Instant Kill

"This is Sixth Squad. The safe passage on the third floor has been secured. Please issue instructions."

Upon hearing the squad captain's report, Zhou Zongming glanced toward the lobby. "Hold your position. Prepare to receive... the supporting personnel."

"Understood."

The so-called supporting personnel naturally referred to Xiao Xueyin and the others.

Even Zhou Zongming found it absurd when he thought about it.

When he had gone looking for them, before he could even explain his purpose, that Little Punk Girl had taken the initiative to ask whether they could enter the Administrative Building to help.

Since it had come to that, he might as well treat a dead horse like a living one.

After giving them a brief rundown, Zhou Zongming had the Adjutant lead them into the Administrative Building.

Of course, he knew this decision carried enormous risks. But realistically speaking, the situation was already terrible enough—how much worse could it get?

He couldn't possibly let all hundred-plus of his men die inside the Administrative Building. Xiao Xueyin and the others clearly didn't act like ordinary civilians; perhaps they could bring him a little surprise.

Fourth Floor, an office in the middle of the corridor.

A man in sportswear was being frantically sprayed with gunfire by several soldiers.

The Deathmatch Participant darted left and right. Bullets struck his body, yet barely hindered his movements.

[Flexible Dodge (Gold): While you remain in motion, dodge all non-instant-kill attacks.]

If reality were a game, miss~ symbols should have been constantly popping up above his head.

The key to achieving this effect lay in the words "non-instant-kill attacks."

Under this ability's judgment, being shot, bleeding, and losing limbs all counted as lethal, but not instant death.

As long as this Deathmatch Participant made sure bullets didn't hit his head, he could practically move like a dragon through a hail of gunfire.

As one soldier changed magazines, the Sportswear Deathmatch Participant slid forward and unleashed an uppercut, smashing the soldier so hard that both his feet briefly left the ground.

He then repeated the same method, taking down the remaining soldiers one by one.

At the corner of the stairwell.

With riot shields leading the way, a squad of soldiers advanced cautiously.

"Woohoo~"

An excited shout suddenly rang out beside the soldiers' ears.

The soldiers all tensed up, yet had no idea where the voice had come from.

One of them seemed to realize something. He stiffly raised his head, only to discover in horror a figure hanging upside down from the ceiling of the stairwell.

It was a young man holding an assault rifle, with a black bat tattooed on his neck.

The young man grinned. "Surprise!"

He pulled the trigger at almost the same instant.

He didn't need to aim at all—every casual burst was a headshot.

After a string of screams, not a single soldier in the squad survived.

In the stairwell between the first and second floors.

Xiao Xueyin followed closely behind the Adjutant, behaving with perfect obedience.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk~"

Looking at the splattered bloodstains left across the walls of the safe passage, Liu Yue clicked her tongue repeatedly. "The casualties were really brutal."

"Keep your voice down." Yan Zhiquan lowered his voice in warning, then added, "But it looks like the Survey Corps came prepared. I suspect there's a mole among us who tipped them off."

"What are you implying?"

With her hands on her hips, Liu Yue carelessly lifted her chin and nodded toward Osas. "You think this guy's the mole? Or Lu Bai?"

"That's not what I mean."

Yan Zhiquan flashed Osas a smile. "But Brother Lu suddenly made a move and killed those two men in suits back then. Don't you find that strange?"

From their perspective, the two sides had only had a minor disagreement.

Yet under the threat of the Survey Corps and the Ten Blades, killing potential allies at the slightest disagreement was still rather forced. It was as though Lu Bai had intended to kill those two men in suits from the start, and had merely found an excuse at random.

And when the Survey Corps' Deathmatch Participants were firing at empty ground, Lu Bai left the group without even saying a word. In Yan Zhiquan's eyes, that was another suspicious point.

"It is indeed suspicious, but I don't think that Brother Lu is with the Survey Corps." The Deathmatch Participant who looked like a textbook engineering man cut in.

As a lone wolf, he had always been suspicious of other Deathmatch Participants. Maintaining that mindset allowed him to assess Lu Bai's actions more objectively.

Even taking ten thousand steps back, if Lu Bai really was the mole, staying with them would have been the choice that best allowed him to play the role of a mole.

"For now, don't suspect our own people. Maybe someone in the Survey Corps simply has an ability that lets them observe from a great distance."

Yan Zhiquan gave a hum. "True. Let's trust them for now."

Osas hunched his neck, doing his utmost to minimize his presence.

As a former Survey Corps member, he would inevitably seem a little awkward in a discussion like this, but he quickly found a new topic.

"Look, the Node's position has moved."

"It really has."

Liu Yue rolled her wrist. "It's on that Brother Hui, right?"

"Where's Brother Hui?"

A middle-aged man holding a middle school biology textbook looked in surprise at Lu Bai as he emerged from the stairwell.

"Brother Hui just left. Didn't he tell you?"

The innocent smile on Lu Bai's face made it remarkably easy for him to win others' goodwill.

Though the middle-aged man sensed that something was wrong, he did not attack Lu Bai right away.

"Left? How come I didn't see him? Wait a second—why do I feel like I've never seen you before?"

Noticing Lu Bai drawing closer and closer, the middle-aged man cautiously took two steps back.

Lu Bai did not slow down. Instead, he casually picked a topic.

"Are you a biology teacher? I heard living things are divided into kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species, but I can't understand—why is family smaller than class and phylum?"

"Uh... because class and phylum come before family."

The middle-aged man answered out of habit.

As they spoke, the distance between them had unknowingly closed to three meters.

Lu Bai smiled and shook his head. "Wrong answer."

The next instant, the image in the stairwell seemed to stutter. Lu Bai appeared behind the middle-aged man, the entire process carrying an intensely disjointed feeling.

Pfft!

Blood gushed from the middle-aged man's wound. In an instant, a sword had pierced straight through his heart, leaving him no time to react at all.

He dropped to his knees in agony and, in the final moments of his life, let out a hysterical warning.

"Enemy attack!"

Lu Bai was on the Fifth Floor, and the Deathmatch Participants on this floor numbered far more than just the middle-aged man.

Even with the gunfire from downstairs interfering, within mere seconds several Deathmatch Participants charged out of the nearby offices one after another.

At that moment, Lu Bai happened to turn through the safe passage door and into the Fifth Floor corridor.

It was worth mentioning that these Survey Corps Deathmatch Participants were all somewhat dumbfounded right now.

After all, the gunfire had not weakened—the fierce firefight downstairs was still ongoing. How could a stranger have appeared here?

"Who are you?"

"Not good—the Node is on him."

"Where's Brother Hui?"

"Forget all that. Kill him first!"