164: Ten minutes

“Pfft!”

This was the sound of Shadow One’s dagger being pulled out.

Almost at the same time.

From the shadows beneath the other Dark Star Empire soldiers’ feet, the crevices in the rocks beside them, and even the gentle breeze that swept past them, dozens of pitch-black afterimages erupted simultaneously!

“Enem—!”

A soldier had just sensed something was wrong and opened his mouth to shout, but a short blade had already pierced his back, tearing his heart to shreds.

His shout was forcibly caught in his throat, turning into a gurgling sound.

This was a silent massacre.

The muffled thud of blades entering flesh sounded intermittently.

The ‘Shadows’ were like the most efficient artists of death.

With the most concise and lethal movements, they reaped the lives of their enemies.

In no more than three seconds, this squad of dozens of men had all been killed, unable to even raise an alarm.

Shadow One gestured towards a shadow.

The figures of Tong and the Ling Shu Sword Guards slowly emerged.

Tong’s eyes swept over the area.

His Heart Mirror ability was fully deployed, and the soul fluctuations within a radius of several hundred meters had nowhere to hide.

A moment later, he shook his head slightly, indicating it was safe.

Shadow One had already crouched down, searching the body of the squad leader.

Soon, he found a metal disc-shaped device.

The surface of the disc was engraved with complex black patterns, and a red dot in the center flashed at a fixed frequency.

It had a faint energy resonance with the seemingly empty Gobi Desert in the distance.

Shadow One gently touched the disc with his fingertip.

A wisp of black energy seeped from his fingertip, drilling into the disc’s crevices.

He closed his eyes, seemingly reading something.

The Team members next to Ghost Hand finally couldn’t help but ask in a low voice, “Captain, what… are we doing now?”

Ghost Hand’s mouth twitched, and he squeezed out two words: “Watching.”

After a few seconds, Shadow One opened his eyes and squeezed with his five fingers.

“Crack.”

The sturdy metal disc shattered into several pieces in his hand, and the flashing red light completely extinguished.

“It’s an Erosion Domain signal amplification node, and also the patrol team’s identity authenticator,” Shadow One’s voice rang out.

“They form a network; if a node loses contact for more than ten minutes, it will trigger an alarm.”

Tong’s gaze turned to the dark distance: “Is this network very large?”

“Very large.”

Shadow One threw the metal fragments on the ground.

“To approach the Dawn Star, all nodes along the way must be removed.”

Shadow One turned his head to look at Tong, relaying the information.

“We are responsible for the seventy-two outer nodes, clearing the perimeter alert.”

“Then for the thirty-six inner nodes, we’ll take care of them.”

Tong interjected, “We’ll go straight to the core, clearing all obstacles. We need to finish this within ten minutes.”

Ghost Hand and the Team members behind him collectively turned to stone.

Over a hundred enemy strongholds, in ten minutes?

Was this to dismantle guard posts, or to buy groceries at a market?

His most elite special operations team, even with detailed intelligence and fire support,

would still need hours to clear these strongholds, and would also have to bear the risk of casualties.

Seeing those people begin to move, Ghost Hand finally became anxious.

He took a big stride forward, blocking Tong’s path, and asked gruffly, “Then what do we do?”

He couldn’t accept bringing the Alliance’s most elite squad here just to watch the scenery.

Tong’s gaze fell on him, and he tilted his head slightly, thinking for a moment.

“Captain Ghost Hand, you are the guides.”

Ghost Hand was so choked by this answer that he almost couldn’t catch his breath.

“Hmm, you are responsible for dealing with these…”

Tong’s gaze swept over the corpses on the ground.

“...traces. Then, follow us along the safe route we’ve opened, and point out the physical coordinates of the Dawn Star to us, to prevent the Erosion Domain from interfering with our perception.”

Ghost Hand understood.

We’re in charge of fighting, and you’re in charge of cleanup and being a live map.

The scar on his face twitched, and his chest felt a suffocating tightness, but he couldn’t refute a single word.

Because what the other party said was true.

In this area shrouded by strange energy, their team, which relied on high technology, indeed couldn’t even pinpoint where the enemies were.

There was no other way; most of the military’s Lords were tech-based, as tech-based forces could play a greater role on large-scale battlefields.

But in special operations requiring top individual strength and infiltration, they were indeed not as good as forces like Infinite City, which specialized in this field.

He could almost see the title of his mission report already.

“On the Importance of Efficient and Environmentally Friendly Disposal of Combat Waste and Navigation Services in Special Operations.”

Thinking of this, Ghost Hand felt his back molars were about to be ground to dust.

“Understood.”

Ghost Hand squeezed out three words through gritted teeth and stepped aside, clearing the path.

Shadow One and Tong said no more, both giving orders almost simultaneously.

“Act.”

Subsequently, Shadow One and his subordinate shadows completely vanished, as if they had never appeared.

Meanwhile, Tong and the hundred Ling Shu Sword Guards flickered simultaneously, darting towards the depths of the darkness, moving so fast that they only left behind streaks of afterimages.

Silence returned to the canyon, leaving only Ghost Hand and his Team members, and a ground full of corpses.

A young Team members came over, his voice dry.

“Boss, we…”

“Get to work!”

Ghost Hand roared, kicking the squad leader’s corpse.

“Drag all these sons of bitches away and bury them! Move it! Otherwise, we won’t even get to eat the ashes!”

...

The wind on Changfeng Plain never ceased.

For the Dark Star Empire sentinels, this wind was a monotonous, hypnotic lullaby.

But tonight, it became the accompaniment to death.

In the folds of the plain, inside a semi-permanent bunker constructed of alloy and rock, two soldiers were staring at the monotonous scanning ripples on an energy screen, yawning idly.

“You think our Erosion Domain can really take out an entire Alliance fleet?” one soldier asked.

“Nonsense, this is the work of Lord Erosion of Darkness. It’s said to directly affect the root of energy, corroding rules.”

“Forget a battleship; even a small world, given enough time, can be eroded through,” the other soldier said with a proud air, as if he shared in the glory.

Just as he was about to say something more, he suddenly felt a slight itch on the back of his neck, like a mosquito bite.

He instinctively reached to scratch, but his palm touched something warm and sticky.

He froze for a moment, then looked down at his hand.

It was covered in blood.

His companion next to him had, at some point, slumped over the control panel, his eyes wide open, with an inconspicuous blood hole in the center of his forehead.

And his own vision began to spin.

The last thing he saw was a shadow flashing across the monitoring screen.

At the same time, over a hundred signal amplification nodes scattered across the vast Gobi Desert were playing out similar scenes almost simultaneously.

Some sentinels, while on patrol, felt sand blown by the wind get into their eyes, rubbed them, and when they opened them again, the world had lost its color.

In some outposts, entire squads were swallowed by the shadows beneath their feet during shift changes, disappearing silently, men and equipment alike.

Shadow One’s figure appeared on the highest sand dune, and on the communicator in his hand, one hundred and eight light dots had extinguished.

The entire process took eight minutes and thirty seconds.

Clean, efficient, and silent.

This was the Infinite City’s way of hunting.