Blade Against Gun

Ye Chen made up his mind and flicked the Frost Coin pinched between his right fingertips with force, precisely striking a trap he had set up at the other end of the dining hall: a broom leaning against the wall, draped in a tablecloth.

The sudden, strange noise startled all the guards present. They locked their gazes onto the fallen broom simultaneously; shrouded in shadows, it looked just like a human figure that had collapsed to the ground.

"Fire!"

Someone among the guard squad shouted first, and then, without a word, everyone aimed at the direction where the broom had fallen and unleashed a fierce barrage.

Bang—!

Ten Abyss Bullets riddled the broom with holes, but the only response was dead silence.

Just as the guards were struggling to confirm whether they had hit their intended target, Ye Chen had already approached rapidly from the other side, steadily raising his silver revolver that reflected the moonlight.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

Ye Chen pressed his finger down hard five times in succession. With every bullet fired, the muzzle shifted at just the right angle, flinging the five bronze-colored bullets toward the vital points of different targets.

The boy's life-or-death focus, combined with the steadiness of his right hand gripping the revolver—which felt almost fused to the weapon—allowed these five bullets to strike the chest and abdomen vitals of five guards with precision, causing them to collapse to the ground one after another, dying with muffled groans.

Five.

Ye Chen muttered internally and immediately sprinted toward the back door of the dining hall.

"He's over there!"

"Don't let him escape!"

"Shoot!"

The remaining five guards didn't have time to tend to their fallen comrades; they immediately ejected the casings from their rifles and launched a second wave of fierce attacks at Ye Chen's darting figure.

However, due to the dim lighting and the terrifying speed of Ye Chen, the guards' bullets only struck the large window behind him, leaving behind nothing but a harsh, jarring sound of shattering glass.

Clatter!

The next second, Ye Chen's figure vanished at the back door of the dining hall.

"Reload before pursuing!"

The remaining five guards pulled their bolts, each chambering a third Abyss Bullet, and then gave chase at full speed toward the back door where Ye Chen had disappeared.

However, Ye Chen hadn't moved far from the dining hall at all; he was merely hiding just to the side of the back door.

When the first two guards rushed out of the back door, only to find Ye Chen less than a meter away, the short sword wrapped tightly around his left hand had already carved out a cold, razor-sharp arc.

Slash!

Before the two guards could even raise their rifles to fire, their heads were both lopped off into the air by the curved trajectory of the Blood Blade.

"Ah!?"

The third guard followed closely out the back door, only to find his two companions inexplicably headless. His expression filled with shock and hesitation, and he immediately raised his rifle to aim and fire at Ye Chen.

Bang!

Ye Chen lowered his body and stomped his feet, letting the Abyss Bullet graze past him before rushing right in front of his enemy.

He swung, twisted, and looped his arms—which were tightly wound with blood-stained steel wire—not only pushing aside the guard's rifle but also strangling his neck tightly with the wire.

Crack.

Under the power enhancement of Ye Chen's blood, the thin steel wire transformed into a ruthless executioner, instantly triggering a sound of shattering bones.

The guard didn't even have the chance to scream before his spine was snapped by Ye Chen's wire.

The two guards inside the door witnessed the gruesome death of their comrade and immediately raised their muzzles, but Ye Chen kicked the corpse of the third guard, causing it to tackle the fourth guard to the ground, while he himself rolled to the side to dodge the bullets fired by the fifth guard.

The boy retreated to the edge of the back door, reached out to grab the rifle dropped by the first guard, and immediately performed a counter-attack, quickly poking his head out to fire into the dining hall, using the Abyss Bullets to gun down the fifth guard who was still in the middle of ejecting a shell casing.

"Urgh, ahhh!"

The fourth guard, pinned down by his comrade's corpse, struggled to crawl up from the ground, but Ye Chen quickly pulled the bolt back and delivered a lethal blow with the rifle.

With the silent collapse of the last guard, the prey in this dining hall had been cleared out by Ye Chen in the blink of an eye.

Ten.

Ye Chen muttered internally, leaning against a blind spot behind a stone pillar in the corridor to prevent Xiaowalus, who might be lurking in the shadows at either end of the hallway, from having a chance to hit him with that sniper rifle.

Although the bullets in this rifle were coated with Abyss Matter, as long as he didn't touch them directly and kept them in the chamber, they could still be used to kill enemies for him.

Having personally verified this, the boy quickly confirmed that there were two Abyss Bullets left in the rifle before slinging it over his back.

Next, Ye Chen used his right hand to flick out the revolver's cylinder, clamped the gun body with his left arm, and methodically inserted the bronze-colored ammunition into the chambers with his right fingertips.

Just then, a faint sound rose from the floor five meters to his side.

It was the sound of the porcelain shards Ye Chen had scattered near the stone pillar being stepped on by someone.

Sss.

Ye Chen turned his head abruptly and immediately sensed the ghostly figure of Xiaowaluwen emerging from the void.

The next moment, the two daggers gripped in his hands, coated in pitch-black sludge, tore through the cold air and slashed directly toward Ye Chen's neck.

I knew you would try this again!

Ye Chen had been prepared at all times to face Xiaowaluwen's sneak attack, so the moment the sound of the porcelain shards rang out, the short sword wrapped around his left hand was already raised, and he turned to slash horizontally at Xiaowaluwen.

Under the cold moonlight, Ye Chen's blood-stained short sword carved a red arc, while Xiaowaluwen's Abyss daggers traced two paths of black.

The clash between the single red and the double black, however, met an outcome devoid of any suspense.

The red light bloomed like fire, and the black paths shattered into fragments.

The two pitch-black daggers Xiaowaluwen had lunged with collapsed into countless specks of dust under the strike of Ye Chen's blood-red blade, falling powerlessly to the ground right before Xiaowaluwen's eyes.

"How could this be--!?"

Seeing this, Xiaowaluwen couldn't help but cry out in shock; he had never expected that the unremarkable short sword in Ye Chen's hand would not only be qualified to contend with the Abyss weapons he had forged, but could also crush them into dust in the blink of an eye.

In his view, this sword of Ye Chen's was a weapon that existed specifically to destroy the Abyss.

But Xiaowaluwen did not know that what was truly at work was the blood of Ye Chen staining the blade!

Ye Chen's Spirit Art possessed an extremely strong suppressive effect against the Abyss!

Xiaowaluwen's expression stiffened in shock, but Ye Chen's sword path paid no heed to this; after shattering the opponent's daggers, he flicked his wrist and slashed fiercely toward Xiaowaluwen's head.

"Ugh!"

Xiaowaluwen stimulated all of his Auling Power, raising his left hand to forcibly deflect the momentum of Ye Chen's sword.

Although this deflection cost him half of his palm, the result was, in any case, far better than having his head split in two on the spot.

Clutching his severed hand, Xiaowaluwen jumped out of Ye Chen's striking range with a ferocious expression.

As Ye Chen raised the revolver in his right hand, preparing to fire a second Blood Bullet, Xiaowaluwen vanished from sight almost simultaneously, once again merging into the dim surroundings.

Ye Chen could not see Xiaowaluwen's body, only vaguely hearing the sound of his running echoing through the corridor, so he did not immediately play his trump card.

When a long sniper rifle floated out from the air at the corner of the corridor's end, aiming its muzzle at Ye Chen, the finger Ye Chen had kept waiting on the trigger finally moved.

At this very moment, even though Xiaowaluwen had hidden his figure, that massive sniper rifle still exposed his position.

Ye Chen fired without hesitation into the air beneath the rifle barrel, while Xiaowaluwen fired toward Ye Chen's chest immediately after, the latter being just a fraction of a second slower than the former.

Bang!

The gunshots from both sides rang out through the entire corridor in seamless succession.

The next moment, Xiaowaluwen, crouching on the ground, had a large chunk of flesh blown off his right shoulder by the ferocious Blood Bullet, while Ye Chen, who had lunged to the side, suffered a minor graze on his left shoulder, barely dodging the sniper shot from across the way.