A rocket's destructive power was far beyond that of an ordinary gun. If it detonated inside the house, the whole building would probably be reduced to rubble.
Against an attack of such tremendous power, Li Xingkong's current defenses could do little.
Even Explosive Reactive Armor couldn't protect him.
Li Xingkong instantly felt the threat of death. His entire body tensed, and every function was working at full speed as he tried to find a way to survive.
Between life and death, there was only an instant, but under extreme tension, a person's awareness of time could stretch on without limit.
This was supposed to be the time when his life flashed before his eyes, but Li Xingkong couldn't give up yet.
If the rockets hit him, he would die, so rather than turtle up and defend himself, he might as well take the initiative and intercept them.
The moment the thought occurred to him, Li Xingkong's body was already moving.
He happened to have the fragments of the phone he had crushed in his hand. With no time to worry about anything else, Li Xingkong immediately began channeling his mana at full strength. The Shotgun Spell spirit pattern on his hand spun faster than usual.
There would be no chance for a second shot, so of course he had to put everything into this one.
The drone outside the window had begun firing. The rockets on its rack had ignited and were about to shoot out.
Li Xingkong stared fixedly in the direction of the two rockets. He couldn't rush; they weren't within his range yet. If he fired too early, he was done for.
Although it was only a few short seconds, for Li Xingkong, this was the most dangerous moment he had faced in some time.
He was already drenched in sweat, and the spirit pattern on his hand grew even more dazzling.
In an instant, the rockets moved.
Rockets traveled extremely fast, often reaching hundreds of meters per second. In other words, less than half a second would pass between the drone firing and the rockets hitting.
And Li Xingkong had to seize that half second.
He couldn't even blink.
In the flash of lightning, Li Xingkong's hand moved at the same time. He used almost all his mana for this shot, and the power of this Shotgun Spell was extraordinary.
Seen from the front, it was as though a transparent mushroom had grown from his hand.
It was so fast that in an instant, the mushroom's cap had spread to the size of two people, and it was still expanding outward.
It was like a fishing net being cast, and what he meant to catch were the rockets flying straight at him.
Naturally, Li Xingkong couldn't stand there like a fool waiting for the result. He still had to run for it.
If there was one drone, who knew whether there would be a second? Had the Security Bureau already surrounded the area?
These were all dangers, and he had no choice but to run.
Most importantly, even if the rockets were intercepted, he couldn't directly withstand the immense destructive force of the explosion at close range.
He needed walls to block it and weaken the impact.
He darted into the bedroom, and the interception outside the window came to a head.
The rockets were powerful, but Li Xingkong's interception net was just as effective.
The two collided in midair.
Both rockets were stopped and detonated in the air more than ten meters outside the room.
A tremendous explosion thundered in his ears, shaking the entire building. Many supporting structures developed numerous cracks, and clouds of dust and smoke billowed out.
Li Xingkong was fine. He had hidden well enough that only a small part of the explosion reached him.
His armor blocked the stones that flew in all directions and the debris blasted through the air.
Half the wall of the room where he had hidden had already collapsed. He only had to look up to see the gaping hole blasted open by the rockets.
The distant drone had yet to fly away, and its camera remained trained on the blasted hole. Though the smoke and dust were too thick for it to see clearly, it seemed to be waiting to see what had happened to Li Xingkong.
It was too far away for Li Xingkong to reach, so he chose to retreat while the smoke and dust had yet to clear.
Everything in the room had to be abandoned, and it wasn't worth showing himself for any of it.
Li Xingkong jumped straight out of the window on the opposite side of the room and ran along the edge of the street on that level.
Perhaps they were confident enough in the power of the rockets. Once Li Xingkong got out, he saw no other pursuers, not even a second drone.
This was Li Xingkong's first time facing a modern military-grade strike, and it was already rather different from what he had expected.
There was no enemy to see, and even reaching what he could see was of little use. Drones were cheap to make, and there were plenty of them.
The moment they met, he had been bombarded with firepower, with no chance for guns to demonstrate their power at all. No wonder arms smuggling was flourishing in Freedom City, yet no one bothered to do anything about it.
In modern warfare, ordinary people really were nothing more than cannon fodder. No matter how powerful the gun in their hands was, it couldn't deal with this kind of attack. Most importantly, a person could very well go onto the battlefield without ever seeing the enemy.
And this was only a small-scale battle. Such tactics ran rampant in civil wars in some small countries, while the ways great powers fought were a cut above, and even these tactics had already become obsolete.
As he retreated, he had no time to care what the disorderly crowd around him thought of him. In fact, no one had time to look at him either; everyone was running.
The entire block had descended into chaos.
Li Xingkong had already guessed that the phone he had used to take the call had exposed him. The speed with which he had been located and the drone had arrived undoubtedly meant that Luke Morgan's people were standing by somewhere nearby.
Time was pressing. If he dragged this out, he would have less and less room to maneuver.
There wasn't much time to think of a countermeasure. His best option now was to recover a little mana, then strike straight at the heart of the enemy.
Since the other side had already deployed this level of firepower, there would probably be even more lying in ambush at the prison Morgan had mentioned. Charging straight in would undoubtedly be courting death.
He had to deal with Morgan, but he couldn't charge in blindly.
Li Xingkong looked at the two spells on his hands. Objectively speaking, the two spells were indeed already strong enough, but as things stood, they still weren't enough.
He no longer had time to learn new spells. It really was a case of regretting having too few spells when the time came to use them.
Fortunately, he wasn't entirely without fighting power. No matter how strong the enemy's firepower was, as long as he didn't fight in a particularly open area, he still had a chance.
Intercepting the rockets just now had also given him a bit of inspiration. In fact, Shotgun Spell had even broader possibilities.
It could be used not only to hurt people, but also to intercept attacks.
But if he went straight to the prison now, he would be doing exactly what Morgan wanted. Before taking action, he would use his own methods to see whether he could find Morgan's whereabouts some other way.