The Whalers’ Association member who transplanted this relic probably only focused on its size, thinking it would be easy to transplant. But for micro-carved relics, once even a tiny crack appeared, a part of the entire micro-carving would easily be damaged along with it.
A suicide attack?
“That’s not right…” Survival is an instinct. Even if they were at the end of their rope, the other party shouldn’t be noble enough to perish with them.
The cracks in both the sky and the ground were like dogs chasing and biting them.
For a moment, the sky and ground where Zhou Qi’an was standing almost cracked at the same time. If he had been two seconds later, he might have been obliterated without a trace.
The flying debris in the sky was blocked by Red Cloak with a prop. She breathed heavily. “There must be a way out.”
That being said, all the current scenes pointed to one thing: the world was collapsing.
They hadn’t seen any other information.
The ground shook violently. Zhou Qi’an fell while running, scraping a layer of skin off his palm. Without even caring about the pain, he barely stood up and forced himself to concentrate on observing the entire world.
What you see is what you get.
Since there was no other information, could it be that what they were seeing was the information?
“What are you spacing out for?” Yuan pulled him hard from the side. In the distance, a gust of wind carrying small burning stones pierced through the spot where Zhou Qi’an had been.
“There is a crack in everything,” Zhou Qi’an frowned. “That’s how the light gets in.”
Yuan almost thought he had been brainwashed by the game.
It wasn’t until Zhou Qi’an repeated it a second time that both of them seemed to have figured something out from this sentence. They exchanged a look: “The cracks!”
The light came from outside. Since the relic had cracks, didn’t that mean the cracks were a channel to the outside world?
When they looked up again at the terrifying cracks on the ground, their expressions all changed.
Zhou Qi’an said in a deep voice, “Check these cracks!”
On the ground, there were now at least dozens of cracks. It was impossible for every one of them to be a way out to the outside world.
Checking the cracks sounded like a fantasy.
The earth’s crust was moving so violently now. With the slightest carelessness, one could fall right in when approaching.
However, no one doubted this conclusion. Zhou Qi’an and Yuan stood a little further away, one using a white silk sash and the other a spider-silk-like thing to wrap around Red Cloak and the university student, making it easier for these two to get closer to a nearby fissure.
However, after only a few seconds of being close, the sky unleashed another ‘Pegasus Meteor Fist’ at them.
The firestones kept falling, forcing them to leave the area.
Rushing to a relatively less cracked area, the four tried the same trick again. But just like before, after a short while, meteors fell to the mortal world again.
Once was a coincidence. The second time the same scene appeared, there was definitely something fishy. The feeling of being chased and bitten by the cracks in the sky grew stronger.
The living environment became more and more harsh. Yuan almost burst out with another curse. “The will of the world just doesn’t want us to live.”
A sentence of complaint, but when Zhou Qi’an heard it, he became thoughtful.
He suddenly started running in another direction, saying to the others behind him halfway, “Don’t follow.”
After pulling away by about two to three hundred meters, the others gradually discovered the pattern. It seemed that wherever Zhou Qi’an went, crisis followed.
“As expected.” Zhou Qi’an’s heart sank slightly.
All benefits were a double-edged sword.
The five-star Fish Eye exempted him from the step of evolving a heart, but the drawback was also obvious. This thing’s allure to monsters was too strong.
Zhou Qi’an even suspected that the previous rest period was itself a form of protection for him by the five-star Fish Eye.
This world had no other NPCs. The relic, the Micro-carved Horse, was on the verge of breaking. It was probably the one after his heart.
No wonder this association member had so cooperatively run out to confront him.
She was treating him as her last straw.
On the other side, because Zhou Qi’an was indirectly attracting fire, the survival pressure on Yuan and the others was much lower.
“Even if you’re anxious, you can’t help him,” Yuan reminded the university student who wanted to go over. “Focus on the cracks first.”
Every crack was bottomless, like a monster with its mouth open. At first glance, there was no difference.
The scorching flames in the air made everyone sweat profusely. While dizzy, they still had to pay attention to the crisis that could descend at any moment, forcibly maintaining their sanity.
Red Cloak: “Let’s try another one!”
Finding the difference definitely required comparison. Just looking at one was useless.
The university student couldn’t react as fast as the old players and could only switch to a pair of [Elastic Running Shoes] to jump over the abyss. This item required a high luck value, and the distance of each jump was hard to control. With a little bad luck, he could jump into a crack.
The ground was now tilted. Just a few centimeters off, and the university student was about to fall into the previous crack.
Red Cloak grabbed his collar from behind and said coldly, “If you want to die, just say so.”
The university student’s throat hitched. “Wind.”
“What?”
The university student held his breath and looked at the terrifying crack. “There’s wind.”
The whole world was filled with heat waves now, so some things were easily overlooked. But the university student strangely felt that a part of the wind was coming from within the crack. It had an unnatural coolness, and when it blew on his body, it brought a hint of chill.
Red Cloak first observed carefully, then found another crack. Inside, there was only a heat wave.
She ran back, looking at the university student with surprise. “That’s right, this is the difference!”
Everyone immediately looked at Zhou Qi’an. The university student had already called out, “Brother Zhou! Here.”
Hearing this, Zhou Qi’an ran towards them.
He had just run a few steps when the meteorites in the open field followed him like shadows. More troublesome than this, the crustal movement intensified. The areas he stepped on were like spiderwebs, cracking open in a few seconds.
As the distance shortened, some of the stones landing nearby had already fallen near the university student and the others.
Zhou Qi’an decisively stopped.
He looked ahead. “You guys go first.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, the crack the university student and the others had found was showing signs of closing. The exit crack was probably not constant and could change position at any time.
Yuan frowned, and just as she was about to speak, she was directly interrupted by Zhou Qi’an: “Cooperate from inside and outside.”
As soon as these four words were spoken, Yuan was stunned for a moment, then quickly reacted.
Under normal circumstances, when a player was viewing a relic, others could not get close. But this was a damaged relic, so perhaps there would be a difference.
If they were lucky, they would have a chance to directly kill the relic transplanter outside, or create more cracks on the relic from the outside.
Yuan no longer hesitated and jumped into the crack.
“Don’t worry, we will definitely get you out.”
Just as Red Cloak was about to jump after leaving a sentence, Zhou Qi’an suddenly thought of something and shouted sharply, “You two stay for a moment!”
“?”
Red Cloak came to a screeching halt, her cloak flying up, her posture comically like a duck.
The university student himself didn’t want to leave and said excitedly, “Brother Zhou, we’ll stay with you!”
Red Cloak: “…”
She really wanted to kill this guy.
Being a selfish person by nature, seeing a way out right in front of her but not being able to take it really didn’t feel good. But annoyance was annoyance. Red Cloak really did not jump into the crack and stayed to listen to what Zhou Qi’an had to say.
After stopping Red Cloak, Zhou Qi’an was busy dodging the troubles in the sky and managed to say, “Go find another crack, you two go together!”
In the time they had just delayed, the original crack had disappeared.
No one knew what he was up to. Zhou Qi’an had no time to explain, fully focused on dodging the ground fissures and meteorites. Amidst the huge impact sounds, even if he said it, the other two, who were running to find a crack, wouldn’t be able to hear clearly.
They could still distinguish the basic priorities.
The university student did not act stubbornly. Since Brother Zhou asked the two of them to leave together a step later, there must be another intention.
Soon, he discovered one of the reasons for his staying behind.
Without Zhou Qi’an following, the university student’s luck was quite good. In a short time, he found a second crack that could be used for escape. If Red Cloak had been left alone, she might not have had this good luck.
The two jumped down one after another.
In the end, only Zhou Qi’an was left.
He was like the last aboriginal waiting for death in the apocalypse, struggling futilely as heaven and earth collapsed.
But the person in question had very calm eyes, observing the about-to-collapse world with a detached attitude.
At first, only some smaller meteorites were falling. As time passed, the area of the falling meteorites became larger and larger. If they got any larger, even if he dodged at the first moment, he wouldn’t be able to run out of the range of the stone itself.
Cooperating from inside and outside was one way through, but one couldn’t completely place their hopes on others.
Zhou Qi’an narrowed his eyes. If the situation became uncontrollable, he would try to use the [Universal Door Card].
Two ways out, one of them had to succeed.
Barely avoiding a strike from falling debris, the corner of Zhou Qi’an’s mouth actually slowly curved up, and he muttered to himself:
“This should be one of your trump cards.”
Yesterday, five association members were dealt with. Today, if the outside world was as he predicted, including the small town, four could be sent off in the early morning.
Nearly two-thirds of the claws had been cut off.
After dealing with the trouble at hand and going to the database to update the remaining relic information, he could completely push through all the way.
Within today, he would make this association also experience an apocalypse.
“And the town residents who schemed against me…” Zhou Qi’an raised an eyebrow. He had a big gift for these people.
————
Outside.
After leaving the relic world, Red Cloak almost immediately locked onto a direction.
A young woman stood on a hillside not far away. She seemed to be in another dimension, her eyes half-closed and motionless. There were spiderweb-like red cracks on her neck, similar to porcelain that could shatter at any moment, cold and bizarre.
Without a doubt, this was the person who had pulled them into the relic world.
“Very good.”
Using a prop, Red Cloak saw that the barrier around the young woman opposite indeed had cracks. With damage, she was confident she could break it.
However, Red Cloak did not strike immediately, first warily scanning the surroundings.
Yuan was gone.
Even though the time they came out was only three or four minutes apart.
The university student suddenly said, “There seems to be someone else there!”
In the woods, a person was standing there at some unknown time, in the same posture as the young woman, motionless like a dead object.
Red Cloak stared for a few seconds and suddenly realized something. “No wonder he let us come out a step later.”
This was to prevent another association member from waiting outside, and pulling them back into a relic world the moment they came out.
She even had a more ominous guess. The person who laid out the plan had long since calculated that Zhou Qi’an would let them come out first, so they had placed another piece, just waiting for this moment.
Red Clo-ak considered herself ruthless enough, but compared to the Whalers’ Association, she was kind.
But obviously, the person standing there was not in a good state either, his face as pale as paper.
Except for the sheep-headed man, no Silent Town resident had ever been seen outside the small town. Association members playing the role of town residents surely couldn’t leave Silent Town at will.
This was a good thing. Forcing their way out must come at a price. Damaged strength meant that the probability of Yuan being able to fight her way out of the relic world alone increased.
It’s a buy-one-get-one-free killing business.
Red Cloak sneered and took out her scythe, wrapping poison around the blade. She first hacked towards the vicinity of the young woman who had transplanted the Micro-carved Horse, violently striking the cracks in the barrier, preparing to forcibly interrupt the viewing.
“No matter how sinister you are, you can’t out-scheme Zhou Qi’an.”
In that kind of critical situation, Zhou Qi’an could actually think of this point immediately. It was clear at a glance who was more skilled at scheming.
On the other side, the university student bought a heavy axe from the game mall at great expense and started chopping along.
This thing felt like it could chop well. He hacked randomly at the barrier blocking their way. He was sent flying by the rebound force several times, but he always managed to accidentally chop at the right spot on an unintentional crack.
After being sent flying again, the university student quickly got up.
This time, however, he did not rush over immediately. A trace of excitement suddenly appeared on his face.
In the distance, a black shadow was as fast as lightning. The surrounding temperature dropped a few degrees. The shadow, which appeared more severe than usual, arrived in front of the Micro-carved Horse ‘relic’ first.
…Shen Zhiyi and the others were back.
