Chapter 73 - 68: You Call This Not Knowing Each Other?

Chapter 73: Chapter 68: You Call This Not Knowing Each Other?

Nan Jiamu had just regrouped with Ye Se and Signal when gunshots rang out.

Her heart lurched. Pressing her earpiece, she ordered, "Everyone, head toward the Sector B factory building—BZZZ!"

A piercing burst of static erupted in her ear. Nan Jiamu ripped off her headset, noticing that Ye Se and Signal were doing the same. Communications were down.

"Damn it!"

Nan Jiamu looked up. The swarm of drones in the sky scattered erratically like a startled hive of bees.

Suddenly, a reconnaissance drone changed direction and dive-bombed the nearest armored vehicle.

BOOM!

Flames erupted, and the shockwave sent two nearby special agents flying.

"The drones are out of control!" Signal stared at the sky.

"Bad Signal" was a young woman who had previously worked as a receptionist for the Guanshan Group.

Beside her was "Ye Se Walks Alone," a slightly older middle-aged man. After transmigrating to the Red Corpse World, he had worked in the Blood Feeding Ground and once posted online looking for other Players.

During their second transmigration, Ye Se and Xian Yu—who was a Blood Beast—had both awakened Extraordinary Abilities. Together, they blew up the Blood Feeding Ground and escaped.

Because they completed a Special mission to liberate the Clones, they were also recruited by the Rebel Army waiting outside. Unexpectedly, they earned enough word counts to avoid the death penalty for mission failure in that round.

Before Signal could even finish her sentence, several armed drones opened fire simultaneously.

Bullets pelted the concrete, kicking up a hail of gravel. The entire factory district descended into chaos. Some people were hit and collapsed, while others dragged their wounded comrades behind cover.

Nan Jiamu raised her gun and accurately shot down an armed drone nearby.

"Black Domain Walker! It has to be him!"

This was a trap. That member of the Blood Clan had intentionally exposed himself to lure the special agents here. Nan Jiamu now highly suspected that Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence was in cahoots with them too!

"Everyone, find cover! Don’t stay out in the open!" Nan Jiamu shouted to her surroundings, handing her Tactical Ball Item to Ye Se. "You guys go back up Ma Fan and the others. Don’t get bogged down in combat. I’m going to take out Black Domain Walker!"

Hundreds of meters away, Yin Zhen was sprinting through the ruins. The dense sounds of gunfire and explosions made her pause.

Watching the drones zip around chaotically, Yin Zhen’s heart skipped a beat. That member of the Blood Clan wasn’t prey—he was bait!

She wondered, "Is it Black Domain Walker? Did he team up with that Blood Clan member? Did he also trigger the Overture of War? Did he choose the Blood Clan faction? How did he trigger it? Through Julian? Or did Black Domain Walker already make contact with this Blood Clan member back in the Red Corpse World?"

Yin Zhen had received a private message from Bai Qiang on the forum. She had set up alerts so that any new messages would trigger a notification sound in her mind.

[Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence]: Sector B factory building. Hurry!

Yin Zhen didn’t have time to overthink it; she kept running forward.

Upon reaching the factory’s back door, Yin Zhen saw Xian Yu supporting Ma Fan as they stumbled out. An ear-piercing sound of grinding metal echoed from inside the building.

Yin Zhen slipped inside through a hole in the factory roof.

Down below, a woman stood clad in a lightweight black windbreaker that covered her entire body. Her hair was tied back, and a mask concealed her face.

As the woman dodged the flying scrap metal launched by Quentin, Yin Zhen got a clear look at the mask and widened her feline eyes in astonishment.

It was exactly the same as her own mask! The only difference was that the glowing lines on this woman’s mask were blue, not red.

The mask was merchandise from a very popular shooting game in the Red Corpse World. But even if sales were high, this was too much of a coincidence.

Quentin stood opposite Bai Qiang. A dense cloud of metal shards hovered in the air around him. His clothes had been slashed open by the shadows Bai Qiang was controlling, leaving his flesh mangled and blood spilling across the floor.

"Magnetic Control, huh? Why don’t you try controlling this?"

Out of thin air, Bai Qiang pulled out an Electromagnetic Cannon. The silver-white barrel, crackling with arcs of deep blue energy, was thicker than her arm. She held it in both hands as if holding a toy.

Quentin’s pupils shrank abruptly. He frantically mobilized all the surrounding metal debris to block his front, layering it piece by piece into a thick Shield.

Yin Zhen was also shocked. She thought, "You even brought an Electromagnetic Cannon back with you. Why on earth did you pay to hire me? Does showing off require an audience? Then your standards for picking an audience are pretty high!"

Bai Qiang smiled and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the Electromagnetic Cannon made her body jolt violently as a blinding blue beam erupted from the muzzle.

The beam slammed into the Shield, sending molten iron splattering everywhere. The metal melted and was pierced through; the Shield disintegrated as the beam’s energy dwindled.

Quentin was sent flying by the shockwave, rolling twice on the ground. Half of his body was charred black.

But he wasn’t dead.

Bai Qiang frowned, recalling the Saint Group’s Medicines. It seemed he had carried the enhancement Effects of those Medicines over to his body in this world, similar to the Effect when Players equipped their Character Cards.

Bai Qiang scoffed lightly. "You’re really hard to kill."

A hoarse voice suddenly came through Quentin’s earpiece. "The plan has changed. Fall back for now."

Gritting his teeth, Quentin raised his hand, ripping down the factory’s entire steel-framed roof and smashing it ruthlessly toward Bai Qiang.

WITH A LOUD CRASH, Bai Qiang’s figure darted out from the shadows of the falling debris. Quentin had already disappeared, and along with him, the corpse of Mao Xuewang was gone.

Bai Qiang stowed away the Electromagnetic Cannon. Her body transformed into a puff of black smoke, merging into the shadows at her feet as she gave chase.

Silence returned to the factory.

Yin Zhen slipped out from another patch of shadow, her feline eyes scanning the scattered corpses and the bloodstains dotting the debris. She quickly shifted back into her human form and pulled out several syringes she had prepared in advance from her fanny pack. She had bought them from several different pharmacies to avoid the staff calling the police.

"Collect the blood on the ground! Store it separately, and be quick!"

Since Yin Zhen had her Character Card equipped, the Shadow Servant could also use Shadow Control. It simultaneously split off several pitch-black shadow arms, delving beneath the rubble to gather blood samples from different areas at the same time.

Once the blood samples were collected, the Shadow Servant neatly laid the syringes in front of Yin Zhen.

Two sets of footsteps echoed from outside. Yin Zhen stashed the syringes in her fanny pack, turned back into a cat, and darted out through the hole in the roof, chasing after the direction where Bai Qiang and Quentin had vanished.

Thanks to the little kitten’s energy-saving mode, Yin Zhen’s Assimilation Degree was still under 20% since she had first set out. However, she acutely noticed that the Assimilation Degree was rising slower than before. The exact reason was still unclear; she would need to keep observing.

Bai Qiang was chasing Quentin, Yin Zhen was chasing Bai Qiang, and elsewhere, Nan Jiamu was still tracking Black Domain Walker.

But none of the three could have ever imagined that they would all track their respective targets to the exact same brick house by a suburban field.

When Bai Qiang arrived, Nan Jiamu was gritting her teeth at a line of text on a computer screen inside the house.

[Thanks for the hospitality. See you next time.]

"Damn it! Who is it?!"

Nan Jiamu dashed outside just as Bai Qiang emerged from the shadows.

Bai Qiang hadn’t spotted Quentin; she had merely followed the trail of blood on the ground all the way here. As their eyes met, Bai Qiang realized she had been tricked. These bloodstains had been planted by someone else.

Just as she prepared to teleport away, Nan Jiamu immediately pulled out a cinematic Clapperboard and forcefully snapped it shut.

CLACK!

"Action!"

An invisible Strength formed a sealed space.

[Clapperboard]: A classic black-and-white striped Clapperboard. Its edges are heavily worn, as if it has been used countless times.

[Item Effect]: Forcefully shut the Clapperboard and shout "Action!" All living creatures within a 50-meter radius centered on you will be forcibly locked onto the set. People outside cannot enter, and those inside cannot leave. While the set is active, everyone (including the user) cannot leave until 5 minutes have passed, or until you shut the Clapperboard again and shout "Cut!"

[Additional Rule]: Between shouting "Action!" and "Cut!", you can announce a "Shooting Rule." This rule cannot directly cause death and can only take Effect on one person once. Once the rule is in Effect, violators will suffer an "NG Penalty," freezing their bodies for 3 seconds.

Nan Jiamu awkwardly curled her toes, staring intently at the masked woman in front of her, and announced in a deep voice: "On this set, no disguises are allowed!"

Bai Qiang’s heart clenched. She swiftly clenched her fists, but before she was forced to take off her mask, a person abruptly appeared in the dense bushes about forty meters behind her—someone neither she nor Nan Jiamu had noticed earlier.

Bai Qiang turned her head and met the eyes of Yin Zhen, who had been forced to reveal her true form. Seeing the identical mask on the other woman’s face, Bai Qiang widened her eyes in astonishment.

In the next second, the two of them shouted at each other simultaneously:

"You are Heavenly Dao Rewards Diligence?"

"You are Blossoming Prosperity?"

They both shouted each other’s nicknames, attempting to confuse the situation.

Nan Jiamu’s brow twitched. "And you call this not knowing each other?"

"We don’t know each other!" they spoke in unison.

Nan Jiamu: "..."