19: Chapter 19 The City Burns in the Dark, the Demise of the Hand

"Click."

The crisp sound of mechanical interlocking was masked by the violent thunderstorm outside the window.

A blinding crimson light instantly tore through the deathly silence of the darkness within the presidential suite.

Hundreds of poison-coated katanas, carrying a sharp whistle that sliced through the air, hacked unreservedly at Lynn in the center of the red light.

There was no spray of blood, nor the dull thud of blades entering flesh.

"Sizzle—!"

Within a thousandth of a second of the blades contacting Lynn's body, it was as if they had hacked into an erupting active volcano. Hundreds of high-carbon steel katanas instantly turned glowing red, then completely melted into scalding molten iron, dripping onto the expensive carpet and immediately igniting a fire.

The crimson light rapidly converged.

[Alien Gene Activated: Heatblast (Radiation Variant)!]

Standing in the center of the ninja encirclement was no longer the human form of Lynn.

Instead, it was a two-meter-tall monster composed entirely of dark rock, with high-concentration nuclear radiation liquid flowing over its body. His head had no facial features, only a mass of raging, ghostly green nuclear fire, with two tyrannical red glints locked onto the surrounding assassins through the tongues of flame.

"Temperature's not high enough."

Lynn's raspy voice sounded like two pieces of burning charcoal rubbing together.

He didn't even throw a punch.

The ghostly green flames on his head suddenly flared outward, and a heatwave reaching tens of thousands of degrees erupted in a ring from him as the center!

"Boom!"

The dozens of undead ninjas closest to him didn't even have time to retreat; the moment their bodies touched the heatwave, their skin, muscle, and bone were instantly carbonized and disintegrated!

There were no screams. Dozens of living people turned into black ashes dancing in the air within half a second.

"Bang!"

Lynn's legs bent slightly, and the reinforced concrete floor beneath his feet instantly melted and collapsed. His massive body turned into a dark fireball, smashing directly through the hotel's top floor and falling straight toward the street dozens of stories below.

...

Manhattan streets. Torrential rain.

But this block had been completely sealed off by some unknown dark magic barrier; there were no vehicles or pedestrians, only a black mist so thick it wouldn't dissipate.

"Boom!"

Lynn smashed heavily into the center of the street.

The massive Impact cratered the asphalt. With him as the center, the rain within a ten-meter radius was instantly vaporized into white high-temperature steam before it could even hit the ground.

In the surrounding black mist, dense red lights flickered.

Those were the eyes of even more ninjas from The Hand. Like painless machines, they poured out continuously from sewers, rooftops, and alleys, numbering in the hundreds.

On the rooftop of a building at the corner.

An elderly Asian woman with a face full of wrinkles, leaning on a cane—Madame Gao—was coldly watching the street below.

"Even if you are a Mutant, it's impossible to kill an undead army blessed by 'The Beast'," Madame Gao said in a raspy voice. "Drain his stamina, cut off his head, and bring it to Kingpin."

Following Madame Gao's command, the hundreds of ninjas below simultaneously formed hand seals.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

White smoke erupted. Ninjutsu activated.

Hundreds of ninjas instantly split into over a thousand identical Shadow Clones, swarming toward Lynn in the center of the street from all directions. Simultaneously, a sky full of Shuriken poured down like a rainstorm, sealing off all space for evasion.

"Illusions? Clones?"

Lynn stood in the melted asphalt pit, watching the black tide surging from all directions. His ghostly green flaming head swayed slightly, letting out a cold, extremely disdainful laugh.

"You know nothing... of power."

Lynn slowly raised his arms, palms open.

The dark gold Bloodtrix emblem on his chest erupted with a blinding light like a supernova.

The nuclear fusion energy Lynn had devoured in Siberia was mobilized without reservation, surging frantically toward his palms along the veins of the dark rock.

The ghostly green nuclear fire instantly transformed into a blinding, deathly white.

"All of you... burn to ash."

Lynn slammed his palms together, then shoved them outward fiercely!

"Boom—!!!"

A small Nuclear Firestorm detonated on the streets of Manhattan!

There was no Impact, only pure destruction at temperatures reaching tens of millions of degrees.

A deathly white ring of fire spread outward frantically at supersonic speeds.

Shadow Clones, illusions, undead secret arts—none of it mattered.

Before this Nuclear Firestorm capable of melting through the Earth's crust, they all became laughable paper toys.

The Shuriken filling the sky were vaporized in mid-air. The thousand charging ninjas, upon contact with the wall of fire, didn't even have time to struggle; they were physically erased, reduced to their basic molecular structures!

The asphalt surface boiled and evaporated. Streetlights on both sides of the street instantly melted into molten iron.

A mere three seconds.

The flames dissipated.

The entire block, hundreds of meters long, had been forcibly "burned" into a glassy flatland. No bodies, no wreckage—only the pungent smell of ozone and terrifying nuclear radiation lingering in the air.

Deathly silence.

Absolute silence.

On the rooftop.

Madame Gao's hand on her cane was trembling violently. The cane hit the ground with a "clack."

Her cloudy old eyes were filled with an undisguisable, extreme terror.

One move.

With just one move, the undead ninja army she took pride in and spent decades accumulating was wiped out. Not a single hair remained.

This wasn't a battle; it was a one-sided natural disaster cleansing the land!

On the vitrified street below, Lynn turned his head, his ghostly green flaming head accurately locking onto Madame Gao on the rooftop.

"Your turn, old woman." Lynn's voice pierced through the curtain of rain.

Madame Gao felt as if she had fallen into an ice cellar. She knew she couldn't escape.

"You forced my hand..."

Madame Gao suddenly bit her tongue, spitting a mouthful of black blood onto her palm. Without hesitation, she pressed her black-blood-stained palm against the concrete floor of the rooftop, chanting an ancient and obscure demonic incantation.

This was the ultimate taboo of The Hand, using the caster's lifespan and soul as a sacrifice to summon the power of their master, 'The Beast', from another dimension.

"Rumble!"

The thunderclouds in the sky instantly turned blood-red.

The vitrified street in front of Lynn suddenly trembled violently, and a pitch-black crack dozens of meters long tore open in the ground.

A strong smell of sulfur, accompanied by Hellfire, surged out from the crack.

A massive demonic claw, five meters long and covered in dark red scales and magma, slammed onto the edge of the crack.

Then, an ancient demon over ten meters tall, with horns on its head and burning with Hellfire, roared as it crawled out from the subterranean abyss!

The demon looked down, its two massive vertical pupils, like lanterns, staring intently at the relatively "small" Lynn below.

Looking at this ancient monster emanating a strong magical aura, Lynn didn't retreat. Instead, he dispersed the nuclear flames on his hands.

"A magical creature? I wonder if its bones are tough."

Lynn raised his hand and pressed the Bloodtrix on his chest.

"Perfect. I'll change into a new form to play with you."