35: Deadly Ambush: The Ironclad Crushing Force of the Black Iron

A man with a face full of scars was roaring frantically into a walkie-talkie:

"You pigs! Didn't you notice something was wrong?

The Iron Anchor Gang's rudder was forcibly twisted off! Someone is messing with us!"

The Scarred Man stared intently at the fleeting anomalous wave peak on the sonar screen, a glint flashing in his eyes:

"There is something invisible right in the middle of us!

It's that black ship! He's watching the show!"

This shout was like a bucket of cold water waking up the bloodthirsty thugs.

The gunfire gradually subsided, and everyone looked around at the empty water surface with suspicion and uncertainty.

Fear and greed intertwined in their eyes—was the legendary "Ghost" truly right beside them?

Inside the cockpit, Jiang Ran looked at the Scarred Man, who was marked as "High Threat" on the screen, and put down his coffee cup.

"Tch, there's actually one with a brain."

Since he figured it out, there's no need to play this low-level game of "killing with a borrowed knife" anymore.

"Fine, grouping them together makes killing more efficient."

Jiang Ran's lips curled into a slight smile, and he lightly tapped the control panel with his finger.

"zero, disable stealth for three seconds. Show them the way."

"Buzz—"

Under the terrified yet expectant gaze of the thugs, the air suddenly twisted on the water surface less than two hundred meters from the jiang dragon.

The black iron ghost, twenty meters long and entirely black as ink, revealed its ferocious form without warning.

In that moment, it was like a deep-sea behemoth leaping out of the void, radiating unparalleled oppression.

"There! It's there!!"

"Fire quickly! Don't let it escape!!"

Greed instantly overwhelmed fear.

Those were three Ark Tickets! That was a chance to survive!

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Countless guns and cannons instantly turned their muzzles.

But a second before the bullets arrived, the black iron ghost started up again.

The engine spewed out a massive wake, charging like a black bolt of lightning directly toward the abandoned high-rise complex on the left.

The waterway there was narrow, flanked by towering skeletons of reinforced concrete—a natural "death trap."

"It's running! It's scared!"

The Scarred Man's eyes were bloodshot as he roared, "Chase! Don't let other gangs get ahead! That's my ticket!"

"Vroom—"

Over a dozen surviving armed vessels, like a pack of hungry wolves smelling blood, scrambled to chase after it.

The black iron ghost "fled in panic" ahead, seemingly plunging haphazardly into a narrow waterway only twenty meters wide.

On both sides were unfinished buildings soaring a hundred meters high, and above them was the narrow, slit-like rainy night sky.

"It ran into a dead end! Up ahead is a collapsed area, it can't pass!"

Aboard the jiang dragon, which was leading the chase, the Scarred Man was ecstatic.

He looked at the black silhouette of the ship drawing closer ahead, feeling that the ticket to paradise was now within reach.

However, just as all the hunters squeezed into this narrow concrete canyon.

The black iron ghost, which had been fleeing at high speed, suddenly stopped without warning.

It neither turned around nor continued to crash into the ruins.

Instead, it lay across the end of the waterway, quietly blocking the path like an insurmountable black dam.

"Why aren't you running?"

The Scarred Man subconsciously felt that something was wrong.

It was too quiet.

The ship had stopped too calmly.

At this moment, he saw a figure standing on the black iron's aft deck.

It was a man wearing a black tactical trench coat.

He wasn't holding a gun; instead, he held a silver lighter, gently flicking it alight in the rain to light a cigarette.

The flame flickered in the darkness, illuminating the man's pair of deep blue, utterly cold eyes.

The man slowly exhaled a smoke ring, flashing a grim reaper-like smile at the pursuers.

"Run?"

The man's voice echoed through the narrow valley via the ship's loudspeaker:

"I was just finding a place for my children to eat."

"What children?" The Scarred Man was stunned.

The next second, a dense, scalp-tingling "buzzing" sound.

Rang out from the darkness of the unfinished buildings on both sides. It sounded like tens of millions of hornets flapping their wings simultaneously.

The thugs raised their heads in terror.

They saw countless palm-sized black shadows on the balconies, windows, and steel beams of the buildings on both sides, simultaneously lighting up with scarlet electronic eyes.

Those were fifty hummingbird drones.

They had already been lying in ambush here.

At this moment, they looked down from above, densely covering the entire sky like a black cloud, blocking the thugs' last route of escape.

"Wha... what the hell is this..."

The walkie-talkie in the Scarred Man's hand dropped onto the deck with a "snap."

Jiang Ran, standing further away, flicked the cigarette butt from his hand.

The butt traced a red arc in the air, fell into the water, and extinguished with a "hiss."

That was the signal for the feast to begin.

"Execute."

[Command confirmed: Saturation Strike.]

[Target lock: All personnel.]

With the soft splash of the cigarette butt hitting the water, the narrow concrete canyon turned into a meat grinder.

"Buzz—!!!"

Fifty hummingbird drones simultaneously dove.

In this nearly enclosed space, they didn't need complex evasive maneuvers; they just needed to crash down like black hail.

"Ah! My eyes!"

"Shoot! Shoot quickly! Did that ship release these things too?!"

The thugs frantically poured bullets into the sky, but in the chaos, most of them hit their own allies.

But those palm-sized black grim reapers displayed a desperate level of efficiency.

Relying on AI calculations, they precisely sought out every unprotected neck, eyeball, and wrist.

Diamond Wing Blades, vibrating at high speed, cut invisible lines of death.

"Pfft!"

"Pfft!"

Blood splattered, and screams rose and fell. But this was only the prelude; true despair came from the water.

"Rumble—"

The black iron ghost, blocking the end of the waterway, roared as if a giant beast had awakened.

This twenty-meter-long steel monster did not use any long-range weapons.

It simply pushed its power to the extreme.

Then, like a heavy tank plowing into a pile of bicycles, it charged and crushed the cluster of small boats with the most savage posture of its life.

"It's charging! Reverse quickly!!"

The Scarred Man looked at the increasingly large black bow, scared out of his wits.

But behind them were all the boats that had scrambled to enter moments ago. Where was the retreat path?

"Crack!!!"

The first speedboat hit didn't last even a second.

It was directly split in half by the black iron's sharp, bio-metal enhanced ram.

Followed by the second, the third... the groans of twisting steel, the crisp sounds of splintering wood, and the crushing of human bones mingled together.

This wasn't a battle at all; it was a traffic accident, except the culprit was an armored train.

"I refuse to accept this! I refuse!!!"

The jiang dragon tugboat, serving as the flagship, was the only one still trying to resist.

The Scarred Man operated a crude cannon mounted on the bow, firing wildly at the charging black shadow.

"Clang! Clang!"

The cannonballs struck the black iron's armor, exploding in bursts of sparks, yet failing to leave even a dent.

The next second, a colossal shadow obscured the sky above the Scarred Man.

The black iron ghost rode directly atop the jiang dragon.

Its tens of tons of dead weight, combined with enormous kinetic energy, forcibly crushed the once-arrogant tugboat below the surface.

River water surged in, and a whirlpool formed.

Clutching the railing, the Scarred Man watched in despair the man standing high on the bridge, looking down at him like a god.

Jiang Ran didn't even spare him a glance.

He just casually waved his hand.

"Leave a few alive. Clean up the rest."

...Five minutes later.

Deathly silence returned to the narrow waterway.

Apart from the crackling of burning wreckage, only a dozen heads remained floating on the water surface slick with oil and blood.

Those were the only survivors.

Most of them were terrified small-fry, now clinging to debris, trembling as they looked at the black warship sitting undamaged in the center of the inferno.

In their eyes, this was no longer a ship.

This was a man-eating devil.

Jiang Ran stood at the edge of the deck, the light from the searchlight behind him stretching his shadow long, casting it onto the terrified faces of the survivors.

"Go back and tell the people of the Ark."

Jiang Ran's voice was not loud, but to these survivors, it sounded louder than thunder.

"Want the 'Kindling'? Fine. Tell them to come and get it themselves."

"But if next time you send trash like you to die..."

Jiang Ran pointed to the countless floating corpses around them, the deep blue halo in his eyes shining terrifyingly in the darkness:

"This stretch of water will be the grave for all of you."

"Do you understand?"

"Ye-yes... we understand! We understand!" The survivors nodded desperately, their teeth chattering.

"Get out."

At Jiang Ran's command, the dozen or so people felt as if they had received a great pardon, scrambling and swimming toward the waterway exit, wishing they had two more legs.

Jiang Ran watched their retreating figures before retracting his gaze.

He knew that after tomorrow, the name "black iron ghost" would become a taboo in the entire Jiang City water region.

This was exactly the effect he wanted. Fear, sometimes, protects better than guns and cannons.

"Let's go, Dr. Su."

Jiang Ran turned and returned to the cockpit, tossing his soaked outer coat aside.

"The path is clear."

"It's time for us to leave this Novice Village and see the world outside."

The black iron ghost slowly reversed, exiting the canyon filled with the scent of death.

Then, it turned its bow, cutting a white wake through the downpour, and sailed toward the vast waters away from the city ruins.

Deeper waters, more terrifying monsters, and the remaining eleven Kindling awaited him there.