Chapter 794: The Prey Might Be the Hunter
The room was utterly silent. Little Yuan crouched by the door waiting for a while, and when she saw several figures approaching from the end of the alley, she hurriedly stood up and tapped lightly on the door.
There was no response from inside, but people had appeared at both ends of the alley, and even the rooftop of the building across the way was occupied.
Little Yuan pressed herself against the wall in fear.
One person stepped forward, waving for her to move aside.
Little Yuan clearly recognized the man, her body instinctively flinching at the sight of him, yet she still refused to budge.
The man frowned at this and asked his companion, "How old is this girl?"
"She'll be ten soon."
"Old enough." The speaker gestured for his companion to remove Little Yuan, but at that moment, the door beside them swung open.
Xu Huo was still seated in his wheelchair, and to make it easier to get through, the door had been left wide open, which also allowed everyone outside to see clearly what was happening inside.
The children had long since been scared stiff, and the adults were all lying on the floor, the blood pooled around them making it impossible for anyone to still be alive.
The wheelchair rolled out the door, and Xu Huo swept his gaze over everyone, both near and far. "Quite a crowd you've gathered. Saves me the trouble of hunting you down one by one."
He casually flipped through the thug's phone, pausing on one of the photos, then held it up. "This is you, right?"
The question was directed at the man who had asked about Little Yuan's age.
"Don't think that just because you're a player, you can ignore the rules here." The man retreated a few steps, hiding behind the others, and added, "We've got plenty of ways to deal with a single injured player!"
The moment he finished speaking, a net shot down from above.
It was an item, though not a particularly high-grade one. Xu Huo dealt with it with a single swing of his sword. With one flick of his lighter, the two players who had lunged in with the net were set ablaze and tumbled out of mid-air. Before they could even get back on their feet, one had his throat slit open, while the other was hoisted high into the air by piano wire, then sent crashing down.
The height wasn't enough to kill a player, but it was more than sufficient to break bones. The player looked up at Xu Huo, gritted his teeth, and tried to retreat, but unfortunately, a kite string was already flying his way the very next second!
Seeing the danger, the player immediately ducked back into the game.
But the kite string didn't miss its mark entirely. It snagged one of the thugs nearby, and the burly man was yanked clean off his feet, then sent flying by a punch from Xu Huo, even from two or three meters away, the sound of his sternum shattering was clearly audible. Two seconds later, the man who had slammed into the street wall across the way went limp.
"Click! Click! Click!" The lighter flicked open and shut. Several thugs on the periphery were set alight, and once the flames caught, the group could no longer think about anything else, scattering in panic in every direction.
"It's late, no need to disturb people's rest." Xu Huo was quick on the draw, using the kite string to yank them all back, then reaping a few more lives in the process.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, half of the people present had fallen. The thug who had been so arrogant just moments before shouted frantically toward the end of the alley, "Brother Xing! If you don't make your move now, none of us are getting out of here alive!"
Only then did two figures emerge from the mouth of the alley. One of them threw out a black cloth, and the moment it wrapped around the thugs, the flames on their bodies were instantly extinguished, though their severe injuries were unavoidable.
But these two players didn't care about the lives of the small-time thugs. One of them charged at Xu Huo, running up the wall, while the other leaped several meters into the air, launching a coordinated attack from above!
The Crimson Sword cut through the air, and Xu Huo first forced the former back with one hand, then raised an air barrier to block the one dropping from the sky. Seizing the moment when the two were within close range, he retracted the Concentrated Air and activated Extreme Fatigue and Progress Bar Disappearance.
The two players' movements visibly slowed, but at that moment, Xu Huo's wheelchair seemed to slide toward them on its own, as if it were on ice.
The distance between them was already short. The two players worked in perfect tandem. One stood three meters away and pressed both palms together, and an invisible force squeezed the wheelchair from both sides. No matter how fast the wheels spun, there was no changing the fate of the chair being crushed and deformed, and the person sitting in it was as good as embedded in the wheelchair, unable to break free!
At the same time, the other player whipped out a pink ribbon that wrapped itself around Xu Huo and the wheelchair together, preemptively preventing him from escaping. Then he pulled out a spear-like item and thrust it forward!
To be fair, these two weren't slow, and their coordination with their items was decent. They even kept their distance during the fight, and a gap of even two or three meters could limit the effectiveness of an item. However, this also exposed a major weakness: they relied too heavily on their items and characteristics, and their items weren't of particularly high grade to begin with.
Xu Huo raised the Eye of the Dead to block the spear, shoved it aside, and first cut through the ribbon around him. Just then, the force crushing the wheelchair disappeared. He turned his head and smiled at that player.
The man's face went pale with shock, and he immediately tried to back away, but he didn't realize when a kite string had pierced his leg. With the tug-and-pull between retreat and restraint, the player was dragged to the ground and finished off with a single sword stroke.
Then Xu Huo turned his gaze to the remaining player.
"Brother Xing..." The thug leader's voice trembled. "Just kill him already!"
With his companion dead, Brother Xing had no mind to spare for the thug. One moment of distraction could be exploited, and if Xu Huo could still find a chance to use his items even while bound and crushed, then in a one-on-one fight, his opponent would have even more opportunities.
"Your items aren't bad, too bad you're a cripple!" Brother Xing retracted his spear and switched to a whip, keeping his distance before attacking from afar.
But before he could even get a single whip strike out, he felt the ground vanish beneath his feet. A large pit had appeared out of nowhere, and he only managed to steady himself after falling for several seconds. But when he looked up, he found himself standing right in front of the wheelchair!
Before the fear from meeting his opponent's eyes could even translate into action, his heart had already been run through.
Xu Huo pulled out his sword, raised his perfectly fine right foot, and kicked the man into the wall. Then he turned to Little Yuan and said, "A weakness you show openly isn't necessarily a real weakness. Stay alert. Watch closely. Because it might be a trap."
Little Yuan was caught between fear and excitement. She ran over to the wheelchair and shouted loudly, "I've got it, Teacher!"
Xu Huo raised a slight eyebrow but didn't bother to correct her. After cleaning up the few remaining thugs, he got ready to leave.
"I saw several people on the rooftops just now." Little Yuan took the initiative to push the wheelchair, speaking in a hushed tone.
"As long as they don't come over, they're none of our business." Xu Huo pointed at the corpses on the ground. "Any more left?"
Little Yuan nodded emphatically. "Two more! I know where they are!"
Xu Huo let her push him there.
People followed them the whole way, but no one made a move. Xu Huo easily dealt with the human trafficking organization and then returned to the inn with Little Yuan.
The innkeeper had already packed his bags and was ready to make a run for it. The moment he saw Xu Huo come back, his eyelid twitched, and he rushed over with a fawning smile. "You're back so soon?"
Xu Huo glanced at the vehicle loaded with gasoline and food. "I'm borrowing your car."