past week, both men’s superpower thresholds had undergone a staggering, exponential evolution in a matter of days.
“Hi-ya! Hi-ya!” Little Meat Bun cheered, scrambling up the side of the earth wall like an oversized gymnast. He opened his jaws wide, systematically siphoning and swallowing the loose supernatural energy right out of the trapped psychics’ reserves. Gaha sprinted straight to the center of the clearing, dropping to her knees to frantically inspect Song Yuqing for any structural wounds.
The catastrophic shift in the battlefield left Lin Han entirely paralyzed for a full second before a freezing realization hit his mind: he had been completely, utterly played.
“Liu Xiaona! Are you insane?!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “Don’t you want to violently avenge Sister Qin’s murder?!”
“I do,” Liu Xiaona growled, his eyes burning with a murderous, unyielding fury as he locked his gaze onto the spatial user. “More than anything.”
Chen Ke backpedaled in sudden panic, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Then turn around and slaughter Song Yuqing! She’s the monster who used her space to erase Sister Qin from existence!”
Song Yuqing slowly pushed herself up from the concrete, casually brushing the gray alley dust off her silver athletic gear. She had fully intended to stretch out her performance a bit longer, but her over-enthusiastic crew had rushed out from the shadows a fraction of a second too early.
“Lin Han, did you seriously fail to graduate from elementary school?” she asked, a dry, mocking chuckle escaping her lips. “How on earth did your brain construct such a comically childish framing strategy? Honestly, I would have felt guilty if I hadn’t played along with your little drama for a bit.”
Lin Han’s face drained of all color. Grinding his teeth, he raised his palms, a localized, erratic black vortex rapidly spinning into existence between his fingers.
“Let me give you a piece of factual advice, Lin Han,” Song Yuqing said, her voice dropping all pretense. “The core staff of God’s Supermarket are exceptionally difficult to liquidate.”
“If you truly want to stage an assassination under this roof, you need to cultivate a foolproof blueprint first,” Liu Xiaona added with a cold sneer. He wasn’t nearly stupid enough to let a snake like Chen Ke warp his mind into turning on his provider.
Lin Han remained dead silent, his pupils expanding. The black vortex between his hands suddenly ballooned, growing exponentially until it was nearly twice his own height. Cornered and desperate, he resolved to gamble his entire life force on a final, definitive strike, expending his full spatial reserves to erase the entire squad in one clean sweep.
“Then every single one of you can go straight to hell!”
“Shut your mouth! You’re the one who murdered Sister Qin!” Liu Xiaona roared, his elemental water energy flaring to life as his anger peaked.
“Little Meat Bun!” Song Yuqing barked, her voice cutting through the wind. “Dinner time! Eat it up!”
With a frantic shove, Lin Han launched the massive, destructive anomaly straight toward Song Yuqing’s head. The giant panda aggressively leapt from the top of the earth wall, sprinting full-tilt toward the encroaching vacuum.
The bear was internally sweating: Oh crap, oh crap! I got so carried away playing gladiator on the wall that I almost forgot my primary corporate directive to shield the manager!
Little Meat Bun’s frame ballooned into its juggernaut form as he raced the anomaly. Opening his jaws wide, he snapped downward, attempting to swallow the black hole in a single gulp.
But the sheer scale of the spatial distortion was too massive; the bear’s jaws only managed to tear away half the vortex, leaving the remaining crescent of localized vacuum to hurtle at extreme velocity straight toward Song Yuqing and Gaha.
Lin Han pushed his physical limits, channeling every remaining drop of latent energy from his nerve endings to fuel and accelerate the flying crescent.
Song Yuqing’s heart skipped a beat. In the short interval since their clash at the mall, Lin Han’s raw destructive output had somehow undergone a massive evolutionary leap.
Liu Xiaona lunged forward, grabbing Song Yuqing with his left hand and Gaha with his right, desperately trying to yank them back toward the storefront threshold. But they were a fraction of a second too late.
The sweeping edge of the vortex violently snagged Gaha, her lower torso instantly dissolving into the spatial vacuum. Song Yuqing clamped both hands onto the zombie girl’s wrist, her own boots leaving the pavement as the rising suction of the anomaly lifted them straight into the air.
“Pull us down! Now!” Song Yuqing screamed.
Bypassing Xie Zetian and Xie Hao, who were still trapped in a brutal close-quarters struggle against the remaining mercenaries, the rest of the crew rushed to form a defensive line.
Song Yuqing held Gaha; Liu Xiaona locked a vice-like grip around Song Yuqing’s waist; and Little Meat Bun anchored his massive paws around Liu Xiaona’s legs, forming a heavy, desperate human ladder. The entire chain dangled horizontally in the air, buffeted violently by the crushing pull of the spatial tear.
“Gaha!” Gaha barked sharply. She locked eyes with the giant panda, flicking her gray pupils pointedly toward a discarded blade resting on the concrete below.
Drawing a massive breath to stabilize his center of gravity, the giant bear swung his heavy torso down, scooped up the tactical knife Lin Han had dropped earlier, and flipped the hilt up to Gaha like a performer passing a baton.
Even though the entire staff was well aware that Gaha possessed an absolute, virus-born immortality, the sheer horror of the sequence that followed left them completely paralyzed with shock.
Gaha gripped the hilt and, without a single blink, violently sliced her own torso clean in half.
Her lower segments were instantly vacuumed into the vortex. A millisecond later, Little Meat Bun launched his upper body forward and swallowed the remaining crescent of the black hole whole.
Lin Han’s brows knit together in pure, unadulterated disbelief. He couldn’t comprehend how a ragtag group of post-apocalyptic survivors could display such a selfless, suicidal level of tactical synergy.
The moment the vacuum was fully metabolized by the bear’s stomach, the gravitational pull vanished, and the human ladder crashed heavily onto the asphalt.
The absolute second her upper torso hit the ground, a fresh pair of legs and a complete lower abdomen violently sprouted from Gaha’s waist, regenerating her form flawlessly within a heartbeat.
“Gah~” she cheered, patting her new clothes.
Lin Han’s entire core worldview shattered into dust right then and there.
Liu Xiaona scrambled to his feet, his face twisted in a mask of pure vengeance. He channeled his remaining power into a colossal, roaring water dragon that surged down the lane, determined to grind Lin Han into the pavement to avenge Sister Qin.
Possessing the hyper-fast instincts of a cornered rat, Lin Han violently reached out, grabbed a bleeding Chen Ke by the collar, and hauled her directly into his path to serve as a human shield, successfully absorbing the brunt of the water dragon’s concussive impact.
Yet even in that moment of absolute, calculated betrayal, Chen Ke’s eyes remained fixed on him, entirely unwilling to let go of her devotion.
Once the water wall dispersed, Lin Han callously tossed Chen Ke’s broken, severely injured body into the mud like a piece of garbage, pivoting to parry a secondary onslaught from Liu Xiaona and the giant bear.
From the corner of her eye, Song Yuqing noticed something bizarre: the moment Chen Ke hit the dirt, two silent, non-aggressive zombies materialized from the shadows, lifted her unconscious frame, and stealthily carried her away into the ruins. A knot of deep apprehension tied itself in Song Yuqing’s stomach. Since when did walkers stop eating casualties and start running medical evacuations?
Having exhausted every ounce of his spatial reserves to manifest the dual vortexes, Lin Han was completely powerless to withstand the dual, close-quarters fury of Liu Xiaona and the giant panda. Closing his eyes as his physical defenses broke, he burned the absolute last shred of his core energy to trigger a desperate spatial retreat, vanishing from the timeline entirely.
“Damn it! The bastard slipped away!” Liu Xiaona roared, slamming a fist against the brickwork.
“Alright, that’s enough! Break it up!” Song Yuqing commanded, shouting across the lane to the cousins.
The moment Xie Hao dissolved his earthen barricade, the dozen mercenaries trapped inside collapsed onto the asphalt, battered, bloodied, and barely clinging to life.
“Let them pack up and leave,” Song Yuqing ordered quietly.
Xie Zetian glared at her, thoroughly incensed. “Why the hell should we let them walk? Every single one of them is a verified traitor to my administration!”
Xie Hao stepped up, gently patting his cousin’s shoulder with his single hand. “Give it a rest, Zetian. In this world, everyone is just trying to scrounge together a living. If I didn’t share a bloodline with you, I probably would have jumped ship to Lin Han’s commissary weeks ago myself.”
Xie Zetian: Are you seriously trying to comfort me right now?
Later that evening, the core staff of God’s Supermarket and the Xie brothers gathered around the long window table, happily devouring a massive, boiling pot of premium beef hotpot as they boisterously replayed the afternoon’s tactical maneuvers. Though Gaha was physically incapable of digesting human food, she had aggressively squeezed her chair right into the center of the arrangement; she simply adored the chaotic warmth of the huddle.
Song Yuqing sat back, checking her laughter as she watched the driver. Truthfully, Liu Xiaona’s dramatic acting over the past forty-eight hours had been absolutely atrocious. It was a massive stroke of luck that Lin Han had only managed to install a basic audio bug rather than a high-tech pinhole lens. Then again, in a ruined world where the electrical grid had been dead for a month, tracking down a functional, military-grade electronic surveillance unit was an absolute logistical impossibility.
Two days prior, the moment Liu Xiaona had trudged back into the shop looking like a ghost, Song Yuqing’s gut had told her a third party had compromised him, and she reasoned the leverage was tied directly to Sister Qin. Recognizing the acoustic signature of the tracking device anchored to his collar, the driver had masterfully played along with the narrative. He had leveraged Master Fu’s passive mind-reading matrix to securely stream his real internal thoughts directly into Song Yuqing’s mind. Through a rapid series of telepathic exchanges, the duo had effortlessly diagnosed Lin Han’s strategy and meticulously structured a localized theatrical production to draw the dictator into the open.
“Hmph. You casually converted my multi-dimensional processing core into a common neighborhood walkie-talkie,” Master Fu grumbled dryly over the speakers.
“It’s an absolute tragedy we failed to secure the kill line on Lin Han,” Liu Xiaona muttered, aggressively splashing a piece of beef through the spicy broth. He still couldn’t swallow the bitter anger burning in his chest. “We staged that entire performance specifically to liquidate him in one shot.”
“Don’t stress over it. He’s stripped of his monopoly now; we’ll corner him again down the line,” Song Yuqing reassured him.
“Tell me… when exactly does this mindless, exhausting cycle of vengeance officially hit its expiration date?” a crisp, elegant male voice suddenly drifted from the threshold.
The entire table went dead silent, their heads snapping toward the entrance in unison.
Standing right past the open frame was a tall, remarkably slender young man. His long hair was bound into a flawless, traditional Taoist topknot, and he was draped in flowing, pristine white monastic robes.
“Personally? I find it infinitely more efficient to simply settle a blood grudge cleanly,” the monk murmured. He stepped onto the shop floor, a strikingly sharp, wicked smile breaking across his handsome features as he made a slow, fluid carving motion directly across his own neck.
