Cultivation: When you take things to the extreme

At that moment, footsteps were heard, and a shadow was cast, bringing silence to the scene in an instant.

“This…!”

Seeing the burly giant steadily enter the room, the barrage in the live stream room cleared for an instant, falling into brief silence, no longer the jesting atmosphere from before.

“Don’t come any closer!”

Zhang Qiang was even more terrified, the handgun pressed against the girl’s head as he bellowed with more fierceness than confidence, “Come any closer and I’ll shoot her dead!”

His words were tinged with fright, utterly at a loss.

Truth be told, Zhang Qiang had no idea whether his threat would work, as it was a desperate shot in the dark, uncertain whether taking a hostage would deter the other party and make them hesitate.

But what could he do? He was out of options and had to treat the situation as if the dead horse were still alive.

Unexpectedly…

The newcomer indeed stopped in their tracks.

“Could it be?!”

Zhang Qiang’s eyes sharpened, and he was ecstatic. He held the girl in his arms tighter as if a drowning man clutching at a straw, “Don’t come any closer, I’ll shoot, I’ll do it, get back, do you hear me!”

“…”

To that, the newcomer didn’t respond with words, nor did they comply by stepping back.

The situation reached a stalemate.

Only the live stream room was in turmoil.

“This…”

“Is this for real?”

“Is this guy even human?”

“How many steroids did it take to get that big?”

“Where did they find such a special actor?”

“This is not going the right way, is it?”

“Quick, call the police!”

Although the image in the video was slightly distorted, the person’s presence wasn’t diminished, and some viewers finally sensed something was amiss. The incident fermented and spread rapidly online, the situation becoming grave in an instant.

But this was irrelevant to Zhang Qiang, who saw that the person merely stopped and hadn’t backed away, causing his heart, which had just settled, to hang high once again.

His jaws clenched tight, eyes reddened, he had the look of a desperate criminal as he hysterically shouted at the man before him, “Step back, step back right now or I’ll shoot her dead, do you hear me? Back off now!”

The man looked at him with an indifferent expression and simply said, “You have only one shot.”

“??!!”

Zhang Qiang’s eyes focused, puzzled.

Then he heard…

“One shot!”

The man’s words were calm, yet carried an immense pressure that bore down on the soul, “If you kill her, I will kill you!”

“…”

“…”

“…”

Upon hearing these words, everyone fell silent.

Zhang Qiang’s face turned pale, his body soaked in sweat, yet he still maintained the posture of a desperado, “So what if she dies. At least I’ll have a cushion for my fall. Come on, make a move, and I’ll kill her.”

The man’s expression remained unchanged and he made no move, simply saying, “With this one shot, if you kill me, that’s your only chance to live!”

With that, he pointed to his own forehead, “Come on, you have only one chance, either kill me or… be killed by me!”

“…”

“…”

“…”

With those words, the live stream room fell into an even deeper silence.

“!!!!!!!!”

Zhang Qiang’s pupils contracted, clenching his teeth. Instinct told him not to fall into the verbal trap set by the man before him, but a voice inside was furiously egging him on.

Kill him, kill him!

He is also flesh and blood, what kind of nonsense martial arts can withstand a bullet?

Only by killing him can you live!

Shooting the hostage would be pointless; with his terrifying speed, he’d be upon you in the same instant you fired, ruthlessly killing you.

Only by killing him, only by killing him…

Under the lure of that voice, impulse finally overcame reason.

“Die!!!”

Zhang Qiang screamed, fiercely swiveling the gun barrel around to face the person before him, the figure that seemed like a Demon God, and frantically pulled the trigger.

“Bang!!!”

“Boom!!!”

A gunshot rang out, a burst of thunderous noise almost simultaneously erupted, too swiftly for everyone to react. The camera caught just a flash of a dark shadow, the image blurred, and then…

“Boom!!!”

A deafening roar ensconced the room, the entire floor shook, trembling under that horrifying force.

“Pfft!”

A warm, thick liquid burst beside her. The girl shuddered, struggling to avert her gaze, only to see a thick arm drive Zhang Qiang’s head into the wall, leaving behind his limp body, sprawled and decaying like mud.

Having seen that, she turned her head back and faced the terrifyingly large man standing inches away. Her eyes rolled back as her body collapsed softly to the ground, fainting on the spot.

“Pfft!”

The intruder paid no heed, simply withdrawing his arm, showering a spray of fresh blood, leaving a massive crater.

Zhang Qiang’s body slumped against the wall, now webbed with cracks. The center bore a terrifying hole – his head not within it, blood gushing continuously, making it hard to fathom his condition.

“…”

“…”

“…”

Inside the live streaming room, silence prevailed; not a single person spoke or laughed.

At that moment, the giant man turned around, facing the camera once more.

Viewers watched in terror. They noticed a damp spot on his chest.

Unconcerned, he moved only his pectoral muscles, and amidst the horrified stares, a misshapen bullet slowly extruded from his chest and clinked crisply onto the floor.

“…”

“…”

“…”

The sharp echo underscored the surrounding stillness.

Acting again, the man strode forward, reaching out with his broad, powerful hand, seized Hong by the throat, and hoisted her up as though she were a chicken or duck, and demanded coldly, “Where is Chen Antai?”

Hong, suspended in his grasp, her face deathly pale and struggling with all her might, answered in a piercing voice without a moment’s thought to the threat of death and the instinct to survive, “At, at his villa, in Jiangnan District…”

“Crack!”

No sooner had she given the address than his hand twisted, and her delicate neck snapped crisply, contorted and slackened lifelessly.

“Thud!”

Releasing his grip, Corpse Body fell, landing in front of the camera, her eyes wide with terror as they stared at the viewers in the live streaming room.

“…”

“…”

“…”

The streaming room remained eerily silent, not a single barrage of comments, yet the number of viewers was skyrocketing uncontrollably.

As for the intruder, he had already picked up his bag and turned to leave.

Screams, gunfire, and booming noises intermingled in a mournful echo, reverberating through the corridors outside the room.

On Red Book TV, the live streaming channel, the viewer count surged instantaneously, throwing every live streaming room into varying degrees of chaos.

Elsewhere…

“What’s going on, what’s going on!”

Inside a racing sedan, a middle-aged man with a stern face and no-nonsense demeanor watched the live stream on a tablet, shouting in a mix of shock and rage, “Why hasn’t this stream been shut down? What are those tech department idiots doing, shut it down now, immediately!”

“Chief, they say they can’t do it, it’s impossible to shut it down!”

The female assistant sitting next to him, continuously making calls, shook her head, “They’ve tried everything to close the live stream, even cutting off power and internet signals to the area, but the stream remains unaffected.”

“How is this possible?”

The middle-aged man’s brow furrowed, his astonishment growing.

The streaming room couldn’t be shut down?

If it were just a cyber issue, one might blame the tech department for slacking off or suspect a powerful hacker group at work.

But now, with the regional network and even power supply cut off, how could they still be streaming?

What hacker, what technology, could disregard physical conditions?

Nie Hailong was at a loss.

But puzzled as he was, as the chief of the Federation’s Security Department, Longhai Sub-bureau, he had to immediately address this emergency.

“Hurry, speed to the scene, call for support from all sides, and send another team to Chen Antai’s hideout, apprehend the bastard. He’s to bear one hundred percent of the responsibility for this incident!”

“Yes!!!”

…

“Someone’s been murdered, right?”

“Is this for real?”

“And the live stream hasn’t been shut down yet?”

“How can it be fake, those gunshots can’t be fake!”

“That body has been lying in front of the camera for over an hour now.”

“Who is that man, who on earth is he?”

“What’s happening with Red Book TV, how can that guy have guns?”

“Such a build, such speed… is he still human?”

“Shot and yet not dead, the bullet squeezed out of the muscle, is this a Wolverine movie?”

Inside the streaming rooms of Red Book TV, with Hong’s body sprawled before the camera, eyes bulging in death, and amidst the chaos in other rooms, the whole online world was struck by an unprecedented shock.

The incident quickly fermented.

The impact deepened relentlessly.

Throughout the long night, Red Book TV, in a way that nobody anticipated, became the top streaming platform of the live streaming industry.