The sniper just pulled the trigger at the right time, the most critical moment for Xiao Yan’s deformed blood vessels to begin to reshape.
All of Ding Ning’s attention was on her. Although he had been aware of the danger with his beast’s instinct, he did not dare to let go of Xiao Yan to avoid the bullet, for if he let go, he would not be able to maintain his True Qi, and Xiao Yan would die.
His most serious headache was that the shooting angle was extremely tricky. Even if he could avoid the bullet the moment it came to him, Xiao Yan would be shot straight in the head.
To avoid it or not to avoid it? This was an extremely difficult choice for Ding Ning.
If he avoided it, Xiao Yan would die. If she died, problems after problems would follow him!
If he did not avoid it, he did not know whether he would die or not. He was confident that even if an ordinary sniper bullet could penetrate the shield of the Vajra Charm, he would be a little wounded at most.
But the problem was that if it was the specially made sniper bullet from an anti-material rifle, the Vajra Charm was useless. Even if he survived, he would be seriously wounded.
Since the enemy even dared to boldly use a sniper rifle in the city where the head of nation resided, it showed how firm the will of killing him was.
This was the first time of sniping, but would never be the last. Once he was seriously wounded, he would be like a lamb to be slaughtered and would not have the strength to fight back anymore.
Humans have a selfish nature. “Is it worthwhile to take the risk to save Xiao Yan?” Ding Ning was hesitant for a millisecond.
But he became determined soon—he decided to bet once with his life, not to avoid it.
After all, Xiao Yan was Xiao Nuo’s cousin, who was an innocent implicated by him. If he let her die without doing anything, he would feel troubled for a lifetime and would not know how to face Xiao Nuo.
Most importantly, he thought that the odds of winning the bet were still very high.
Shenzhou Country was the country with the strictest firearms management in the world, and the probability of the gunman using an anti-material rifle was less than 1/10000. As long as it was not an armor-piercing bullet, the probability of his survival would increase significantly.
All this happened in an instant. The moment he made up his mind, Ding Ning was no longer hesitant. The Vajra Charm had been activated, and he was ready to bear this shot.
The gunshot sounded, but most people on site had not realized it and looked around in a daze, still wondering what this sound was.
After all, Yan Jing was the political center of Shenzhou Country, and shooting in public was too far to reach for them. In their opinion, this was something that could only happen in war-torn areas.
Therefore, even if some in the crowd had ever been in the army or served as military police officers, they didn’t think about it at all when they heard the gunshot sound.
The site was still in a harmonious atmosphere. Those reporters were even less aware that the person they focused on would probably fall in a pool of blood the next second.
Those who could instantly realize that Ding Ning was being sniped at and could help him were no less than five people on the whole site.
They were Yan Hui, Jiang Wuhui, Green Bamboo, Director Duan, and also Yagyuu Asamayu. Junior Sister Qingyun had great potential, but her cultivation was low, so she could not detect the life and death risk facing Ding Ning at all.
Even if she had detected it, she would probably not do anything because she had no friendship with Ding Ning.
As for Yan Hui and those of his kind, they were less likely to take the bullet for Ding Ning and even wished him to be shot in the head.
Director Duan was the deputy director of the Bureau of Religions, but managing the fights between ordinary people was not his responsibility. More importantly, in order not to bring trouble to himself, he watched the fun from a distance. Even if he wanted to do something, he could not due to the distance.
But human lives are always full of dramas. Although they were indifferent to Ding Ning’s life and death, they cared so much about the Ice Spirit Body holder they determined to get.
So, the moment Yagyuu Asamayu proceeded without hesitation to stand in front of Ding Ning, Yan Hui, Jiang Wuhui, and Green Bamboo became anxious at the same time.
“Get out of the way!”
With a light shout, Green Bamboo got a green bamboo in her hand and made a green faint trace in the air, aiming at the sniper bullet.
With a clang, Jiang Wuhui took out his sword and made an arc of sword light in the air, trying to take the bullet.
But no matter how good their qualifications and speeds were, they were still in the Earth Martial Arts Realm. Taking the fleeting sniper bullet in an instant was daydreaming. Expectedly, they all failed.
With a shout, Yan Hui rushed to Yagyuu Asamayu, giving off beams of faint miraculous light, but when he felt the threat the bullet brought him, he became hesitant.
“Is it worthwhile to risk my life for an Ice Spirit Body holder?” With this instant hesitation, he stopped moving for a millisecond.
The speed of the sniper bullet was quite fast. Due to this unnoticeable instant hesitation, the bullet passed by his shoulder and went straight toward the chest of Yagyuu Asamayu.
Like an old hen protecting her young, she stood in front of Ding Ning and spread her arms, her eyes clean and peaceful without sadness or joy. In her simple mind, there were no distractions but only one idea: Her father must not die.
Ding Ning had an ill feeling about Yagyuu Asamayu previously because of her Black-Robed Man’s identity, but he changed when he saw her take the bullet for him without hesitation at this moment, and lots of scenes that had happened during this time flashed across his mind: her relying on him and her pestering of him—pulling the corner of his clothes timidly like an abandoned little girl, only sleeping soundly when she held him…
Remembering these scenes, he had a heartbroken pain. It turned out that he had unconsciously allowed her to enter his heart and treated her as his sister or even his daughter.
He felt the pain in his heart as if he was bitten by a poisonous snake. Regret kept swallowing his soul, and he roared angrily at the top of his voice, “Money Bag. Get out of the way!”
Pitifully, it was too late. Even if he gave up treating Xiao Yan now, it was too late to save Yagyuu Asamayu.
Now, he could predict that the bullet would go through the chest of Yagyuu Asamayu the next moment, and she would fall in a pool of blood.
The panic and heartache he had never experienced before made his eyes turn red instantly. He could no longer care about restraining the power of his attack, letting a seven-colored fluorescent like an illusory colorful cloud go out of him.
“Clang!”
No feat was the match of the flowing light, let alone a sniper bullet. The seven-colored light was withdrawn as it touched the bullet, as if it had never appeared before.
But the lethal sniper bullet had been cut into parts and fallen on the ground with two thuds, having lost the power to take human lives.
Time seemed to freeze at this moment. Blinking once in a daze, Yagyuu Asamayu did not know why she was safe and sound.
Yan Hui was stunned, and so were Jiang Wuhui, Green Bamboo, and Director Duan.
Although they were advanced in cultivation, they only saw a beam of illusory seven-colored light flash past, and then the sniper bullet was severed into two parts, which lifted the risk. But as for who had done it, they did not see it clearly at all.
Then they thought that this was incredible. “Is it that a senior in the God Martial Arts Realm or the Holy Martial Arts Realm hiding in this place couldn’t bear to see the Ice Spirit Body holder die and then made an outrageous move?”
The risk was lifted, but the panic of the site had just begun. When the onlookers found that a shooting had even happened under their noses, the whole site burst into noises.
“Murder! Murder!”
Those with poor mental endurance screamed miserably, and those with a slightly better mental endurance had started to run, wanting to stay away from the place of trouble.
No matter how attractive the fun was, it was not as important as their lives. The whole Shengzeyuan was in chaos—people were screaming and running in all directions with their friends everywhere.
Zhao Zifeng’s face was quite dark. As he was pushed to move by the crowd, he staggered, but surprisingly, he did not get angry and walked demented along with the stream of the people, feeling panicky.
He roared crazily in his mind. “Fuck you, Jingang! I just asked you to kidnap the guy and broke his limbs and manhood and then bring back the evidence about my secrets, but I didn’t ask you to kill him! Look at what you did! You even used a sniper rifle in Shengzeyuan and brought me great trouble, but the key is that you didn’t kill him. Son of a bitch, you’ve brought me to a dead end!”
Shengzeyuan was a property of the Zhao Family. As the person in charge of Shengzeyuan, he knew that he would have big trouble no matter whether he had relations with it or not because the shooting happened here.
When he slipped into a remote vacant area, he kept dialing Jingang’s phone number, but could not reach him. Out of anger, he cursed him and smashed his mobile phone.
At the top of Shengzeyuan’s building, Director Duan appeared like a ghost. Seeing the 7.62mm caliber sniper rifle of the 79-type left by the gunman in a hurried retreat, he could not help frowning slightly. “The gunman was really cunning. He escaped after failing to shoot the target.”
But this was not his responsibility, and he could only report it to other departments as an on-site witness, letting them deal with it. Anyway, it was not good to use guns in Yan Jing.
Soon, the police arrived and sealed off Shengzeyuan at all levels. The nearly 5,000 people at the scene were taken to the police station to be interviewed. As the person in charge of Shengzeyuan, Zhao Zifeng was taken away to be specially interrogated.
Before the police arrived, Ding Ning had finally cured Xiao Yan, but he had consumed the True Qi excessively. In addition, the first use of the flowing light let him know that the magical artifact was not so easy to use because it had almost drained all his spiritual strength, making him look extremely depressed.
Mr. Jiang and the other TCM practitioners thought that he had been excessively shocked, so they comforted him with kind words and expressed great indignation at the gunman’s assassination.
Surely, doctors were a group of people who could build up relationships quite easily. When a group of TCM practitioners joined hands, the energy they could burst out was extremely terrifying.
Several TCM practitioners had called Zhongnanhai and directly reported the case to the central government, asking for a strict investigation of the case to look for the murderer, and the big bosses of the Central Agency were even alarmed.
After learning that Ding Ning, whom they had met this afternoon, was almost assassinated, the big bosses of the Central Agency instantly went furious, held an emergency meeting at night, and even made it to an international affair, suspecting that if the foreign forces were fishing in troubled waters, wanting to take this chance to destroy the inventor of the Rice Bean Oral Solution.
After the brief meeting, the big bosses instantly made a decision, ordering to establish a special investigation team to strictly investigate the origin of the gun, the gunman, and the truth behind the scenes of the shooting and severely punish anyone who was found involved.
The whole of Yan Jing was teeming with soldiers. Large numbers of armed military police forces had rushed to the streets and used heavy guard to carefully check every suspicious person. The scale of enforcing martial law was comparable to that during the Aoyuanhui Games.
This was only the publicly seen situation. The staff of the National Security Bureau was working all night to handle cases, taking the video footage of every monitoring place to look for suspects.
The unidentified plainclothes people frequently went to every street near Shengzeyuan to search carefully for clues.
Ding Ning returned to his living place at Yan Jing Hotel under the personal escort of Luo Zhicheng, and the scale of vigilance was comparable to that for the head of state.
When the “state apparatus” began to work at full capacity, the efficiency was amazing. This night, undercurrents surged in the quiet Yan Jing City, and numerous people with all kinds of thoughts were frightened and lost sleep, waiting for the latest results.
