Editor: Junyans
You would hardly believe that human strength could defeat such a ginormous and sturdy creature, but the fighters had calm expressions; they were well-trained.
Bai Jingan fired three shots at the extremely malformed white specter. Wei Xi was sure the man was testing it. Bai Jingan was obviously much weaker than the monster, but he was staring at the thing as if he was looking at a prey, his gaze wintry and deadly.
Bai Jingan turned his head and made a few hand gestures to a few companions next to him to relay tactics. His eyes were focused and full of murderous intent. He was no longer the person he’d appeared like during the lottery ceremony, dressed in formal wear and with a gentle appearance. He wasn’t like Wei Xi, someone who had come to the wrong place. Bai Jingan seemed like he was born to be on the battlefield.
The next moment, the white specter’s tentacles danced wildly toward the crowd, each attack deadly.
The fighters swiftly divided into two units, strategically employed firepower to make it open its massive ‘wings’ away from its body, exposing the clam-like form. This tactic allowed them to assault the body of the creature with greater precision.
However, to Wei Xi’s eyes, its body was just as hard. The gunfire had almost no effect on it, and the situation was hopeless. The organizers had taken the time and pains to create this masterpiece, and they would definitely let it kill enough people, rip off enough heads, and teach enough people a lesson.
Those fighters also knew that. The moment they saw it, they knew that it would be a bloody and hard-fought confrontation. They could not kill it by using some trickery; they could only use their own lives as padding and give the survivors a chance to slay it. And they were used to it.
Eventually it would work, if they struck it enough times.
Or if enough people died.
When the tentacle hit one of the fighters, he responded quickly, raising his gun to block it. But the tentacle was so powerful that it bent the barrel of the alloy gun and ran straight through his lung.
Wei Xi saw him sway slightly but hold his ground.
The fighter knew he couldn’t escape, and the tentacle would drag him over—
Wei Xi didn’t know if the man thought things through at that moment; all he saw was the man pause before suddenly charging straight toward the monster, shooting at its head one after another, without dodging its attacks even once.
Another tentacle pierced him, yet he still fired all the bullets from his energy gun at it.
It doesn’t even have blood, Wei Xi thought horribly. The injury was just a pale crack, not like a wound at all, as if the creature were originally a giant, weird porcelain vessel that had been transmogrified into a monster by an evil magic spell.
The fighter’s body was so full of holes that it was hard to believe that people could still be alive even when injured to this extent.
At the moment of rushing to the nearest point to the monster, something on the warrior exploded. Wei Xi couldn’t see the details—blood, flesh and gunfire were woven into a mass, creating an intense vortex terrifying to behold, yet no one could look away from it.
Then, he saw Xia Tian dash into the vortex without a moment’s delay, with a gun in his hand.
Xia Tian was holding a Warhawk Punisher-series large-caliber energy gun, in which he had installed two energy enhancers, added energy bars, and then wrapped it with heat insulation tape. It was an abnormal and deadly monster of its own kind.
Xia Tian was a first-class expert in firearms modification. Wei Xi wondered when he had gotten the time to make it. It was the first time he had seen someone who could still engage in firearms modification in this kind of combat intensity.
Xia Tian walked forward. His figure was caught in the fire of the explosion and the countless noxious tentacles. It felt like he would disappear at any moment.
Then he fired, and a massive burst of flames erupted from his hand, as if a sun had exploded in his palm. Under this light, the filthy entities seemed to vanish completely.
Then he threw the scrapped gun to the ground. Without retreating, he grabbed a concussion gun and continued to march forward.
Eventually the flames dissipated, and Wei Xi saw the creature’s shattered face, but its head was still intact. Its skull was hard, like alloy casting.
Seeing this scene, Wei Xi felt his breath stop.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He had always known that Xia Tian, like himself, was cornered and had ended up here. This was a deadly battlefield full of corpses, entrails and filth, the most barbarous place in the world. Xia Tian also had to trade everything for a chance to survive, just like all the other players in the Killing Show. And Xia Tian was not even a few years older than him, either.
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All the guns were firing, and most of the monster’s body was shrouded in flames. A mangled tentacle was rushing towards Xia Tian, but the man didn’t even dodge or duck. Bai Jingan bombarded in that direction.
Xia Tian did not turn back, but kept moving forward without stopping. All the bullets and flames of the fighters avoided him, as if he was spreading a pair of huge flame wings on his sides.
He looked straight into the monster’s eyes. It was a pair of cruel and crazy eyes, but Xia Tian never shied away from anyone’s eyes.
He pushed the barrel of his gun straight into its mouth and fired.
Xia Tian fired three more shots in a row until the energy bar was finished. Half of the creature’s body was blown into smithereens, but one should not take this kind of creature lightly.
The tentacles finally softened and became like rotten skin.
Xia Tian swayed a bit, and Bai Jingan walked over to hold him.
“How many times have I told you not to rush so fast?!” Bai Jingan shouted.
He raised his hand and gave Xia Tian a hemostatic needle and sealing gel; the temporary treatment could only go so far. Xia Tian was taking out an energy gun. Bai Jingan gave him two energy cartridges, and Xia Tian smiled at him.
Wei Xi looked at them and felt an inexplicable chill.
No, he thought, the death toll isn’t enough. The “masters” are still hungry. More people must die…
A force jerked him from under his feet, and Wei Xi bowled over to the ground, hitting his head against the corner of the table, and something whisked him two or three meters away in a flash.
In a burst of severe pain and dizziness, he heard Eric calling his name. He saw the man jump on a table covered in iron sheet and shoot at the thing dragging him, the bullets sending a shower of sparks around him.
The next second, the light dimmed; the monster had dragged him deeper into the cave.
Wei Xi groped for his gun. His field of vision was filled with the appearance of hideous, malformed creatures in countless jars. It looked like a bottomless abyss, and he couldn’t distinguish whether it was up or down.
He fired a shot in confusion and seemed to have hit something, but the monster’s dragging action just paused only for a split-second before it pulled him several meters away.
The silhouette of all his teammates faded out of his vision.
In about three seconds, Wei Xi felt a sudden emptiness in his heart as he suddenly realized that he was doomed.
But it was only three seconds, and then he saw Xia Tian and the lethal gunfire that followed.
He struggled and fired another shot, but to little effect. As he was being dragged, Wei Xi could only see that the creature holding him was moving very fast, with four human-like feet, its crawling appearance resembling a malevolent spirit that had grown within a heap of garbage.
But in his confused view, he could always see Xia Tian’s figure.
Wei Xi saw the man pass through a huge glass jar two people high, when a white specter that resembled a mass of vomit leapt out of the shadows and bounded towards Xia Tian. The man just leaned sideways to dodge and kept on walking without stopping, letting its sharp claws scratch deep onto him, leaving a bloody scar, and then fired at the monster that had taken him away.
Then, behind him erupted a series of gunfire and explosions. It was evident that the sharp-clawed monster had blocked Bai Jingan and Eric from coming towards Wei Xi, but they swiftly dealt with the threat.
Xia Tian stepped over the toppled over sealed jars and closed the distance with Wei Xi once again. Another monster leapt down from the ceiling and tried to bite him in the neck, and as it was about to touch him, Bai Jingan in the back sent it flying with a shot.
Xia Tian, as if he knew Bai Jingan would do this, didn’t even look at the thing. He shot the head of the monster that was grabbing Wei Xi. It continued to crawl mechanically forward, and he fired another shot, breaking the tentacle-like appendage clutching his legs.
The pulling force finally disappeared, and Wei Xi struggled to stand up—
At that moment, a mutant creature threw itself onto him from behind. Its sharp claws clasped his throat, the tips sinking into his neck, and Wei Xi realized that it was about to slice his throat with a rightward slash.
Xia Tian raised his hand and fired two shots in quick succession.
The first shot broke its arm, the second one flew past Wei Xi’s ear, shattering the creature’s head and tearing the white monstrosity away from his body. It wheeled through the air before it careened into the darkness behind him.
Wei Xi was extremely exhausted and could barely stand upright. He had survived by the skin of his teeth, twice, in a matter of minutes. He should have been grateful for that, but part of his consciousness—even as he was being dragged around by the monster—remained fixed on the program flickering in the corner of his vision. The world of numbers changed rapidly and became clearer and clearer.
He swayed a little. He held on to something to steady himself, raised his finger to point in the opposite direction, and said to Xia Tian, “The transmission tower is in that direction, and the positioning is accurate to within three meters!”
Xia Tian smiled at him.
He looked very wretched, but his smile was very nice. It made sense for the TV station to make him a star. He always smiled brightly, as if the world was peaceful and happy.
Wei Xi also unconsciously smiled. At that moment, he was quite sure that the matter would end here.
He would return to the team, as had happened so many times before, as if it would always be.
At that moment, he saw Xia Tian freeze for a moment, his eyes wide open, as he looked behind him.
The man’s gaze slowly lifted… At the same time, Wei Xi also sensed it. The monster had climbed out of the abyss at some unknown time and was coming towards him, casting a massive and unnatural shadow that enveloped him.
Wei Xi felt a chill from head to toe. It should have been over. They had met the danger, but it was resolved…
He looked at Xia Tian helplessly. Behind Xia Tian was another battlefield, and nobody could spare their hands. The monsters were whimpering and screaming, entangled in a chaotic dance with human bodies, before turning into broken flesh and blood.
Xia Tian also stared at him, without any confusion or chaos in his eyes. He looked calm, with a cold focus, calculating all the possibilities.
Their eyes met in the air. Their lives were hanging by a thread.
Wei Xi clung to Xia Tian’s eyes. He always felt that the idea of using eyes to give hints that was often shown on TV was pure bullshit. There must be an action. He never knew what other people’s eyes meant. But at that moment, he found that everything could not be clearer.
In a flash, he saw the signal in Xia Tian’s eyes: Run!
Wei Xi wasted no time and hotfooted it out of there as fast as he could. It was the swiftest pace of his life. Xia Tian fired behind him, so fast that the bullets grazed his hair and lapels. Wei Xi didn’t know what was behind him, but knew that each of Xia Tian’s shots stopped the monster’s attack that was directed at him.
And even in this environment, the man’s gun was always steady. He truly knew how to handle the most critical situations.
This should be the most critical situation, shouldn’t it?
But when his life was hanging by a thread, he saw what was above Xia Tian’s head.
A dirty “angel” had crawled out of some cave above, silent and without warning. But there should be no vertical caves here.
Its thread-like tentacles slowly spread out towards Xia Tian, who was so focused on Wei Xi’s direction that he didn’t notice it at all…
Wei Xi opened his lips and tried to scream. At that moment, Xia Tian might also have seen something in his eyes… but it was too late.
At the last moment, Xia Tian dodged a little.
He knew that there was something behind him, but he did not know what it was, or where it was attacking from. The tiny dodge at the last moment was based on pure intuition.
At the same moment, the monster rushed down, its dirty tentacles twisted together and ran through Xia Tian’s right shoulder from behind.
The impact was so great that Xia Tian slumped to the ground—later Wei Xi thought that it had probably wanted to pass through Xia Tian’s pulmonary lobe and disable his mobility—and the tentacles embedded themselves deep in the ground, holding him in place.
Still, Xia Tian held the gun tightly and aimed at the monster behind Wei Xi… But he could not shoot again, because the next second, another tentacle pierced his arm.
His fingers shook violently, the gun slipped out, and he looked up at Wei Xi.
Wei Xi staggered a little but did not fall. The network logistician lowered his head and saw dozens of tentacles of another monster twisted together, like a pale, wriggling spear that had hit his spine and completely penetrated his lower abdomen.
Then, the tentacle behind him abruptly retracted. Pulled along, Wei Xi stumbled and fell to the ground.
He saw the expression on Xia Tian’s face, who was just a stone’s throw away from him.
Behind them, gunfire rang out, creating a cacophony, and it was impossible to tell if there was no more hope, or if things were going well. Yet in this corner, everything seemed tranquil and fine.
In a matter of seconds, Bai Jingan had arrived. He had somehow managed to get something—probably improvised at the last minute—with which he hit the monster above Xia Tian’s head. It burst into dark red flames, like a fire that invaded one’s core.
The monster struggled to escape, but it didn’t know what it was running from, and hurtled frantically toward the fighters.
Another mutant creature behind Wei Xi spotted its opponent and climbed across him to the battlefield. It was huge, and its body was a combination of torture tools. It was dragging countless pincers and tentacles and had a pair of crazy, malicious eyes.
Wei Xi lay on the ground. Only now did he feel the pain… He knew how painful it could be, but at this moment, the most unbearable thing was the cold and numbness. He couldn’t feel anything anymore.
But his mind was extremely sober, and he realized that this was revenge.
From start to finish, the attacks of the white specters were targeted.
Targeted at him.
He recalled clearly what Bai Jingan and Xia Tian had said on the way here. The scenery along the way was beautiful, and everything seemed hopeful. At least Wei Xi thought it was hopeful.
Bai Jingan had said, “It won’t end like this.”
“Hmm,” Xia Tian had said, “I’ve been through a lot anyway.”
He had smiled at Bai Jingan, looking a little sad, and the latter had patted his arm.
They were the stars of the Floating Gold TV station, face of its “familial love” brand. They lived together, and they had a kind of aura like nothing could get in between them. The TV station did have a first-class eye to see this unique thing at a glance.
At that time, Wei Xi had also thought, yes, they have been through a lot, so what else can happen?
At this moment, he suddenly realized that the quagmire of this method was bottomless.
Everything that had happened to him was because he and his teammates had failed to listen to the planning team, to be a puppet on a string, to go to the place they had arranged, and to suffer and die in the prescribed way. Perhaps the planning team thought that the plot was not exciting enough and decided to spice it up a bit by—
By making them lose a comrade.
Wei Xi felt disgusted. He’d thought he understood the word, but at this moment he realized how strong disgust could feel.
His fate was to die a horrible death on the spot. The uglier the better, as punishment for his teammates.
