Chapter 45: Ten Million

Chapter 45: Ten Million People

"Still too slow."

With many distractions removed, Jiang Ren's speed increased exponentially.

In this city emptied because most people chose to hide from the sounds of explosions and alarms, he propelled himself forward like a cannonball, using the exterior walls of surrounding skyscrapers as springboards.

Every time he leaped against the outer wall of a building, the surrounding surface would instantly shatter and blast outward in all directions, unable to bear the immense impact.

Even if someone nearby happened to look in this direction, they would only manage to catch a fleeting red afterimage.

Yet, this speed could not satisfy Jiang Ren.

"Even at this speed, it will take nearly ten hours to reach the Empire State Building. But reality is not a video game; what if the members of the Heavenly God Society flee beforehand?"

"With their power and wealth, if they are determined to hide, I might not find them even if I turn the entire continent upside down."

Jiang Ren felt a sense of helplessness. The most effective method was to continue unsealing the power of his left arm.

He had to remember that in his current state, he had only unsealed a tiny fraction of his left arm's power. If he could unseal it completely, his speed would at least multiply several times over.

However, this was far too dangerous.

Even while maintaining his current state, his beastly intuition kept warning him of the extreme danger emanating from his left arm.

If he continued to unseal it further, no one could predict what might happen.

"Hmm?"

Suddenly, a suffocating sense of dread surged within Jiang Ren's heart.

This was a warning from his beastly intuition.

Yet the feeling he faced now was as if death itself had arrived at his side, leaving no path of survival ahead, behind, to the left, to the right, or above—only the act of waiting for death remained.

Thud!

Jiang Ren landed on the ground, raising his head to gaze at the sky illuminated by only a faint sliver of moonlight.

His crimson right eye operated at full capacity.

His gaze pierced through the clouds, spanning a vast distance, to catch sight of a missile hurtling rapidly toward this direction.

"Ordinary missiles are useless against me. Even those with terrifying destructive power could at most injure me; they could never produce this feeling of absolute doom."

"Unless this missile carries... a nuclear warhead!"

Jiang Ren fell silent. He had already lowered his moral bottom line for those members of the Heavenly God Society as much as possible, but now it seemed he had still overestimated them.

To kill him, they were actually willing to sacrifice the people of an entire city.

In reality, if there were only a single missile equipped with a nuclear warhead, although he might not be able to outrun the blast radius of a nuclear weapon, he could still distance himself as much as possible from ground zero to increase his chances of survival.

As for the rest, he would have to leave it to fate.

But clearly, the Heavenly God Society did not intend to grant him that chance.

Jiang Ren looked around and spotted another missile in each of the four remaining directions...

"Mommy, the moon."

On the balcony of a high-rise residential building thousands of meters away, a three-year-old girl ran out playfully.

Her mother rushed over, pulled her into an embrace, and said, "Be a good girl, look at it tomorrow. There are bad people outside right now."

"Mommy, the moon is so pretty."

The little girl raised her hand, pointing at the moon largely obscured by clouds.

"Yes, so pretty..."

The mother instinctively looked up, only to witness the sudden appearance of a white light as dazzling as the sun.

In an instant, her eyes were scorched into two hollow voids by the blinding light.

Yet she emitted no scream and made no other reaction, because the searing heat accompanying the arrival of the white light had already incinerated both her and her daughter to ashes.

Within a radius of several thousand meters from the epicenter of the flash, all buildings, vehicles, and human beings were utterly reduced to dust.

Following closely behind was the shockwave of the explosion.

It instantly destroyed countless buildings, hurling fragments of brick, glass, reinforcing steel, and concrete toward every surviving human being.

Moreover, the gasoline-laden cars parked throughout the city were also swept outward amidst raging flames, bringing death to those who had managed to survive the initial blast.

Amidst this cataclysmic detonation, five crimson mushroom clouds rose from the five directions of the city, briefly illuminating the night sky.

Screams, weeping, curses...

Everything seemed utterly fragile and powerless in the face of a nuclear explosion.

After a long while.

The shockwave subsided, the mushroom clouds dissipated, and invisible radioactive dust slowly drifted down upon every corner of the city.

Those individuals on the fringes of the blast, who had escaped incineration by the extreme heat and miraculously evaded the immense dangers of the shockwave, crawled out from the ruins one by one.

They stared blankly at everything around them.

The fiercely burning structures, the endless expanse of ruins and debris, and those who would never wake up again.

Many bore wounds on their bodies from unknown flying shards, yet not a single person thought to tend to them; they could not even feel the pain.

"Is this a dream?"

Someone felt something unusual on their face, raised a hand to wipe it, and discovered it was tears shed without their knowledge.

It was unclear who began to weep first.

As if a starting trigger had been pressed, the overwhelming sorrow instantly infected the others, and tears flowed uncontrollably...

On the outskirts of the city.

A luxury private jet landed slowly.

The cabin door opened, the automated staircase descended, and a group of imposing elders walked down step by step.

Leading them was Bridges, the president of the Heavenly God Society.

He held a square, antique iron box in his hands. Gazing at the raging fires flickering in the nearby city, his face was filled with the ecstasy of impending rebirth.

The other official members of the Heavenly God Society filed down the aircraft one after another.

When many of them caught sight of the city blazing against the night sky, a flash of reluctance and pity crossed their eyes.

However, that was all.

To attain their current wealth and status, while they might not have completely discarded their conscience and morality, they were not far off.

That remaining shred of conscience could at best prompt a brief, silent mourning in their hearts.

"Ten million people, they have all been gathered, and they are still fresh."

As if experiencing a miraculous revival of vitality, Bridges's aged face gained a hint of rosy luster, his posture straightened, and the intermittent coughs that had plagued him vanished entirely since stepping off the plane.

He placed the iron box upon the hood of a car parked by the roadside.

His fingertips gently caressed the archaic patterns engraved on the box, his lips moving silently, though no sound escaped.

The official members who descended from the plane stood in silent unison behind Bridges, their expressions solemn and dignified.

Yet whenever their gazes swept across the iron box, a trace of greed inevitably rose in their eyes—not a greed for wealth or power, but for a higher form of life.

"Thud!"

A sound suddenly emanated from within the iron box.

It resembled the beating of a heart, only much louder, carrying an eerie, hypnotic rhythm that made one's own heart desire to pulse in synchronization.

"We shall all welcome eternal life!"

Bridges's expression was consumed by fanaticism. He withdrew his hands from the iron box and stepped back two paces.

The heartbeat within the box grew increasingly powerful, so much so that even survivors a thousand meters away heard this inexplicable sound.

"Thud! Thud! Thud!"

Gradually, every single survivor in the city heard it.

They did not know where the sound originated, only feeling that whenever it echoed, their own hearts beat along with it.

None of them knew that deep within one of the craters formed by the explosions lay a single, crimson left arm bone.

Suddenly, the finger bones of that left arm twitched slightly.