Chapter 1160: I Just Enjoy the Process
“That’s true,” another man with a scarred arm chimed in. “We only took in a batch of evolvers. We didn’t break any laws. Even the nation has no right to deal with us. What are those players supposed to be?”
“Just like Old Zhao said,” the scarred man pointed at the thin-faced man. “It’s the poor turning over a new leaf, straightening their backs, daring to speak loudly. The Special Defense Department took a big hit this time. They’ll definitely come looking to settle the score.”
Thin-faced Old Zhao smiled faintly. “Those people won’t stir up any waves.”
The group laughed and chatted, treating the chaos outside as trivial, even irrelevant to them.
“Really won’t stir up any waves?” Liu Zhichao leaned forward, hands on his knees, looking up at these lofty individuals. “Then how did Old Yang die?”
“He was unlucky.” Old Wan’s smile turned cold. “Only he and a few impatient ones took their families and fled first. Easy targets. The players who had infiltrated the safe zone naturally assumed they were important figures and hunted them to the end.”
“But it was the players tracking them to the safe zone that led to what happened later,” Liu Zhichao said. “The players’ methods are more formidable than we imagined. Aren’t you really afraid?”
The thin-faced man chuckled. “One death has you this scared? Look around us. Players are everywhere. And this safe house is equipped with high-tech instruments. Anyone approaching will trigger an alarm… At least it’ll buy you time to escape.”
The last sentence was purely mocking, but before the scattered laughter could die down, Liu Zhichao spoke again. “What if he followed us into the safe house?”
The noise in the room abruptly ceased. Old Wan was the first to react, pressing the alarm on his wrist, but the alert never sounded.
Likewise, the alarms of the thin-faced man and the scarred man didn’t go off either. The person nearest the door rushed to open it, but no matter how hard he twisted the handle, the door wouldn’t budge. The players who should have been guarding outside also showed no reaction, as if they couldn’t hear anything inside.
Realizing they couldn’t escape, the thin-faced man and another buzz-cut man simultaneously drew their guns. But before they could aim at Xu Huo, the former’s fingers and the gun’s trigger were severed together. The latter, though not attacked, wisely lowered his hand upon seeing the thin-faced man’s gruesome state.
“Liu Zhichao” pointed to the sofa beside him and said to the buzz-cut man, “Please, sit.”
The buzz-cut man, confused, did as he was told.
“You’re not Liu Zhichao. Liu Zhichao came on the same plane as me. When did you replace him?” Old Wan stared sharply at the person beside him.
“Where did Liu Zhichao go?” the buzz-cut man asked, concerned for his companion.
“I threw him off the plane early on.” Xu Huo answered the buzz-cut man’s question, then tossed a bag onto the coffee table. The cheap, transparent plastic bag looked out of place in this setting, yet there it was, filled with vials of evolver blood serum. It seemed so casual, but everyone present knew that from now on, the contents of that bag would decide their fate.
“Getting out is impossible.” Xu Huo glanced at the scarred man, smiled with Liu Zhichao’s face, and said, “There are six of you. How about drawing lots to decide who gets the first injection?”
“Six?” the scarred man asked in confusion. Excluding Xu Huo, there were still nine people here.
Xu Huo gestured with his chin toward the buzz-cut man and the two soldiers sitting stiff-backed beside him. “These three aren’t on my target list.”
“From your heated discussion earlier, you should know why I’ve come for you.” He took out a die. “One to six, six numbers. In the first round, whoever rolls the highest number gets the injection. If two people roll the same number, they keep rolling until it’s different. How about it? Isn’t that method fair?”
“You don’t need to do this at all. Why bother?” Old Wan, who had been deliberately ignored, still maintained his composure and spoke again.
Xu Huo flicked the die, letting the numbers tumble endlessly, and said nonchalantly, “I just enjoy the process… Same as you.”
Now he was using a die to decide who got the injection, just as they had once checked names off a list to decide who needed to evolve.
“A man can be killed but not humiliated. How dare you toy with us!” The scarred man charged at Xu Huo, swinging a fist at his face.
To a player, no matter how exquisite a normal person’s combat skills were, they were no different from a child waving a sword. Xu Huo lightly flicked his left index finger, and the scarred man was pierced by an invisible tangent, his body shattering into several pieces.
The splattering blood and organs made Old Wan and the thin-faced man, sitting nearby, jump up and step back. Seeing the steaming blood flow to their feet while the perpetrator remained unmoved, their expressions turned extremely ugly.
Xu Huo still sat in place, scrolling through the scarred man’s information on his phone. “Lin He, the true controller of Ice City Lab 66. It’s said that this lab has a set of painful therapies for evolvers to stimulate them through the period before entering the preliminary train. But the person in charge repeatedly tortured the evolvers privately, causing some to die from abuse or commit suicide.”
“But since Lin He handed the lab over to his nephew and claimed ignorance of the details, I’ll give him a quick death.”
After saying this, he looked up at the remaining five and slid the die over. “Old Mr. Wan, let’s start with you.”
Old Wan remained relatively calm and even began to negotiate. “Since we can’t escape death, why should we cooperate with you?”
Xu Huo raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Alright, I’ll offer you the same terms as Old Yang. Anyone who successfully evolves, I’ll let go.”
“At the beginning of the game, we were tested. The success rate of evolution is very low,” Old Wan said.
Besides, most of them were elderly. Even if they succeeded in evolving, how many instances could they survive given their physical condition?
“I’ve already made concessions. Pushing for more is overstepping.” Xu Huo’s expression darkened slightly.
Left with no choice, Old Wan picked up the die, squeezed it a few times, and tossed it onto the coffee table. When it landed on “1,” he breathed a slight sigh of relief.
Xu Huo tilted his head, signaling the thin-faced man to go next. He rolled a “4,” his face turning even more grim as he nervously watched the remaining three roll.
But his luck held. The last person rolled a “6.”
Seeing the number “6,” that man’s eyes were filled with both terror and the determination of a last stand. He flipped the coffee table and charged toward the door—but the table didn’t flip, and he only managed to turn around before being frozen in place. Then, like a marionette, he was dragged by an invisible force around the table to Xu Huo’s side.
Xu Huo opened the plastic bag and pulled out a vial of serum.
(Chapter End)