Free Web NovelChapter 244: Chapter 206: Judgment in the Ruins
The smoke of battle had yet to clear, and waves of heat rolled across the landscape.
The surface of G-01 Floating Island had been thoroughly scoured. Its once-indestructible fortifications were now like melted candles. Steel twisted into grotesque angles as molten iron dripped and sizzled.
BOOM!
A massive shadow crashed down.
The Tier Three Fusion Beast smashed down hard in the center of the control room’s ruins, kicking up a roiling wave of dust.
The behemoth’s scales were shattered, its body a mangled mess of flesh and blood, but the intense pain only stoked its ferocity.
Han Feng stood atop the beast’s head, one hand tucked in his pocket, gazing down at the scene below.
His gaze pierced through the lingering flames, settling on two pathetic figures amidst the ruins.
"Well, gentlemen. How do you like my return gift? Potent enough for you?"
His voice was calm, without the slightest hint of breathlessness after such an intense battle.
In the control room, Sun Changhe was slumped amidst a floor covered in shattered glass, his fine suit torn to ribbons.
Hearing that voice, this magnate, who was accustomed to calling the shots in the Inner City, now resembled an old rooster with its neck wrung, and his entire body shuddered violently.
"You... You stay back!"
Sun Changhe scrambled backward on all fours, trying to hide behind a warped control console. His voice was shrill and strained.
"I’m a core executive of the Inner City Sun Family! My older brother is a First Level councilman!
Laying a hand on me is the same as declaring war on all of East Sea City!
Those are consequences you can’t afford to bear!"
Han Feng didn’t answer.
He simply vaulted lightly off the beast’s head. The soles of his boots crunched on the shattered glass, an ear-piercing sound.
One step. Two steps.
He stopped in front of them, his gaze as placid as if he were looking at two corpses.
"Even now, you’re still trying to use your family name to intimidate me?"
A mocking smile touched Han Feng’s lips as he casually flicked his right index finger.
ZING!
Two streaks of silver light flashed through the air.
THUMP! THUMP!
Two dull thuds.
Sun Changhe and Mo Sen didn’t even see Han Feng move before their bodies abruptly went rigid.
Immediately after, bloodcurdling screams shattered the silence of the ruins.
As if their spines had been ripped out, both men collapsed limply to the ground, hands clamped tightly over their lower abdomens.
Blood poured frantically from between their fingers, staining the scorched earth beneath them red.
"My Qi Sea... My Cultivation..."
Sun Changhe’s face twisted in despair—a fate he feared more than death itself.
For the powerful figures of the High Martial World, losing one’s power was worse than death.
"You crippled me?! You dare to cripple me?!"
"Cripple you?"
Han Feng squatted down unhurriedly, his gaze level with Sun Changhe’s.
"If that ’Judge’ had gone off just now, I’d be nothing but ash.
So you get to start infernos, but I’m not allowed to light a lamp?"
The intense pain caused beads of sweat to cover Sun Changhe’s forehead, but he was a wily old fox of high society, and his survival instinct quickly overrode his dignity.
’If the hard approach won’t work, it’s time for the soft one.’
"Money! I have money!"
Sun Changhe gasped, his eyes darting about.
"Just let me go! I’ll give you whatever you want!
Ten million Spirit Coins? No, fifty million!
Take whatever you want from the Sun Family treasury! I have the authority!"
Han Feng raised an eyebrow. "That sounds sincere enough."
A flicker of hope had just appeared in Sun Changhe’s eyes when Han Feng’s next words plunged him into an icy abyss.
"A pity. I don’t take bad checks from dead men."
Han Feng toyed with the dagger in his hand—a blade condensed purely from Sword Essence—and asked pensively,
"You know, there’s something I’m curious about.
Sun Rui and Sun Hao... those two unlucky souls were part of the Sun Family’s main lineage, weren’t they?
Since you knew about the Blood Feeding Sect’s sacrificial ritual this time, why didn’t you lift a finger to save them?"
Sun Changhe froze, clearly not expecting Han Feng to care about such a trivial matter.
He gritted his teeth, his facial muscles twitching uncontrollably from the pain.
"Sun Rui? Hah... They were just a couple of idiots from a branch family."
"Branch family?"
"That’s right."
Sun Changhe’s eyes held the unique arrogance of a noble family scion.
"They insisted on getting mixed up with that madman, Li Wei. They got what they deserved.
Contributing to the family’s ’Divine Domain’ project was the greatest value their lives ever had."
Han Feng nodded.
"I get it.
They were more useful to you dead than alive.
When this all comes to light and the council starts investigating, you can claim the Blood Feeding Sect acted alone and lost control. You can even point out that members of the Sun Family were among the casualties, making you the ’victims.’
Those two poor bastards were your sacrificial lambs to wash your hands of the whole affair."
Sun Changhe fell silent, his gaze shifting. Han Feng had clearly struck a nerve.
"Tsk. You schemers really have no heart."
Han Feng remarked with a sigh, "Scheming against your own family, treating them like disposable assets... That takes a special kind of enlightenment. I’m impressed."
Before the words had even left his mouth,
he lifted his right foot without warning and stomped down hard on Sun Changhe’s right knee.
CRACK!
The sharp crack of bone was piercingly loud in the dead silence of the ruins.
"AAAAAAGH!!!"
Sun Changhe’s eyes bulged from the pain. His mouth gaped open as he let out an inhuman howl.
"Since you all love treating people like disposable assets, it’s your turn to experience it."
Han Feng scraped the blood from the sole of his shoe on the ground with an expression of disgust, his gaze shifting to the laser tower that lay snapped in two.
"One last question.
The Secret Realm opens once every three years; otherwise, it’s sealed.
These ’Sentinel’ turrets and those drone production lines... even dismantled into parts, there’s no way you could have transported all that in over just seven days, right?"
Sun Changhe’s body convulsed with pain. He had intended to stay silent to the bitter end, but when he saw the dagger in Han Feng’s hand pulsing with Sword Aura and aiming for his other leg, his mental defenses completely crumbled.
"It... it was three years ago..."
he confessed, trembling.
"Right after the last trial ended, we partnered with Star Sea Technology and submitted a proposal to the council for a ’Subspace Geological Monitoring’ project.
