Chapter 1860: Swift Kill
Players didn’t need to step forward to verify; they could tell from the breathing and heartbeat that the child was already dead. The kid, who moments ago had been desperately digging into the ground to escape, now lay motionless with only its back exposed. The vigorous heartbeat vanished within two breaths. In that instant, the entire city seemed to fall silent.
The players in Zone 010 were going mad. They had harbored suspicions about Little Pink Hat’s identity and whether a newborn had truly appeared in Zone 010, unsure if this child would bring them surprise or disaster. But the appearance of Sand Sea players and so many outer-zone players here was no coincidence. What they were fighting for wasn’t just the hope of Zone 010—it was the belief they had clung to for so long. They carried both the future and the past, along with the persistence of those who had died!
But who could have imagined that before they could even get a proper look at the child, an outer-zone player would kill it?!
At this moment, the happiest ones were undoubtedly the black-side players in the “Wandering Melissa” instance. Since “Melissa” was dead, even if not by their hands, they had indirectly cleared the instance. As long as they could leave Zone 010, whether they got clearance rewards or not didn’t matter.
However, this joy gradually faded as the notification of failed clearance never came. Their gazes once again focused on the middle-aged man and the newborn on the ground.
The newborn was undeniably dead, completely devoid of life. So where was the problem?
Where was the problem? The middle-aged man wanted to ask the same question. He had killed the newborn in front of everyone. If he couldn’t clear the instance, there would be no good outcome!
Just as he was about to deliver a finishing blow, a flying knife shot out from the side, blocking him. Several Zone 010 players charged at him, eyes blazing with fury, ready to fight to the death. Meanwhile, other players had already surrounded the newborn’s corpse, making a second attack impossible. But from the disappointment on their faces, he knew the answer and realized that this newborn was not “Melissa” at all.
The middle-aged man shook off the Zone 010 players and was about to use a Space Teleportation Item to escape, only to find that the item had failed again. Frowning, he used his trait to push through the surrounding players. As he tried to flee the city, a black metal bead suddenly flew straight at his forehead!
He had just taken off into the air and couldn’t dodge in time. He barely blocked the attack with a life-saving item, but as he was distracted, he saw a black thin light, a hundred meters long, slashing toward his waist.
“Emergency landing!” The middle-aged man quickly used an item to plummet to the ground, but halfway down, a portal appeared out of thin air in the air. He couldn’t avoid it and fell in. For the next ten-plus seconds, he felt like he had fallen into a bottomless black hole, passing through countless portals of unknown depth!
The weightlessness of never touching the ground made the middle-aged man panic. Before he could grab onto a portal, the next moment, he was stuffed into a cramped cavity. The narrow space and surrounding environment told him he had fallen under a collapsed building. But then, the building above him emitted a creaking sound as if it couldn’t bear the weight anymore. Just a reflexive look upward, and the collapsing, compressed building materials frantically squeezed into every gap in the structure, including his hiding spot.
Defense items had limited endurance, especially under the weight of an entire building. Even if the defense item could hold, the middle-aged man would be trapped underground, making escape difficult.
But the advantage of Zone 010 was that the ground wasn’t that solid. The middle-aged man pulled out an item that could turn soil into sand, temporarily freeing himself from the crushing weight. Then he took out a mechanical animal specifically for digging, planning to tunnel his way out. For safety, he even considered digging all the way out of the city.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t crawled three meters before a thin light slashed down toward his head.
The middle-aged man wasn’t buried too deep. Although the thin light was blocked by his defense item, it still sent a cold sweat down his back. Realizing that staying underground meant only passive defense, he reached up, touched the stone above him, quickly turned it into a softer sandy tunnel, and then burst out.
Xu Huo was waiting for him outside. As soon as the man emerged, Xu Huo greeted him with ambush items and the Black Blade, while also setting up Tangents around the area. For spots he couldn’t cover, he filled them with Space Ray Blades, and even the ground was covered with Mental Power materialized objects, ensuring a 360-degree no-blind-spot assault.
The middle-aged man wasn’t unprepared. He wore five defense items and carried seven attack items, and before coming out, he had used a Jamming Device and his trait. But what he didn’t expect was that Xu Huo would first destroy his Jamming Device upon meeting, then leave everything to the pre-arranged items.
First, the ambush items clashed with his defense items. Although he blocked the attack, when the middle-aged man tried to run, he ran into the Tangents, breaking through two layers of defense. As he retreated to reactivate his items, the Space Ray Blades found an opening and stabbed into one of his hands and one of his feet!
Before he could fully block the Space Ray Blades’ attack, the Mental Power materialized object pierced through the sole of his foot. Taking advantage of his slightly tilted posture, it drilled through his leg, chest, and abdomen, then emerged from the top of his head.
The black materialized object protruded only a finger’s width from his skull before disappearing. The middle-aged man’s body stiffened for a moment, then his hands loosened, and the attack items and explosive items he held fell to the ground.
Xu Huo’s gaze shifted slightly downward. The next second, the moving Tangents sliced through both explosive items and the middle-aged man’s body together.
This seemingly complex confrontation actually didn’t take long. In the eyes of nearby players, they only saw the middle-aged man disappear from the air, emerge from underground, and then face Xu Huo for less than five seconds before dying.
Even if they could guess that the two were using items to fight, without close observation, outsiders only saw each side use their attack items briefly before it was all over.
The corpse fell at his feet. Xu Huo didn’t pay it any more attention. He vanished from his spot and reappeared beside Pink Hair in the next second.
Still on the same building, still holding the disguised Little Pink Hat, but this time Pink Hair was holding a “corpse.” While Xu Huo was fighting the middle-aged man, Pink Hair had used the same trick again, snatching Little Pink Hat from the Zone 010 players and bringing it to the top of the building. He wanted to kill the “newborn” again in front of the Zone 010 people.
In truth, the Zone 010 players had already checked the “newborn’s” corpse and confirmed the child was dead, so there was no need to be threatened. But when Pink Hair lifted the corpse, they were utterly enraged.