Chapter 854: has a sequel.

During that brief moment of distraction, the middle-aged woman had already swept up all the items from the desk. She clashed with the Black Epaulets members who had arrived in pursuit, while Xu Huo retreated to the outer edge of the fight, offering support from time to time.

The Black Epaulets reacted quickly. Within a short period after the signal went out, two waves of reinforcements arrived one after another. Yet the already-exposed middle-aged woman didn't leave District 011 immediately. Instead, she chose to lock horns with the Black Epaulets.

The commotion here quickly drew the attention of several Black Epaulets captains, including the pair of robots stationed beside Ran Ying.

The Black Epaulets deployed interference devices targeting items, which could disable certain items and imposed restrictions on both friend and foe alike. However, the Black Epaulets had battle strategies and handled this situation with ease, whereas the middle-aged woman found herself hampered at every turn.

But soon, several more players appeared from different directions, destroying two interference devices one after another and tearing a gap in the encirclement. The group, along with the middle-aged woman, made their way toward the courthouse building.

Xu Huo broke away from the Black Epaulets' formation, shed his disguise, and adopted a new face before melting into the crowd. He moved with the surging mass of people, observing the courthouse building's movements from a distance.

The trial must have been halted the moment he escaped the building. Now the entire interior was clogged with something like black smoke. Based on the transmissions between Black Epaulets members from afar, visibility couldn't penetrate the black smoke from either side. Lower-ranked Black Epaulets had been ordered to stay out of the building, and news of a prisoner's escape was also leaking out.

Xu Huo confirmed they had obtained the train ticket, but they hadn't left despite having it, and other Holy Sword Society members were coordinating from the sidelines. This suggested the Holy Sword Society hadn't achieved their objective in coming to District 011, and perhaps even the arrest and trial phases had been heavily diluted with deception.

"Boom!"

Just then, the ground beneath his feet shuddered violently, followed by a thunderous roar in the distance. The entire city fell silent for a moment.

Limited by their field of vision, the crowd scanned the horizon but couldn't locate the source of the incident. However, someone soon learned what had happened from their communicator. "The Night Orchid Laboratory exploded!"

The Night Orchid Laboratory was located in a nearby mid-tier city, the same tier-three laboratory Qing Cai had mentioned earlier.

Sure enough, the box Director Sanyang had left behind was a decoy.

And after the explosion, the Black Epaulets surrounding the building visibly shifted their focus. Led by Ran Ying, she withdrew half the captains and a third of the Black Epaulets from the battle, rushing toward the explosion site without delay.

Not long after they left, Ahsis Vilner emerged from the building with his companions. Their faces were grim, and once outside, they immediately directed their players and government players to coordinate in pursuing the few Holy Sword Society players who had fled.

But the moment this group came out, the previous scene replayed itself—players in different positions and different states fell dead one after another. The range was vast, the distances immense, with some players dying even from across an entire building!

Normally, no item had such a massive kill radius. Even if one did, intervening physical obstacles would render it ineffective or drastically reduce its power. The scene before them was clearly wrong!

"Any Holy Sword Society player, or anyone suspected of being a Holy Sword Society player, is to be executed on sight!" Ahsis reacted quickly. Since this item couldn't be limited by space or distance, hiding or retreating wouldn't help. The best solution was to kill the item's holder!

Xu Huo had already slipped away from the crowd.

The method used to kill Black Epaulets earlier and now to kill government players was identical, the same technique Xu Huo recognized.

He had seen this method once in the classified archives of Zone 014, once in Zone 009, and counting today, this was the third time.

During the Super Item incident, the Special Defense Department only knew such an item existed and that the personnel list had been leaked, but they had no idea how the item actually killed people.

In Zone 009, Xu Huo and Yan Jiayu had witnessed several players using a piece of paper with names written on it, striking names off one by one, killing Zone 009 players through this method. However, the slain player hadn't been found carrying that item afterward—which might not have been the full truth, but it did give him another lead: the player who used paper-name striking to kill was suspected to be connected to the Holy Sword Society.

Now in District 011, it was confirmed beyond doubt that these were Holy Sword Society members, but this item had fallen into the hands of a female player.

In Zone 014, a Gold Disciple of the Holy Sword Society had appeared, so the Special Defense Department naturally assumed the killing was done by a high-grade item. In Zone 009, the same item appeared in the hands of several unremarkable players. And just days after leaving Zone 009, the same item had turned up in District 011.

When the middle-aged woman had been destroying the items in the secret room, Xu Huo had glimpsed what was laid out on the desk.

A blood sample obtained from the Black Epaulets, and it was open.

Scattered Black Epaulets identity cards.

An ordinary, freshly used palette.

A bottle of purified water.

An ordinary pen.

These were the things he could see at a glance. Though he had never seen the same kind of paper, the combination of these items revealed the killing method of that paper item.

First, you needed the victim's real name, or perhaps their appearance as well.

Second, you needed their blood, possibly mixed with some special substance to create a "ink" suitable for writing.

Finally, you used that special "ink" to write down their real name.

That was the preparatory work before killing.

In other words, back then the Special Defense Department thought they had only leaked a name list, but in reality, the blood samples of those elite players had likely been taken as well.

Only then could the killing conditions be fulfilled.

But since this item had appeared in the hands of players of different ranks and required a considerable amount of preparation time, it would be extremely difficult for it to appear in Zone 009 and then in District 011 within such a short span. Though transferring items wasn't difficult, this clearly involved massive preparatory work. If the item wasn't delivered in time, it could easily delay the plan—far too unreliable.

Moreover, passing such a lethal item between different players was also impractical.

Given these premises, combined with the circumstances of the slain player in Zone 009, it was easy to reach a conclusion—this paper that killed by striking off names was a single-use item.

That was why it appeared in different players' hands, appeared across different game partitions within extremely short periods, and after the holder was killed, the item vanished without a trace.

Speaking of killing with paper, Xu Huo's first thought went to the Paper Artisan. That person was a super player who could create items like the paper phone, so a paper killing item wasn't out of the question. However, the game backend had recently announced the feud between the Paper Artisan and the Holy Sword Society. The two sides shouldn't have any friendly relations, so it seemed unlikely that the Paper Artisan's items would be so easily stolen by the Holy Sword Society.

Aside from loss, the remaining possibility was purchase.

Unless this item wasn't the Paper Artisan's.

But now that the item's usage method was known, there was no need to trace its origin. Knowing how to defend against it was enough.

Xu Huo found a slain Black Epaulets member and took his communicator.