Chapter 460: The Unmentioned Rule
“Brother Qiao…”
“Brothers.” Qiao Jiajin looked around at everyone. “I really did think this was too simple. But there’s no time to admit fault now. I have a new plan.”
Everyone was standing unsteadily on the ground, looking at him.
This man before them had once crushed three stars by himself, like the sun. Now, they could only rely on his plan.
After all, this wasn’t a test of strategy. If even this man couldn’t solve it, no amount of brains from anyone else would be of any use.
“Brother Qiao… just say it.” Bai Jiu clutched her chest where she’d been struck, and said.
“I will do everything I can to protect this vehicle.” Qiao Jiajin said. “But this time, I don’t dare say I can ‘protect everyone.’ I can only guarantee that whoever sits in the cart won’t be eliminated. As for the others…”
“Isn’t that enough?” Bai Jiu interrupted. “As long as we protect the people in the cart from being eliminated, we’ll win this game.”
“But you might die…” Qiao Jiajin gritted his teeth. “I hate this feeling. I can’t protect the people around me. In the past, no matter what, if anyone dared lay a finger on my people, I’d pay them back double. But this time… the gap between me and those monsters is just too big…”
After hearing this, Bai Jiu rubbed her chest and forced out a sweet smile. “Brother Qiao, have you gone silly? Weren’t you protecting us just now?”
Qiao Jiajin paused for a few seconds, then nodded coldly. “I’ll do my best from now on.”
Everyone reformed their formation and continued pushing the cart forward.
Only a few steps later, Ning Shiba gave everyone a signal with her expression. “They’re coming…”
Everyone immediately stopped the cart and braced themselves.
「Swoosh」!!
From the left side of the straight track, the “Lu Cun” mechanism fired a stone ball first, flying straight at the pushers. Then came the other six mechanisms, each spewing out stone balls in what seemed like a pre-arranged sequence. After a brief moment of thought, Qiao Jiajin charged straight toward the ball heading for him. He struck it from the side, redirecting it with incredibly precise force so that it crashed directly into another ball.
「Bang」!!
The two stone balls shattered in midair. A shower of gravel exploded everywhere, forcing everyone to squint.
Because the stone balls flew so fast, Qiao Jiajin simply couldn’t get to everyone in time to block for them.
This time, Qiu Ershi and Yun Shijiu, having prepared in advance, barely managed to deflect their balls. But everyone else was hit again.
Feng Shijie got a stone ball straight to the back from some unknown direction. She’d never imagined the force behind these balls could be so strong. Her entire body lurched forward uncontrollably, stumbling several steps before she was about to fall flat on her face. But right where she was about to land lay a row of razor-sharp shattered glass.
“Ah! Flash girl!” Qiao Jiajin yelled. “Watch out!”
In that instant, a thought flashed through Feng Shijie’s mind—she was going to die. If she fell face-first onto that glass, what were her chances of survival?
In that single second, she almost relived her entire life.
She still didn’t have her “Echo.” Was she going to forget everything now?
Would all the memories of the “Endlands” she had accumulated be wiped away?
Just as she was about to fall, the words Qiao Jiajin had said before the game began echoed in her ears.
“Everyone, when you feel like you’re about to fall, try to curl up and use your legs to launch yourself forward.”
Feng Shijie decided to try it as a last resort. She quickly shifted her legs, bent her knees in a flash, and kicked off the ground hard. Her body shot forward several dozen centimeters, and she lifted both legs as high as she could in the air to clear the glass.
But Feng Shijie wasn’t a combat-type team member. Her body cleared the broken glass, and one leg was raised high, but her other leg wouldn’t cooperate on landing. It slammed straight down onto the glass.
“Ugh!!” She let out a muffled groan but immediately swallowed the scream in her throat.
“Sister Seventeen!”
Qiu Ershi and Yun Shijiu rushed over to check on her. The glass on the ground looked randomly placed, but if you looked closely, it was clear that each piece had been specially sharpened into a slanted edge—designed to pierce flesh.
Qiao Jiajin, still shaken, glanced at her, but at the same moment, he noticed Ning Shiba beside him.
From Qiao Jiajin’s perspective, she clearly wouldn’t have been hit by the stone ball. Yet she turned her body and took the ball straight to her ribs.
In that instant, the stone ball was practically embedded in her body. Her ribs must have been shattered. The entire side of her abdomen was caved in, and the ball slowly fell to the ground.
“Aaaaaaah!!!”
The moment the stone ball dropped, Ning Shiba let out a heart-wrenching scream. She fell to her knees, burying her head low, and repeatedly slammed her hand against the icy ground to distract herself from the pain.
“Holy shit!” Qiao Jiajin rushed over to shield her in case another ball flew her way. “Star reader girl, what the hell are you doing? Are you trying to die?!”
“Cough—!” Ning Shiba tried to speak, but a mouthful of blood sprayed out. It seemed the shattered ribs had already punctured her internal organs, leaving her coughing up nothing but blood. “Cough, cough, cough!”
Qiao Jiajin had never seen anything like this. He was about to say something else, but then he heard a distant bell toll.
「Dong」!!
Ning Shiba’s “Rampant Growth” had descended.
“Cough, cough…” Ning Shiba cleared the blood from her mouth and smiled bitterly. “Brother Qiao… if you hadn’t trusted me so much, I wouldn’t have resorted to this…”
At that moment, Qiao Jiajin suddenly remembered that Ning Shiba’s “Echo” trigger was “extreme pain.”
“Whether I live or die this time… you’ve already accomplished your mission.” Ning Shiba propped herself up and slowly crawled over to lie down nearby. “But my chances of surviving aren’t high… I’ve experienced way too much ‘pain’ before… now I need even more intense means to trigger my ‘Echo’… this time… cough… this time is just right…”
Qiao Jiajin looked at Ning Shiba’s frostbitten right hand and felt she wasn’t lying.
If a person didn’t even consider an entire hand being frostbitten as “extreme pain,” how helpless must she be every time she summoned her “Echo”?
Qiao Jiajin had never imagined that just two attacks in the fourth round would leave their team so battered. Two of the girls were seriously injured; their physical conditions could no longer allow them to continue pushing the cart.
“What the hell…” Qiao Jiajin’s lips trembled as he stared at the white ice now splattered with his comrades’ blood. “Big Horse girl, you’ve gone too far… Don’t you have any humanity?!”
Bai Jiu looked at the two fallen teammates and felt the situation was grim.
Now, every attack came with seven stone balls, each targeting one of the seven people on the field.
Once there were casualties, the remaining people would have to face the same number of attacks with fewer numbers.
“We… are we going to die?”