“He isn't a good person either. Things are even worse than I guessed before. Zhou Shen mixed in among us just to gain our trust.
As soon as the broadcast ordered him to resume his identity, he immediately killed that old lady! Her corpse is right in that room on the second floor with the exit!”
Lin Mo asked, “Resume... his identity?”
“He! He is...” Chen Xijian felt her head spinning. “He's a Grey Mark—a pawn planted among us by the mastermind. It's a profession that accepts full client commissions, a hitman who follows orders, but encompasses even more than a hitman. It was by relying on undercover investigation and deep infiltration that he gathered all of us here!”
“He's the mastermind's accomplice, and not long ago the broadcast gave him an order: if the real killer isn't identified, kill him, or kill everyone... He completely obeys his client's arrangements, and now—”
“Shh.” Lin Mo cut her off.
Chen Xijian felt as if her vocal cords were instantly pinched shut. She fell silent and tilted her head away, using the furniture to conceal her body while staring fixedly at the gap exposed by the rotting door.
The corridor was pitch-black, with cold wind blowing continuously into the room.
“What's wrong?” Chen Xijian's voice was extremely thin. She crouched lower, trying to minimize her presence. “Who is it?”
Lin Mo said, “Don't speak anymore.”
Chen Xijian reached up and tightly covered her own mouth. The instant her hands touched her skin, she realized her hands were as cold as ice.
Please, no matter what happens, just let her live. Just let her live.
A heavy sound of footsteps echoed slowly from the far end of the corridor. The sudden increase in weight made the floorboards let out a sharp groan.
Accompanying the footsteps was an intermittent, stumbling, hair-raising noise—the sound of iron being dragged across the floor.
An axe?
Lin Mo looked down at the dagger in her hand. She flipped the hilt slightly; the blade was thin as a cicada's wing, shimmering with cold light.
Outside, the axe blade dragged across the decaying wooden floor, producing a harsh, drawn-out scraping sound.
【Looks like And Then There Were None turned into an infinite flow battle royale.】
Lin Mo thought about the profession of “Grey Mark.” Was it similar to a hitman? Zhou Shen's physical conditioning and build were far superior to hers. He was well-trained and armed with a weapon.
So what should she do? If the person outside was Zhou Shen, even having two of them wouldn't give them an advantage.
An ambush?
If she couldn't guarantee a instant kill, she would pay a heavy price. Should she sacrifice someone else to draw Zhou Shen's attention?
If she didn't kill him, every subsequent action would be restricted, making escaping even more difficult.
What to do...
A person dragging an axe wandered nearby, a presence constantly threatening her life lingering in the vicinity.
Chen Xijian held her breath. Slowly releasing her hands, she maintained her original posture, half-kneeling by the door, completely motionless.
The prolonged standstill caused a bead of sweat to roll slowly down her temple, dropping onto the floor without her noticing.
The scraping of the axe grew near. The person seemed to have noticed something, but with the night so dark, even if there were bloodstains left behind, they wouldn't be noticed so quickly.
As long as they didn't make a sound...
Just then, a flash of white light streaked across the sky, followed by the belated roar of thunder and the loud crash of a falling tree, instantly brightening the entire manor by two levels.
Through the crack in the door, both of them caught sight of a contour at the same time. The passing lightning also briefly illuminated a shadow cast onto the floor. The person's shoulders were extremely broad, like a moving wall. He wore dark clothes soaked through with an unknown substance and held a long-handled axe.
A flash of dark red light flickered past; the arc of liquid spraying from the axe was terrifyingly grisly.
Chen Xijian's legs went weak, and she nearly slumped to the ground. Tears and sweat fell silently onto the floorboards, making an infinitesimally faint sound in the quiet.
It's over...
Lin Mo stood up.
They had been discovered after all. That flash of lightning must have illuminated all the clues; the person behind the door definitely knew they were hiding here.
Under the brief flash of white light, the sound of wind and rain seemed to be seized by a massive hand, and the world went dark once more, vanishing along with all hope.
Her heart felt as if it were about to leap out of her chest. Everything was thumping; utter despair was nothing more than this.
“I... I don't want to die,” Chen Xijian muttered. Perhaps under extreme fear, a physiological reaction caused her stomach to contract violently, making her feel like vomiting.
A strong odor seeped through the crack in the door, a damp, fishy ocean stench crawling out from the gaps between the wooden boards.
Watching Chen Xijian's reaction, A9 suddenly had a hallucination of Lin Mo, so it turned its head to look at the authentic version.
As expected, the original version also had her palm pressed tightly against her cheek. Perhaps there was fear, but it was definitely not because she lacked the courage to face reality, as her hand was still gripping her weapon tightly.
This was fear, but it was also the birth of a murderous intent.
After a brief hesitation, the figure outside swayed.
A crimson eye slowly floated into view.
It peered inside through the gap in the door.
【Hurry up and kill him!】
A9 didn't hesitate for a second. Are you kidding? For a character with no role in the plot, it wouldn't even deign to spare him a glance.
Don't ask why it didn't doubt Lin Mo's strength this time and end up slapped in the face again. It was because Lin Mo had even defeated Wudong—that was Wudong!
Even though she had used petty tricks, a key operative of the Covenant of the Scales' action team had been defeated. This guy was just a nobody.
In short, hurry up and make a move!
Lin Mo bent down slightly and moved to the front of the door almost instantly, thrusting the dagger straight toward the eye exposed outside the door crack.
The person outside reacted astonishingly fast. His heavy body leaned back violently, and the tip of the dagger grazed right past his eyeball.
No sound came from behind the door, but the hand Zhou Shen used to cover his eye had already touched a warm, wet liquid. The stench of blood spread through the air, and blood smeared across half of his face.
His expression twisted, yet he forcefully suppressed the pitch in his throat.
The already rotted and fragile wooden door was kicked open. Splinters scraped harshly against skin. Zhou Shen stumbled back a step. Recovering his senses, he squeezed one eye shut and swung the long-handled axe in his hand horizontally. The wind brought by the axe blade was deep and terrifying.
If this hit struck, her body would likely be split in two and sent flying.
The pain limited her reaction speed. Having kicked out just now, the pain at her ankle grew worse, as if a red-hot iron needle had pierced through the bone.
Perhaps when she heard the scream back then, she should have turned back the way she came so she wouldn't have been injured.
The wind pressure brought by the back of the axe grazed past her shoulder, tilting her entire body sideways. The back of her head and shoulder slammed heavily against the wall, causing white spots to explode before her eyes.
“Clang—!”
The wall outside was coated with a layer of brittle plaster. The axe blade embedded itself deeply into the gap between the bricks. With a hard pull, a large piece of plaster was torn off the wall, sending splinters and dust surging out.
Reversing her grip on the dagger, she slashed upward horizontally, cutting toward his flank.
The tip of the blade sank into muscle. The man in the dark finally let out a muffled groan of pain. The muscles in his arm contracted spasmatically; the axe blade slid downward out of alignment and chopped into a wooden board on the corridor floor.
The ferocious force grazed Lin Mo's cheekbone and smashed into the doorframe behind her, causing the dilapidated manor to shudder.
Lin Mo hated his weapon.
Although the giant axe robbed its user of agility, a single minor mistake on her part would be fatal.
The glint of the blade flickered constantly in the dark, like a phantom fire appearing and disappearing in a rainstorm.
Zhou Shen's axe had a rather long windup. After all, in the dark, no one could guarantee they wouldn't hit the building when swinging down, and pulling it back out required extra effort.
Thus, he could only retreat step by step. The axe was long and heavy, impossible to wield freely in such a narrow corridor. The blade chopped into the walls, floorboards, and stairwells again and again, leaving behind a flurry of debris and roars with every strike, making the entire corridor seem as if it were being demolished.
While leaving wounds on her enemy, she also sustained varying degrees of injuries herself.
With a single misstep in dodging, Lin Mo collided with the back of the axe and was flung out light as a kite.
Rate on N.U.
