Captured

Faced with that vicious punch, Yang Zixuan would have been sent sprawling in a heap if he hadn't been fairly agile. He landed in a half-kneel after a backflip, his entire arm numb.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The real problem was the poison steadily eating away at him.

Warnings about negative effects kept appearing one after another.

Yang Zixuan hurriedly pulled out a bottle of medicine and gulped it down, but it barely helped. More and more negative effects piled up on him like a snowball, until they could no longer be removed.

After only a few breaths, Yang Zixuan could hold on no longer. He glanced toward Xu Tong and saw that Xu Tong was also being steadily driven back under Mad Dog's assault.

As for Xiong Tao, after taking an arrow, he was in even worse shape than Yang Zixuan. His entire face had turned dark green.

"Heh heh!"

As Yang Zixuan wrestled with whether to activate the escape item he'd bought at a high price, he suddenly realized the man had already walked up to him.

A huge, dark hand grabbed his shoulder and lifted him off the ground. The man grinned, revealing a foul-smelling maw, and spoke in stiff Chinese. "Hand over the Golden Dagger."

But as soon as he finished speaking, the sudden stench made Yang Zixuan pass out.

The man paused, then casually searched him, even stripping off his pants, but still couldn't find the Golden Dagger.

His expression darkened. Glancing at Xu Tong, who was still fighting Mad Dog, he strode over. He was nearly two meters tall, and though his steps looked slow and steady, he moved astonishingly fast.

He shoved Mad Dog away with a hard push, then punched Xu Tong.

The terrifying force behind the punch made it feel as if mountains were collapsing and the earth splitting apart. Xu Tong tensed and didn't dare block it, hurriedly dodging backward.

But the force of the punch still slammed into him, instantly robbing him of the ability to fight back. He toppled backward and hit the ground hard, his eyes rolling back as he passed out.

"Take them! Bring them all!"

The man shouted in the Miao language, summoning the Miao people from the bushes. They bound everyone tightly, then threaded a pole through the ropes and hoisted the three of them up like game.

Yang Guanjin and Old Bart had no chance to resist either. The Gu techniques Yang Guanjin relied on for survival were utterly ineffective against this man.

Old Bart struggled for a few moments before one of the Miao people pricked him with a poisoned thorn, knocking him out.

The Miao people weren't tall, but they moved through the forest with extraordinary agility. Their bare feet crossed the uneven, rock-strewn mountain path as easily as if it were flat ground.

They moved quickly and without a sound.

After who knew how long, Yang Zixuan finally opened his eyes. But the moment he did, he froze: Xu Tong was already awake beside him, making faces at him.

"You..."

Yang Zixuan furrowed his brow, about to speak, but Xu Tong was squinting and looking him up and down. His strange gaze made Yang Zixuan feel deeply uncomfortable.

Following Xu Tong's gaze, Yang Zixuan realized he'd been stripped completely naked, leaving him with nothing but a pair of underwear printed with little elephants.

Yang Zixuan felt awful. He struggled a couple of times, only for one of the Miao people beside him to kick him hard and babble at him in an incomprehensible Miao dialect.

"Stop struggling. It's nice and breezy, isn't it? Besides, being carried up the mountain is a lot more comfortable than walking ourselves."

Xu Tong smiled as he spoke.

"How can you still joke around at a time like this?" Yang Zixuan couldn't believe the guy was still so irreverent with death staring him in the face. He didn't know whether to call him levelheaded or an idiot.

Of course, he leaned toward the former. He'd already been wrong about Xu Tong once; he couldn't have been wrong about him twice.

He looked back at Xiong Tao and, after confirming he was still alive, finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Not only was Xiong Tao alive, but the Miao people had also applied ointment to him. Even Captain Wang, who had passed out, was being carefully looked after. They seemed quite concerned about keeping them alive.

Yang Zixuan didn't know why, but he could guess it had something to do with Yang Guanjin. Unfortunately, she and Old Bart had been made to walk ahead, apparently talking to the man leading the group. They were too far away for him to hear them.

"Are you really not going to join our team? I'm serious. If you join us and things go wrong, I can force the entire team to leave this Script World."

Yang Zixuan still hadn't given up on recruiting Xu Tong. They had nothing else to do, so he might as well try again.

"You can do that?" Xu Tong raised an eyebrow, looking tempted.

Yang Zixuan nodded. "I have a special item. But if we use it, the difficulty of our next Script World might increase by a lot, and we'll lose all the rewards from this one."

Yang Zixuan briefly explained the different levels of items. The items in Script Space came in all shapes and sizes, with huge differences between them.

Ordinary items and special items.

Ordinary items were the Prop Cards they carried. They varied in strength, but ultimately operated within the rules.

Special items might not give you much power, but the key was in the word "special." They often had remarkable properties, sometimes even breaking free of the rules and turning your worldview upside down.

Strictly speaking, the various potions they took were also special items.

Beyond those, there were the legendary top-tier Golden Items, but they were far beyond their reach.

Even certified players didn't dare hope for something like that. They were practically a legend. In a sense, anyone who possessed a Golden Prop Card was... a god!

But whatever kind of item it was, they all followed one principle: equivalent exchange.

The greater the power you gained, the more staggering the price you paid. Script Points and negative effects were unavoidable.

Yang Zixuan paused, then gave Xu Tong an amused once-over. "You're still a rookie, really. You may have taken Old Third's Prop Card, but you don't even have a fifth of his strength. Otherwise, how could that guy have kept beating you?"

He was talking about Mad Dog. In Yang Zixuan's eyes, Mad Dog was, at best, a second-rate player.

Xu Tong had gotten Old Third Zhang Hu's top-quality Prop Cards, yet he still couldn't beat Mad Dog. The reason came down to two words.

Yang Zixuan grinned. "Combining them!"

"Even the best Prop Cards can only give you limited power because of their negative effects. That's why combining Prop Cards is so important."

Xu Tong understood the key point at once.

"A well-planned combination is far better than a player carrying all kinds of top-quality Prop Cards. If you put together the right combination, not only can you greatly increase your abilities, you can also greatly reduce the strain they put on you. To repeat the same old saying, there are no strongest items, only the strongest combinations!"

Yang Zixuan spoke at length. Though he was still an ordinary player, he understood things that many players took several detours to figure out.

"Make good use of every slot in your Prop Catalog. Those slots only become more precious when it matters."

He reminded Xu Tong once more.

Besides certified players, ordinary players like them had only three Prop Pages, with a total of 27 slots.

Count them on your fingers: the slots were limited. Prop Cards took up some, and Title Cards took up others. Add various odds and ends, and there was even less room.

The further they progressed, the more precious those slots became. They had to think carefully about what to put in each one.

As the two talked, the view before them suddenly opened up. They'd reached the mountaintop. The Miao people set them down for the moment, then began preparing a campfire, resting, and eating.

"Have some water."

Mad Dog walked over and handed Xu Tong a water flask. "Don't blame me. My main mission is different from yours."

"An opposing mission. No shame in that," Yang Zixuan teased from beside him.

"Hmph."

Mad Dog snorted and looked at Xu Tong. "When did you start suspecting me?"

"What if I told you I'd suspected you from the start?" Xu Tong looked at him with a faint smile. "You had so many potions that you could've gone solo. But you gave me such a precious potion to get me on your side. At first, I thought you'd valued my title as a Doctor, but later I realized it seemed a little too convenient."

He was referring to their first mission. Mad Dog had rushed into the room, but Xu Tong hadn't heard any fighting. And although Mad Dog's wound looked fatal, it hadn't been inflicted in a way that would kill him immediately.

Xu Tong had been suspicious then. If Mad Dog was strong enough to overpower him, why had he left the dagger in Xu Tong's possession?

On top of that, Mad Dog had given him the potion beforehand. Wasn't that so Xu Tong could come to his rescue as quickly as possible?

It was as if Mad Dog had planned everything in advance. How could Xu Tong not suspect him?

"Hahaha! You actually thought you were in control, when you were the one being used all along."

Yang Zixuan sat nearby and gave Xu Tong a thumbs-up. "Impressive!"

Xu Tong shot back, "You're the ones who are hard!"

Caught between them, Mad Dog felt like he didn't belong on either side. It was an indescribably awkward feeling, like a boyfriend and a mistress exchanging glances in front of the wife, occasionally mocking her too.

Finally, Mad Dog lost his temper. He pointed at the man standing atop the mountain ahead of them and laughed angrily. "After all that talk, you're still prisoners. In the end, it's all thanks to Big Brother Huo Ying—tall and hard!"