Cooperate

"Foolish! Foolish! What are we supposed to do now?"

Inside the warehouse, Chen Hang and the others had all been rescued. Several of them were so weak that they could only lie on the ground.

Yet Chen Hang felt none of the joy of being saved. Instead, his face was filled with anxiety.

"What are we supposed to do? We wouldn’t have been in any danger to begin with. Even if they didn’t give Beiyang any face, they would have had to show Saint Hill some respect. But now, we’ve taken the initiative to disgrace them. This has made things even more difficult."

Chen Hang’s expression was grave.

"Ha, what’s so difficult about it? We escaped by our own abilities. Why should we worry about their pride?"

Sun Lin was clearly dissatisfied. She had rushed over enthusiastically to save them, and this should have been the moment of greatest accomplishment, when she received everyone’s thanks. Instead, she was getting criticized. What the hell was that?

"Sigh, Rin, you don’t understand all the twists and turns involved. It’s complicated. There’s no way to explain it in a few words."

Chen Hang sighed, then turned to Liu Hongtao and Li Hui. His attitude toward them was clearly far less friendly than it had been toward Sun Lin, and he harshly rebuked them.

"You two are veterans of the Society too. Can’t you see the situation clearly?"

The two men who had been forcibly saddled with the blame could only exchange bitter smiles.

"Fine, since things have already come to this, let’s withdraw first. Are those three guards all right?"

Chen Hang began worrying about the three men they had subdued outside earlier.

One of the rescued Society members, who was in relatively better condition, walked in and said, "They’re fine. They’ve been restrained, though they keep cursing and threatening us."

"That’s understandable. Let them be."

Chen Hang sighed again. Then he left the three captives where they were and called for the others to retreat with the injured.

They could only abandon that production line mission.

However, halfway through their retreat, when they reached the docks, they discovered that the entire dock seemed as though something had chewed through it. It was riddled with pits and craters.

There was cooled lava, along with shattered corpses.

Seeing the dead bodies, Chen Hang stopped to inspect them.

Then his face filled with shock as he realized that they were all members of the Holy Saints of Heaven!

They were the group that had met them before—the ones who had intercepted their development mission.

It seemed that apart from the three guards, everyone else was here.

What had happened? What was going on?

At that moment, Chen Hang did not feel even the slightest pleasure at getting revenge for having his mission taken. Instead, his heart was filled with terror.

What exactly had happened to cause them all to die here? Although he had been subdued before he could even deploy his mech—

The fact that they had been able to subdue him so quickly was enough to show how capable they were.

Such a powerful team had been wiped out without any clear explanation!

Most importantly, now that they had escaped and the other side’s main force had died here, would the blame be pinned on them after the matter came to light?

If that happened, then even if they successfully left this Mission Space, they would still be in enormous trouble!

They were still in France in the real world, while the Holy Saints of Heaven was itself the fifth-largest Legion in France.

If the other side used this as an excuse, Saint Hill probably would not step in to protect them.

Should they stay and wait to explain themselves, or should they simply kill the three captives as well and leave no loose ends?

Chen Hang had his own judgment and decision, but he found it difficult to choose.

If anyone else knew that they had been captured…

"Can someone tell me what happened here?"

A cold voice drifted over, making Chen Hang shudder for no reason.

The speaker had approached and spoken without stirring even the slightest alertness or awareness in him. Whoever it was had to be terrifyingly powerful.

When Chen Hang looked up, his heart sank to the bottom.

It was Lord Ba!

One of the big shots of the Holy Saints of Heaven!

The kind of person they could least afford to offend.

Sure enough, it had been the right choice not to ruthlessly kill the three captives.

He had not expected a lofty big shot to be involved in this matter.

"Lord Ba, we aren’t entirely sure what happened either…"

"Hmph."

Ba hovered silently in the air, showing no reaction whatsoever to Chen Hang’s words. He merely raised a hand casually, and the three captured guards at the warehouse entrance in the distance flew over at his beckoning.

After landing, the restraints on them were automatically released.

"What happened?"

Clearly, compared with outsiders like Chen Hang and the others, he trusted his own people more.

The three men, already full of resentment, learned of the situation before them and immediately began recounting the entire course of events from their own perspective, embellishing it heavily.

The general facts did not change much, and they did not dare deceive a big shot. But with a different choice of words, Chen Hang and his group were instantly portrayed in an exceptionally terrible light.

"They don’t have the ability to do something like this. But since they dared resist, they must be prepared to face punishment."

After listening to the three men, Ba clearly came to his own conclusion.

The difficulty of swallowing everyone else in one go was absolutely not something a team like this could accomplish.

The reason those dead men had been able to form a relatively independent squad was because their captain, Saiyang, possessed the potential to break through to Ba’s level.

So when they came asking for help, aside from the rewards involved, Ba had also intended to give them some face in advance.

Yet now, they had been completely wiped out. Other than the three weakest members, not a single one had survived!

The person or force capable of such a feat might not be someone Ba could suppress with certainty. There was no need for him to take that risk. Since that was the case, he would use this group as a sacrifice first. Blood debts ultimately had to be cleansed with blood—whose blood it was did not matter…

With a cold snort, Ba made his decision. His floating figure raised a hand and pointed at the members of the Beiyang Society below.

A point of light began gathering at his fingertip.

A destructive force made the scalps of everyone facing that light tingle.

They were finished. With a big shot acting personally, even Sun Lin, who seemed to have a treasure for everything, surely could not produce something capable of blocking it.

Her brother was only at the same level!

Just as the point of light reached its peak and everyone below from the Beiyang Society began recalling their lives—

A hand suddenly gripped Ba’s raised finger. Like snuffing out a match, it went pop, and the sound vanished completely.

"Um, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division is handling a case. We suspect that you may be connected to the rioters who were shot dead on the spot after attacking Stark Tower. Please cooperate with me and assist with the investigation…"

A hoarse voice sounded. Then the big shot who had been arrogantly hovering in the sky moments ago, seemingly able to wipe out everyone present with a wave of his hand, vanished together with that voice.

The three guards who had just been embellishing their story were left utterly dumbfounded.

A big shot had just been about to stand up for them. He had been flying in the air, so imposing and obvious—how had he disappeared in the blink of an eye…?