novelraw Chapter 182: The Dead City of Cairo
Chapter 182: The Dead City of Cairo
“Could it be some UMA capable of ultra-long-distance spatial jumps?” Ethan’s brow knitted tightly as he instinctively searched his UMA database for possible explanations.
“I once saw a vague entry in the Association’s Black Book appendix about an UMA called the ‘Walker,’ said to traverse space by folding it.”
“Unlikely.”
Lin Jie’s voice cut off Ethan’s speculation, he was far more familiar with the UMA recorded in Karl’s diary than anyone else present.
“According to our intel, those seven guards vanished along with the sand. That does not match the Walker’s behavioral profile.”
“There has to be some crucial link here that we haven’t understood yet.”
“Perhaps,” Old Ab, standing silently to the side, spoke up, “we don’t need to play pointless guessing games over a corpse.”
The living fossil of the Cairo Branch scanned the young people before him.
“The Descendants of Apophis may act bizarrely, but they are still human. Humans need to eat, to sleep, and they still have dirty jobs they don’t want to do themselves.”
“In the southern dead city of Cairo there’s a local gang called the ‘Scavenger Dogs.’ Their leader, Adil, is the fiercest and greediest of all the hyenas haunting this cemetery.”“According to reports from our planted informants, in the past month that hyena has been getting close with those snake-worshipping fanatics.”
“If we want to know what those ‘snakes’ have been doing around the city lately—”
Old Abdul’s mouth curled into a cold smile.
“Maybe we can try our luck in that hyena’s lair ourselves.”
His proposal was blunt and brutal, showing the old-school hunter’s bloodthirsty efficiency.
Lin Jie and Ethan exchanged a glance, seeing the same thought reflected in each other’s eyes.
Rather than passively analyzing secondhand intelligence that the enemy had already tampered with, it was better to take the initiative.
“I like this plan.”
Ethan touched the immaculate Morning Star and Evening Star at his waist.
Lin Jie gave the old hunter a slight nod.
“Since no one objects, then it’s settled.”
When night fell over the ancient city of sin.
The cemetery district in southern Cairo, the Dead City where the living and the dead mingle, was slowly waking from its daytime slumber, revealing its true face.
Inside a massive tomb, supposedly belonging to a Mamluk dynasty sultan that had been looted until it was an empty shell, a “secret auction” was underway.
Dozens of gang leaders and underground merchants from every corner of Cairo, wearing curved blades and old revolvers at their hips, had bloodshot eyes as they frantically bid on a supposedly “well-preserved” female mummy that had just been “invited” out of some unnamed noble’s grave.
Presiding over the auction was a burly local gang boss with a cobra totem tattooed on his face, named Adil.
He was the “Hyena King” of the Scavenger Dogs.
Just as Adil was about to bring down his gavel on this priceless item.
A thunderous explosion tore open the sealed chamber entrance above them, sending the heavy stone doorway to splinters.
Through smoke and rubble, three figures bearing murderous intent strode in from the forcibly breached opening.
“Your party is over!”
Ethan’s voice of judgment echoed through the underground chamber.
“Kill them!”
After a brief dead silence, the Hyena King Adil snapped to, roaring as he drew a Mamluk curved blade stained dark red with blood from his waist and charged at the three uninvited guests.
The battle erupted instantly.
What looked like an uneven showdown quickly turned into a one-sided massacre.
Ethan moved like an elegant dance of death, weaving nimbly among the rain-like hail of old bullets.
Every shot from his Morning Star and Evening Star precisely took another guilty life.
His finely honed Fanning Shooting technique was unleashed to perfection;
within seconds he emptied the two cylinder chambers’ twelve rounds, tearing a vacuum through the densest section of fire at the chamber entrance.
William was more like a slaughter machine from the depths of hell.
He didn’t even draw the Colt revolver he carried as a backup.
He calmly walked through the shattered entrance, watching gang members rush him swinging blades and daggers.
Then he moved.
His motions weren’t fast, in fact they were somewhat heavy.
But every punch, every kick, every apparently simple block and grapple demonstrated a lethal beauty derived from military combatives.
A gang member swung a curved blade at his neck;
William didn’t even look at him. He casually lifted his left arm and seized the attacker’s wrist.
Then his right hand clamped onto the man’s throat and squeezed.
“Crack!”
The crisp sound of bone breaking rang out, and the attacker slumped to the ground like a rag.
Another tried to stab his kidney from behind with a dagger, but William, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, suddenly dropped into a squat, letting the deadly blade whistle past his scalp.
Then his massive frame leaned back in an impossible motion and slammed his solid back into the attacker’s chest.
The would-be assassin felt as if his sternum had been struck by a full-speed rhinoceros;
blood gushed from his mouth.
Lin Jie, meanwhile, operated like the “ghost” controlling the battlefield.
He did not carry out wide-ranging slaughter like the other two.
From the first second the fight began his gaze had locked onto the Hyena King Adil.
During his charge, the cobra tattoo on the gang leader’s face seemed to come alive, emitting an ominous red glow.
The Mamluk curved blade in his hand, covered by that red light, began to release waves of toxic gas. It was a crude but genuine Grotesque Armament.
As the poisoned blade swung wildly.
“Bang!”
A gunshot rang out.
A spray of brilliant blood burst from Adil’s wrist that clutched the blade.
The Grotesque Armament fell to the ground useless before it could take effect.
Lin Jie had fired the shot.
He acted with perfect timing, disabling the small boss with a single bullet.
The fight was over in less than five minutes;
the underground chamber had become a wailing human furnace of pain.
Lin Jie walked up to Adil, who lay on the ground like a dead dog, his legs crushed by William’s strike as he wailed in agony.
He pressed the muzzle of the Serene Heart against the trembling man’s forehead.
“I’ll ask once.”
“Where have the Descendants of Apophis been appearing recently?”
“I... I don’t know, I really don’t know anything.” Adil’s voice trembled with fear and pleas for mercy.
Bang!
Lin Jie pulled the trigger.
The bullet grazed Adil’s scalp, leaving a horrific blood groove across his head.
“Let me ask differently.”
Lin Jie’s voice remained calm.
“When was the last time you supplied them, and where?”
“Three... three days ago!” Faced with the overwhelming fear of death, Adil’s fragile mental defenses collapsed quickly, and he spilled everything he knew like a tipped jar of beans. “It was outside the city! I saw them... they had several British men who weren’t dead with them!!”
“British men who weren’t dead?”
Lin Jie’s brow furrowed.
The guards had apparently still been alive when the Descendants of Apophis captured them and brought them to Egypt.
The information trail ended there.
Because that was all the hyena knew.
Lin Jie lowered his gun. To find that missing final link in the evidence chain, they had to personally visit the guards’ last known “crime scene.”