Upon arriving directly outside the apartment door, the assault squad didn't resort to a direct, violent breach.
Hong Meiling watched as Hoshiguma raised a hand to signal a hold. Two L.G.D. breachers wearing specialized thermal goggles stepped forward, pressing a compact diagnostic scanner flat against the wall.
In under a minute, they whispered their findings to the squad leader: "Four targets inside, all in the central living room. One is positioned roughly two meters from the entry point. The other three are grouped on the couch four meters out, likely watching television."
Meiling cast a slightly surprised look toward the wall. Their technical assessment aligned almost perfectly with the life-force vibrations she had picked up through her own Qi sensing.
"Why are there only four?" Hoshiguma frowned deeply.
They had authorized the strike only after intel confirmed all five suspects were present in the hideout. To discover one was missing right before the breach was a major operational discrepancy.
Given that all five were ruthless, cold-blooded killers, leaving a single suspect at large posed a massive threat to public safety. Furthermore, a lone fugitive operating without dead weight could slip through perimeter nets far more easily.
Yet, they had reached the point of no return. Dozens of residents in the surrounding alleyways had already noticed the L.G.D.'s subtle movements; aborting now was out of the question. Word traveled fast in these cramped sectors. If they pulled back, the targets inside would catch wind of the police presence the moment they stepped out the door, instantly realizing they were exposed.
Once compromised, the initiative would shift entirely to the suspects—whether they chose to bolt through the residential block or take surrounding families hostage, the L.G.D. would be forced into an impossible standoff.
Therefore, regardless of the head count, they had to take down the four inside first.
Hoshiguma raised her hand, forming a silent breach signal, and an operator stepped up holding a heavy hydraulic ram.
Before he could swing, Hong Meiling lightly patted his shoulder. "Let me."
Hearing her soft voice, the operator turned to Hoshiguma in hesitation.
Hoshiguma stared at Meiling. "How confident are you?"
Hong Meiling held up a single, slender finger. "One hundred percent."
Without waiting for a reply, she placed her bare palm flat against the heavy steel-reinforced door, letting out a soft, rhythmic exhaling breath.
The target standing closest to the entrance caught the subtle vibration and stepped toward the door with an armed, vigilant stance.
Before he could even call out to ask who was outside—
BOOM!
With a thunderous roar, the door frame shattered into splintered metal! The entire door tore off its hinges, blasting backward like a cannonball and slamming directly into the man. The force pinned him flat against the adjacent concrete wall before he crumpled limply to the floor like a broken ragdoll.
The three men lounging on the sofa leaped up in sheer terror at the deafening explosion.
Sprinting into the living room, their eyes caught a green-and-white shadow surging through the smoke. Being trained martial artists, their subconscious combat instincts kicked in instantly, their hands flashing into lethal counter-strikes.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The next second, three sickening thuds echoed simultaneously.
When Hoshiguma breached the threshold a fraction of a second later, what greeted her eyes were the three hardened suspects literally embedded flush into the far plaster wall.
She stared at the scene, a flash of genuine shock washing over her eyes.
She had always assumed the traditional martial arts phrase "striking someone until they hang like a painting" was merely a dramatic figure of speech.
It turned out to be a literal physical description. Hong Meiling, who had charged in first, had actually struck those three grown men directly into human wall hangings.
Of course, Meiling had held back her internal power significantly; had she used her full strength, those punches would have compressed the three thugs from three-dimensional beings straight into a two-dimensional floor plan.
Crackle—
Hoshiguma's tactical earpiece buzzed with Ch'en's crisp voice: "The fifth suspect outside has been neutralized and captured by Flandre Scarlet."
Hoshiguma let out a long, quiet sigh of relief. If even one suspect had slipped through the net, the Major Crimes Unit would have faced formal administrative inquiry rather than commendations upon their return.
Now that all five were secured, regardless of how the courts sentenced them, the Major Crimes Unit's operation was a resounding, flawless success.
The accompanying medical officers stepped into the ruined living room to assess the suspects' vitals.
Even though Meiling had exercised extreme restraint, her physical blows were far beyond what ordinary human flesh could comfortably absorb. Every single one of them suffered multiple compound fractures.
However, their unconscious state was merely a protective mechanism triggered by the brain when receiving impact force that exceeded the body's pain threshold. By the time the L.G.D. officers handcuffed them and hauled them downstairs on stretchers, a few were already groaning back to consciousness.
Yet, the moment they opened their eyes and realized their entire crew was heavily bound with restraint straps on gurneys, they desperately wished they had stayed asleep. At least in unconsciousness, they could indulge in the delusion that they hadn't been effortlessly wiped out.
One suspect tried to find a silver lining, thinking that even if four of them were caught, their fifth brother had stepped out early and surely escaped to safety.
Then he looked over and spotted his fifth partner lying on an adjacent stretcher—his limbs twisted into terrifying, unnatural spirals, bleeding profusely.
"Hiss... this level of bone deformation... Flandre, did you do this?" Hoshiguma stared at the suspect whose arm and leg bones had been wrung out like wet towels. She estimated that even with advanced medical Arts, the man would spend the rest of his life bound to a wheelchair. His limbs were fundamentally ruined.
In comparison, the three who had been punched into the wall by Meiling were extraordinarily lucky.
Flandre Scarlet didn't deny it in the slightest. She pointed at the mangled suspect and casually recounted his plan to torch the market stall with a fire hose and lighter.
Listening to her explanation, every officer in the squad gasped, their eyes turning cold as they looked at the criminal. Suddenly, nobody thought Flandre had overstepped.
If that monster had successfully ignited a massive fire in such a densely populated market, the resulting civilian casualties would have been catastrophic.
Now, no one felt a single shred of pity for him. The officers only regretted that they hadn't been there at the scene themselves—otherwise, they would have delivered a non-stop barrage of heavy boots to his face to vent their fury.
After securing the suspects inside heavy transport vehicles, the L.G.D. convoy sped back toward headquarters.
Only then did the surrounding neighborhood break into loud, excited chatter.
Though they frequently heard about the Guard Department's high-profile cases on the nightly news, witnessing a live tactical raid in person was a completely different experience. Seeing the L.G.D.'s clean, highly efficient execution—where not a single civilian or market stall suffered collateral damage—the residents felt their confidence in Lungmen's security grow even stronger.
Inside the return vehicle, Hoshiguma sat across from Hong Meiling, staring at her hands. She raised her own right palm, attempting to mimic Meiling's earlier motion against the door.
"How did you manage to just push your palm flat like that and send an entire reinforced steel door flying inward?" Hoshiguma marveled. "It looked like you barely put any momentum into it!"
"That is the the Crushing Fist of Xingyi," Meiling explained smoothly. "It emphasizes power originating from the roots, sudden explosive release, and short-range impact. It is fast, fierce, and designed entirely for penetrating internal force."
To demonstrate, Meiling thrust her fist straight forward. Though her knuckles moved less than five centimeters through the air, a sharp, whip-like sonic boom cracked inside the armored transport, startling every officer in the cabin.
One of the conscious suspects lying on a stretcher stared at Meiling's demonstration with wide, terrified eyes.
If he possessed such absurd, terrifying martial skill, he would have founded his own grand dojo in Gouwu decades ago and lived as a revered grandmaster! Looking at the woman who performed it—who looked no older than her early twenties—he felt a profound, crushing sense of defeat, as if his half-lifetime of grueling martial arts training had been an utter joke.
Earlier, he had harbored a trace of defiance, believing that if the L.G.D. hadn't launched a cowardly ambush, he could have fought his way out or taken a few officers down with him.
Now, it seemed that being knocked unconscious into a wall by a single casual blow was quite literally the best possible outcome he could have hoped for. Otherwise, if that sonic-boom fist had connected directly with his chest, he could only pray to be reborn as a decent human eighteen years later.
"Can ordinary people learn this?" Hoshiguma asked, her eyes shining with genuine professional interest.
"If it's a young teenager around fifteen or sixteen whose body is still malleable, certainly," Meiling smiled warmly. "For adults whose bones have already set, practicing the forms won't yield internal force, but it can still strengthen their physical constitution significantly."