151: Chapter 151 A Series of Missed Attempts, A Hidden Force Makes its Move

These memories were as clear as if Solomon had witnessed them with his own eyes, heard them with his own ears, and been present in person, yet he had never possessed any of them before this moment.

At this moment, his brain had been thoroughly rewritten by Zhang Yi, utilizing the system's Tier 3 Personal Memory Revision.

The moment the rewrite was complete, he no longer remembered that he had just personally denied the existence of Mothman and Grey Alien.

He lowered his arm, his compound eyes refocusing on the face of Rockefeller III.

His tone had changed; it was no longer the sneering and mockery from before, but rather a chilling, wolf-like gloom that cut to the bone—the sound of someone whose cards had been laid bare.

"We will talk about the future later."

"Right now, you must die!"

Rockefeller III, Samuel, Isabelle, Jacob, and William stood amidst the corpses scattered everywhere, all instinctively taking a step back.

Samuel's hand pressed against Rockefeller III's shoulder, his fingers trembling slightly from excessive force. His voice was hushed like a whisper, but the fear in his tone was completely undisguised:

"Rockefeller! There is no bargaining with him! We are nothing but meat on his chopping block now!"

Isabelle gripped her bulletproof cloak tightly.

Jacob silently stared at the bodies of the guards nearby, not saying another word.

William took out the whiskey flask he never left behind from his coat pocket, unscrewed the cap, tilted his head back to take a swig, screwed the cap back on, and uttered in a hoarse, low voice:

"If I had known it would end like this, I shouldn't have trusted that Fourth Prince."

Rockefeller III looked at the pair of compound eyes gleaming with a cold, dark red light in front of him, opening his mouth as if to say something more.

After all, he was a family head who had seen the most turmoil and desperate situations, yet had still managed to turn the tables.

But Solomon did not give him the chance to continue.

He took a step toward Rockefeller III and raised his arm, the tip of his chitinous blade pointing at Rockefeller III's heart. Within those few steps, the dark red light in his compound eyes shifted from cold to scorching, his tone cold, steady, and resolute.

"Rockefeller, you are the commander-in-chief of this operation to wipe out the Crane Family, aren't you!"

"I'll borrow your body for a moment now!"

Solomon's figure swayed slightly, and his entire body transformed into three streams of swirling black smoke, rushing forward to lock onto Rockefeller III's eyes and mouth.

The three streams of black smoke traced three arcs in mid-air, each composed of trillions of nanoscopic, biomimetic cockroach units.

As long as they drilled into Rockefeller III's eye sockets and mouth, crawled to his cerebral cortex, and took over his central nervous system with bio-electrical signals, Rockefeller III's body would become Solomon Crane's new vessel.

And Rockefeller III's own consciousness would be crushed to death inside his own skull.

Rockefeller III stood where he was, his pupils suddenly contracting.

In his life, he had had a gun pointed at his head in a boardroom, been publicly humiliated at a congressional hearing, and been surrounded by armed rebels while negotiating oil fields in Venezuela.

Every time, he had managed to escape unscathed through calculation and negotiation skills.

But at this moment, what stood before him was not a human, but a mass of black smoke spewed from someone's eye sockets.

And all the trusted guards around him had already fallen into a pool of blood.

He wanted to step back, but his back hit the corridor wall; there was nowhere left to retreat.

He watched helplessly as the three streams of black smoke dragged their arcs toward him, getting closer and closer, so close that he could clearly see the faint electrical signals flickering between the individual nano-units on the surface of the smoke.

Samuel Astor stood less than three steps to Rockefeller III's right. He instinctively reached out to pull Rockefeller III, but his fingers froze in mid-air.

He watched the three streams of black smoke pounce on Rockefeller III, and the next frame of the scene automatically appeared in his mind:

Rockefeller III's eye sockets and mouth would be filled with black smoke, and then he, like those previous commandos, would clutch his throat and let out a scream, and when he opened his eyes again, it would no longer be Rockefeller III, but Solomon.

And who would be next?

Isabelle's face was devoid of color; she gripped her bulletproof cloak until her knuckles turned white, her lips pressed tightly together, her gaze locked onto the trails of the three streams of black smoke, the same thought spinning in her mind.

Jacob Rothschild pulled his hands out of his coat pockets and let them hang by his sides, his fingers slightly splayed, as if waiting for a weapon that would never arrive.

William Vanderbilt V slowly placed the empty whiskey flask on the gravel ground at his feet, stood up, and adjusted his collar, facing the black smoke about to devour all his allies with a final, dignified posture before death.

The three streams of black smoke collided.

And in the same instant they collided, they missed.

In Solomon's field of vision, he had clearly aimed at Rockefeller III's aged and stern face, at his sunken eye sockets, and at his lips, slightly parted in shock.

But in the millisecond before the nano-cluster was about to touch the target, his visual signals were suddenly tampered with at the retinal level.

The Rockefeller III he was pouncing on shifted angles silently before him.

It wasn't a movement, it wasn't a dodge; it was like the person in a mirror suddenly misaligning with the person outside the mirror.

A subtle but fatal deviation appeared between his visual coordinates and the real coordinates.

Solomon's black smoke cluster passed through a gap less than three inches from Rockefeller III's side, slamming into the corridor wall and creating radial cracks in a layer of compressed alloy steel.

He immediately changed direction in mid-air, re-locked onto Rockefeller III's position, and pounced for a second time, only to miss again.

The third time, the fourth time, the fifth time...

Every time, he watched as Rockefeller III stood right in front of him.

Every time, his black smoke cluster slid past the target at the very last moment.

Samuel stared at this bizarre scene, his lips parting and closing, then he turned his head sharply to look at Rockefeller III, his eyes full of shock and confusion.

He assumed this was some kind of high-tech trump card Rockefeller III had hidden.

Isabelle also shifted her gaze from the streams of black smoke that were repeatedly missing in mid-air, landing on Rockefeller III's face with a look of cautious appraisal.

Jacob and William also looked at Rockefeller III simultaneously, their gazes filled with the same question:

"What did you hide that you didn't tell us?"

Rockefeller III looked at them with equal shock.

He also thought this was a contingency plan left by one of them—Samuel, Isabelle, Jacob, or William.

Each of the leaders of The Five Great Families had more or less hidden a few trump cards that had never been disclosed to the outside world.

His first reaction just now was that Samuel had finally decided to bring out the secret weapon that the Astor Family had passed down for generations.

But when he locked eyes with Samuel, he saw the exact same bewilderment in the other man's eyes.

After confirming with each other through their gazes, they all understood the same thing:

This interference method that kept making Solomon miss did not come from any of them.

Where did it come from?