Although Xu Mo knew about this item, this was his first time seeing it.
Of the three trump card S-rank Containment Objects in Dawn City, S-024, the Blood Medal of Choice, was ranked the strongest, yet it had never once appeared.
Back when he played the game, he had suspected that this item might not have been officially contained by Dawn City at all, or perhaps its side effects were so severe that it was unusable and had been shelved indefinitely.
He never expected it to be in Liang Shuguang's hands!
How could he even pull this thing out?!
Liang Shuguang was simply too ruthless. His tricks were like water in a sponge—as long as one was willing to squeeze, there was always more.
But none of that mattered right now. The moment Xu Mo laid eyes on the object, his eyes gleamed with green, unadulterated greed.
He wanted this thing. He wanted it desperately!
He hurriedly called out in his mind, “Bai Feifei! Quickly enter that Slaughter God Mode state to lock your Sanity! Hurry!”
His immediate instinct was to exploit the system bug to contain this item, just as he had done with the Crown of Time Lag.
The prompt on his panel—【Do you want to contain directly?】—made his mouth water.
“Wh-what mode?” Bai Feifei couldn't just enter that state at will, and she was completely dazed at the moment.
Before Xu Mo could think of another way, Kong Man made her move.
She was a member of the Rangers, after all, and their organization's entire philosophy was to collect Containment Objects!
A water whip lashed out from her palm, tearing through the air with a sharp screech as it struck straight toward Liang Shuguang inside the tree cage, aiming to snatch the object from his grasp.
Before the water whip even arrived, the biting, frigid moisture had already caused a thin layer of frost to condense on Liang Shuguang's body.
Yet Liang Shuguang remained expressionless. In the next instant, he violently stabbed the Blood Medal of Choice directly into his own chest!
Buzz!
Instantly, a powerful, dark crimson light exploded from his chest, sweeping across the entirety of Dawn City's Inner City!
As the light swept past, Kong Man's water whip crumbled silently into nothingness the moment it made contact.
Kong Man's pupils contracted. The moment the light swept toward her, she immediately activated her Escape Art, her body dispersing into water vapor as she tried to dodge.
Before she could even process what she was facing, a massive golden phantom suddenly flashed in her peripheral vision.
It was the out-of-control Liu Yun. Her eyes glowed with golden light, and the phantoms of heavenly soldiers danced incessantly behind her.
A colossal golden palm, carrying a world-ending force, came crashing down in Kong Man's direction!
Kong Man cursed inwardly, realizing things were bad. It was better not to take this head-on; she had to dodge.
But in the next second, the palm did not fall.
Just as the energy was about to envelop her, Liu Yun's left hand suddenly clamped down hard on her own right wrist.
The golden phantom violently veered off course right before it could strike Kong Man. It grazed past her body and slammed into Qiu Jing's tree nearby, instantly pulverizing the already snapped giant trunk.
Liu Yun stood there, her body trembling violently. She pressed one hand against the other, the colors of her two eyes completely different.
One eye was clear, burning with her own will.
The other eye was wild, filled with the madness of wanting to attack everyone indiscriminately.
She looked like a half-human, half-aberrant creature.
Her lips quivered violently as her own powers clashed furiously against themselves. Struggling for control, she looked toward Kong Man and said:
“Stay away from me!”
“If you can, protect the others... don't let them get close to me.”
Kong Man: ?
She was dumbfounded. A top-tier Prophet had split into two consciousnesses and was currently fighting herself?
“What is... going on with you right now?”
Kong Man asked instinctively, but the moment the words left her mouth, she suddenly realized something was wrong!
She can no longer fly.
Not only could she not fly, but she couldn't even maintain her Escape Art form of turning into water vapor.
She had become an Edgerunner many years ago and was now a Prophet; she was long accustomed to soaring through the sky, diving into the earth, and merging with water.
But now, her body was being forcibly dragged back into its most primitive human form!
“Wait... what is this?!”
She only had time to let out a cry before she went into a free fall, plunging straight down from midair.
Splash!
She crashed into the street, which she had already turned into a vast body of water, kicking up a massive splash.
For a Prophet, looking this pathetic was incredibly humiliating.
But at this moment, no one cared about her plight.
Because everyone in the city was in a similar state.
Some of the ordinary Scavengers who were still struggling to resist aberration suddenly found themselves completely unable to move, their muscles freezing up like statues.
Others blacked out, losing consciousness without any warning—like Xie Xuan.
Some who had been in the middle of casting Word Souls suddenly lost all their power in the next second, staring at their hands in panic—like Ye Hanshan.
As for those who were already halfway through aberration, some completely finished their transformation in this instant, turning into genuine monsters.
Yet for others, the exact opposite happened: writhing bone spurs retracted, cracking skin healed, and the aberration actually halted—even reversed! They changed back into normal humans.
Standing on the slanting tree trunk, Xu Mo was the closest to the Blood Medal of Choice, so he naturally received the most direct impact.
His current state was extremely off.
Half of his body could not move.
His left hand and right leg had completely lost sensation, as if someone had directly severed the signals from his central nervous system.
Only his right hand and left foot could still move.
Half of his face was also numb. While the right side could still make expressions, the left side felt as though it had been injected with an overdose of anesthetic—his eyebrow, the corner of his mouth, and even his eyelid drooped, leaving him looking half-dead with facial paralysis.
“Fuck...” he cursed, the sound squeezing out from half of his mouth, slurred and indistinct.
Looking at the state of the others around him, he guessed that the function of the Blood Medal of Choice was likely to strip away a portion of the abilities of those enveloped by its light.
The Blood Medal of Choice... Keep some, discard some... Lose half, keep half?
Half choice, half sacrifice?
That was probably the gist of it. Although the actual mechanics were unlikely to be this simple, that was how it felt in practice.
But the current situation did not allow him the luxury of overthinking.
With only one hand and one foot left, he had become a top-tier cripple, completely uncoordinated.
And who knew if there were other side effects.
Clenching the sword in his right hand, Xu Mo thought to himself that this was going to be a really tough fight.
With only one hand and one foot, even though the Old-Timer loved to increase the difficulty when playing, he had never attempted such a high-difficulty stunt!
Just as he was thinking this, he suddenly noticed something was slightly off.
Why was he still standing so steadily?
If half of his body had completely lost control, it would be a proper case of hemiplegia. By all accounts, he should have lost his balance and toppled over by now.
Yet he did not fall. He remained standing firmly.
Shifting his still-controllable left eye downward, Xu Mo saw a shocking sight.
The left hand that he could not control was currently rising slowly, wrapping around his still-controllable right hand that held the sword.
Changing from a one-handed grip to a two-handed grip!
The sensation was incredibly bizarre. It was a very simple movement, and it was clearly his own body, but Xu Mo felt as if he were holding the sword together with another person, sending a shiver down his spine.
Xu Mo's pupils contracted sharply, his expression turning slightly blank.
Then, the corner of the mouth on that half of his face which should have been paralyzed and unable to move suddenly twitched.
Xu Mo felt “his” mouth move uncontrollably, and a slightly bewildered, somewhat flustered voice slipped out.
It was Bai Feifei's voice!
“What... what's going on?”
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