Xu Huo glanced at the deformed metal skeleton ahead, then met the players' wary, warning looks. He readily stopped and made a "please" gesture.
Four players had been pursuing the combat puppet. Two had already approached the skeleton. To be safe, both were wearing Protective Suits and had activated Defense Artifacts. But the moment they touched the skeleton, the instrument at the puppet's heart let out a shrill, rapid warning and exploded!
The tiny device unleashed power beyond all reason, blasting straight through the two players' layers of protection. A little Black Liquid splattered out with the explosion and landed on them. The potent poison spread in the blink of an eye, and they screamed one after the other. Even guzzling Antidote did nothing to slow its spread. Within a few breaths, they had turned pitch-black and collapsed to the ground.
They were already dead. The other two players had been standing farther away, and their Protective Suits had stopped the poisonous droplets in time, leaving them unharmed. But they were badly shaken. Only after checking themselves over and over did they finally relax. When they looked at their companions, the poison had already ravaged the two corpses beyond recognition.
"The poison will spread." Gao Ming surveyed the area. "We should be able to burn it, but we'll need to cover it while we do, so we don't contaminate the woods."
The game had simple tools specifically for dealing with situations like this. But chemical substances that were more complicated to handle usually required more people and better equipment. As for the poison at the puppet's heart, it had probably been made from whatever was available on-site. It was likely some kind of mutated bacterial toxin, which could be treated with fire.
When they saw him preparing to cover the