41: Chapter 41 Ambush and Headshot: Loyal Servant Dies

Walsh jerked backward as a tremendous force slammed into the back of his head, snapping it away from his neck and severing his spine's balance; before his legs could even react, he had already landed flat on the gravel ground.

No one could remain conscious after taking a hit like that.

There were no post-mortem convulsions, no final gaze, no last words.

His grey-blue eyes, like an oil lamp forcibly extinguished, grew cold in the morning light that had not yet shed its mist.

Less than a tenth of a second had passed.

Edward's jacket was splattered with something hot.

"Eli!" his voice exploded from his throat.

The Retainer closest to him tackled him to the ground, shouting urgently:

"Sniper! East-northeast!"

Another bullet grazed Edward's ear, shattering the iron cover of an abandoned streetlamp behind him into several flying metal shards.

This time, everyone heard the dull thud of the bullet impacting the wall.

Musk's tactical team reacted in less than half a second.

Immediate counterattack!

The squad leader who had been standing on the blockade line knelt in a cloud of dust and opened fire, unleashing three precise shots toward the water tower to immediately force the enemy sniper to relocate.

When other team members' armor was grazed by bullets, it emitted sharp metallic ricochet sounds and low-frequency warnings, and the entire intersection was instantly covered in gunfire.

But there was more than one sniper on the other side.

There were at least five trajectories originating from the water tower area.

The position of each shot kept changing, from the old water tower to the adjacent high-voltage power pylon, and then to the broken balcony of a three-story abandoned warehouse further back.

It wasn't random spraying; it was a precisely calculated, alternating cover-fire suppression.

Musk was tackled to the ground the instant the shooting started.

The former Navy SEAL closest to him threw his entire body over him, evading a shot that came from the east.

But a second shot came from another angle in the south, piercing through the iron shells of two old trucks; the trajectory slipped through a gap in their protection, sweeping across the front of Musk's left arm with a shower of broken glass, and a deep red stain instantly bloomed on his jacket.

Musk gritted his teeth in agony, leaning to the ground while holding his right arm with his left hand, yet his eyes still anxiously scanned through the night mist toward the direction where Walsh had fallen.

Meanwhile, on Edward's side.

A Retainer wearing plain dark grey casual clothes—whose full name no one ever remembered—had already stepped sideways before the shriek of the sniper bullet reached the back of Edward's head.

There was no hesitation in his eyes, no pause of "should I or shouldn't I."

His legs, fueled by a pure instinct far surpassing elite training, pushed off the ground with force, and he thrust his chest into the path of the bullet.

The bullet struck him right in the forehead.

He tilted backward, not even letting out a muffled groan, and landed flat on the cold gravel, his neck twisted to one side as blood flowed into a dust-covered puddle on the ground.

While on the ground, Musk turned his head and witnessed the entire process of the man falling.

It wasn't a slow-motion shot from a movie; there was no soundtrack, no heroic glance back.

It was just a movement, so clean and efficient that it felt like a conditioned reflex carved into his very bones.

But it was precisely this cleanliness that felt like a heavy hammer blow to Musk's chest.

In that moment, his brain swept aside all remaining business logic, value calculations, and cost-benefit analyses,

leaving only one reality he had never truly experienced—

this person had unhesitatingly given up his own life so that his master could live.

This was the kind of loyalty that no amount of money could buy!

And he, Musk, did not have such people.

He had money, top-tier bodyguards retired from special forces, the world's most advanced weapon systems, and the energy to ionize oxygen molecules in the air,

but he did not have a single person who would shield his forehead with their own chest.

His bodyguards would return fire, provide tactical cover, and drag him into the safest bunker based on ballistic calculations,

but they would not die for him.

This was why those old-money political families that had been passed down for hundreds of years looked down on him.

It wasn't because he wasn't smart enough, rich enough, or influential enough,

but because the moment a bullet flew, wealth only recruited contracts, professionalism, and tactics.

While what was bound to a Retainer was a loyalty instilled from birth, one that weighed heavier than life itself!

Musk's left arm was still oozing blood, yet his gaze remained fixed on the young man lying on the ground with a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead, unable to look away.

The last time his mind had gone this blank was after the third explosion of Falcon 1,

but that was a failure built on money, while this time, it was an answer bought with a man's life.

Amidst the chaos, more gunfire erupted from a higher position.

Edward's second Retainer, a slightly older, silent man with an old scar on his jaw, was now half-crouched beside Edward, using his shoulder to push Edward behind the thick steel chassis of an abandoned forklift.

He clutched his gun, his eyes devoid of any hesitation, ready at any moment to take a bullet.

Meanwhile, Musk's tactical team, while attempting to re-establish suppression, was pinned down by the enemy's precise sniper array and unable to retreat.

Their defensive perimeter developed a gap of less than half a second during two consecutive rounds of crossfire.

And this gap was exploited by a third shot.

The bullet sped straight toward Musk's head from the direction of the high-voltage pylon.

The distance was too short, the trajectory too tricky; even the former Navy SEAL squad leader couldn't turn in time to shield him.

But at the very instant that trajectory was clear, a figure once again blocked Musk.

It was right after Edward had screamed "Protect Musk" at the top of his lungs in the chaos.

Another of the Warren family's Retainers stepped directly into the bullet's path.

The bullet entered his right chest, destroying an artery and a large portion of lung tissue, spraying blood onto Musk's face and sleeves.

Before falling into the gravel, his final breath was choked with the taste of blood, and he didn't even close his eyes.

Musk knelt before the fallen corpse, his left arm still bleeding uncontrollably, his whole body seemingly nailed to the spot.

His pupils shattered into a widening expanse of dark green.

His ears were filled with the sound of gunfire, but what he heard wasn't the guns;

it was Edward's shout of "Protect Musk," and the movement of the man who had just died as he stood up—a speed a hundred times faster than when he himself stood up from a Tesla conference table.

His wealth, his corporate market value, the perfect parabolas his Falcon rockets etched at the edge of the atmosphere—

at this moment, all of it lay shattered at his feet like old banknotes.

For the first time in his life, he truly understood the weight of the word "Loyalty"!

...

Everything that followed happened in less than forty seconds.

The other Retainer beside Edward returned fire while dragging his master toward the armored SUV, its engine already running; the steel plates of the car body had five new dents, but the tires remained intact.

Musk's special forces were having a hard time under pressure while maintaining the retreat formation, but they still used concentrated cover fire to force the enemy sniper array back from two high vantage points.

The former Navy SEAL squad leader hauled Musk up from beside the corpse and shoved him into the backseat of another vehicle, his movements rough and precise; there were no words of comfort, only a tactical command: "Get down."

The car door slammed shut amidst several muffled and dense bullet impacts,

and the tires burned a thick cloud of rubber smoke into the gravel,

as the two armored SUVs sped through the outer fence of the abandoned warehouse, charging into the gradually whitening morning sky of Los Angeles.

The gunfire faded behind them, but no one in the cars looked back.

...

Los Angeles, Silver Lake Park, early morning.

Zhang Yi sat in his cloaked tent, eyes unblinking, staring at the system interface before him that only he could see.

In the image at the center of the interface, the abandoned warehouse in the industrial zone along the Los Angeles River was having its outline licked into view by the dawn.

Several corpses lay on the gravel ground;

Walsh had a hole in his forehead, and of the two Warren family Retainers, one had been shot in the forehead and the other through the right chest, their blood mixing into grey-red mud on the ground.

The distant gunfire had stopped, leaving only the dense bullet holes on the outer walls of the abandoned warehouse and the lingering smell of gunpowder in the air.

He had seen the whole process.

From the second Walsh laughed and said, "A bunch of ten-thousand-year-old turtles,"

to the second the sniper bullet pierced through from the top of the abandoned water tower, striking him squarely in the forehead and flattening him onto the ground, less than three seconds had passed.

He also saw Musk kneeling before the corpse of the Retainer who had blocked the bullet for him, the expression on his face not one of fear or anger,

but a dazed look that only appears after one's entire cognitive defense line has been pierced through by something.

System notification sounds had been ringing incessantly since the gunfight began.

[Ding—Detected intense emotional fluctuation from Eli Walsh (dying), Emotion Points +680.]

[Ding—Detected deep shock and fear fluctuation from Elon Musk, Emotion Points +610.]

[Ding—Detected grief and alert fluctuation from Edward Warren, Emotion Points +550.]

[Ding—Detected intense cognitive impact from Trent Molloy, Emotion Points +530.]

[Ding—Detected another cognitive subversion fluctuation from Elon Musk, Emotion Points +580.]

[Ding—Detected grief and indignation fluctuation from Edward Warren, Emotion Points +520...]

The notifications rang densely for nearly twenty minutes, each sound like a coin dropping into a metal jar—crisp, dense, and cold.

Zhang Yi watched the Emotion Point balance on the system interface climb from twenty thousand,

climbing to thirty thousand,

to thirty-five thousand,

to forty thousand...

Finally, when the notifications stopped, the balance settled at exactly forty thousand points.

Forty thousand.

It had doubled from before.

Under normal circumstances, Zhang Yi would definitely be happy for a while, lying in the tent with his legs crossed, counting his Emotion Points and calculating what good things he could buy next.

Forty thousand points was no longer a small sum.

It was enough for him to buy two more Grey Alien eyeballs, or eight more nano-bionic units, or upgrade to a proper piece of defective alien technology—

not the defective of the defective, the kind of foolish spending where even eyeballs cost twenty thousand points.

But now, he didn't immerse his attention in that forty-thousand-point figure.

His gaze remained fixed on another corner of the system interface,

at the notification that had popped up a few minutes ago, the one he had almost accidentally overlooked.

[System Notification: Diana Hopkins has officially intervened in the information dissemination chain of the Host's script "Extraterrestrial Visitor."]

[The Host has now obtained permission to view Diana's real-time perspective.]

[Do you wish to access the footage immediately?]