With the girl by her side, she had no more worries. She swung the Dawn Haze Blade, carving a path through the front. Even when a puppet occasionally tried to sneak an attack while she was off-guard, Tang Xin would notice and deal with it in time.
From beginning to end, Tang Xin’s combat intuition had exceeded her expectations.
The girl had grown up on the Star of Art, rarely encountering danger or undergoing the rigors of combat training.
Her tactical training didn't exceed the scope of the academy's curriculum, yet she could steadily keep pace with Xu Xiaoyou's steps. It was as if she could read her mind, always taking action one step ahead and coordinating with her next offensive move.
Likewise, Xu Xiaoyou could guess the intent behind every one of the girl’s actions in battle, making timely adjustments to defend or break through, creating a perfect environment for the girl to chant.
This sense of mutual understanding, of being able to trust one's back to another person, allowed her to stop holding back.
She flashed past a dozen lunging puppet figures, aiming straight for a single puppet hidden behind the crowd.
Its appearance didn't differ much from the puppets around it; it even looked more inconspicuous than those refugee puppets. It was easily overlooked in the black tide, but it was precisely this deliberate concealment that caught Xu Xiaoyou's attention.
Intuition told her that the puppet before her possessed a support ability, capable of strengthening all puppets within its vicinity. It reminded her of a standard-bearer in a group battle; their powerful group buffs and morale-boosting abilities made them the first priority to be eliminated on the battlefield. This place was no exception.
Just then, black mist surged around her. From the shadows, a puppet figure draped in a black cloak and wielding two snake-fang daggers broke through the void, lunging toward her!
She saw his face the moment the dagger thrust forward. It was Lin Xing. The youth’s former refreshing smile was gone, his face covered in a dim glaze-gray, and his lifeless pupils held nothing but the silence of death.
He was being controlled by silk threads—or rather, his body, which had long been under the control of silk threads, had recently been converted into a puppet.
This long-hidden attack was extremely sharp. A cold light flashed at her neck, but the wound that should have been fatal was blocked by two layers of protective water. One was the water barrier Xu Xiaoyou cast herself, and the other came from Tang Xin behind her.
She ignored him directly. Before he could launch a second strike, she stepped on the head of a refugee puppet and leaped into the air.
She pounced on the puppet at the very back, piercing its upper body with a single blade, then slashed horizontally, cutting open its chest along with its head!
After she dealt with this puppet, the bodies of most of the surrounding puppets began to shake violently. As if their souls had been plucked out, they struggled for a moment before collapsing one after another, emitting a series of dull thuds.
Only a few puppets remained standing, still moving toward them. For a moment, an eerie silence hung in the air, broken only by the crisp clattering of the puppets' movements and the distant rumble of thunder on the horizon.
As expected, the mental strength of a single puppeteer couldn't possibly control so many puppets at once. The mental capacity of a grade 3 rank wasn't vast enough for that. This puppet acted like a relay, receiving commands and controlling these ordinary puppets on behalf of the puppeteer.
With the relay destroyed, these puppets lost their control, and naturally, their support and strength vanished.
Having finished this, Xu Xiaoyou looked at the puppet Lin Xing nearby, wondering what he would do next.
However, the opponent seemed to have received an instruction. He didn't attack Tang Xin as she expected, but instead turned and vanished into the night, running off into the distance.
There was no doubt that the one controlling the puppet Lin Xing was the puppeteer himself. Being able to change tactical commands in real-time based on the battle situation meant only one thing: that puppeteer was currently nearby, in a place where he could observe the entire battlefield.
Yorick was most likely within the settlement. Just as she thought, after she repeatedly showed openings, the puppeteer finally couldn't sit still and took the initiative to drop the facade and attack, hoping to take them down one by one.
This confirmed her initial judgment: the puppeteer had been observing them all these days.
From that basement before leaving the city, to the snowfields, the Fars Mountain Range, and finally this refugee settlement—every conversation they had, every argument, and every move had been watched by the opponent.
And the spy he planted was Lin Xing, at least that was what appeared on the surface for now.
The enemy was in the dark while they were in the light. Xu Xiaoyou’s mind quickly raced through her next strategy.
"To catch a sly rabbit, the difficulty isn't in grabbing its swift body, but in luring it out of its hole. The most crucial step has already been completed."
Tang Xin also realized something and stepped up to Xu Xiaoyou's side. "That puppeteer is in the settlement right now?"
"Yeah," Xu Xiaoyou nodded in response.
"Then what should we do next?"
"Same as before. Find the others and regroup."
Xu Xiaoyou said. She and Tang Xin then dealt with the remaining puppets nearby and rushed toward the stilt house.
Before dawn, they broke through several layers of encirclement and happened to find Lin Sheng on a street near the stilt house.
The man’s clothes were reduced to tattered rags. Large patches of blood spread across his upper body, and deep, crisscrossing wounds—some deep enough to show bone—marred his sturdy back, looking quite gruesome.
Behind him followed a dense mass of puppets. Figures shifted as this surging black tide crashed through the street. The limbs and faces of the refugee puppets were tangled together, their expressions either grinning wildly, weeping, or terrified. At a glance, they looked like a crawling, demonic mountain of corpses, consuming everything in their path.
Lin Sheng’s aura was heavy with the scent of blood and a thick killing intent, as if he had just fought his way out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
As soon as he reached the two girls, he asked, "Have you seen Lin Xing?"
"He’s a puppet," Xu Xiaoyou said, then added after a thought, "He attacked us just a moment ago."
A complex look flashed across Lin Sheng’s face, and only after a long silence did he let out a sigh.
Xu Xiaoyou asked, "What about Chen San?"
Lin Sheng shook his head. "I didn't see him when I woke up. I don't know where he went."
As they spoke, two more groups of puppets arrived, swarming from both the left and right sides of the street. In this purgatory the puppeteer had meticulously prepared for them, these refugee puppets seemed endless, appearing from every direction.
Even after being struck down, faces they had killed moments ago would reappear in the black tide, dragging their rotting bodies along.
Just as they were backed into a corner and about to face another bloody battle, they suddenly heard several low calls coming from near the street corner.
The three turned their heads and saw several figures waving at them from an alley. They were the refugee youths they had met during the day yesterday.
"Quick, come here! Follow us, we'll take you somewhere safe!"
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