Chapter 1643: Imperial Assassin

A tow truck was driving along the streets of Fuyuki City, and Rin Tohsaka sitting in the special seat on the back finally let out a long breath—it had finally reached a flat stretch of road.

The ride in the special seat was awful; you could tell that just from Illya’s little face full of despair. But the special seat had one advantage: it was safe. With A Mu and Hercules there, with the two of them as meat shields in front of and behind Rin Tohsaka and Illya, the enemy simply wouldn’t feel any desire to launch an attack on these two Masters.

“Where exactly is Kirei Kotomine?”

Inside the tow truck’s canopy, Su Xiao was sketching an electronic map. If nothing unexpected happened, he could settle his old score with Stan tonight.

“Underground.”

Priest Dao En spoke from the driver’s seat. He wasn’t good at fighting, but his tracking ability was definitely top class within the Holy Church—or rather, he was pure logistics.

“Kirei… Sorry. Kirei Kotomine knows us very well. We used to think we knew him just as well, but it seems that’s not the case. It’s hard to imagine someone with that kind of achievement being willing to use such unscrupulous methods.”

Priest Dao En still wore that lazy expression, as if he couldn’t bring himself to care about anything.

“What are you using to track him?”

“Intuition.”

“…”

Su Xiao said nothing, just stared at Priest Dao En with a blank face.

“Hey, hey, I’m joking. We’re almost there. This thing can track Kirei Kotomine’s location—unless he takes off the cross on his chest.”

Priest Dao En held the steering wheel with one hand and reached into his coat with the other. Just as Su Xiao was expecting him to pull out some bizarre Miracle relic, Dao En took out a cell phone from his coat. From the look of it, it was a fairly modern smartphone.

“A tracker?”

“Of course. How else do you think I’m tracking Kirei Kotomine?”

Priest Dao En looked at Su Xiao with pure astonishment. At this point, Su Xiao had completely given up any expectations for this priest who carried a phone on him.

“Divine Officials all have some degree of rejection toward modern tools, including Kirei Kotomine. That just makes him easier to track. The things he and his father did back then—the Church certainly knows some of it, it’s just…”

Crack!

Blood splattered, and a bullet pierced through Su Xiao’s arm. But before his arm was blown open, he snatched the phone from Priest Dao En’s hand in a lightning-fast motion. The next instant, another bullet appeared out of thin air and blew through Priest Dao En’s skull, then sank straight into the coupling ring at the back of the canopy.

With a loud clang, the tow truck’s cab separated from the rear coupling ring, breaking apart into two sections.

The special seat in the rear only felt a slight jolt, but the cab in front rolled onto its side, tumbled twice, left a field of shattered glass, and crashed into a residential house by the roadside.

The now headless tow truck slid nearly a hundred meters before it finally stopped. A Mu was the first to jump off and sprinted toward the house that now had a hole smashed in it.

Inside the house, the tow truck cab had flipped sideways and was wedged into a wall. Su Xiao stood up in the driver’s compartment and climbed out through the front windshield. He still had a phone in his hand, smeared with blood.

Su Xiao flicked the blood off the phone. Luckily, it still worked. On the screen was a crude map, with a red dot blinking near the upper part of the map.

Su Xiao was standing in a bedroom. On the bed was a young couple, propped up against the headboard. Their eyes were full of terror, and there were chunks of concrete rubble all over the quilt. A big lump had swelled up on the man’s forehead, faintly oozing blood.

You could imagine: the young couple were sleeping, and suddenly a tow truck cab rammed into their bedroom. Their feelings at this moment had to be a mess of panic and utter disbelief—especially since there was also a headless corpse inside the driver’s compartment, still spasming unconsciously.

Su Xiao patted the dust off himself, calmly pushed open the bedroom door, and even closed it carefully behind him. A few seconds after he left, a woman’s scream finally rang out from the bedroom.

Walking out of the house, Su Xiao’s gaze swept across the street. He didn’t even need to think to know this was Blood Gate’s doing. No other Independent Contractor would take such a huge risk just to kill a priest, especially one working for the Burial Institution.

“Didn’t see that coming.”

Su Xiao walked down the street, his eyes sharpening as they scanned in all directions. That shot just now hadn’t come from long range—if it had, his Intuition ability would have warned him immediately.

The bullet had appeared out of thin air right in front of Priest Dao En, then shattered his head.

Meanwhile, in a basement five kilometers away from Su Xiao’s position, a man and two women were standing there. The man held a Heavy Sniper Rifle, and not far in front of him was a Crystal Mirror. Reflected in the Crystal Mirror was Su Xiao, walking down the street.

“Recalibrate the coordinates.”

As he spoke, the man worked the bolt. A brass-orange casing popped free, the wisp of smoke clinging to it slowly dispersing.

Beside the man, a short-haired older-sister type conjured a bullet between her fingers. She gently kissed the bullet and murmured a quiet phrase.

The man took the bullet. From beginning to end, his face showed no emotion. Rather than calling him Human, he was more like a machine built for killing—numb, mechanical, cold. His name was Death Penalty, a killer specifically cultivated by the Blood Gate Adventure Group to deal with other Contractors.

“I can only hold it for one more shot at most. The distance is too far.”

The other girl, with long hair, spoke up. Her hands were clasped together, and five-colored, prismatic light flickered in her eyes.

“That’s enough.”

Death Penalty took the bullet the short-haired woman handed him, loaded it, racked the bolt, raised the rifle, and aimed. The target was Su Xiao in the Crystal Mirror.

Death Penalty didn’t fire immediately. He pulled a Tactical Dagger from his waist and sliced into the artery in his arm. Blood spurted out in a jet.

Unexpectedly, his blood reversed direction, flowing upward and crawling along the Heavy Sniper Rifle.

Thirty seconds later, the short-haired woman couldn’t watch anymore and spoke anxiously: “Death Penalty, if you keep bleeding like this, you’re going to be the first one to die.”

“It’s not enough. Not nearly enough. He’s strong, so…”

With a soft swish, the Tactical Dagger sliced across the short-haired woman’s throat. She turned to glare at Death Penalty, eyes blazing with fury.

“Are you brain-dead? I’ve told you dozens of times—if you need blood, you give me a heads-up, and you cut the arm.”

The short-haired woman clutched her throat with one hand and pulled out a Potion to stop the bleeding. Just a few seconds of blood loss had already made her slightly light-headed—that was the price of that Mysterious Side sniper rifle.

Death Penalty ignored her. He slowly squeezed the trigger. With a thunderous report, the bullet left the barrel and shot into the Crystal Mirror. This round wasn’t something Su Xiao could tank—A Mu holding a shield couldn’t take it head-on either.

At the same time, Su Xiao, walking down the street, suddenly felt his hairs stand on end. This wasn’t the vague chill before danger struck; it was his Intuition ability sounding the alarm. A bullet had already appeared in front of him, only a few centimeters from his brow.

At such close range, Su Xiao had no time to Dodge. The bullet sank into his skull, exited from the back of his head, and with a bang buried itself in the asphalt behind him.

Su Xiao kept walking, completely unharmed. Through the Crystal Mirror, Death Penalty watched this scene; his face, pale from blood loss, still showed no expression—but the next second, he crashed to the floor. With ninety percent of his blood gone, if he weren’t a Contractor he’d already be a corpse.

Su Xiao had avoided that devastating bullet thanks to his Dragon Shadow Flash ability. He’d paused for a moment while Penetration Space, which caused the bullet to miss him.

The bad news now was that Blood Gate had somehow gotten out of the Barrier—and did it without Bennie sensing a thing. Even worse, they’d managed to track down Su Xiao’s location.