198: Only the dead don't knock on the door.

Chapter 198: Only the Dead Don't Knock. Chen Mo closed his eyes. The sound was extremely faint, wrapped in layers of electronic noise, but it couldn't escape his ears.

"Dong... Dong... Dong..."

"That's the chime of the old Jiangcheng Customs House. You're by the river."

The breathing on the other end of the line paused noticeably.

"Are you looking for me?" the voice turned cold.

"No."

Chen Mo threw the cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it with his foot.

"I'm here to see you off to your grave."

"Wash your neck and wait for me."

After saying that, he directly crushed the earpiece in his hand.

Snap.

The fragments fell into the mud.

"Done!"

Li Ke poked his head out of the off-road vehicle, looking excited. "Boss, this car's firewall is tough, but it's full of holes. I've already obtained the highest authorization, and I've changed the navigation system to display false coordinates. Now it shows us heading toward the north of the city."

"Beautifully done."

Su Qingxue pulled open the car door and checked the equipment inside.

The car was packed with ammo boxes, and there were even two individual rocket launchers.

"Are these people planning to go to war?" she frowned.

"They *are* at war."

Chen Mo stepped over the leader's body and pulled open the driver's side door. "It's just that the battlefield is in the gutter."

"How should we handle this trash?"

Ninth Master pointed at the Men in Black on the ground who were still groaning.

"Leave them."

Chen Mo started the car.

The V8 engine let out a low growl, sounding much more pleasant than that broken golden cup.

"Let them pass a message to the people behind them."

"The rules of the game have changed."

Three black Raptor off-road vehicles, Li Ke three beasts released from their cages, roared out of the gas station.

The wheels kicked up mud, leaving the desperate leader behind.

Inside the car.

The heater was turned up high.

Chen Mo held the steering wheel, his newly restored hearing greedily capturing information from this world.

The sound of rain, the wind, the engine.

And... that beating sound hidden deep within the city, Li Ke a massive heart.

"Where are we going?" Su Qingxue sat in the passenger seat, loading bullets into a magazine.

"The riverside."

Chen Mo watched the wipers trace fans across the windshield.

"To the old Customs House."

"Isn't that place long since sealed off?" Ninth Master shouted from the back seat. "They said it's a condemned building and was supposed to be demolished."

"A condemned building is the perfect place to hide ghosts."

Chen Mo's gaze was Li Ke a knife, staring at the dark curtain of rain ahead.

"In that phone call just now, I heard the chime."

"And..."

He paused, a cruel arc curling at the corners of his mouth.

"I also caught a scent."

"What scent?" Li Ke subconsciously sniffed the air.

"Formalin."

Chen Mo stepped on the gas.

The car's speed instantly surged to one hundred and twenty.

"And that nauseating, rotting smell of 'Eternal Life'."

...The wipers swung frantically across the windshield.

The squeaking sound of rubber against glass was amplified dozens of times in Chen Mo's ears, sounding Li Ke fingernails scraping a blackboard.

But he didn't turn them off.

This teeth-grinding noise actually helped him calibrate his newly recovered auditory nerves.

Three Raptor off-road vehicles sped along Riverside Avenue, their black bodies cutting through the rain Li Ke three steel behemoths prowling in the dark night.

"Boss, the exclusion zone is ahead."

Li Ke's voice came through the walkie-talkie with a noticeable tremor. "The municipal government designated this whole area as a 'condemned building renovation zone.' The roadblocks are all concrete barriers."

Chen Mo held the steering wheel with one hand and a cigarette in the other.

"Ram through."

"Huh?"

"This car has a heavy-duty breaching plow on the front. Do you think it's for clearing snow?"

Chen Mo exhaled a smoke ring. "Give it gas, don't be a wimp."

Boom—!

In the rearview mirror, the engine of the Raptor driven by Li Ke let out a roar as it forcefully smashed through the iron horses and police lines blocking the way.

Concrete fragments flew everywhere.

Su Qingxue sat in the passenger seat, holding a tablet confiscated from the Men in Black, her fingers sliding rapidly across the screen.

"Found it."

She didn't even look up. "The Jiangcheng Customs House was built in 1924. It was abandoned five years ago due to foundation settlement. It was originally planned to be converted into a museum, but accidents happened frequently after the construction team moved in—either workers mysteriously broke their legs or equipment malfunctioned."

"Those weren't accidents."

Ninth Master suddenly interjected from the back seat, loading slugs into his double-barrel shotgun. "It was 'haunted.'"

He spat out the window. "All the old Jiangcheng locals know that place is cursed. You can always hear movement in the clock tower at midnight, but when you go up to look, there's not even a ghost of a shadow. Later, the rumors got so bad that even homeless people didn't dare crawl inside."

"Haunted?"

Chen Mo sneered and stepped on the accelerator. "That's just someone playing tricks inside."

The convoy rounded a sharp curve.

A massive Gothic building abruptly appeared in the curtain of rain.

The granite exterior walls were weathered and mottled by time, and the towering clock tower stood Li Ke a raised middle finger, piercing straight into the dark, cloud-covered sky.

The entire building was pitch black, without a single sliver of light.

Dead silence.

But in Chen Mo's world, this building was "screaming."

Dong... Dong... The low sound of mechanical operation conducted through the damp ground.

Those were the gears inside the clock tower turning.

And there were even subtler sounds.

The sizzle of electrical currents, the whistling of airflow in the ventilation ducts, and... countless disordered heartbeats.

"This place is quite lively."

Chen Mo flicked his cigarette butt out the window, the sparks instantly extinguished in the rain.

"Get ready to work."

...The convoy skidded to a stop fifty meters from the building's main entrance.

The tires plowed several deep furrows into the slippery road surface.

"Li Ke, jam the nearby surveillance signals."

"Ninth Master, suppressive fire."

"Captain Su, charge the front door with me."

As Chen Mo issued the orders, he was already pushing the door open and stepping out of the car.

The torrential rain soaked him instantly, his trench coat clinging to his body.

He didn't take a gun; he still held that Meat Cleaver in his hand.

"We're just charging in?" Ninth Master jumped out of the car with his gun on his shoulder and wiped the rain from his face. "Shouldn't we send a Drone in first to scout the way?"

"No need."

Chen Mo stood in the rain, tilting his head slightly, his left ear toward the tightly closed bronze doors.

"Lobby on the first floor: twelve people. Steady heartbeats, heavy breathing—they should be wearing heavy body armor."

"Second-floor gallery: four people. Very slow breathing—snipers."

"The basement..."

Chen Mo's brow furrowed.

The sounds there were very murky.

They didn't sound Li Ke human heartbeats, but more Li Ke some kind of viscous liquid flowing through pipes—a gurgling sound that made one feel nauseous.

"There's a big guy in the basement."

Chen Mo opened his eyes, his pupils constricting. "And that smell of formalin—I can smell it even from this far away."

"Then how do we do this?" Ninth Master racked his shotgun. "That's a blast door. This piece of junk gun is just for making noise against that."

"Who said we're using the door?"

Chen Mo turned to look at the Raptor.

He patted the hood; it was solid bulletproof steel plate.

"Get in."

Chen Mo climbed back into the driver's seat, shifted gears, and revved the engine.

The V8 engine let out a beastly roar.

"Hold on tight."

He said over the radio.

The next second.

The Raptor, Li Ke a black cannonball, roared and charged up the steps.

The granite steps crumbled under the crushing weight of the off-road tires.

The bronze doors, which had weathered a century of wind and rain, appeared fragile and helpless before the aesthetic of modern industrial violence.

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