76: 6000 shots per minute? After the snap, they belonged to the Jiang family.

"Action?"

The instant Golden Tooth heard Jiang Ran utter those two words, he was first taken aback.

Immediately after, it was as if he had heard the funniest joke in the entire world.

"HAHAHAHA—!"

He slapped his thigh hard, laughing so hard that his entire body's fat jiggled violently on the sofa.

A few drops of the red wine in his hand splashed out, landing on his expensive silk robe like a stain of filthy blood.

The private soldiers surrounding them, whose fingers were already on the triggers, also burst into a chorus of mocking laughter.

With thirty automatic rifles and two heavy machine guns aimed at his head, he actually still dared to say the words "action."

This guy must be scared out of his mind.

"Wait! Don't fire!"

Seeing several of his subordinates about to pull the triggers, Golden Tooth suddenly roared.

The smile on his face instantly vanished, replaced by a perverted stinginess:

"I said, don't damage the skin!"

"Especially that woman's face and hands. If you scratch even a single mark, I'll chop you up and feed you to the dogs!"

He put down his wine glass, his greedy gaze scraping over Su Qingyu's body as if he could already see a collar and chains on that form.

"Capture that woman alive."

"I have a custom-made platinum collar that hasn't been opened yet."

"It just so happens that the pianist died yesterday, and the cage is sitting empty."

"From now on, you'll live in there, and every day you'll... make a few sounds for me to hear."

A chill flashed in Su Qingyu's eyes, her fingers gripping the dagger turning slightly white from the force.

"As for this man..."

Golden Tooth turned his head, looking at Jiang Ran, his eyes filled with malicious mockery:

"Such a tough bone, killing him would be a waste."

"Break his limbs. If he doesn't want to die, he can crawl to the power district for me."

He pointed at the floor beneath his feet, as if he could see through the thick foundation to the hellish factory below.

"Arrange a 'special seat' for him."

"Let him step on that heaviest generator."

"Since he has so much strength, he can power my palace."

"I want him to watch me have fun with his woman while he steps on the pedal down there."

"Keep stepping... until he drops dead."

Golden Tooth picked up his wine glass again, his face revealing an intoxicated expression of controlling life and death:

"This is my 'mercy' as a collector."

"Thank me, at least I'm letting you stay alive."

"What? Not convinced?"

Seeing Jiang Ran's still-calm expression, Golden Tooth felt his authority was being silently challenged.

He snorted coldly and twisted the large ruby ring on his thumb.

"Crack—Boom!"

Above their heads, the European-style dome ceiling, originally painted with exquisite murals, suddenly split open.

Accompanied by the heavy sound of hydraulic machinery, six massive black metal mounts slowly descended from hidden compartments in the ceiling.

Those were not ordinary firearms.

They were six rotating six-barrel autocannons gleaming with cold metallic light.

Each barrel exuded a chilling aura of death, the ammunition belts hanging from the feed chutes like steel venomous snakes.

"Zzzz—!"

With the fine-tuning sound of servo motors, the six autocannons simultaneously completed their charging and warm-up.

The barrels began to slowly rotate, emitting a teeth-grating low hum.

Six thick red laser beams instantly locked onto the two figures in the center of the hall, dyeing the expensive Persian carpet a bloody red.

"Recognize these?"

Golden Tooth pointed at the ferocious steel beasts above, the fat on his face flushing red with excitement:

"These are 'Scorpion'-type close-in weapon systems phased out by the 'Ark'."

"They used to be mounted on frigates to shoot down missiles."

He stood up, spreading his arms as if embracing this absolute power:

"Even the powered armor of regular troops can't last three seconds under the crossfire of these six autocannons."

"If I press this button, six thousand depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds per minute will shred you and this floor into pieces!"

In the Floating City, this system was his pillar of stability, the foundation of his audacity to defy all rules.

"In this room, I am a god."

Golden Tooth sat back down on the sofa, looking down condescendingly at Su Qingyu, who only held a dagger, and Jiang Ran, who stood empty-handed.

His eyes were full of the cruelty of a cat toying with mice: "Now, tell me, what are you going to fight me with?"

"With that little fruit-peeling knife?"

...Facing the despair-inducing steel reapers above, not even a trace of a ripple appeared on Jiang Ran's expression.

He didn't look at the warming, rotating barrels, nor at the arrogant Golden Tooth.

Deep within his pupils, a faint blue stream of data flashed extremely quickly—it was the tactical assistance interface of the black iron's core, "zero."

"drone terminal, hack successful!"

On his retina, countless red warning frames instantly transformed into green analytical data:

[Target Detected]: Obsolete model "Scorpion" close-in weapon system (civilian neutered version)

[Hardware Status]: Servo motor aging, reaction delay 0.8 seconds, barrel rifling wear 35%

[Fire Control System]: Ark OS 2.0 (no longer updated), encryption level: civilian (extremely low)

[Vulnerability Scan]: 128 logic backdoors discovered, hard connection protocol unencrypted.

Jiang Ran sighed softly.

It was a kind of heartfelt helplessness and disappointment, like seeing a primitive person proudly showing off a sharpened stone to a modern army.

"Is this your trump card?"

Jiang Ran's voice wasn't loud, but in the hall where only the hum of motors could be heard, it was piercingly clear.

He slowly raised his head, his gaze as if looking at a pile of non-recyclable industrial waste, finally settling on Golden Tooth's face:

"A civilian neutered version system that's been obsolete for fifty years, with firewall leaks all over... plus a few servo motors that aren't even calibrated properly?"

The smile on Golden Tooth's face froze.

He didn't understand those technical terms, but he understood the tone—it was the disdain of a deity for an ant.

"Still talking tough when you're about to die..."

Golden Tooth, embarrassed and enraged, raised the remote control.

"Do you perhaps have some misunderstanding about 'power'?"

Jiang Ran interrupted him, the corner of his mouth curling into a cold sneer: "Holding onto this pile of scrap metal you picked from the Ark's garbage dump..."

The blue light in his eyes suddenly intensified, the condescending gaze of a Level 5 civilization upon a lower one: "Do you even deserve to call it 'machinery'?"

Before Jiang Ran's mocking words had even finished echoing.

His raised right hand snapped its fingers lightly in the air.

"Snap."

That crisp snap of the fingers was like some supreme command code, instantly severing all the old logic within this hall.

"Beep—!!!"

A sharp, piercing system alarm suddenly blared.

Immediately after, the six "Scorpion" autocannons above, which had been spinning wildly, had their flashing crimson kill indicators extinguish in an instant.

The hall plunged into a thousandth-of-a-second darkness and dead silence.

The next moment, an eerie, ghostly blue light reignited.

It was the black iron's signature color—deep blue.

"Hum... clack clack clack!"

Accompanied by a hair-raising sound of servo motors twisting.

Those six thick barrels, originally aimed between Jiang Ran's eyebrows, began to move as if they were living creatures with autonomous consciousness.

They uniformly turned their muzzles.

At this moment, it was as if the laws of physics had reversed.

The dense red laser dots that had covered Jiang Ran and Su Qingyu disappeared.

Replacing them were countless icy, ghostly blue laser beams.

Firmly locked onto Golden Tooth on the sofa and the twenty-plus private soldiers who hadn't yet reacted.

On the forehead of every private soldier, at least two blue light points now rested.

Even the two heavy machine guns mounted on the second floor automatically turned their muzzles.

Their black, gaping barrels lowered, aiming at their former masters below.

"What's... going on?!"

A private soldier panicked as he discovered the electronic trigger lock on his exoskeleton rifle had suddenly turned red—

[System locked, permission revoked].

Under the overwhelming electronic warfare assault of the black iron's AI core.

This fire control system, still based on code from a hundred years ago, was as fragile as an unlocked toy house.

Jiang Ran lowered his hand, looking at the turned barrels as if looking at a pack of obedient hounds, his tone indifferent:

"Now, this pile of junk is mine."

"No... impossible! Fire! Manual fire!"

Golden Tooth's plump face contorted into a ball from extreme terror.

He frantically pressed the remote control in his hand until the precise electronic instrument cracked and shattered.

He even jumped up, screaming hysterically at the private soldiers.

But it was all too late.

Jiang Ran gave him no chance to catch his breath, not even bothering to spare another glance at the destined-to-become-meat-paste minnows.

He merely moved his lips slightly, uttering two utterly emotionless words:

"Clear the room."

"BOOM—!!!"

The six "Scorpion" autocannons simultaneously unleashed an ear-splitting roar.

It wasn't the "rat-a-tat" sound of ordinary firearms, but a continuous, deathly hum like a chainsaw cutting through bone.

A firing rate of six thousand rounds per minute made the flames from the muzzles merge into a dazzling whip of light.

For an instant, the entire Cloudtop Palace seemed engulfed in a storm of metal.

The expensive handwoven Persian carpet was instantly shredded into flying cotton fluff, the hard marble Roman columns crumbling like tofu.

And those twenty-plus fully armed private soldiers.

Didn't even have time to scream before the dense rain of bullets directly turned them into a mist of blood drifting through the air.

Limbs flew, blood splattered onto the crystal chandeliers, dripping onto the petals of blooming red roses.

This was a one-sided slaughter, a dimensional strike of higher civilization upon primitive violence.

Ten seconds.

The roar that lasted only ten seconds abruptly ceased.

The still-spinning barrels emitted astonishing heat, filling the air with the smell of scorching and a nauseating stench of blood.

The originally splendid hall had now become a slaughterhouse.

Except for the pristine spot where Jiang Ran and Su Qingyu stood, everything around had turned to ruins.

Gun smoke slowly dispersed.

The sole survivor was Golden Tooth, slumped in the center of the sofa.

He wasn't injured, not even a scratch on his skin—

This was the result of extremely precise fire control calculations.

All the bullets flew past his body.

Turning the sofa backrests around him into honeycombs, yet leaving only the spot beneath his buttocks untouched.

The Golden Tooth now bore no resemblance to his earlier overbearing self.

His eyes were vacant, his whole body trembling violently, a stream of warm, foul-smelling liquid trickling down his expensive silk trousers onto the floor.

"Zzz..."

Six ghostly blue laser beams pierced through the gun smoke, firmly converging on his sweat-drenched forehead.

Jiang Ran stepped over an unrecognizable pool of flesh and blood on the floor, walking up to the sofa.

He bent down, picked up the [deep sea black box] that Golden Tooth had dropped in fright, and gently wiped off a drop of blood that had splattered onto it with his sleeve.

"Seems your god isn't very effective."

Jiang Ran looked down at the trembling mountain of flesh, his voice cold:

"Now, can we discuss the transfer procedures for the 'collection'?"