Night of the Hunt

"Cough, cough, cough!"

A member of the honor guard coughed while lifting a fuel canister, methodically drenching the familiar living room and bedrooms in fuel before tossing a torch inside.

A corner of the once-glorious Xiaowalus mansion was instantly swallowed by terrifying flames.

"Sigh, what a pity. This is a precious house with over a hundred years of history, and now it's just going to burn away like this."

After setting the fire, the guard carrying the canister couldn't help but sigh with regret.

"Stop whining and keep working elsewhere. Let's try to get out soon, or we'll be choked to death by the thick smoke before the mansion even finishes burning. Cough, cough, cough!"

Another guard holding a rifle urged him on, unable to stop himself from coughing a few times as well.

Because the mansion was terrifyingly large, the honor guard had to spend over ten minutes working inside to ensure it would be quickly engulfed in flames. Even with wet towels wrapped around their noses and mouths, they still felt incredibly miserable.

The two walked out of the living room and back into the corridor, intending to regroup with the main force and head toward the next arson site, when they suddenly spotted a figure stepping out quickly from the end of the hall.

"Hm? That is..."

The guards who spotted the figure first had their expressions change in an instant.

However, the opponent had already leveled his rifle steadily at the honor guard.

The next moment, brilliant muzzle flashes erupted. A pitch-black bullet crossed the distance of several dozen meters and plunged directly into the chest of one of the guards in the formation.

Eleven.

Ye Chen counted silently in his mind, retreating to the corner of the corridor, his hands moving methodically to eject the casing and reload his rifle.

"The enemy has come to us! Kill him!"

Watching their companion collapse to the ground, eyes wide with death, the eight guards in the front row were consumed by rage. They raised their rifles and charged in unison toward the direction where Ye Chen had vanished, attempting to riddle him with holes.

"Hey, stop! Don't just charge in blindly!"

The captain of the honor guard, Kaminge, who had a bandage taped to his chin, immediately shouted.

However, whether due to prolonged close-range exposure to the Abyss Matter on the bullets in their chambers, the mental states of the charging guards had suffered varying degrees of distortion. They had completely lost their composure and had no intention of heeding their captain's warning.

Following this, Ye Chen, having finished chambering his final round, leaned out from the corridor once more and raised his rifle to fire at the guard in the lead.

Bang!

The nail that sticks out gets hammered down; the Abyss Bullet pierced the guard's throat, making him the newest victim.

Seeing Ye Chen lean out again, the rest of the group didn't hesitate, quickly focusing their fire on him.

However, because the boy's exposed profile was very small and his speed in retreating behind the wall was extremely fast, all seven Abyss Bullets missed, whistling into the air where Ye Chen had been a moment before.

But at the same time, Xiaowaluwen, lurking on the roof of the mansion, had already sensed the movement inside.

He shifted his position, adjusted his muzzle, and pulled the trigger. A pitch-black Abyss Bullet erupted from the long barrel of his sniper rifle, crossing a hundred meters of night sky, shattering the corridor window, and striking directly at Ye Chen's side.

Crash!

The moment he heard the glass shatter, Ye Chen lunged deep into the room, hiding in Xiaowaluwen's blind spot.

Yet, his leg was still grazed by the bullet, leaving him wounded and dripping droplets of blood onto the floor.

"His reaction is still as terrifyingly fast as before..."

Xiaowaluwen couldn't help but mutter to himself, putting away his sniper rifle to wait for the next opportunity.

Is that guy with Invisibility hiding on the roof?

After pinpointing Xiaowaluwen's location, Ye Chen glanced at his wound, which didn't require immediate treatment, and tossed aside his empty rifle before sprinting toward a spacious bathhouse in the back.

"Ha! He was hit by Lord Xiaowaluwen!"

"Quick, chase him! Let's kill him in one go!"

"Yahoo! Revenge for everyone!"

The seven members laughed like lunatics, ejected their casings, and with twisted faces, continued to pursue Ye Chen toward his hiding spot.

"Captain, should we follow them?" a subordinate beside the honor guard captain asked nervously.

"No, there's no need. Xiaowaluwen told me that if certain members of the team lose their minds and refuse to follow orders, we should abandon them decisively."

"Our mission is only to ensure the enemy is forced out of this mansion as quickly as possible."

"If he refuses to leave, he will surely come for us! We should be switching from offense to defense right now!"

After Kaminge finished speaking, he led the remaining ten guards toward the next target location, leaving those few madmen to fend for themselves.

The seven crazed guards followed the trail of blood spilled on the ground and chased into the massive bathhouse.

This was a place where Xiaowalus used to relax and relieve his fatigue, but now, it would become a bloody arena for the Hunter and his prey to slaughter one another.

"The blood trail leads inside, and the only exit is this main door."

"Two of you guard this spot, the rest of you come in with me and search for him separately!"

"That man is already wounded in multiple places; we can bury him just by piling up our corpses!"

The guard who still retained the most sanity among them gave the order, and they split up to search.

Although the bathhouse had not been touched by the fire, a large glass window above the pool allowed the moonlight to easily penetrate the interior, so the lighting was not particularly dim.

The guards held their guns, searching every dark corner, yet they could not find a trace of Ye Chen.

"Hey, come out already, you despicable coward!"

One of the guards shouted into the silent bathhouse hall, only to suddenly hear a faint sound coming from the central pool.

"Could this guy be hiding in the water?"

He muttered to himself, bypassed a tall stone pillar, and walked to the edge of the pool to peer inside, where he actually discovered a curled-up dark shadow at the bottom of the clear water.

The guard instinctively raised his gun and fired.

Bang!

The bullet pierced the shadow, and although it strangely didn't cause much of a stir, a cluster of blood-red liquid emerged from its surface and slowly floated to the surface of the water.

"Hahaha! Everyone, I've taken down this self-righteous idiot!"

Seeing the blood emerge from the shadow, the guard immediately became convinced he had hit the jackpot. With an excited face, he pulled the bolt, laughing wildly as he fired four more Abyss Bullets at the target.

At the same time, the other six companions in the bathhouse were drawn over by his laughter and gunfire.

Looking at the blood spreading across the water, everyone beamed with joy and excitedly raised their guns to use the target for practice.

Yet, while these fools were lost in their own delusions, Ye Chen himself was crouching on top of the tall stone pillar behind them, silently observing everything below.

The shadow in the pool was nothing more than a decoy he had fashioned by tying two bath stools together with string and a towel, then placing the half-finished teapot of Red Blood Flower inside.

And just as the group gathered together, the moment their guard was down, the youth leaped from the top of the stone pillar, sounding the death knell for them all.

Ye Chen descended from high above, tackling the outermost member of the guard squad, and then, without hesitation, drove the short sword wrapped around his left hand through the man's occiput.

The others turned their heads at the sudden commotion, but Ye Chen's revolver was already held steady.

The next second, he pulled the trigger repeatedly, flicking the muzzle back and forth.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

Five gunshots rang out through the bathhouse, and five figures of varying heights immediately collapsed to the ground.

"Ah!?"

The very last remaining guard felt his face fill with endless terror and despair.

He screamed, immediately raising his gun to aim at the youth rapidly closing in on him.

However, Ye Chen released his revolver, reached out to shove the guard's barrel aside, and then leaped up to clamp his legs around the guard's neck like a pair of scissors, slamming him to the ground.

"Waaah!"

Pinned to the floor by Ye Chen, the guard began to scream frantically, struggling with all his might.

But Ye Chen, while steadily suppressing the man's movements, calmly reloaded his revolver, pressed the muzzle against the side of the guard's head, and fired one last shot.

Bang!

With the final gunshot, the last prey in the bathhouse met his end.

Nineteen.

Ye Chen thought to himself, ejecting the spent shell casing and replacing it with a new bronze-colored bullet, before walking out of the bathhouse gate with a cold gaze, continuing to enjoy his night of the hunt.