By now, the toxic radiation fog below had risen to nearly fifteen ters in height, spreading across a radius of over one and a half kiloters — enough to blanket half a city.
There was truly no easy answer to a death zone like this. No wonder Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi, both veterans in their own right, had been at a complete loss.
They were temporarily immune to the radiation fog, sure — but blundering around blindly inside it was still a death sentence.
What neither of them had expected was that Li Wei, even in this desperate situation, actually had a way out. All they could say was that they had underestimated him.
Li Wei led the way, with Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi close behind. At their level, even with their eyes shut and nothing visible, their ability to sense the wind and pinpoint positions by sound alone was more than enough.
The only condition was that soone up front had to know the correct path.
In the blink of an eye, Li Wei had already descended to the sixth floor. The radiation fog was thick here — black vapor coiling and churning in a way that made the skin crawl. He plunged straight into it and imdiately felt a faint itching and stinging across his skin, as though even the air he breathed was scorching his lungs. Warning ssages flickered across his vision in rapid succession.
But it wasn't a serious problem. Immunity to Level 2 Blood Plague was no joke — all things considered, it was little more than mild discomfort.
And on top of that, he had just downed a Two-Star Blood Resistance Potion.
The only real nuisance was that inside the radiation fog, visibility was absolute zero.
Eyes open or eyes shut — it made no difference.
So Li Wei simply closed his eyes, holstered the two-handed heavy sword, and drew his Three-Star Dagger to lead the way.
And he was anything but slow.
He could navigate entirely through spatial feedback, Perception scanning, and most importantly, the three-dinsional map in his mind — precise down to every single step and every corner.
They descended three more floors in one unbroken run. At the third floor, he didn't continue downward. Instead, he said quietly, "Third window on the left — duck and jump!"
Then he leapt straight out through the third window on the left side. Three floors up — potentially lethal for an ordinary person, but for Li Wei, it was a perfectly manageable drop. He landed with both hands spread wide, body slightly bent, and in the very instant his feet touched the ground, he was already launching forward in a sprint toward the left.
Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi were equally impressive — they followed with a one-second gap between them, nearly replicating Li Wei's landing point with perfect fidelity, matching even his movents beat for beat.
Of course, only they could pull that off.
"Whoosh — whoosh — whoosh!"
A volley of projectiles tore through the radiation fog and slamd into the exact spot where the three had just landed. Li Yue dodged. Liang Yuzhi, coming up behind, didn't — over a dozen ice spikes caught her full on.
These spikes were noticeably more powerful than before — faster, hitting harder. A Level 4 Ability User.
But Liang Yuzhi didn't even glance at them. Eyes still shut, she gave a few casual sweeps of her Enchanted Sapper Shovel and batted every last spike aside.
Without breaking stride for a single second.
By then, Li Wei had already crossed to the other side of the street.
"Up the wall — follow my landing point."
Before the words had fully left his mouth, he had already stowed the dagger, gone hands-first, and scrambled up the side of a six-story building like a monkey, making straight for the fifth floor.
A heartbeat later, Li Yue followed with effortless ease, her landing point a perfect copy of his.
Then ca Liang Yuzhi — and behind her, from every direction, ca the sound of tearing air: ice spikes, bone shards, and agility-type Ability Users converging on them from all sides.
All of them had been pushed to Level 4 by the radiation fog — stronger, but stripped of every last shred of reason.
Slaughter had beco their only instinct.
They moved like piranhas scenting blood in the water, closing in to encircle the three from every angle.
The radiation fog didn't affect them in the slightest.
If anyone could have seen through the fog and witnessed this scene, it would have been a chilling sight.
The mont Li Wei's group hesitated even slightly — no, in truth they were already encircled. The entrances and exits of the six-story building were flooding with Level 4 Ability Users. The retreat was cut off, the path forward was blocked, and even the rooftop above was crawling with them.
Just as Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi were beginning to doubt, Li Wei suddenly accelerated and slamd himself headlong into the wall directly in front of him.
What is he—
"BOOM!"
The wall, which should have been solid, caved in with a massive hole.
It wasn't Li Wei's iron constitution or raw strength — he simply rembered that this particular section of wall had been riddled with cracks by what appeared to be a shell impact at so point. Under normal circumstances it still held together, but one good hit was all it needed to collapse.
"Jump! Eight ters!"
Li Wei shouted and stepped back two paces, took a running start, and launched himself through the pitch-black fog — a leap spanning over eight ters.
Eight ters away was the rooftop of another building.
Li Wei hit the roof in a roll and ca up in the sa motion, his Bloodthirsty War Spear already flying from his hand — it punched straight through the skull of a Level 4 Ability User who had been climbing up twenty ters away.
An instant later, a bowstring sang, and an arrow grazed past Li Wei's ear and drove clean through the heart of the sa target.
Both life cores — destroyed.
The archer: Li Yue.
Nothing special about it. Did people at their level really need ti to develop teamwork?
Li Wei didn't pause for a second. He strode forward, yanked out the Bloodthirsty War Spear, and pocketed the Universal Gold Card in passing — using it to restore his condition and simultaneously upgrade his two-handed heavy sword by one tier, from Three-Star to Four-Star.
He didn't linger to check the upgrade results. He called out:
"Tuck — four rotations!"
And dropped straight off the rooftop, tucking into a 360-degree spin that carried him precisely through a fourth-floor window.
Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi followed right behind him. They wove through the floor at speed while roars echoed from every direction outside. It seed even the Fla Duke had sensed sothing was wrong — Li Wei could feel his presence closing in rapidly.
But that was fine. Li Wei knew the Duke's energy signature intimately.
"Eighteen-ter run-up — jump!"
Li Wei called out low and sharp, then broke into a sprint. Even with debris scattered across the floor, he wove through it without a misstep, accelerating with every stride. The mont he reached the window, the run-up was complete — and he launched into a leap that cleared over twenty ters.
There was no margin for error.
Fortunately, Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi were genuinely formidable.
Using Li Wei's footfalls as reference points, Li Yue cleared the gap in an instant — perfect replication, one hundred percent.
Liang Yuzhi fell just a hair short — but Li Wei's hand shot out as if guided by instinct, catching her before she could slip and hauling her up.
"Damn it!" Liang Yuzhi swore, palms drenched in sweat. She had never done anything this insane in her life.
"Stay focused!"
Li Wei kept running. The Fla Duke had appeared — if they didn't move now, they'd be surrounded.
In truth, after this brief stretch of extre parkour, they had already shaken off most of the Level 4 Ability Users. The Fla Duke, however, was another matter.
Still, it wasn't a fatal problem. Two of his life cores had already been destroyed. In the short term he could regenerate injuries — a severed head could reattach, a broken leg could nd — but life cores were not sothing that recovered quickly.
If he had originally possessed four life cores, his current power was at most sixty percent of his peak. Without the radiation fog, Li Wei's group could have finished him outright.
Unless he was willing to abandon his reason entirely.
So now the Fla Duke was growing desperate.
He was racing to cut them off — but so advantages couldn't simply be overco by wanting to.
Li Wei's escape route was never fixed. With the ntal map at his disposal, he could change course at any mont. His mastery of the terrain ant that even without the fog, even against Ability Users with full visibility, no one could catch him.
And on top of that, the Fla Duke was currently lit up like a beacon.
Without Li Wei needing to say a word, both Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi could sense him clearly.
The two sides played cat and mouse through the fog for several loops — and then the opening ca.
"Fifteen ters ahead, turn left — three seconds!"
The mont Li Wei said it, Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi understood: a counterattack window, but only three seconds.
In the next instant, Li Wei stopped dead. Li Yue drew her blue greatsword, charged forward, and unleashed a brilliant cross-slash — eting the Fla Duke's humanoid form head-on in a direct clash.
Yes — without the radiation fog, with a clear field of battle, she had no fear of going toe-to-toe with the Fla Duke.
"Whoosh!"
The Fla Duke lost the exchange and, by reflex, dissolved into a swarm of fla bats that scattered upward in all directions.
It was a trick that worked every ti — reliable, effective, endlessly reusable.
Except he wasn't paying attention to who he was up against this ti.
Li Wei had already drawn the Three-Star War Bow in a flash, three armor-piercing arrows in his grip, the Tracker title active — bow drawn, waiting.
Beside him, Liang Yuzhi's twin hand crossbows opened up in a rapid volley — twenty bolts unleashed in an instant.
Her Perception was nothing to scoff at, and at under twenty ters, her accuracy was exceptional. In a heartbeat, eighteen of the fla bats went down.
But not a single life core among them — she couldn't sense it.
Neither could Li Wei. After losing two life cores, the Fla Duke had buried the remaining ones deep, making them nearly impossible to detect.
Repeating the old trick was going to be difficult.
But not impossible. Because everything leaves a trace.
The Fla Duke's flashy techniques cycling one after another were, in truth, accumulating tiny, barely perceptible flaws — and enough of those flaws stacking up would eventually walk right into the crosshairs.
What Li Wei was waiting for was that very small, very slim probability.
And if it didn't co now, it would co eventually — because right now, his coordination with Li Yue and Liang Yuzhi was truly seamless. There would always be another chance.
As it turned out, the mont ca sooner than expected.
When Liang Yuzhi's twenty bolts were spent, when Li Yue's cross-slash missed and she drew her Four-Star heavy bow to open fire into the air — the two hundred-odd fla bats that the Fla Duke had beco suddenly wheeled into a spiraling formation. Like a tornado, like an enormous fireball, they ca crashing down on Li Yue.
This was one of the Fla Duke's most powerful ranged attacks — the fla bats spinning in a frenzy, converging into a fireball whose core temperature could reach two thousand degrees in an instant. Even a refined steel tower shield would lt a gaping hole in seconds.
But it was also only in this mont that there was any chance of locking onto the Fla Duke's third life core.
Reviews
All reviews (0)