"Get out here!"
A group of men armed with guns and knives bellowed at a tightly shut door riddled with bullet holes.
"Sh*t up! If you continue prattling on, I'll shoot him dead!" Zhou Zhenguo's yell came from the room. He carried himself in an even more imposing manner than the people outside.
'I have a hostage!'
There were a total of five people in the room.
One of them was sprawled on the ground with a pool of blood underneath him. He was still alive and spasming. It was the man whom Tang Luo and the others had been holding hostage and forced to lead the way for them.
Apart from him, there was another stranger whom Zhou Zhenguo was strangling and pointing a revolver to his head.
That person was Dr. Jack White, whom the man from before had led Tang Luo and the others to.
They were in Jack White's office now.
A few minutes earlier…
Zhou Zhenguo and the man barely stepped into the office when the man suddenly put up resistance and turned around to seize the gun.
Zhou Zhenguo's reaction was swift, and he managed to prevent the man from successfully snatching the gun away. Instead, he shot the man.
However, this also caused a huge commotion.
It led to the current situation where they were trapped and had to rely on hostages to prevent the other party from taking all-out action.
They were holding people hostage!? They were clearly detectives of justice investigating Jack the Ripper, yet they were holding people hostage as if they were villains.
Something must have gone wrong somewhere.
The office was on the fourth floor. There was only a door, and a window that was right opposite the door, escaping through the window, wasn't easy.
Firstly, it was too high. Secondly, it was very easy for the enemy to shoot at him if he was behind the door. The bullet holes in the door were fine examples of that.
The door was relatively thin. Even bullets shot by a revolver, a weapon that wasn't considered terribly powerful here could go through it.
Currently, Tang Luo and the others were beside the door, pressed against the wall. They stood in a blind spot where bullets couldn't reach them.
Little Chu's mouth was shut tight. His chest heaved up and down violently. Being mentally prepared and facing actual danger were two completely different things, much like the difference between watching war movies and personally going onto the battlefield.
"Mr. Jack, relax. I have a few things I'd like to ask you," said Tang Luo to Jack White, who was close to dying from asphyxiation because of Zhou Zhenguo's strangling.
The 'relax' in the middle of his sentence was directed at Zhou Zhenguo so that Jack could speak.
"Jack?"
The man's eyes widened dramatically. "You've gotten the goddamn wrong person! I'm not Jack!"
Suddenly, mocking laughter rang out. With utmost satisfaction, the man on the floor took his last breath.
"F*ck!" Little Chu cursed aloud, slamming his fist onto the wall.
They had been tricked!
Zhou Zhenguo swore in his dialect too.
Tang Luo was very calm. With a nod, he replied, "So you aren't. That's fine. Do you recognize this?"
He took out Hodge's letter and pointed at the symbol signing off the letter.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just a normal doctor," replied the man.
Tang Luo chuckled lightly. "Are those people outside just normal healthcare workers too?"
Armed healthcare workers.
"I don't know." The man shook his head vehemently.
"Is that so? In that case, if I push you to the back of the door, take a guess, will those normal healthcare workers open fire?" asked Tang Luo with a smile. "I hope you're as normal as what you claim to be. That way, you can go a little more peacefully."
"No—"
Before the man could finish, Tang Luo had already pushed him behind the door.
There were no gunshots.
Without waiting for the man to reveal a triumphant smile and run out the door, a hand reached out seemingly from nowhere. It grabbed the man around the neck, caught hold of him, grabbed hold of a little chick, and slammed him against the door. The back of his head slammed against the wall, causing the man to see stars from the great pain.
"Whether you're Jack or not, you're still pretty important to those people outside," said Tang Luo.
Right at that point, they heard a cold and emotionless voice from outside.
"Don't bother with him. Charge in and kill all of them!"
Someone even more highly-ranked than the man Tang Luo and the others were holding hostage had appeared. Not just that, the moment he showed up, he gave the order to kill.
He was probably a Russian.
A look of shock and fear appeared on the man's face.
With a somber expression, Zhou Zhenguo aimed the revolver at the door.
Unfortunately, the revolver only had six bullets. After the shot earlier, there were only five left. But outside, there were probably seven to eight people.
"Watch him well."
Tang Luo pushed the man over to Little Chu, whose heart was pounding hard and fast. Then, in a flash, he went behind the office desk.
Bam!
At the same time, the door was violently kicked open, and the entire door frame smashed onto the floor with a loud crash.
A group of people came charging in. They crowded in the doorway, the muzzles of their guns swinging about.
After ensuring that they wouldn't misfire at their comrades in front, they immediately pulled the triggers, no intention of aiming whatsoever. Every single one of them had a crazed look on their faces as if they were lunatics.
Sparks flew out of the revolver in Zhou Zhenguo's hand as well.
Screech!
The ear-piercing sound of a heavy object rubbing against the ground at high speed rang out among the gunshots.
The heavy office desk lay horizontally and spun 90 degrees by Tang Luo, so it could just so fit through the door.
He knelt down and pressed his hands against the bottom of the desk. Then, he flipped it!
A deafening boom resounded as though a gigantic rock had crash-landed. The sound echoed within the tiny and cramped space, the reverberations ringing loudly in everyone's ears.
The gunshots ceased after the deafening boom.
"Done." Tang Luo dusted off his hands and walked out of the office.
The ceiling and walls along the walkway outside the office were dyed red by all the blood.
A large part of the thick and solid office desk had fallen apart. Pieces of broken wood littered the area. The remaining part of the desk was embedded in the wall. Blood dripped from the gaps in the wood.
The sight was as terrifying as something straight out of hell, as though the place had gone through the crushing of a millstone.
A man in a white doctor uniform sat on the ground, his mouth gaping wide. He looked at Tang Luo in absolute horror.
Just a second ago, he saw a massive black shadow literally smashing everyone at the doorway, planning to charge into the room, into bits.
It was then embedded into the wall. It was practically as if a huge war catapult had hurled that office desk out from the room!
'What happened? How was it done? Who did it? Did the three trespassers combine their efforts to do it?'
When Tang Luo's line of sight landed on him, Jack White, who was in a state of shock, suddenly regained his senses and tried to flee.
He had only just turned around and gotten up when he felt severe pain in his left leg. Unable to support himself, he fell back down. It was only then that he realized that his left calf had been hit by a piece of broken wood, and blood flowed from the wound.
"Let go of me!"
The three people in the room heard a terrified squeal, as though the cry of an animal being slaughtered.
Then, they saw Master Xuanzang dragging a man into the room by his calf. It left a trail of blood on the ground. No one knew whether the blood was from the bespectacled man or the people outside.
Probably both?
"M-master," Little Chu stammered, unable to even utter a coherent sentence.
Zhou Zhenguo was very calm. "Who is he?"
The one he directed the question to was the original owner of the office.
"He's Jack White! Not me!" yelled the man.
Less than half a minute ago, he had been abandoned by Jack White, so there was a look of gratification on his face from taking revenge.
After a twist and turn of events, it was his turn for revenge.
"Good day to you, Mr. Jack."
Tang Luo stepped on Jack White's injured leg, preventing him from escaping. At the same time, he picked up a revolver from the floor and pushed the cylinder open.
With the muzzle pointing up, Tang Luo emptied the rounds inside onto his palm. After loading one back into the revolver, he discarded the remaining two. Then, he spun the cylinder. Finally, Tang Luo locked the hammer of the revolver, aimed the gun at Jack White's head, and pulled the trigger.
Russian roulette!
Click!
Click!
Click!
Three somewhat choppy clicks rang out one after the other—all three strikes of the revolver returned empty-handed!
"Your luck is pretty good, Mr. Jack," commented Tang Luo. "In that case, let's talk."
He straight up did away with the meaningless process of starting the interrogation with questions, while the other party was uncooperative.
Chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter…
His teeth chattering, Jack White suddenly went limp and collapsed into a heap onto the ground. Beneath him, pale yellow liquid gradually pooled.
"What! Say that again!"
A few minutes later, Little Chu's reproachful voice echoed in the room.
'Lucky White', who had gone through a round of Russian roulette, was very cooperative. He told them everything he knew and held nothing back.
The interaction between both parties was extremely harmonious except that the conclusion wasn't satisfactory. To be more accurate, the conclusion dissatisfied Zhou Zhenguo and drove Little Chu mad.
Jack White was a high-ranking member of the organization and their most crucial researcher. The organization didn't have a special name. It was just called the organization. It was established by a group of high-ranking government officials and influential figures adept in toadying for personal gain.
The organization's purpose was to study and research immortality.
That's right, immortality. No matter the era, to people in high positions, this term always held a lethal allure.
The organization used mentally ill patients for their human experiments. Over the years, most of the patients in the hospital had become the targets of their experiments. Unfortunately, It didn't stop there. They would secretly kidnap people for their experiments too. After all, compared to the number of test subjects they needed, the number of patients was still too low.
Nine out of ten cases of missing persons over the years were related to the organization.
However, this organization wasn't the Jack the Ripper organization from Little Chu's deductions.
They had indeed cut open the guts of people, but they didn't do it outdoors or in small alleys. Rather, they carried out their experiments and cut open the guts of both living and dead test subjects in the hidden laboratory in the basement of the hospital.
When Jack the Ripper was mentioned, the doctor, who was also named Jack, was full of disdain. His acts of murder were for the grand purpose of immortality. It had already broken away from the vulgar purpose of pleasure.
There was a world of difference between him and pure, raving lunatics like Jack the Ripper.
Little Chu asked persistently, "Are you sure you're not the one out there using those people as practice targets for dissection?"
"Ha!"
When it came to his field of expertise, Dr. Jack was radiant and in high spirits. "Are those crude methods of the Ripper's even worthy of being compared to mine? Those wounds are practically no different from the biting and clawing of beasts! Even a baboon waving a scalpel can do better than him. The people whom I dissected are works of art!"
He spoke fervently and had a zealous look on his face. The degree of Dr. Jack's insanity didn't lose out to Jack the Ripper's.
However, he wasn't the Jack the Ripper whom Tang Luo and the others needed to hunt down in their mission.
Little Chu stood at the side with an awful look on his face. He had analyzed the situation seriously, proved his argument with confidence, but was then hit by reality.
He had once dreamed of planning battle strategies and setups. But now, his dream was crushed. He had been full of confidence in his analysis, yet he was wiped out in the actual execution.
This place was indeed dangerous ground and was terribly risky, but it had nothing to do with the mission.
If not for Master Xuanzang, who had executed a True Table-Flipping, even if everyone was lucky enough to survive, they would have ended up in a terrible state.
Zhou Zhenguo shook his head as he sighed as well.
"You don't need to put the blame on yourself, Little Chu." Tang Luo went on. "Although we didn't catch Jack the Ripper, we discovered an evil organization nonetheless. This is heaven's will telling us to completely destroy anti-humanity and anti-societal organizations like these. Let Master here end all of these for good and return a safe and peaceful place to the world. So that all the victims may rest in peace!"
Naturally, punishing evil and advocating good gave him virtuous merits.