The north wind howled, and leaden clouds hung low. Though the guards at the city gate wore thick clothes, they still felt very cold, especially their faces, which were either painfully stung as if scraped by a knife, or numb and icy.

Although the sky was dim, as it often is before a storm, it was still morning, truly daytime, which made the guards less vigilant.

Their eyes swept over the crowd, seeing only faces so numb they barely seemed alive, as if facing a group of statues that could do nothing.

"I wonder when the other slave-catching teams from 'Initial City' will arrive… It can't go on like this. If too many people die, there might be an epidemic," the small headman with a pistol on his waist paced back and forth at the city gate, saying casually.

That was a nightmare more frightening than war in the eyes of many.

Just then, he heard a loud boom.

It was clearly an explosion.

It came from deep within North Street!

All the guards at the city gate turned their bodies and heads, looking in that direction, wondering what had happened.

At that moment, the small headman caught a glimpse of a group of ragged, unshaven wasteland wanderers suddenly standing up from the crowd near the city gate.

They all had guns in their hands!

Some had revolvers, some had shotguns, some had dilapidated-looking rifles, but they were all guns.

"War…" The small headman only managed to say one word before hearing a barrage of gunfire.

His vision went black, and intense pain washed over him like a tide.

Bang, bang, bang!

After a round of intense shooting, most of the guards at the city gate had fallen, and the remaining few were all wounded and in extremely poor condition.

They ran towards the fortifications, using their weapons to retaliate.

However, they were horrified to discover that the group of wasteland wanderers were charging forward in the face of the bullets. Although people kept falling, the others were unaffected, as if the path ahead was a new world, a paradise.

Their faces were contorted, their eyes bloodshot, like intelligent beasts or "Heartless".

At this moment, Li Tou grabbed a loudspeaker and shouted frantically:

"Charge in! Charge in!

"Charge in and you'll have food! Charge in and you'll survive!"

Countless wasteland wanderers outside the city turned their gaze towards this side, their eyes turning red one after another.

Seeing that only a few guards remained at the city gate, nearly cleared, they instinctively stood up and surged towards it.

Some still had the strength to run quickly, while others were already so weak that they could only follow slowly behind.

Rat-tat-tat, several machine guns on the city wall spat fire, and large swaths of wasteland wanderers fell like straw.

In a short minute of strafing, many people lost their lives.

The wasteland wanderers behind them flinched, hesitated, and stopped.

But just then, the machine guns went silent, needing to reload their belts.

And A Cai and the others, who had charged into the city gate, had already eliminated the guards there, seized better weapons, and quickly rushed up the city wall stairs.

Seeing this, the wasteland wanderers outside the city, who were about to collapse, went crazy again and poured into Wildgrass City like a tide.

The main force of the city defense army and the city lord's guard, who had gathered due to the explosion at the First Hospital, were unsure which side to support in the face of this situation.

…………

Inside the First Hospital, as Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei raised their guns, aiming at their company colleagues, Jiang Baimian finally understood something:

Lin Feifei entered "Wolf Alley" not related to any bar, she passed through there, via some secret passage, into North Street.

Just then, Shang Jianyao, who was wrestling with his own hands, suddenly asked:

"Why don't you shoot yourself, and instead find two servants?"

"Father" didn't want to waste any more time, but for some reason, he felt he should share his carefully laid plans, otherwise, wouldn't he have done so many things in vain?

"Don't rush," he said to Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei.

Then, amidst Odick's incessant sneezing, he smiled and looked at Shang Jianyao, saying:

"Guess."

Shang Jianyao became immediately interested:

"I guess it's the limitations of your ability.

"Its essence is to connect a part of your body to the corresponding part of someone else's body, so that the target 'replaces' you in performing the desired action.

"In other words, the actions we are doing now are equivalent to the actions performed by your hands.

"Since it has already performed an action, it can't perform another action, such as drawing a gun and shooting."

"Father" chuckled:

"Close, but no cigar.

"You're smarter than I thought, but your brain seems to have some problems."

Shang Jianyao smiled, looked at the other party, and said strange words:

"Fall, fall, fall…"

As soon as he said three "fall" words, Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei's eyes became unfocused, and their bodies uncontrollably fell to the ground.

"Father" also realized that he was about to lose consciousness.

He blurted out in astonishment:

"You, you…"

Jiang Baimian, in the area near the main door, laughed:

"As a company specializing in biology and medicine, it wouldn't be too strange to have anesthetic gas equipped.

"Knowing that you can make other people's hands uncontrollable and hurt themselves, why wouldn't we prepare before entering here?"

Her electric eel-type biological prosthetic limb had another function, which was a conscious linkage chip, that could spray a rather faint, difficult-to-detect anesthetic gas without any movement.

Therefore, after eliminating the exoskeleton-equipped bandit gang, Jiang Baimian said that one of her methods was to choose to surrender, and after being subdued, to launch an extreme counterattack.

This was her means of counterattack.

And this, combined with her genetically modified ability to hold her breath, was enough to reverse the situation—she could also change the type of gas, turning anesthesia into poisoning.

Of course, she didn't need to show that this time. Having made preparations in advance, both she and Shang Jianyao had taken corresponding preventive medicines.

And the vinegar that "Father" used to control Odick perfectly masked those slight odors.

The effect was better than Jiang Baimian had expected.

"Father's" consciousness became even more scattered:

"I, shouldn't have…"

He began to regret saying so much.

It must be said that his willpower was very strong. Odick, enveloped in the smell of vinegar, had already passed out and stopped sneezing.

Shang Jianyao's smile became even more radiant:

"You didn't really think you liked talking so much, did you?

"Guess when you were affected by my ability."

His use of tumbling to get close to "Father" wasn't solely for shooting, forcing the enemy towards Odick's side.

Otherwise, what difference would a little distance make? No matter how big the inside of the building was, how big could it be?

It wouldn't have a significant impact on his hit rate.

His hidden purpose at the time was to use "Sentimental Me" to influence "Father".

However, this time, he didn't make the other party do anything that seriously violated reason, that they would regret doing.

If that were the case, the effect of "Sentimental Me" would immediately be lifted.

He simply used this as a backup in case Odick couldn't control "Father", using his own actions, words, and performance to induce "Father" to say a lot more sentimentally, buying Jiang Baimian enough time.

——When "Sentimentality" isn't so obvious, it's difficult for the target to realize that they have been affected in a short period of time, which allows the effect of "Sentimental Me" to last for two to three minutes.

Therefore, even if Shang Jianyao continued to fight against his and Jiang Baimian's hands afterwards, unable to use other Awakened abilities, it didn't prevent him from making "Father" become talkative.

Hearing Shang Jianyao's words, "Father's" body gradually softened, and his eyes were filled with unwillingness.

Shang Jianyao kept his smile unchanged, and added another sentence:

"You lost because you are anti-intellectual. Your servants have no intelligence, they are just puppets who obey your orders, while my companion is very strong, very strong."

Plop, "Father" fell to the ground, completely losing consciousness.

"Tsk, no need to suck up at the end," Jiang Baimian turned around, trying to open the door for ventilation.

With a hard effort in her left arm, she directly lifted the aluminum-white electric roller shutter door.

The cold wind immediately howled in from the doorway, along with its kind from the broken glass, clearing away the peculiar smell in this area.

During this process, Jiang Baimian casually asked:

"Besides waiting for my anesthetic gas to take effect, what other preparations did you make?"

Shang Jianyao immediately raised the "Icy Moss" in his hand, aimed at his own head, and pulled the trigger violently.

Pulled the trigger.

An empty click echoed, the gun was already out of bullets.

"I only loaded three bullets in each gun…" Shang Jianyao explained with a smile.

And those had been used up in the previous few attacks.

If there was another opportunity to shoot, Shang Jianyao would discard the "Icy Moss" and switch to the "Joint 202".

Jiang Baimian couldn't help but laugh:

"So, you were just teasing him at the end?"

There was no need to fight back and forth with his hands, he could have taken the time to use his ability on "Father" once.

"The plan was to anesthetize him, so the result must be anesthetizing him, unless it's already impossible to succeed," Shang Jianyao said with a serious face.

Jiang Baimian smiled, and was about to order Shang Jianyao to drag Lei Yunsong and Lin Feifei to the outside lawn, wait for them to wake up, use "Reasoning Clown" to make them friendly, and then formulate a plan to remove the hypnosis based on the situation.

Just then, she heard a barrage of gunfire in the distance.

It was as if a war was breaking out.

"Those wasteland wanderers…" Jiang Baimian frowned, quickly recalling the previous details.

"Not good!" she suddenly said to herself.

At this time, Shang Jianyao also sighed:

"Sigh."

Seeing Jiang Baimian looking over, Shang Jianyao proactively explained:

"I think this 'Father' is too weak, not as powerful as I imagined."

Jiang Baimian nodded seriously:

"I also discovered a problem.

"When 'Father' hypnotized Zeng Guangwang and others before, didn't he ever think that those people might fail to commit suicide and spread his appearance characteristics and ability characteristics? And the fact is, it's really possible!

"If this is his style of doing things, or a trap targeting Odick, I find it hard to imagine that he could be active for so long while being pursued by the powerful force of 'Initial City', he's too careless."

Speaking of this, Jiang Baimian paused for a moment, and said in a deep voice:

"He seems more like bait."