Stronger with More Jobs

Chapter 588 - 268: Symphony of Flesh and Blood (Part 3)

Blocking the way... it’s not just Jiang Chengyue, this "traitor"!

Jiang Hongyuan’s gaze was like a searchlight, sweeping over the twenty or so silent yet familiar faces behind Jiang Chengyue.

"Zhao Tiezhu?! Wang Kun?! Li Su?!... And you! Liu Mingyuan! You’re the deputy captain of the Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Seventh Patrol Team!!"

With each name he called, his voice rose higher.

Filled with the madness of betrayal and an ice-cold absurdity to the extreme.

"What... what do you want to do?!" Jiang Hongyuan’s voice trembled with extreme anger, pointing at those familiar faces, his fingers shaking, "Following Jiang Chengyue, this traitor, to betray the Jiang Family? Betray Glazed Light City? Betray the Federation that raised you?!!"

His hoarse questioning echoed in the sky over the square, carrying a sense of "justice" judgment.

However.

The response to him was still silence.

Dead silence.

Those twenty-odd former comrades, subordinates, and battle mates merely stood silently, gripping the weapons in their hands, meeting Jiang Hongyuan’s furious gaze with complex eyes.

There was struggle, there was pain, there was guilt, but more than anything... it was a determination forced to the edge of a cliff, with no way back.

This silence pierced more than any argument.

The muscles on Jiang Hongyuan’s face twitched violently, and in his extreme anger, he laughed: "Good! Good! Good! A bunch of ungrateful bastards! Very good!!"

He suddenly waved his hand, his eyes turning as cold and poisonous as an ice cone, filled with a cruel threat:

"Wait until the ancestors return! Wait until the Family Head triumphantly returns from the front lines! You! And your families won’t escape! You will all pay the most painful price for your stupidity and betrayal today!! I will make you..."

"Do you know?"

A voice abruptly interrupted Jiang Hongyuan’s hysterical threats.

The voice was light, with a trace of imperceptible tremor, yet like a needle, it suddenly pierced the manic atmosphere over the square.

The speaker was a middle-aged man standing to Jiang Chengyue’s left rear.

He wore an old-style Garrison Army officer’s uniform, a grim knife scar on his face, and at this moment was staring hard at Jiang Hongyuan.

"Know what?!"

Jiang Hongyuan suddenly turned his head, his gaze like a knife carving into him.

The man with the scar’s Adam’s apple moved slightly, seeming to use all his strength to shout out the words suppressed in his heart:

"Do you know what the ancestors! What he’s been doing in the quiet room all these years?!!"

"Shut up!!"

Jiang Hongyuan’s expression changed abruptly, breaking off sharply, eyes flashing a subtle panic, then quickly covered by deeper rage.

"A bunch of fools! What brainwashing soup did Jiang Chengyue feed you?! The ancestors command the center, he is the Stabilizing Needle of Glazed Light City! How dare you traitors slander him!!"

"Slander?"

Jiang Chengyue’s voice resounded again, so cold it held no warmth.

He did not look at Jiang Hongyuan but slowly pulled out a thick stack of photos from his coat, the edges already worn.

Then, under Jiang Hongyuan’s mixture of shock and anger, and the puzzled gaze of everyone behind him.

He abruptly raised his arm!

Swish—!!!

Over a hundred photos fluttered like snowflakes toward the gates of the City Lord’s Mansion, drifting towards Jiang Hongyuan and the elite team behind him.

The photos were not deliberately aimed at anyone, just scattered.

Yet, everyone present, even the lowest tier, was a battle-honed Tier One Peak Martial Artist, how sharp were their eyes?

Instantaneously, the scenes on those photos clearly entered everyone’s view....

One, was on a metal bed.

A middle-aged man, emaciated, eye sockets sunken like a skeleton, his wrist connected to thick tubes, dark red blood being continuously drawn.

He opened his mouth wide, eyes empty, staring at the dome.

Despair.

One, was in a corner, piled high with black body bags.

One bag was torn, revealing a section of bluish-gray, bony arm.

Rotting flesh clung to the thin bones, a few fat maggots crawling out from between fingers.

Disgust.

One, was a Corpse Mountain made of countless body bags and decaying remains.

Black-green pus flowed like a stream from the "mountain foot," reflecting a nauseating sheen under the stark white light.

A few metallic handling arms hovered over the Corpse Mountain, like the jaws of a beast waiting to devour.

Indifference.

No sound.

No shouting.

Only the silent fall of the photos, like the coldest snow in winter.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment.

In front of the City Lord’s Mansion, the surging murderous aura, the furious roar, the fervent fighting spirit...

Everything, completely frozen solid in the face of these photos.

Jiang Hongyuan’s outstretched arm, ready to order indiscriminate killing, froze in mid-air.

He hesitated for just a moment.

Then was replaced by rage and murderous intent.

Just as he was about to speak again.

"This... this... what is..."

Beside him, a young guard’s voice was suddenly as dry as sandpaper scraping.

No one answered.

Only the cold wind lifted a few photos, spinning them on the icy Crystal Stone ground.

Jiang Chengyue stood amid the swirling storm of photos, standing before dozens of companions, faces ashen yet eyes resolute.

Slowly raising the ancient long knife stained with dried blood, the blade’s tip pointed at the ground.

His voice hoarse, yet like the iron law of fate declared, a word at a time, shattering the icy silence on the square:

"Today..."

"This road is closed!"