Chapter 1516: The Vanished Building
Upon inquiry, the base commander also provided Xu Huo with updates on the "old acquaintance's" subsequent movements.
"He went to the A7 Safe Zone after slicing half the city apart."
"The A7 Safe Zone is currently controlled by several Outer Zone players, making it impossible to observe the situation inside the city from the outside. However, fragmented messages intermittently emerging from within mention this Super Evolver."
For Zone 017, there could be no worse news. Not only was the whereabouts of the Super Item unknown, but with Outer Zone players holding the city hostage, they had no capacity to handle the situation.
Of course, they also understood that hoping for mercy from Outer Zone players was utterly impossible. So now, aside from using misleading false information to lure and kill some people, their only hope lay in the infighting among the Outer Zone players themselves.
The base commander chose to relay this follow-up information to Xu Huo for the same reason.
After leaving the military base, Ma Zhi asked Xu Huo, "Are we heading to the A7 Safe Zone now?"
"Dingtan City," Xu Huo replied.
"Isn't Dingtan City already destroyed?" Ma Yu found it strange that he would make a special trip there.
"I have a bit of a grudge with that Super Evolver." Xu Huo said to the two, "I cannot continue traveling with you."
The Ma siblings had just reviewed the data on Dingtan City as well. Being able to slice half a city into pieces was no longer something an ordinary player could achieve. And since the base commander mentioned that the opponent was a Super Evolver, the method of destruction was undoubtedly tied to their evolutionary power.
The two admired Xu Huo's courage in proactively seeking out the enemy, but of course, they had no intention of continuing on the same path with him.
Xu Huo gave them a slight nod. "Fate willing, we'll meet again."
With that, he used the "Head-to-Tail Connecting Ring" to travel to the next city.
Using teleportation items made it easy to cross cities, but a brief layover was required in each city. After passing through sixteen cities in succession, three of them—like the one Xu Huo had arrived in—were completely empty ghost towns, while the rest each had their own circumstances.
Some cities had only experienced small waves of looting and were still in relatively good shape. Others had become battlegrounds for different factions, both local and Outer Zone. When Xu Huo passed through an area undergoing large-scale crossfire, he was even ambushed. After figuring out that one side of the conflict consisted of black-market forces and prisoners who had robbed the local armory, he used "Horizontal Tailoring" to gift these people a "No-Legs Package."
More common were small groups of Outer Zone players looking to make a quick profit along the route to the major safe zones. The national government might be unwilling to pay further ransoms, but local governments could be forced to compromise. Of course, how much money and items they could actually obtain, and whether the promises would be kept in the end, was anyone's guess.
By evening, Xu Huo arrived at Dingtan City.
This was a city both unfortunate and fortunate. Unfortunate, because an Outer Zone player had, without warning, destroyed half the city as easily as slicing melons and vegetables. Fortunate, because due to that player's presence, many Outer Zone players chose to avoid the city and not linger there.
After five days of effort, search and rescue operations had basically concluded—those who could be saved had been saved, and the rest were unlikely to survive. So the city's focus had shifted to full-scale defense. Evacuating to a nearby safe zone was clearly impossible, so they had to fortify in place.
"Please pay attention to the markings on the ground! Do not step outside the lines!" Large numbers of people were moving toward the intact side of the city, with military personnel using loudspeakers to guide them along marked safe routes to avoid potentially active random instances. The survivors, still reeling from the massive blow, could only numbly follow the military's arrangements.
The immense grief of losing loved ones made many unwilling to leave the ruins. They lingered on one side of the city, refusing to give up. Some continued digging until their hands were bloody, clinging to the last thread of hope. However, the military had already fully withdrawn from the ruins. They couldn't do anything about those who refused to leave, so they had to prioritize those who had already been relocated.
"Damn those Outer Zone players!" Xu Huo heard someone cursing through gritted teeth as he approached the ruins.
He saw a middle-aged couple, covered in dirt, supporting themselves with their worn-out hands. They knelt despairingly in front of a collapsed building, lifting their heads weakly and murmuring, "Gone... all gone..."
Others scattered throughout the ruins uttered the same words. They seemed to be searching for something, but not the buildings lying before them—they were trying to dig something out from underground.
"An entire building just vanished..." A young girl was shivering as she spoke into her phone, whether to someone on the other end or simply recording, "I saw it with my own eyes. More than one building. In the neighborhood... and two office buildings. They all disappeared in an instant... and then everything started collapsing."
Xu Huo gathered the gist of it. Before the city was destroyed, several buildings had already vanished first, and the affected area was quite extensive.
This sounded somewhat like the activation of a random instance. Previously, he had only encountered instances that absorbed people directly, never one that swallowed entire buildings. But it wasn't impossible. However, the timing—buildings vanishing first, followed by half the city being destroyed—seemed a bit too coincidental.
"Are you a player?" A young girl, barely half-grown, walked up to him. Struggling to hold back tears, she asked, "Can you save my mom and dad? Give them some player medicine to bring them back to life?"
Xu Huo glanced at the couple lying on the ground, completely devoid of life. "They're already gone."
"No!" The girl stubbornly wiped her tears. "Mom and Dad said they would never die and would always be with me! It's you bad people!"
"If you bad people hadn't come, Mom and Dad wouldn't have died!"
Her voice attracted the attention of those around them. Compared to everyone else's disheveled state, Xu Huo was far too clean. It was obvious at a glance that he was a player. Only players could remain composed in a disaster. But all the players from this city had already been mobilized by the military to help. So he could only be an Outer Zone player!
"Bang!" A piece of rubble landed near Xu Huo. A woman rushed toward him hysterically, screaming, "Give me back my son's life! Give me back my son's life!"
She was stopped by some people who still had their wits about them. At that moment, everyone's eyes were filled with hatred, but their fear of death kept their actions in check.
Xu Huo paid it no mind. He looked at the city where the destruction had already been covered up, then stepped forward and walked deeper into the ruins.
Players did have the capital to act with impunity, but the act of destroying a city, when linked to the earlier suspected random instance incident, seemed very much like the style of those people. At the very least, there was no entrance to a random instance in the city now. Appearing and disappearing suddenly—perhaps this was also a flexible random instance carried by someone.
(End of Chapter)