Chapter Ninety-Three: The Twentieth Underground Level

“Liu Wenhong, have you eaten too much? This is the Ling family’s building. Do you think this is your little backwater in Linhai, where you can just say buy and it’s yours?”

“What a coincidence. This country bumpkin from that little backwater really did buy it.”

Clap, clap.

Liu Wenhong clapped his hands, and Young Master Liu handed over a thick stack of documents.

“Take a look.”

At first Ling Nianhan’s face was full of contempt, but the moment he saw the signature and transfer papers, his expression turned extremely ugly.

He controlled Ling Biotech and Technology. Real estate was not an industry the Ling family cared about all that much, so it had merely been handed as part of the profits to a branch of the family, Ling Nianhan’s cousin, Ling Nianbei. And the signature on the papers was indeed Ling Nianbei’s.

That meant the documents carried legal force.

The Ling family was not a monolith. For someone like Liu Wenhong, an old fox, dealing with Ling Nianbei, who had countless scandals attached to him, was no difficult task at all. With a mixture of coaxing, threats, and a sum of money enough to drive anyone mad, he had effortlessly taken Ling Real Estate into his own hands.

“You’re here because of that Ye guy too?”

Liu Wenhong nodded, looking at him with pity. “You should never have provoked Mr. Ye.”

“Damn it, I don’t even know this Mr. Ye. Who the hell is he?”

Ling Nianhan was almost breaking down. Just moments ago, Jin Liu and the others had said he had offended this Ye fellow, and now Liu Wenhong and the others were saying the same thing. But no matter how hard he thought, he still could not figure out where this outrageously capable man surnamed Ye had come from, let alone when he had managed to offend him.

“The unfinished villas in Linhai’s development zone.”

Seeing that the man was still completely bewildered, Xie Yishou could only offer a hint.

Linhai?

Ling Nianhan’s heart gave a jolt. The surveillance from the Linhai laboratory was linked to the Jiangcheng laboratory, which was why, before Shi Yuanthu even realized it, the lab had already spewed out poison gas.

Shi Yuantu was dead, and Shi Ping had run out of the laboratory. Ling Nianhan could only go to Linhai himself to catch Shi Ping back, because Shi Ping was crucial to all the live data from this experiment.

He had rushed to Linhai with a few men, only to discover that the villa had already been seized by someone else. That was why he had casually taken a hostage. It had been nothing more than a spur-of-the-moment act.

Who the hell could have imagined that casually grabbing a hostage would draw out someone so formidable?

“So all of this was caused by that Ye guy?”

By now Ling Nianhan had finally recovered some composure. The shock on his face faded, and he looked at the people in the office with amused disbelief. “You think you can latch onto Ye’s coattails? Then you should at least see who your opponent is. Do you really think my Ling family is a place where any stray cats and dogs can run wild?”

Ling Nianhan slammed the table and stood up. Only then did people notice there was still a short man standing at the doorway.

If Ling Nianhan had not struck the table, and if the short man had not taken a few steps forward, no one would even seem to have noticed him.

“Mr. Ling, leave them all alive?”

The short man’s voice was very calm, without the slightest trace of emotion, as natural as eating or drinking.

At the sound of that voice, Liu Wenhong and Xie Yishou exchanged a glance.

When they came, they had already anticipated that the Ling family would not let this go, so Liu Wenhong had specifically asked Xie Yishou to bring a few capable men from Linhai.

Liu Wenhong glanced back at the people he had brought. Their muscles were well-defined, their arms and thighs bulged with veins, and at a glance one could tell they were the kind of men brimming with strength.

Yet for some reason, after seeing the short man with the close-cropped hair, Liu Wenhong’s heart would not stop pounding. The pressure radiating from him was simply too overwhelming. Even though Liu Wenhong had weathered the tides of the business world for so many years, he had never met anyone who made him feel so uneasy.

“Anyone who points at my Ling family loses the hand. Anyone who gestures with the foot loses the foot.”

“Understood, Mr. Ling.”

The short man gave a slight nod, then turned his eyes to Liu Wenhong. “You pointed at my boss just now and tried to seize the Ling family’s property. First I’ll break one of your hands, then I’ll take your life.”

His tone remained just as flat and casual as before.

But with every step he took forward, Liu Wenhong could feel the pressure on him increase by a notch. Especially those eyes: clearly pitch-black, yet from them there was not a trace of human feeling to be seen.

“Kid, don’t get too arrogant.”

Xie Yishou stepped aside, and the several burly men behind him surrounded the short man. They even pressed their chests against the man’s head, their faces full of mockery.

“Kid, you don’t even have any muscle, and you still want to play the hero and settle things for someone else? Are you tired of living?”

As they spoke, the men kept jabbing him with their chests, as though a few ostriches in a chicken coop were looking down at a chick with contempt.

The next moment.

The short man moved.

A single punch crashed toward the man speaking in front of him.

Crack.

The sound of a rib cage breaking suddenly rang through the office. The burly man stared in disbelief at the short man, then at the sunken-in part of his body, before collapsing to the floor in agony.

Immediately after, the short man struck again and again. The cracking of broken bones mingled with the screams of the big men. In the blink of an eye, all of the muscle-bound thugs brought by Xie Yishou were lying on the ground.

Xie Yishou was dumbfounded.

Even Liu Wenhong’s expression froze on his face, and Young Master Liu’s eyes unconsciously drifted toward the doorway.

Jin Liu and the others were already drenched in cold sweat. Boss Wang simply plopped down on the floor, his face deathly pale, naturally terrified by the short man.

“With this little skill, you still dare come to the Ling family and make trouble?”

Ling Nianhan felt hollow inside, as if he had drunk a bottle of tonic wine for a month only to finish in three seconds, never even getting the chance to enjoy himself before entering sage mode.

“Except for the one surnamed Liu, the rest are of no real value. Send them to the laboratory. Don’t waste them.”

Ling Nianhan clapped his hands, utterly disinterested. What the hell was this supposed to be? He had been nervous for half the day, and it turned out they were nothing more than three half-baked moves.

“Ling Nianhan, under a clear heaven and bright sun, I don’t believe you dare—”

Pfft.

Boss Wang screamed and turned to run. He had not even gone a few steps before the short-haired man caught up and struck the back of his neck with a knife-hand blow.

If Ling Nianhan had not specifically ordered that they not be wasted and sent to the laboratory, that strike would have taken his life on the spot.

Seeing the horrified look on Boss Wang’s face, Jin Liu and the others also realized that this laboratory might be truly terrifying. Otherwise, a grown man like Boss Wang would never have been scared into turning tail and running.

Jin Liu and Boss Zhou exchanged a look and decided to split up and flee, but the moment they started running, the short man kicked them both to the ground.

“Anyone who dares run, I’ll kill him on the spot.”

With a single sentence, the short man silenced everyone, including Liu Wenhong and his son. They could only hang their heads dejectedly as the security staff escorted them into the elevator.

Who could have imagined that the elevator controls in the building concealed another layer of mechanisms? Once opened, it revealed an entirely different set of buttons, and the elevator actually went straight underground. There were more than twenty levels beneath the surface.

Young Master Liu’s face had gone green, and his legs were trembling.

How could he have imagined that in this glittering world aboveground, there would actually be a laboratory twenty floors beneath the earth?

Whatever could possibly be down there to justify building twenty levels, and to require human beings for experiments? Merely thinking about it was enough to send a chill down one’s spine.