Chapter 2766: Both Sides Are Full of Expectations
This behavior had already transcended the realm of humanity, but just looking at those eyes for a few seconds, the strong man and the curly-haired woman felt pressure. This pressure wasn't the urgency brought by the threat of death, but more like a stress response from the brain. Within moments, their minds went blank, and they even started to get headaches.
"Can you understand me?" Xu Huo looked at the thing in front of him. "If you can understand, stop screaming."
The roar grew louder.
"Communication is difficult." Xu Huo raised his hand and sliced off its head.
The curly-haired woman and the strong man, now freed from the gravity, immediately felt relieved. Looking at the dead xenomorph on the ground, they found it hard to believe they had been so thoroughly toyed with earlier.
"Maybe there really is more than one xenomorph," the strong man couldn't help but say.
Xu Huo also leaned toward this judgment. In fact, he hoped there would be more xenomorphs; otherwise, even tearing down this Punishment City would be meaningless.
Sweeping the corpse aside, the three continued forward. After a while, they finally found the room housing the xenomorphs that matched the curly-haired woman's description.
It was a very large space. There were over thirty cylindrical vats, with various types of xenomorphs soaking in nutrient solution. They were all asleep, but when Xu Huo's light shone on them, some of the xenomorphs in the containers began to stir.
"Quick!" The strong man said only one word before covering Xu Huo's lighting tool as fast as he could. However, in the next second, the milky-white, gecko-like, man-sized xenomorph in the nearest container suddenly opened its mouth and let out a piercing shriek. Everyone present felt a sharp pain in their brains, and then the containers began to explode one after another, and the sleeping xenomorphs started to awaken.
Despite being attacked by the high-frequency sound waves, the strong man and the curly-haired woman immediately used their items to plow through the room. Although spatial items were restricted, they could still handle this easily. First, a few flying arrows from the strong man quickly reaped the heads of the xenomorphs. Then, the curly-haired woman threw out a mirror. The separated mirrors reflected each other, and the path of the light soon sliced the xenomorphs into pieces.
The stench of feces and a foul odor spread, and the air quality visibly deteriorated. The three had no choice but to retreat from the room.
Looking at the piles of body parts on the ground, the curly-haired woman couldn't understand why she had been so scared earlier. It was as if she had entered a completely different place.
"Is that all?" The strong man regained his confidence.
Xu Huo raised his hand, and a piece of glass with a number on it flew over. He looked at it and then asked the other two, "Have you seen similar numbers before?"
"This should be from a company in District 022," the curly-haired woman recognized it. "They specialize in making experimental equipment. It's not strange for it to be supplied here. As for these xenomorphs used for research, none of them have obvious numbers on them. They've probably been activated."
"Using these to entertain us, District 022 is really underestimating us!" The strong man snorted coldly.
Xu Huo was also a bit disappointed. It seemed that underground, aside from the space that restricted freedom and the mental interference, there was nothing more formidable.
It seemed there was no need to waste any more time. He touched his arm and was about to take off his protective gloves to melt this Punishment City when a clicking sound suddenly came from the corridor not far away.
Someone was coming down from above!
The three knew it in their hearts, but as the metal door in front was pulled open, what appeared was a Punishment City player wearing a white protective suit that covered them from head to toe. The player reached out a hand towards them and said, "Solidify!"
In an instant, the air in the corridor seemed to turn into a wall with no gaps. Xu Huo and the other two were not only stuck in place, but even breathing became difficult.
Maintaining his distance, the Punishment City player produced a red coil in his hand. He raised both hands and looped the coil into three rings. Suddenly, an invisible force appeared around the necks of Xu Huo and the others, tightening wildly.
A defensive item blocked this attack, but the opponent's goal didn't seem to be to kill them immediately. Instead, he repeatedly looped the red line to bind their hands and feet.
The thick air wall weakened the effect of the items. The items Xu Huo and the others released often couldn't reach the player before being blocked. The opponent was also very cautious, not getting close, but slowly backing away step by step, using the air wall to drag them forward.
Seeing that he really intended to move them this slowly, Xu Huo manipulated a space tangent to tear apart the air wall in front of him. The space all around exploded violently, the force surging and crashing against the building with a huge roar. Due to the limited space, the floor and walls only deformed slightly, while the air current instead rushed wildly through the corridor.
He only used a space barrier to block the wind on his side, but the Punishment City player on the other side forcefully crossed the explosion center and appeared right in front of him. With a single word, "Sink," Xu Huo's body began to fall downward, dropping into an underground passage that had appeared from somewhere... However, he only dropped for a moment, sinking less than half a centimeter before getting stuck at the entrance of the passage. No matter how many times the opponent repeated the command, he didn't sink any further.
"Water and fire are incompatible!" Seeing the situation was wrong, the opponent immediately retreated, pulling a hundred meters of distance in the blink of an eye.
But how could Xu Huo let him leave so easily? He clenched his fist, and a space seal forcibly pulled the person back. Just as he was about to interrogate him, the opponent's protective suit suddenly collapsed—the person was gone!
As if shedding its skin, the player had directly disappeared from the protective suit. There was no trace of a space teleportation item being used, which meant they had escaped into the game.
"Useless." Xu Huo commented calmly. After exchanging only a couple of moves, they ran away cleanly and neatly.
The strong man and the curly-haired woman came to his side. "The xenomorphs are gone, and the Punishment City players are coming. There will probably be more and more people soon."
There were no prisoners in Punishment City, but monitoring instruments were everywhere. It was hard to say what the purpose of this city was. Instead of hunting them down, it deliberately locked them into different enclosed spaces, toying with them as if watching a show... But when it came to Xu Huo, the "show" effect wasn't so good anymore.
Sure enough, after a while, Punishment City players began to appear in groups. With the previous experience and lessons, Xu Huo now acted without hesitation whenever he saw someone coming. After killing twelve people in one go, the pace at which Punishment City sent people slowed down, clearly feeling the cost a bit.
"High rewards naturally come with high risks. With just a few shabby rooms and a few players who run away when they can't win, where's the spectacle?" Xu Huo wiped the blood off his short blade, but his eyes were fixed on the monitoring instrument in front of him. He smiled. "This is the price."
As his words fell, he supported himself against one wall with his left hand and walked forward slowly. Wherever his fingers touched, the metal began to dissolve. It spread from the point of contact, first the walls, then the floor, then the ceiling, then the building above. After breaking through the upper building, it reached the ground. Unnoticed, the power of the item had permeated the entire Punishment City... When Xu Huo leaped up, passing through the dome of Punishment City to reach a high place, the entire circular building instantly collapsed and crumbled!