Chapter 887: Double-Edged Sword

"Why..." Gan Yi blurted out a single word before cutting himself off abruptly. He whipped his head around. Everything within sight, the cold hard deformed white walls, the long sword stuck in his chest, Xu Huo standing several meters away, all of it had returned to the way it was!

His eyes went blank for a moment, his expression slightly dazed, as if he didn't understand why he kept waking up inside an illusion.

Xu Huo was also a bit surprised that the mental illusion he'd created could be so seamless, trapping a C-level player and making him completely unable to tell illusion from reality.

He glanced at the eyes on the "Eye of the Dead," where the blade met the hilt, now slightly more open than before. He knew the sword had played a role too, only its effect was fiercer than he'd imagined. Even while severely wounded, Gan Yi had entered his Mental World completely unguarded.

The "Eye of the Dead" had performed brilliantly, but Gan Yi was somewhat disappointing.

Xu Huo took back the "Eye of the Dead" and let him fall to the ground.

Gan Yi had already lost too much blood. He looked up at the time, "Only three minutes..."

Number 27 was already dead beyond doubt. Gan Yi stared at his corpse for a few seconds, then said, "You have a grudge against the Holy Sword Society?"

"Not exactly." Xu Huo said, "I just don't particularly like the Holy Sword Society."

In the lawless game, the simple words "don't like" carried a lot of weight, especially coming from a young player with promising potential. A biased attitude could bring incalculable losses to the Holy Sword Society.

Gan Yi laughed soundlessly. "I can tell you who that person is, but on one condition, you let me go."

Xu Huo stood where he was without moving. "Do you honestly think that's possible?"

Gan Yi crawled forward, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he spoke, "What the Holy Sword Society wants to do, no one can stop... Eternal Brand!"

With a wave of his hand, several light spots appeared in midair, streaking like arrows through "Xu Huo's" body and rushing toward an empty patch of ground nearby!

Gan Yi lay flat on his back, laughing with satisfaction, "Just as I thought, still fake..."

That's right, the "Xu Huo" standing in front of him at this very moment was still an illusion. The real Xu Huo was to his left. But items didn't have eyes, and even though he couldn't see where Xu Huo was, within a certain range, the items still homed in on the real person!

Xu Huo, already on guard, traversed space the instant the light spots appeared, moving a hundred meters away. The first light spot struck where he'd just been standing, leaving behind a hexagonal pattern that quickly faded, but the rest pursued him across half the plaza in a relentless chase.

Xu Huo changed positions several times and used items to block before finally canceling out most of the light spots. But just as he returned to Gan Yi's side, a massive hexagonal light spot appeared on the ground beneath his feet, then rapidly compressed to the size of a thumb and locked onto his face!

Even through the item, Xu Huo felt his skin burning. His brows sank, and he blinked to appear in front of Gan Yi, piercing through his heart before the man could kill himself!

But when Gan Yi saw the hexagonal brand left on his face, he let out a breathy laugh, "There's... a mark... any... Holy Sword Society disciple... will hunt you... and kill you..."

Xu Huo rotated the sword hilt, unmoved. "As you said, as long as I carry this mark, I can endlessly lure out Holy Sword Society players?"

Gan Yi's eyes flew wide open, and with a faint trace of regret and fury, he breathed his last.

Xu Huo pulled out the sword and stood before the corpse, silent for a few seconds before retrieving the items from his body.

Aside from Gan Yi, Zhuang Mengtian, the ambushing player, and Number 27 were all D-level players. Their professions were hypnotist, assembly line worker, and diver respectively. Their items were average, nothing particularly impressive. The three of them combined weren't worth one Gan Yi.

Gan Yi's profession was supermarket owner. The items he'd used before, "Hide-and-Seek Cabinet," "Box of Life and Death," "The Heart's Vacancy," "Eternal Brand," and "Stop Or Go," were all decent quality, not low-grade.

"Hide-and-Seek Cabinet" and "Eternal Brand" were Special Items. The former could intercept ambushers who entered within ten meters and had a chance of trapping them inside the cabinet. The latter was a tracking item, and once successfully branded on someone's face, it was very difficult to remove.

Xu Huo touched the fake mask on his face. It seemed this "Actor's Mask" was done for.

"Box of Life and Death" was a B-class Spatial Item. After successfully trapping someone, one could compress the space to crush the prisoner to death or suffocate them from lack of oxygen. "The Heart's Vacancy" was a C-grade item that would travel along blood vessels into the heart and destroy it. However, both items were somewhat troublesome to use, the former requiring the trapped person to stand in a fixed position for more than five seconds, the latter requiring direct contact.

"Stop Or Go" was a D-grade item that could make a person march in place, with a time limit of half a minute.

Beyond that, his item slot also contained a "Precise Hit."

This was the same kind of paper the Holy Sword Society player had used earlier to write names and kill people.

[One-time A-class item. Blood and a name can locate any independent person within a space. When that person's code name is erased, their life will dissipate along with it. However, the number of names that can be written on one sheet of paper is limited, so please use with caution. Additionally, any player can only use this item once in their lifetime, and once the first name is written, its effective duration is thirty minutes.]

Judging from how the item was used, it basically matched Xu Huo's earlier assessment. But considering how many Holy Sword Society members carried one, despite being labeled a one-time A-class item, it wasn't actually that precious.

After examining the more important items, he only briefly rifled through the potion slot and luggage compartment. Besides some Holy Sword Society documents in Gan Yi's luggage compartment, he also found a non-player train ticket among the ambushing player's belongings.

During this time, two more players on the plaza "obtained friendship" under the Host's announcement and successfully cleared the dungeon.

"Why is obtaining friendship so easy now?" Someone was puzzled. From an outsider's perspective, it was just two players choosing to complete a task together, not even reaching the level of a life-threatening situation, and this method had been tried before.

"The flower you tend won't bloom; the willow you neglect gives shade." Shajia remarked with feeling.

That was exactly the principle. Previously, all players were focused on clearing the dungeon with a clear goal, retreating whenever they encountered danger, and didn't have the conditions for "sharing adversity." It was only when clearing became hopeless that they had the idea of helping each other survive until the dungeon ended.

Friendship, well, maybe the threshold wasn't that high. How could friendship form without interaction? So the longer the time, the greater the possibility of "obtaining friendship." However, the mortality rate of "You're Well, I'm Well" was too high. Most people didn't last this long.

Of course, more people didn't meet the "friendship" criteria. "Sharing adversity" required not just courage but also ability. To begin with, the possibility of non-players and players forming friendship was very small.

Xu Huo gave the non-player train ticket to Xiaoxiao.