Am I... Going to Die?

After Li Ming lured away the Code??? Clone I, the guard team's pressure eased considerably. Their main task now was to eliminate the suicide warriors. With reinforcements arriving and their formation redeployed,

those suicide warriors were quickly cleaned up by Li Ming. However, they did not go to support him immediately, instead stopping within a relatively safe distance.

Since the place where Li Ming and Code??? Clone I were fighting was an intersection, the local California guard team could quickly form an encirclement.

The guard team deployed their positions two hundred meters away. There were eight armored vehicles and over two hundred personnel. Every guard merely readied their weapons and waited for their superior's orders.

Yet that superior made no move. He simply held his radio and silently watched Li Ming fight Code??? Clone I.

In truth, in his eyes, Li Ming, who could contend with a monster like that, was no normal person either. After all, both of them looked human. They were probably some other freakish thing cooked up by the higher-ups.

"Sir, we couldn't find any information on that monster. There isn't any information on that man either."

"Shit, what the hell are you all good for? Forget the monster—how can you not find anything on that man?!"

The officer cursed under his breath. They had intended to use Li Ming's appearance to find information on him, but unfortunately, his subordinates had brought him no good news.

And so, the guard team watched them remain deadlocked for a full half hour. The battle situation had not changed much, but a new order came through his radio.

"Director Fiss, have the guard team cooperate with that warrior's operation. This is the latest order from above. Eliminate the monster immediately. Do not cause panic among the civilians."

"Do you know what you're saying? Even rockets have no effect on that monster. Are you sure this isn't some new toy those bastards came up with?"

"Please carry out the order, Director Fiss."

"Damn it, you're asking my men to throw their lives away..."

"Carry out the order!"

As the voice fell silent, the static of the disconnected radio grated on his ears. With no other choice, Fiss gritted his teeth and went through with it. Still, he was not completely foolish. They had enough ammunition for now, so they would first imitate that warrior's strategy and focus on wearing it down from range.

Fiss relayed the order to the guard team, and they finally sprang into action. Individual rocket launchers, USP submachine guns, and more—all of them opened fire. Even Fiss held a Colt Guardian pistol and fired repeatedly at Code??? Clone I.

When the guard team opened fire on Code??? Clone I, Li Ming noticed that the monster's movements changed again. It began deploying an energy shield and a gravity field. The powerful gravity field was like an invisible aura barrier; once erected, it rendered everything within three meters untouchable.

But Li Ming noticed a detail. Ever since the guard team began attacking, the monster had not fired its beams again. Rather than disdain, it seemed more like it could not fire them. It was as if, after deploying the gravity field, it no longer had the energy to use other skills.

"Can it only use two skills at once?"

Li Ming pondered in secret. He felt as though he had grasped something. He holstered his twin guns, used Vermillion Bird Treading Clouds beneath his feet, and kept moving through Code??? Clone I's blind spots, waiting for an opportunity.

When Li Ming came within five meters of Code??? Clone I, it spotted him. But what concerned Li Ming more was that Code??? Clone I's movements suddenly changed.

As the guard team fired their last tactical rocket, the bar representing the energy shield directly dropped to zero. Sure enough, the energy shield vanished from sight.

Li Ming was immediately delighted. He drew Moon God's Protection with a backhand motion and decisively unleashed Crescent Strike. The gray-black bullet struck Code??? Clone I.

Unlike before, when it had been neutralized by the energy arcs, the gray-black bullet successfully made contact with Code??? Clone I's body this time. A purple-black energy field appeared around it.

Code??? Clone I was shrouded in purple-black currents, as though it had entered a state of stagnation. But compared to the effect Li Ming had achieved on Zhu Yan, this spatial-temporal rupture was far from ideal. Li Ming could even see Code??? Clone I's hand beginning to move, its core glowing faintly red.

Not good. The 3.3-second spatial-temporal rupture might not hold.

Li Ming's heart tightened. His feet did not stop moving as he widened his stance and aligned his waist and hips. Then he exerted force through his calf, and his body shot forward like a bullet.

"Inch Punch: Mountain Collapse!"

His fist struck Code??? Clone I in the lower abdomen. Unfortunately, Code??? Clone I was not human and felt no pain.

Code??? Clone I flew high into the air from Li Ming's punch. Then, amid a flash of yellow light, Li Ming leaped into the sky, passed directly over Code??? Clone I, and flew above it.

"Inch Punch: Heaven Render!"

His body spun like a battle-axe as he chopped down heavily. Wrapped in yellow light, Code??? Clone I crashed hard into the ground, smashing out a huge pit.

Then Li Ming gathered power in his hands. A yellow energy sphere quickly formed, and in just one second, it had grown to a diameter of one meter. As he thrust both palms forward, the enormous energy sphere tore through the dust and struck Code??? Clone I, which had already risen to its feet inside the pit.

Three-point-three seconds was still too tight. Honestly, even when grinding the Abyss, he had never rerolled for points this hard.

What Li Ming found regrettable was that he had originally wanted to strike the core directly. Yet when he attacked it, most of his force was blocked by that faint red glow before it could land on Code??? Clone I.

Looking at the health bar above Code??? Clone I's head, Li Ming had a headache. Sure enough, that entire combo had only taken away one-third of its second health bar.

Adding in the damage from wearing it down alongside the guard team earlier, this damned thing still had a total of three-quarters of its health left.

"What a headache!"

Fortunately, that damned thing's shield had not recovered yet. For Li Ming, that was probably the best news possible.

Gritting his teeth, he charged forward, deciding to take it down in one go before the shield recovered.

"Inch Punch: Azure Dragon Emerging from Water: Rock Break!"

"Inch Punch: Azure Dragon Emerging from Water: Cloud Mist!"

"White Tiger Listens to the Wind, Sixth Form!"

At that moment, Li Ming felt as though he had left the beginner village, mastered all his skills, and returned only to discover that the boss was an upgraded version of the beginner village boss.

He unleashed everything he had learned since arriving in this world. His moves were ferocious as a tiger, but when he checked the results—great, the health bar was now at a little over two. Mm, truly an outstanding result.

However, after striking that iron lump of a body on Code??? Clone I, the back of Li Ming's hand was now drenched in blood. Faint red veins, three or four centimeters long, had appeared around his right wrist, though they went unnoticed beneath the blood.

Ever since Code??? Clone I had been struck by the spatial-temporal rupture, it seemed as though it had suddenly crashed. But it only crashed for half a minute. After Li Ming finished his combo and pulled back five or six meters,

the guard team resumed their barrage. Fiss had figured it out just now: as long as they could break that monster's shield, the rest could be left to the warrior.

What else was there to say? When poor, strike precisely. When rich, saturate with firepower.

What, they had armor-piercing rounds too? Bring them up immediately!

In any case, they did not waste words and simply unleashed a storm of fire.

The dust kicked up by bullets and artillery blurred Li Ming's vision, but he could see that the shield beneath Code??? Clone I's health bar had reappeared.

Gritting his teeth, he prepared to keep wearing this damned thing down.

But suddenly, all the surrounding dust and flames vanished. The air cleared, as though it had been washed clean. As the red light in Code??? Clone I's core flashed, the gravity field instantly covered a radius of fifty meters.

Li Ming felt his once-light body turn as heavy as lead. He could not move at all.

He could only watch Code??? Clone I draw closer and closer. As it approached, the oppressive force of the gravity field became increasingly heavy.

How many times gravity was this?

Li Ming had already been pressed so hard by the gravity that he could not straighten his body. Even when facing Triple Gravity at the airport before, he had never felt such crushing weight.

Code??? Clone I approached step by step, and Li Ming's eyes were filled with horror.

"What are you doing? Keep firing! Don't let that monster get close to that warrior!" Fiss roared when he saw the surrounding team members lower their weapons.

The deputy captain swallowed. "N-No, Director Fiss. All our weapons fail the moment they enter that monster's range."

"What?!" Fiss was horrified as well. Everything had been fine just moments ago, so how had it suddenly turned into this? Refusing to believe it, Fiss raised his Colt Guardian and fired.

After the brass bullet entered within fifty meters of Code??? Clone I, its trajectory abruptly changed, plunging sharply toward the ground.

It flew less than ten meters before falling to the ground with a crisp clink.

Fiss was at a complete loss, his face looking terrible. What kind of damned monster was this? After today, he was definitely filing a complaint with the higher-ups about those bastards.

Code??? Clone I approached Li Ming step by step and extended its core toward him. Li Ming could even clearly see the golden-red patterns wrapped around the scarlet translucent orb.

This was actually Li Ming's best chance to attack, but he did not have even a shred of strength to resist the gravity around him. This was simply an impossible problem: solve the core to dispel the gravity field, but solve the gravity field before he could solve the core.

Was this some kind of nesting-doll trap?!

The instant the core touched Li Ming's chest, it erupted with a powerful suction force. On the combat panel, Li Ming could clearly see both his HP and SP rapidly dropping.

In less than a minute, his HP and SP would probably both reach zero.

In a game, reaching zero meant combat failure. But in reality, what would happen to him? Would he die? Was he about to kick the bucket already? He had not even done anything yet...

As the red light in that core flickered, Li Ming's pupils gradually lost focus. Am I... going to die?