Chapter 1215: Stealing the Kill
The thin, frail man seemed insulted, a furious light bursting from his eyes. He moved along the ground like a snake, swiftly arriving behind Jiang Zifeng and spitting a poison needle at him while his guard was down!
"Did you think you were the only one with an evolved body?" Jiang Zifeng, who had been facing away, suddenly twisted his upper body, caught the poison needle with his backhand, and flung it back along the same path.
Unexpectedly, the man couldn't even defend against his own poison needle. Two needles struck him directly in the forehead. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed backward!
Jiang Zifeng was stunned. He opened his mouth to speak, but the man, who hadn't even hit the ground yet, once again vanished by shedding his clothes, reappearing thirty meters away.
This time, he turned to flee without looking back. However, before Xu Huo and Jiang Zifeng could give chase, a thread-thin silver light shot out from the depths of the thick fog, effortlessly piercing through his brow!
The moment the thread pierced his forehead, the player froze in place. Yet the silver thread, as if encountering no obstacle at all, shot straight toward Jiang Zifeng.
Seeing the silver line speeding toward him, Jiang Zifeng, who had already equipped a defense item, unhesitatingly dodged. Behind him was Xu Huo. The silver thread, after piercing through "Three Hundred and Sixty Defenses," finally stopped at the "Inviolable Domain."
But seeing the thread less than a meter away from him, Xu Huo frowned. He noticed that the thread blocked by the space barrier wasn't completely stopped; it was slowly breaking down the barrier.
Of course, this process lasted only a short time. As he retreated from the thread's path, the line continued forward, passing through the entire maze corridor like a beam of light shot from a distance.
The person using the item was still some distance away. After the ray disappeared, they calmly vanished around a corner of the corridor, leaving behind only a corpse with a peaceful expression.
Xu Huo and Jiang Zifeng approached the body and carefully examined the wound on its forehead. They exchanged glances. Jiang Zifeng said, "This doesn't look like a wound caused by an ordinary item. It's more like some kind of combat weapon. Although the train prohibits carrying weapons not approved by the game, there are ways to get these things. It's best to switch weapons when switching zones. Convenient, but it costs a lot."
"Ordinary players don't usually play this way. Items are the most cost-effective weapons players can buy."
"As expected of a major zone. So many rich people." Jiang Zifeng grinned. "If I had money, I'd try to get a robot to play with. If I really had to switch weapons every time I switched zones, no amount of money would be enough."
This reminded Xu Huo of the Holy Sword Society. It might not necessarily be the Holy Sword Society, but an organization like it—many people, lots of money. These weapons could be traded internally, making the cost very low for them compared to ordinary players.
He was about to speak when a fierce killing intent swept over them like a tangible force. As he and Jiang Zifeng dodged in opposite directions, the spot where they had been standing was shredded like a meat grinder. The corridor floor, the nearby maze walls, and the corpse on the ground were all ground into fragments!
In battles between players, life and death often hang by a thread. While evading the sudden attack, Xu Huo and Jiang Zifeng immediately gave chase at top speed. Within less than a hundred meters through the thick fog, they saw a man in a hooded cloak flash past them!
"Don't move!" Xu Huo, who had been sprinting, suddenly slammed on the brakes and called out to Jiang Zifeng on the side.
Jiang Zifeng instinctively stopped, but his body still lurched forward by an inch. At that very distance, the protective layer spread by his defense item was cut open. A thread, thinner than a tenth of a strand of hair, stopped right before his eyes!
A chill ran down Jiang Zifeng's spine, but he dared not move recklessly. He took out a ball and tossed it forward. Before it could travel a meter, it was sliced into pieces!
"So close! There's a wall of threads!"
"Not just that." Xu Huo blew a handful of colored powder forward. The sticky powder, as it fell, left quite a bit suspended in the air. Upon closer inspection, they could see that the entire corridor ahead of them, a full ten meters wide, was covered in fine threads, as dense as a roughly woven cloth.
Jiang Zifeng looked up. "Damn. No way up, no way down."
Xu Huo tried using "Cake Slice," but the B-grade item couldn't cut through these threads at all.
"Let me." Jiang Zifeng took a step back and pulled a two-meter-long cleaver from his item slot. He raised it with both hands, then swung it with full force at the thread wall ahead!
As if mocking them, the moment the cleaver was about to touch the thread wall, all the threads vanished on their own!
Jiang Zifeng's blade struck the ground, directly cracking the corridor floor beside his feet with a thirty-centimeter fissure that extended over thirty meters!
"You bastard! Fight me head-on if you've got the guts!" Jiang Zifeng roared. "Hiding and sneaking around, what kind of skill is that!"
"He's probably gone." Xu Huo said. "The threads on the wall were connected to a distant point through the maze walls. It's too late to chase now. Since he didn't intend to show himself, he won't appear now."
Despite his anger, Jiang Zifeng said, "It's fine. There are plenty of people who play dirty tricks like this in the game. But we need to be careful. People like this are usually very petty."
Since they couldn't find the person, the two turned back.
Returning to their previous resting spot, the female player's shelter and Xu Huo's were unharmed, but Jiang Zifeng's tent had been burned through. Although it was only two small holes, once an item is damaged, it can no longer perform as effectively as before.
"It's normal to have losses." Xu Huo comfortingly patted Jiang Zifeng on the shoulder.
"I have plenty of tents." Jiang Zifeng replaced it with a new one and added, "I'd better not run into him again."
The night in the maze returned to tranquility. The thick fog, combined with the unique scent of the plants, seemed especially hypnotic. Even the person on watch couldn't help but doze off. As dawn approached, Xu Huo and the other two briefly fell asleep.
Awakened by a sound, the female player was the first to sit up. Just as she was about to stand, Xu Huo stopped her. She paused and saw him standing inside the shelter, raising a finger to point upward.
The female player looked up and saw several fine, barely noticeable threads floating above her head. She froze and asked, "What is this?"
This patch of threads was about a meter above the ground, just at waist height. On the other side, Jiang Zifeng also pulled open his tent's curtain to observe the situation outside. "These threads don't seem to be directly affected by items. Your room and my tent have both been cleared out."
"But relatively speaking, the range of the threads has also increased." Xu Huo lifted his head. Last night's thread wall only covered a width of ten meters. Today's thread wall, though not as high, had changed its dimensions like an object whose length and width had been adjusted—shortening the length naturally increased the width.
"It looks like he's got his sights set on us."