225: Chapter 226 All Signals Destroyed! Shadow Maru is Dead! Li Qingcang's Doomsday Countdown

Kyoto. Thirty meters underground.

The Li Family's secret command base.

At the exact moment Lin Qi crushed the final signal transmitter, the atmosphere inside the base changed.

It didn't change gradually; it changed in an instant.

Li Qingcang stood in the very center of the command center, his hands behind his back, his spine held straight.

Before him was a giant light screen that covered the entire wall.

Densely packed on the light screen were dozens of signal source icons, each representing a pawn he had sent into the Dragon Tomb.

The signal sources for the ordinary death warriors were blue.

Over the past few hours, the majority of these blue light points had been extinguished, dropping from over thirty at the start to a mere four or five now, and they were still decreasing.

Every time one went out, it meant a life lost.

Li Qingcang's complexion was already extremely ugly, his jaw muscles clenched tight.

But he did not panic.

Because in the very center of the light screen, there was a unique signal source.

It was gold. A unique, one-of-a-kind gold.

That was Ying Wan's signal.

The gold-medal assassin of the Shadow Blade Alliance, the Void Walker himself, the trump card that the Li Family had spent an astronomical amount of resources to hire.

As long as this golden light point remained lit, Li Qingcang felt secure.

"Two more blue signals have gone out," a technical supervisor nearby reported in a low voice, sweat covering his forehead.

Li Qingcang ignored him, his eyes fixed intently on that golden light point.

The light point was still there, the signal stable.

Good.

As long as Ying Wan was still alive, there was still a chance for things to turn around. No matter how good that kid was at fighting, it was impossible for him to withstand the absolute assassination of a Void Walker.

There were no System skill buffs in the Dragon Tomb sub-dimension, but Ying Wan was an old monster who had transcended the System; he relied on his own raw strength.

"Clan Chief, should we activate the backup plan?" An Elder of the Li Family leaned forward, lowering his voice.

Li Qingcang raised his hand to stop him.

"No rush."

Two words, his tone still relatively steady.

His gaze never left that golden signal source, his lips pressed tightly into a line.

Ying Wan would definitely find an opportunity.

Gravity was doubled in the bottom layer of the Dragon Tomb; no matter how strong that Blank Slate's Physical Body was, it had its limits. As long as Ying Wan caught a single opening, one strike would be enough.

With the Karma judgment of the fang of the night god, a backstab was guaranteed to hit.

No one could dodge it.

Li Qingcang just stood there, motionless, waiting for a full two hours.

Standing behind him were seven or eight core high-ranking members of the Li Family, and not a single person dared to make a sound. The entire command center was left with only the humming of the equipment and the occasional data alert sound.

Just as the third hour began.

The golden signal source moved.

It wasn't displacement; it was flickering.

Li Qingcang's eyelid twitched, and his upper body leaned forward involuntarily.

The golden light point flickered for the first time, its brightness dropping sharply.

The second time, the light began to scatter, its edges becoming blurred.

The third time.

It was extinguished.

The gold vanished, replaced by a gray icon.

Signal lost.

The entire command center fell silent.

Everyone saw it.

Everyone was too afraid to even breathe.

Li Qingcang's body froze in place, as if he had been struck from behind with a club. The trace of composure and anticipation on his face solidified, his muscles sagging piece by piece.

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

"Re... Report, Clan Chief..."

The technical supervisor's voice was trembling as his fingers tapped on the control panel, pulling up a string of data.

"Ying Wan's vital sign signal... has been completely interrupted."

No one spoke.

The technical supervisor swallowed hard and continued reading.

"It's not just Ying Wan. All backup signal sources sent into the Dragon Tomb, including the tracking chips on the death warriors, environmental monitoring probes, communication relay nodes... all have been interrupted within the same time frame."

The same time frame.

All interrupted.

These words circled through the command center, and everyone's complexion turned a shade paler.

Li Qingcang's Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

He staggered back a step, grabbing the back of the command chair with his left hand, only then managing not to collapse.

His eyes were still fixed on that gray icon on the light screen, his pupils dilated, his focus failing.

The silence lasted for a full ten seconds.

Then Li Qingcang moved.

He lunged toward the console, clenched his right fist, and slammed it onto the alloy tabletop.

Bang!

The entire console shook, and a few buttons on the panel were jarred upward.

The skin on the back of his hand split, beads of blood seeping out between his fingers, but he didn't feel it at all.

"Impossible!"

He shouted it out.

His voice cracked, the sound echoing back and forth in the enclosed underground space.

"Ying Wan is the Void Walker himself! The fang of the night god carries a Karma judgment! How could a Blank Slate with all attributes at 5 kill him? With what?!"

No one dared to answer.

The technical supervisor shrank into a corner, wishing he could stuff himself into the gaps of the equipment.

Li Qingcang turned around and scanned the faces of everyone present.

Every face was written with the same word.

Fear.

"Trash! You're all trash!"

He kicked over a chair nearby; the chair slammed into the wall and bounced back, nearly hitting an Elder's leg.

No one dodged.

No one dared to move.

Li Qingcang's chest heaved violently, veins bulging from his neck all the way to his temples. He pressed his hands against the console, his nails digging into the alloy crevices.

Ying Wan was dead.

The astronomical amount of resources had gone down the drain.

Plan B had failed completely.

These three pieces of information turned over and over in his mind; with every rotation, his sanity diminished by a fraction.

He slumped into the command chair, his whole body shrinking in on itself.

"Impossible... This is absolutely impossible..."

He muttered this phrase repeatedly, his voice growing quieter and quieter, eventually becoming almost a whisper.

The Shura field he had meticulously prepared for Lin Qi.

Using the Prodigy of a powerful Family as bait, death warriors to exhaust his stamina, and Ying Wan to reap the head.

Every link interlocked; it was foolproof.

Now it was all over.

The bait had been extorted into a hostage, the death warriors had turned into a pile of gray icons, and the ace assassin had been cut off without even transmitting his final signal.

It was a Shura field, indeed, but the one trapped inside was not Lin Qi.

It was the Li Family itself.

An Elder of the Family with graying hair walked forward slowly.

He held an extremely high seniority within the Li Family, having seen more storms than everyone present combined. But now, his expression was also grim, his brows knitted together.

He walked up to Li Qingcang, bent down, and lowered his voice.

"Clan Chief."

Li Qingcang did not react.

"Clan Chief, listen to me."

Li Qingcang's eyeballs slowly turned, bloodshot.

The old Elder looked at him in this state and sighed inwardly.

"We may have provoked an existence that should never have been provoked."