“I overestimated him. I should’ve had John’s Cinan Arm swapped for the latest model too!”
Feng Xue sighed inwardly. If John had brought Heartfire or Silk-Spitting, this would be much easier to fight.
Still, cheap had its own way of fighting. It wasn’t as if John had no trump cards on him!
Once the decision was made, John immediately abandoned the original plan of disengaging. With his back against a load-bearing structure, he spread out his perception.
Iron Mask was a standard assassin-type character. He lacked neither patience nor killing intent. Without an opportunity for a one-hit kill, he would rather keep dragging things out like this.
Although once Mirage’s cooldown ended, John could attempt to turn invisible and disengage, with Iron Mask’s speed, the instant he went invisible, a blade would probably already be chopping into him. And under Mirage’s slowing effect, he would have no chance of evading at all.
“Then we’ll do this the hard way!”
John’s gaze suddenly sharpened. The sword intent of the Hell Sword roamed beneath his skin—not for attacking, but purely as a means to heighten his perception.
Inhale—exhale—
Inhale—exhale—
Inhale—exhale—
John’s breathing grew steadier and steadier, while Iron Mask frowned. This kid’s mental state was far too stable, nothing like someone at the end of his rope.
Recalling the arrow from before that had nearly killed him, Iron Mask did not dare underestimate this killer in the slightest. While continuing to use words to disrupt the other party’s state of mind, he searched for John’s openings.
“Click!”
“Reloading? How dare he!”
Though Iron Mask suspected a trick, he trusted his own ears even more. A magazine-fed shotgun could hold more shells, but reloading was also much more troublesome.
He couldn’t let this chance slip by!
Iron Mask decided to take the gamble. His figure twisted, brushing along the shadows between buildings as he charged toward John. But what greeted him was a handgun already waiting to fire.
The black muzzle was raised just like that. Beneath John’s practiced one-handed reload, fire had already blossomed!
“Nice technique. But in that posture, how are you going to maintain mobility?”
Iron Mask did not pull away. With a lift of the mantis blade on his left arm, he easily knocked the bullet aside. In that instant, a trace of hesitation actually surfaced in John, but in the end, he completed the reload at an unbelievable speed and sprayed shot at Iron Mask, who was already close at hand!
Against handgun bullets, Iron Mask could easily shoot them down, but faced with these countless steel pellets, his only path was to evade and retreat.
His legs erupted with astonishing spring force, instantly widening the distance between them. He did not even dare to keep using that trick of transmitting his voice from multiple angles.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t installed subdermal armor, but the long-lost pain on his face made him understand—this was an expert capable of breaking through ordinary source-energy counteraction.
“Looks like I need to get a source-energy interference device.”
Iron Mask made up his mind, but when he thought of that thing’s price, he couldn’t help feeling a pang of pain.
And at this moment, John was likewise wary of Iron Mask’s mobility.
Iron Mask did not know that John had to be invisible to launch a source-energy attack that ignored protection, but John understood that Iron Mask’s speed and reflexes crushed his own.
Of course, if he activated Hajichikov, he should be able to contend with the other party. But if the other party wanted to flee, John would have difficulty catching up. Hajichikov’s transformation was too conspicuous; once Iron Mask carried that information away, it would mean that as long as he used this transformation, the connection between his clones might be exposed.
So even if John was truly killed, he could not expose Hajichikov!
Having made the decision in his mind, John suddenly felt somewhat helpless. If he hadn’t fired earlier, things might actually have been much better.
“Ah, people really do instinctively want to win sometimes!”
And so, just as Iron Mask was formulating a new plan, even beginning to consider whether he should notify the other cadres to come over, this killer he couldn’t quite figure out actually showed an appearance of giving up resistance.
“What is this guy trying to do now?”
Iron Mask frowned as he watched John move toward Wind Chime Street completely unguarded. Yet he had no choice but to make a decision. His own face was proof enough that the other party possessed flesh source energy. If he did not deal with him here, then as long as John entered the crowd, he could immediately change his face and appearance. At that point, Iron Mask would have to be on guard at all times against a cold arrow shot from who knew where.
Dodging it once had already been luck. He had no confidence he could dodge it again!
So he couldn’t give him the chance!
He would finish him right here!
A fierce gleam burst from Iron Mask’s eyes. His mantis blade stabbed into the wall as if into tofu; with a twist, he slipped into the narrow gap between the load-bearing structure and the functional building.
“Nine meters…”
“Seven meters…”
“Five meters…”
Relying on his familiarity with the terrain,
Iron Mask slowly approached along the little mechanisms only locals would know. His heat was shielded by specialized skin, his breathing switched to internal oxygen supply, and with his mantis blades fully unfolded, he was like a shadow living within the walls, drifting like fluid around John.
“Game over.”
Making his judgment inwardly, the Kerenzikov ran at full power, and the flow of time was instantly stretched out. His consciousness began to surpass his body.
Without the assistance of a Sandevistan, the Kerenzikov’s acceleration only acted on the nerves. Those who had just installed it would often encounter the problem of thinking they had already made their move while their body remained in place. But Iron Mask would obviously not make such a low-level mistake. In the time where his perception of time was stretched out, he did not urge on his sluggish body. Instead, he split his consciousness into every nerve ending, bringing every single movement to perfection.
The boss had said his mental talent was quite good. If he had not joined a gang from a young age, perhaps he could have become a precious hacker. But he did not feel that kind of combat through a screen suited him. Only by spreading his will outward and experiencing the sensation of blood bursting forth could he find the battle he pursued…
Chh—
A sharp blade entered flesh, and blood sprayed out, but Iron Mask only felt a strange unease.
Too simple. Too easy. As if the person falling beneath his blade at this moment were not the enemy who had pressured him earlier.
The satisfaction that should have come from killing a powerful foe inexplicably turned into emptiness. But while he had yet to shut off the Kerenzikov, while his mind was still in a slightly berserk state, the corpse that should have been falling “slowly” suddenly vanished, leaving behind only a handful of pale-pink bone fragments that scattered down like snowflakes.
“Run!”
At this moment, Iron Mask felt an unprecedented malice. He did not understand what had happened, nor did he know how a living person had turned into bone fragments, but both his reason and his instincts were transmitting the same signal to him at once—
If you don’t want to die, run!
“Think you can make it in time?”
John, who had already begun storing power the moment he pretended to leave, did not raise his gun and shoot. Hatred’s ability was merely “sure hit,” not “sure kill.” And now, having lost part of his arm bone because of Golden Cicada Sheds Its Shell, it was obviously very difficult for him to fire a shot with sufficient power.
However…
“Didn’t think I’d actually get to use this!”
John looked at the figure rapidly fleeing into the distance, not forgetting to run in a zigzag pattern, and suddenly broke into a stride.
His speed was slow compared to Iron Mask’s, but as he ran, two masses of flame had already gushed out from his heels.
“Great Strength, activate!”
Under Great Strength’s enhancement of both legs, John’s body suddenly rose into the air. His entire person seemed to be drawn by an invisible force, taking his left foot as the axis as he began spinning at high speed!
A piercing hum came from behind his head. Iron Mask did not dare look back, and could only keep searching for routes with more cover. But a voice had already come from behind him—
“My drill is the drill that pierces the heavens!”