Fortunately, the woman was well aware of her predicament.
Everyone in the warehouse stared at her intently, waiting to see what would come out of that mouth.
“His body is indeed not a player's, nor is it a human body. We don't know exactly what it is, and he never mentioned it...”
This was another useless answer. The tip of Cheng Shuili's blade pressed an inch closer, forcing the woman to speed up her speech: “But! But his consciousness... his consciousness comes from another grand region! He also said he was American. His purpose in coming here was to assassinate you. You are the rank one player in our partition and the only player to have been announced across the entire server; you are too much of a threat.”
The pressure of the blade eased significantly, and the woman's speech slowed down, but the amount of information she provided did not.
“He said that current highway merges are only happening within partitions of the same grand region, but later on, various grand regions will merge randomly. He said... he said that there will definitely be a full-server leaderboard! When that time comes, you—you will be the biggest threat to them reaching the top!”
“He said... he said that as long as they killed you, our region, the entire Dragon Country, would lose its strongest player. When the full-server merge happens in the future, they would be able to occupy an absolute advantage! He promised... that as long as they succeeded, he would take us to transfer regions and go to their side to enjoy better resources and status!”
The woman's voice was hoarse, almost like a sob. “We... what did we do wrong?! We just didn't want to wait for death in this desperate world!”
The burly man's face turned ash-gray; he collapsed completely, knowing that everything was over.
Cheng Shuili slowly withdrew her blade.
She looked at these two people who had betrayed their compatriots and invited a wolf into the house for the sake of an ethereal promise. There was no anger in her heart, only an extreme sense of coldness and disgust.
Cheng Shuili did not judge the right or wrong of their choice; she only understood one thing: they had indeed followed Fengyun Tianxia to assassinate her.
She would certainly not spare those who wanted to kill her.
Cheng Shuili stated the facts in a low voice: “You did intend to kill me, and you even prayed in your hearts that Fengyun Tianxia would succeed. Since that is the case...”
She turned around, her back to the two wretched captives, and moved her lips to speak the final half of the sentence: “Why should I spare you?”
“No... we...”
The woman tried to argue, her lips trembling, but she could not form a complete sentence.
The burly man was even more utterly broken, his eyes filled only with despairing ash.
Cheng Shuili no longer looked at them. She tilted her head slightly and said to Ailin and Xinxue behind her: “Clear them out.”
The tone was as flat as if she were saying “clean this up.”
Ailin's gaze sharpened, and she raised her gun without hesitation.
Xinxue seemed to hesitate for half a second, but upon seeing Cheng Shuili's cold profile and the eerie, headless body on the ground, she immediately tightened her finger on the trigger.
“No!”
“Spare us! We can still...”
The pleas for mercy and the sound of gunfire rang out almost simultaneously, then ceased abruptly.
Xinxue's shot was extremely precise.
After two short, muffled gunshots, the warehouse returned to complete silence, leaving only the rain drumming tirelessly against the roof.
Master of Slacking stared at the corpse of Fengyun Tianxia on the ground and suddenly raised a hand to touch his own neck. He hadn't known about any of this... he had only accepted supplies to act as a human ticket booth...
Crow... surely Crow wouldn't kill him too, right?
Master of Slacking was panicked, but Cheng Shuili had no time to spare for him right now.
Her mind was still occupied with the matter of Fengyun Tianxia.
A body that wasn't human... yet could carry the consciousness of another human? What on earth was this thing?
The smooth cross-section shimmered with the cold, hard luster of metal under the dim light, lacking any texture typical of biological tissue; it looked more like a piece of specially cut, advanced alloy.
“Not a player, not a monster, but... a consciousness from another grand region?”
She muttered to herself, her brow furrowed.
This explained many things, but it also brought more questions.
How was this kind of “cross-border” assassination achieved?
How did the opponent find her specific partition?
And would her decapitation of this vessel affect the consciousness? Also... what was the situation in the American grand region right now? They actually had the spare time to use items to assassinate her?
Cheng Shuili walked over to Fengyun Tianxia's headless body and gently poked at the severed neck with the tip of her blade.
Full-server announcement, rank one...
It turned out that in a corner unknown to anyone, she had long since become a target in the eyes of others.
Future highway merges would be a brutal collision between nations and regions.
But so what?
Just as Fengyun Tianxia could only be decapitated by her, one would simply meet challenges as they came. Being anxious in advance served no purpose.
And this experience served merely as a reminder to Cheng Shuili.
Cheng Shuili sheathed the Night Hunt, the long blade making a crisp sound as it returned to its scabbard, breaking the deathly silence of the warehouse.
“We should go.”
She suddenly said this, and only after speaking did she check the system time.
Her intuition was correct; only 20 minutes remained until the peak of the second acid rain.
Leaving early was always better than being caught in a panic.
Before leaving the warehouse, Cheng Shuili stuffed all the remaining coatings into the Abyss Ring. Only empty wooden crates and a headless corpse remained on the floor.
Cheng Shuili thought for a moment and decided to stuff Fengyun Tianxia's body into the Abyss Ring as well.
This thing's bulletproof effect was truly excellent. If the materials of the Night Hunt hadn't been top-tier, Cheng Shuili really wouldn't have been able to handle him today.
Besides, for such a bizarre thing as a cross-region assassination, the materials used must surely be top-notch.
She couldn't tell what this thing was right now, but she could take it to show the monster merchant NPC at the gas station, or perhaps show it to Lion Nian.
Regardless, it was better than leaving it here.
And that dagger—it could block the Night Hunt, so how could it be an ordinary item?
There was no time to look now; Cheng Shuili simply shoved it into the Abyss Ring.
“Let's go.”
Cheng Shuili offered no further explanation, turning first to walk with long strides toward the warehouse entrance.
The shelter they chose was the same one as last time.
It was close and familiar, which naturally made it the best choice.
But just as Cheng Shuili stepped inside, she received a notification.
【The current shelter has already provided protection once and is now invalid. Please find a new shelter!】
Her expression changed, and the others who entered behind her also frowned, clearly having seen the same prompt. Now was not the time for complaints; fortunately, they had arrived early, and since they discovered it couldn't be used now, there was still time!
But it was still worth cursing!
The system chose not to warn them early or late, but specifically at the moment players entered the shelter a second time. This intent... was truly malicious!
Cheng Shuili immediately pulled up the map that Ginger Candy had discovered to search for the location of the next nearest shelter.
Qi Wanyi also simply leaned over to look with her. Very quickly, both their gazes landed on the same spot.
Rate on N.U.
