Chapter 2648: Worry About Whether You Can Survive First
The specific usage and effect upgrade of "Life Origin" had no description when completed, but now the effect was surprisingly beyond Xu Huo's expectations.
He checked the items on himself, and only after confirming no damage did he reactivate the item. This time, instead of directly touching a metal object, he pressed his hand against the ground. In an instant, the metal needle that had pierced through the defense barrier and shot into a tree several hundred meters away turned to ash. At the same time, the RV parked further away was also destroyed—its wheels, outer shell, and internal metal structure vanished, causing the bed, kitchenware, and other items inside to clatter to the ground in a heap.
Xu Huo paused at the sight. Using his mental power to materialize objects, he suspended several items and metal utensils at different heights and tested again. This time, the items and utensils were fine, but the knives in the knife rack by the RV disappeared.
The situation was the same as with the metal needle in the tree.
After a few more attempts, he roughly understood the nature of "Life Origin." The objects the item could destroy were still formed metal objects, but direct contact was no longer necessary. However, the prerequisite for destroying metal objects without direct contact was that they could not be suspended in midair—no matter where the connection came from, there had to be an object serving as a medium.
This meant that from now on, using this item no longer required directly touching metal objects.
"Friend, are you alright?" A player approaching from the direction of Lingshui Town stopped at a distance after spotting him.
Xu Huo, who had just lifted his hand, pressed it back to the ground. There was nothing unusual about the other person.
It seemed that a person could not serve as an indirect contact medium. He wondered if direct contact with a human body would produce an effect similar to the puppet.
He looked up, and the next second, he flashed behind that player. As his right hand touched the other's shoulder, several items dropped.
"What are you doing!" The other person pulled back while simultaneously throwing out an item, but it didn't activate. Xu Huo, standing still, glanced at the intact metal utensils in the grass nearby:
Life Origin, truly living up to its name.
Being able to destroy metal or items with metal parts was already surprising enough, but it could also use the contact point as a source to radiate and destroy metal objects within its connection range. Except for when a person was the source—which had a smaller coverage area—the range with other objects as sources was nearly identical to "Life Core." The longer the item was activated, the larger the destruction range.
The complexity of space and time within the human body went without saying. As a top-tier A-grade item, as long as it contained metal parts, items and instruments would likely be easy to destroy.
Hopefully, the puppets active in Zone 039 were all made of metal.
"Are you its companion?" Xu Huo looked at the player who was on high alert.
The man had long noticed the deflated clothes and shoes on the ground, and now his heart ached beyond measure. Of the items on him, aside from those that had turned to dust and the few that had dropped, at least half were unusable—including one A-grade item and one top-tier B-grade item. And this was just from a single encounter with Xu Huo!
"I was just passing through. I saw you crouching on the ground and thought you were hurt, so I came to check," he said through gritted teeth. Whether it was a misunderstanding or not, the items were definitely gone. Seeing that Xu Huo had no intention of attacking further, he immediately used a teleportation item to flee.
Xu Huo chuckled, quickly cleaned up the area, and headed straight for Linghe Town.
The environment in Linghe Town was even worse than Lingshui Town. Although many people lived in the town, many destroyed houses had not been rebuilt, and the livable areas were extremely cramped.
Players came and went through the town, and encounters were inevitable upon entering. Linghe Town wasn't an important place, so most people who met here were connected to Dou Hui, making everyone highly wary of each other.
Xu Huo followed the address the young man had given him. Unexpectedly, he ran into the unlucky guy from earlier. The moment the other saw him, his face darkened, and several layers of defense barriers instantly enveloped him.
Xu Huo smiled faintly, pushed open the old courtyard door, and went inside. He called over a slightly older child and handed him a bag of snacks, "Does Teacher Gong Shu live here?"
The child took it, politely thanked him, and then said, "Teacher Gong went to visit relatives. He hasn't been back for days."
"Did someone come to pick him up?" Xu Huo asked again.
"An old man and an auntie," the child said. "I heard the auntie say they were players from somewhere else. Teacher Gong left with them, saying he would take them to the town library."
Xu Huo asked for the location of the town library, gave out some more food for the other children to share, and when he walked out, the unlucky guy was already gone.
Xu Huo wasn't in a hurry. He walked along the town's only main road, gathering information about Miecheng and Dou Hui. By the time he reached the town library, the player who had left earlier was already trapped inside a large box, covered in a transparent substance, barely able to move even his eyeballs.
Inside the two-story small library, besides the old man and woman the child had mentioned, there were also two other male players. As for the teacher Gong Shu, his whereabouts were unknown.
The two men immediately blocked Xu Huo's escape route. The bald one among them grinned, "What luck. We've been squatting here for days with no one, and today two show up at once."
"Is Gong Shu still alive?" Xu Huo asked.
The female player stood by the window on the second floor, "Can you first worry about whether you can survive?"
Xu Huo nodded, "Fair point. We can talk about Gong Shu later."
As the words fell, he pressed his hand down to the ground. Accompanied by the collapse of the library, all five players present were pinned to the floor.
Xu Huo looked at them, "Now you can worry about whether you can survive first."
"Gong Shu is on him!" The bald man from earlier immediately pointed at the old man, "I'm just here for the excitement. I have nothing to do with the national heirloom treasure instance!"
"So you're all players from the national heirloom treasure instance," Xu Huo's gaze swept over the remaining three, "Lying in wait here to kill people—you shouldn't be on the defending side."
Deactivating the ring item, he pulled the few into his spiritual realm. Using "Sealed Door" to severely injure the old man, he then trapped his neck with a space instrument. The entire sequence was seamless. By the time the others reacted, he had already taken the old man's belongings.
Finding the other's container item and opening it, a withered old man indeed fell out.
"Gong Shu?" Xu Huo asked.
The old man nodded woodenly, "I am Gong Shu."
"My surname is Xu. I'm a player from another district. I have some things I'd like to ask you." Xu Huo pointed to a small restaurant nearby, "Why don't you go sit over there for a while? I'll come over once I'm done here."
Gong Shu didn't even care who had captured him or what would happen to them. Without a glance at the headless corpse on the ground, he walked away.
Xu Huo then turned to the remaining people, "Don't even think about space teleportation. You can't run far either. Why not think about how to cooperate?"