Lin Jie's unexpected shot instantly disrupted the Purifiers squad's combat rhythm.

When their lead assault trooper was felled by a single blow from an Asian man they had considered harmless, the psychological shock caused the remaining two heavy-armored warriors who were grappling with William to waver ever so slightly in their fighting will.

That slight wavering introduced small redundancies into their otherwise tight assault.

William, that veteran so seasoned he could rightly be called a "battlefield artist," instinctively sensed the enemy's mental fracture.

He stopped entangling himself with those two foes in any prolonged close combat.

He intended to seize this brief disorder in their offense and end the fight.

He let out a sharp battle cry, swung the Winchester rifle in his hands upward at a tricky angle, and used the modified metal butt to smack aside an incoming war pick.

Then, using the recoil, he nimbly vaulted backward, immediately creating distance between himself and the two enemies.

For Purifiers wielding short-handled melee weapons, that distance marked the limit of their effective range.

For William, armed with a rifle, it was precisely his most comfortable and deadliest firing range.

Click!

The crisp sound of the lever chambering signaled impending death.

Before the two Purifiers could recover from the sudden shift in tempo and the shock of their comrade being killed, the rifle in William's hands—already thirsty for blood—roared again.

Bang! Bang!

Two shots fired with less than half a second between them sealed their fate.

The bullets struck with unstoppable force, entering the gaps at the eye sockets of the masks those two Purifiers had to expose to maintain sight!

The last two Purifiers collapsed backward with a thunderous crash, utterly lifeless.

From Lin Jie's decisive first shot to William's textbook double kill, the reversal of the fight had occurred in barely ten seconds.

Julian climbed up from the ground. He looked at the three still-smoking steel suits of armor and at the last surviving Purifier, clutching his shattered knee and moaning in pain. An excitement he could not suppress lit up his scholarly face.

"Incredible, this is unbelievable..." he murmured, "Mr. Lin, your shot under pressure alone could be written into the Knights Templar's Manual of Precision Shooting."

"And Sergeant William, your move just now... it was flawless. Truly a battle-hardened soldier," he added.

William ignored Julian.

The old soldier simply walked up to the wounded survivor, and with cold eyes looked down at a captive who had lost the will to resist.

His voice was stern: "I only want to know one thing. Besides this route, do you have any other patrols in this damned area? How many of you are there in total?"

William's question reflected the practicality and caution of a veteran. They had just wiped out a cult patrol; the missing members would inevitably trigger alarms soon, so reinforcements could be sent into this underground maze.

However, the captured Purifier only gazed at them with a look that mixed pity and mockery, then wore a martyr's smile and said, "All things return to one, all spirits ascend... for the Eternal Serpent..."

"Bad! He's trying to activate a self-destruct restriction again!" Lin Jie shouted immediately.

Sure enough, amid a faint pfft sound the Purifier convulsed, blood black as ink flowing from his orifices.

The avenue for gathering verbal intelligence was shut down.

"Check his belongings first. If there's no clue, we'll have to rely on you," Julian said helplessly, looking at Lin Jie, then began professionally to search the corpse.

Soon he produced something from a waterproof pouch at the Purifier's waist—a neatly folded patrol map drawn on some kind of special waterproof paper.

"This is it!" Julian's face brightened with the joy of discovering a precious artifact. "These low-level Purifiers may not understand the structure of the underground tombs, but their movements must follow patrol routes assigned by their superiors!"

He immediately spread that red-marked patrol map on the ground and compared it to his own vast "Complete Map of Paris' Underground World," beginning a tightly logical game of cartographic deduction.

Yet as he compared and analyzed the two maps more deeply, the confidence on Julian's face began to erode bit by bit.

"This... this is not good..." Julian said with surprise in his voice, "The end point of this patrol route... and these... these red crosses..."

"What's wrong, Julian?" William sensed something amiss.

Julian raised his head, his eyes full of anxiety.

"Our entrance..." he pointed at the exit above the abandoned monastery in Saint-Germain-des-Prés they had initially infiltrated, "Based on the markings on this patrol map and the posted change-of-duty times... it's very likely been sealed off!"

The impact of that conclusion was enormous.

"It could just be your inference. Maybe the marks mean something else," William said, skeptical.

"I hope that's the case." Julian shook his head bitterly.

"Let's go back and check." Lin Jie made the most direct decision to verify the truth without delay, "Now. At top speed, before they're fully alerted."

The three of them wasted no more time. Guided by Julian, they retraced their steps down a branching passage and began a cautious withdrawal.

Apart from hearing footsteps not far away around one corner, they did not encounter other cult members directly.

But when they, breathless, returned to that familiar ancient Knights Templar secret passage, the scene shattered the last shard of hope in their hearts.

The stone steps that should have led upward to the wine cellar were gone.

In their place stood a "wall" composed of massive rocks blown and smashed into one another!

A lingering acrid smell of nitroglycerin-tainted smoke seeped from the cracks of that "wall," mocking the three of them as caged mice with no escape.

"Utterly trapped..." the ironic proverb flashed through Lin Jie's mind.

Only then did they realize that the Purifier squad's appearance might not have been a random patrol encounter at all, but rather a deliberate, slow-netting "sweep" operation!

The Eternal Serpent had likely detected the traces of "mice infiltration" through means unknown to them or via inside information within the association.

So they sealed every "mouse hole" first, then sent bloodhounds into the locked area for a carpeted purge!

Their situation had shifted from hunters who could withdraw at will to prey passively trapped here, potentially to be discovered and crushed at any moment.

"Is there any other way out?" William asked Julian.

Julian took a breath and spread the two maps out on the ground again.

After ruling out all impossible options, his finger finally landed on a passage they had previously overlooked on the patrol map—a route drawn in red leading to another, unknown direction.

"Only... two routes remain..."

"Either we fight our way back to that heavily guarded purification workshop; according to the patrol map, inside it there is an emergency evacuation passage they opened that leads to another section of Paris' underground."

"Or..." His finger traced along the "backup passage," slowly pointing to a deeper, more obscure area on the map.

"We can only trust this map and take our chances, to see whether this passage I've never heard of leads to a way out, or to a hell even worse than that factory."