Encirclement

There were quite a few pedestrians in the Black Market.

Ji Xun stepped out of the shop and onto the street, his pace utterly unhurried.

He knew perfectly well that they did not know what he looked like. Even if a Mystic Type divination spell had located him, it would not necessarily identify him immediately amid the crowd!

Sweeping his gaze around, Ji Xun quickly spotted several men in suits on the street, hurrying along with their eyes searching through the crowd.

They were stationed at both ends of the street.

From the look of it, an ambush encirclement had clearly been prepared in advance.

"They probably had people lying in wait anywhere in the city with a lot of people."

Ji Xun realized that luck was only one reason he had been discovered. More importantly, the enemy had cast a wide net.

It was hardly strange for the governor's Cao Family to possess such capabilities.

At the same time, he immediately deduced something. "So that Mystic spell from earlier must have had a casting range."

Coming to the Dark Rain Street Black Market today had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, and he had only arrived not long ago.

Yet these people had formed an encirclement in such a short time. They had clearly been lying in ambush here all along.

In other words, he was a rabbit that had run straight into a trap.

And since he had not been caught elsewhere, that Mystic spell most likely had a casting range.

So long as he left Dark Rain Street, he should be able to shake off the pursuit.

But now, that would be difficult.

A flood of thoughts flashed through Ji Xun's mind. Rather than heading toward the main road out of the street, he walked toward the pitch-black alleys.

Just as he had expected, those suited men did not know which person was their target. They were still looking around through the crowd, searching for suspicious individuals.

Ji Xun's calm, unhurried walk attracted no one's attention.

Originally, as long as he entered the darkness and used Shadow Dive, he would most likely be able to escape.

Yet at that moment, something unexpected happened.

Suddenly.

Among the crowd, Ji Xun spotted a white-haired old woman in a black robe.

Her presence was clearly different from everyone around her. She looked like some muttering old crone, apparently casting some secret art.

The instant his gaze swept over her, the old woman saw him as well, and her expression changed abruptly.

"I've been discovered!"

Ji Xun keenly caught the detail of her pupils shrinking and immediately knew he had been found.

He did not give them time to react. He decisively struck first.

Ji Xun's hands swept to his waist, and he heard gunfire almost the instant he drew his pistols.

Fast as lightning!

Bang!

Bang!

As the two shots rang out, the old woman had only just raised a hand and pointed. "That's him!"

Yet at the same instant, two mercenaries with bullets through their foreheads collapsed amid the crowd.

Ordinary Armor Break bullets might find it difficult to kill Spell Card Masters, but a headshot was equally fatal to Card Master Apprentices!

Those two shots had been so decisive that the men did not even know where the bullets had come from before they died.

Ji Xun's two precise shots took down two mercenaries closing in on him, immediately opening a gap in the encirclement.

But at the same time, the four Spell Card Masters beside the old woman reacted at once.

The red-haired woman was exceptionally quick. With a flick of her hand, several cards shot through the crowd with a whoosh, whoosh, slicing into the ground before Ji Xun.

The ground beneath his feet suddenly softened, as though he had stepped into quicksand, and he instantly lost his balance.

"Quicksand Technique!"

Seeing this, Ji Xun's expression turned icy, yet a cold smile rose at the corner of his lips. Just as expected, their orders were to take him alive.

This method was meant to trap someone, not kill them.

That was the greatest advantage!

Unable to exert force beneath his feet, he was about to be trapped.

But he had prepared for this long ago.

Ji Xun raised a hand and activated the Mechanical Sleeve Dart hidden in his arm, aiming it at the iron railing on the second floor not far away.

With a whoosh, an extremely thin steel wire shot out at high speed and instantly hooked onto the railing. When he pulled the trigger again, the mechanical device in his sleeve retracted rapidly, and a powerful pull yanked Ji Xun away from the paving stones that had turned into a patch of quicksand.

Ever since he had watched Chujiu escape using that kind of Mechanical Sleeve Dart last time, Ji Xun had gotten one for himself as well.

Used properly, this thing was absolutely a lifesaving tool.

Ji Xun did not stay idle in midair either. He turned and fired a shot back.

With a bang, the bullet burst from the barrel.

At that instant, time seemed to slow tenfold. The bullet trailed a stream of air as it shot straight for the red-haired woman's head.

How fast was a bullet?

Without anticipating it, there was no way a physically frail spellcaster-type Spell Card Master could dodge it.

Yet the red-haired woman had no intention of dodging at all. Her crystalline eyes held only indifference, because bullets posed very limited threat to a full-fledged Spell Card Master.

Curse power surged around her body, and the bullet stopped in midair barely a foot in front of her.

Looking closely, the bullet had been blocked by a pale yellow Curse Power Shield.

But then the red-haired woman's eyes changed sharply. She saw a second bullet in her field of vision, and her heart went cold. "Annihilation Magic-Breaking Bullet!"

Only then did she realize that the man had not fired one shot just now, but two!

Only a gunner with extraordinarily high firearms skill could turn the recoil from one shot into assistance for a second shot, firing twice in an extremely short span.

And because the shots had been fired so quickly, they sounded like a single gunshot.

This was Advanced Firearms Specialization!

The bullets had clearly outrun the senses, striking the exact same point on the magic shield.

The curse inscriptions on the black warhead instantly corroded the shield, and with a whoosh, it drilled through.

Though a Curse Power Shield was strong, like human breathing, it was not always at its strongest defense. A Spell Card Master had to actively gather curse power toward a particular direction to achieve the greatest defensive effect.

After one hit, the vibrations caused by the shockwave would greatly reduce the shield's stability.

Furthermore, an actively deployed Curse Power Shield was directly tied to a person's subjective awareness. The force one instinctively used to catch cotton and to catch a lump of iron was completely different.

These two shots had also been highly deceptive.

One shot concealed the truth, while the second hid the killing intent!

Just as expected, the Annihilation Bullet easily broke through the shield. With a clang, it struck the red-haired woman in the forehead.

Blood streamed down her face.

But it did not penetrate.

The red-haired woman's facial expression darkened. She had actually been injured? Injured by an apprentice?

A shield card in her hand shattered at the same time.

After only one exchange, the Blackwater Mercenary Group immediately realized how troublesome the target was.

"Sure enough, he wasn't that easy to kill."

Ji Xun looked at the red-haired woman standing where she was. Though her head was bleeding badly, she was not dead.

He silently lamented the missed opportunity.

To be honest, spellcaster-type Spell Card Masters were absolutely the most troublesome opponents. He had wanted to see whether he could catch them off guard before they knew the level of his firearms skill.

And the facts proved that before absolute strength, the gap that skill and equipment could bridge was limited.

But they were not entirely useless.

At least he had prevented the woman from drawing more cards and continuing the fight.

That was enough.

Firing had taken only an instant, but the enemies were clearly all seasoned old mercenaries.

Ji Xun had acted decisively, gaining only a slight advantage.

But his opponent was not alone!

At the very moment he fired, the man dressed as a ranger also drew his gun and fired.

When Ji Xun saw it, he was being pulled through the air by the steel wire and could not evade in time.

Just as the path of his landing was about to overlap with the gun barrel's line of fire, he seemed to have anticipated it long ago and decisively severed the steel wire. The pulling force propelling him forward stopped instantly, and he began to fall!

At almost the same instant he dropped, sparks scattered with a clang as a bullet struck the railing two feet away.

If he had not decisively abandoned the wire, that shot would have hit him squarely in the thigh.

Firearms were convenient and powerful.

But their greatest drawback was that they were highly predictable.

At short range, a bullet's trajectory was almost straight, and it could only be fired from the muzzle.

Thus, from the moment a target drew a weapon until they pulled the trigger, anyone with sufficient experience had countless chances to predict the shot.

Advanced Firearms Specialization did not merely refer to shooting skill. It also meant an understanding of firearms!

One could even infer where a bullet would land from the intention in an enemy's eyes.

While Ji Xun had fired just now, he had caught the ranger's drawing motion in the corner of his eye. At that point, he had already predicted that the man's shot would target his thigh.

The other man's gun skill was not bad either, at least around Intermediate Specialization.

Without prediction, relying solely on reflexes, Ji Xun would certainly have been shot.

"He missed?"

Seeing this, the ranger who had fired was clearly somewhat incredulous.

He had never imagined that a Card Master Apprentice could evade his shot.

What exquisite gun skill!

Even as an enemy, the ranger secretly marveled.

That precise prediction alone left him with no trace of contempt.

A Card Master Apprentice had actually injured one person and evaded his gunfire while facing their squad's encirclement tactics.

He was the first in all these years.

And the only one.

However, what surprised them even more came afterward!

The instant Ji Xun landed, he did not hesitate at all and leaped backward from the broken platform behind him.

He had jumped off a cliff!

The buildings in Sinless City were all very tall. The city itself had been built along a mountain, so sheer drops with great elevation differences could be found everywhere.

The Black Market being located here on Dark Rain Street was not merely because the place was remote. It was because the terrain here was unusual and extremely complex. If anything happened, the merchants and customers in the Black Market had no risk of being surrounded.

And on one side of Dark Rain Street was a building cliff that dropped dozens of meters.

That had been Ji Xun's intention when he chose to break through in this direction.

He knew there were several full-fledged Spell Card Masters among the enemy, and that they had planned this in advance.

Forget beating them; under normal circumstances, even escaping would be impossible.

That was why he had decisively leaped from the cliff.

Seeing this, the four-man Blackwater Mercenaries squad was collectively stunned.

This guy had jumped off a cliff without the slightest hesitation?

Normally, upon seeing a cliff, a person's instincts would make them stop and look, confirming how to exert force and where they would land.

Yet this guy had not even taken a glance before jumping?

Had he been forced into fleeing blindly?

But how could they know that before entering Dark Rain Street, Ji Xun had already carefully observed the surrounding terrain and environment?

He had even mapped out several escape routes in advance.

At this moment, the entire complex street view was already in his mind like a three-dimensional blueprint. Even without looking, he knew exactly where he would land after jumping.

This was not a blind jump. He had prepared for it long ago.

Seeing this, the warrior captain urgently bellowed, "Third, stick to that guy! Don't let him get away!"

The target they had waited so long for was right before them. How could they possibly let him escape?

The ranger reacted extremely quickly after missing his shot. Without needing a reminder, years of teamwork had already told him what to do. He stomped hard against the ground, moving as fast as a ghost as he likewise leaped toward the cliff.

If a Card Master Apprentice dared to jump, why would he not dare?

His ranger profession was the very best at tracking!

An enemy could not escape simply by jumping off a cliff!

Yet the moment he jumped beyond the edge, he suddenly saw the rapidly falling figure turn around and raise a gun. The black muzzle was aimed directly at him.

Almost the instant he showed himself, flames erupted from the barrel.

Bang!

Bang!

Two more shots.

So decisive!

The ranger was still flying through the air on the momentum of his charge, with nowhere to brace himself. He was practically a living target.

"Damn it, how could a Card Master Apprentice possess such exquisite gunsmanship?"

The ranger cursed inwardly.

The previous two shots could perhaps be called luck, but these two tested true skill.

There had been no preliminary aiming motion before firing. That meant the man had predicted the exact place where he would jump from the cliff.

The ranger himself was also a firearms user close to Advanced Specialization, and he understood perfectly what that prediction was based on.

The shortest distance between two points was a straight line. From his previous position, this was the closest point from which he could pursue and jump off the cliff. Predicting that point itself was not difficult, but what was difficult was that under such circumstances, the man had not panicked in the slightest, had predicted it, and fired at exactly the right moment?

That terrifying awareness was hardly inferior to that of a firearms master!

He had thought he had already rated him highly, but he had still underestimated him.

But he was, after all, a ranger with the profession of a full-fledged Spell Card Master. In an instant, thoughts flashed through his mind, curse spirits surged through his body, and he suddenly stomped the air beneath his feet, somehow borrowing force in midair to narrowly evade the two shots.

The ranger twisted in midair, his gaze fixed on his target as he prepared to land, his eyes turning icy.

"Such high agility."

Ji Xun's expression did not change in the slightest when he saw both shots miss.

He had failed to kill that spellcaster Spell Card Master earlier, so he had even less expectation that a gun could kill an Assassin Type Spell Card Master with such exceptionally high physical agility growth.

It was enough for the bullets to delay the enemy for a moment.

After all, if he had not fired, the ranger could have leapt down from over twenty meters up and caught him in midair.

Although his physical attributes had soared, there was still an enormous gap between him and an Assassin Type Spell Card Master.

Moreover, if Ji Xun did not want to break his legs, he needed to cushion his descent. He fired steel wires from his sleeve again, tugging himself in midair to slow his fall slightly.

For an expert, that brief window was more than enough to make up for the time difference from the earlier cliff jump and catch up. But those two shots had widened the gap again.

In Ji Xun's field of vision, behind the ranger, the warrior captain and more than a dozen mercenaries also leapt down from the cliff.

Seeing this, he decisively threw several grenades onto the landing platform, turned, and ran.

Below the platform was another pitch-black cliff. Ji Xun leapt down again without hesitation.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Three grenades exploded on the platform, and the firelight instantly illuminated the dark surroundings.

Several figures were blasted away, but the captain and several other mercenaries charged fiercely out of the flames.

They hesitated no more than he had and jumped after Ji Xun.

If everyone had simply been falling freely, Ji Xun would not have been worried.

But those people behind him clearly had abilities that let them accelerate their descent in midair, which was truly troublesome.

Just two or three breaths after this second cliff jump, that ranger moved as fast as a ghost and had almost reached Ji Xun's face in the blink of an eye!

There was nowhere to borrow force in midair, not even a point for the grappling cable to catch onto.

Ji Xun could practically see the chill in the enemy's eyes just a few meters away, as if they were saying: Got you!

Yet what the ranger did not expect was that, just as he was about to seize him, their eyes met—and he did not see even a trace of panic in his target's eyes.

In that instant of confusion, a feral grin flashed across Ji Xun's face as he violently tore off a pull cord from his chest.

The ranger's pupils contracted sharply. "Flashbang Grenade!"

He had never imagined that this guy would set off a Flashbang Grenade directly on his own body.

Did this guy not want to live?!

Even if Flashbang Grenades were usually not lethal, at such close range, was an apprentice not simply courting death?

Bang!

A visible blast of overpressured air exploded between them. Though Ji Xun wore a ballistic plate, the close-range blast still felt like a train had slammed head-on into his chest. His blood and qi churned violently, and he instantly lost consciousness.

But with that force, his entire body accelerated into the darkness below like a cannonball.

As the blast came at him, the ranger instinctively assumed a defensive posture, but the Flashbang Grenade still sent him flying backward.

Watching the distance between himself and the target widen, the assassin was helpless as he flew backward. He could only pull the trigger on the launcher in his hand. With a pfft, a metal net shot toward the figure amid the blast.

A splash rang out.

The target had fallen into the Underground Dark River and vanished from sight.

Only then did everyone realize that from the very beginning, the guy had not chosen to jump off the cliff in blind panic. He had intended to jump into the pitch-black underground river.

It was also the only way they could think of for a Card Master Apprentice to possibly escape the encirclement.

The warrior captain stared at the Underground Dark River, shrouded in thick fog, his eyes full of gloom.

They had thought he was merely a Card Master Apprentice. As long as he dared appear on Dark Rain Street, there was absolutely no way he could escape their squad.

But the truth was right before them.

Not only had he escaped.

He had also slapped them hard across the face.

Thinking back on it now, the mercenaries realized that from the very beginning, that guy had displayed almost inhuman calmness and precise judgment.

During that brief minute of fierce pursuit, every shot he fired had been perfectly timed, buying himself precious time to escape. Every step he took afterward had seemed carefully calculated, leading to what might have been the only possible route to survival.

Only at the end, when they saw him detonate the Flashbang Grenade right in front of his own face, did the people from Blackwater Mercenaries realize that he was not only meticulous—he also possessed a madness ordinary people lacked.

Even if the Flashbang Grenade did not kill him, it would most likely knock him unconscious. Bound in an iron net and thrown into the water, could he still survive? Was he betting that the river water would choke him awake?

Seeking a sliver of life from death itself—had this guy truly not hesitated even a little?

If he had shown even a trace of hesitation or made a single mistake during the entire escape, he would have been caught!

But he had not!

Not even once!

Shooting, cliff jumping, Flashbang Grenade, precise water landing.

There had not been a single unnecessary movement throughout, not a single mistake!

The fog had settled over the river surface, reducing visibility to less than two meters. Even flares could reveal only a mass of dense fog over the water.

The captain's expression had darkened to the extreme as he roared, "Get in the water! No matter what, we have to find him!"

With that, he removed his Mechanical Equipment and jumped down first.

If they truly let the target escape, they could already imagine their own fate.

Thanks to 'Yong Ye' for 1,000, 'Keleier' for 500, 'Qian Mo' for 500, and 'Nanshan Nan 04' for their support. Many thanks.