Chapter 105 - Escaping from Burial Grounds (XXXV)
Editor: Kitty
Luo Jian had climbed very high up, the tree frantically shaking, when the huge tomb had started to collapse. Fortunately, there were several Roman pillars in the god’s tomb vault, which slowed down the vault’s collapse. However, the tree was so tall that he still could not see the end of it. In front of him, it was pitch-dark. It was unknown what props the vampire team captain, who had climbed higher than him, used to light up the area around himself. He used the light source to observe and avoid the huge stones that were falling from above.
Brawny, who had been in front of Luo Jian earlier, was behind him now. Although he had great strength, he did not seem to be flexible or good at climbing. Moreover, the big tree demon not only shook but also moved the branches and vines on its trunk to attack Luo Jian and the others.
Luo Jian unconsciously ran through his mental technique in his mind when climbing. Amazingly, the big tree seemed to completely ignore him after that, and the vines stopped attacking him, allowing Luo Jian to happily climb up the height of the trunk.
As he climbed, Luo Jian looked toward the ground and saw that the stalker had disappeared without trace. Luo Jian knew that he would not come and help him. During critical moments, the stalker always left Luo Jian. He would mercilessly leave all the unknown dangers and evils for Luo Jian to face alone and would not care about his feelings at all.
But it was necessary.
Luo Jian was very clear that the stalker had helped them too much. If he continued to help, the secret chamber would not allow it. This would not only make Luo Jian and others fall into a more dangerous situation but also implicate the stalker to be punished by the secret chamber.
Therefore, Luo Jian must rely on himself from now on.
Duan Li and Feng YuLan, who were far behind, also kept up with the pace and started to climb. Since the boy disappeared, Ah Lan told Duan Li that the child had left. As for where he went, Ah Lan did not know.
The very last one was the long-forgotten Specter. In fact, his speed was not slow. In a normal situation, he would soon be able to catch up with most of the others and rendezvous with his teammates, but the problem was that he encountered some accidents on the way.
Just as Specter arrived by the roots of the huge tree demon, the tree went berserk, and its roots struggled to pull out from the soil and rock. Therefore, those vines brought out some things that were originally hidden under the ground.
Specter saw that from underneath the ground, the vines flipped out a corpse. Specter hesitated for a moment and wanted to go closer to study the corpse because he realized that the corpse’s dressing style and makeup were not like the funeral accompaniments in this ancient tomb. Although the corpse’s clothes were gray, they were typical modern garbs.
And when Specter approached, something unexpected happened. When he climbed up the vines and got closer to the corpse, the corpse suddenly moved as if it had been resurrected. The man opened his eyes suddenly and turned to look at Specter.
If Luo Jian was currently present, he would surely recognize that the k2018;corpse’ was Clown, who he thought he had killed previously.
It may have been because he was buried under the ground all the time, but Clown’s makeup was all ruined. Thus, his makeup appeared messed up, his hair was all tangled, and his clothes were so dirty that one was unable to see the original colours. He had a thick gauze wrapped around his neck like Luo Jian, which undoubtedly had allowed him to escape from the clutches of death.
It was just that Clown’s eyes were a little dull, and he had a kind of expression akin to a puppet. When he woke up after surfacing from the ground, he looked at Specter standing in front of him, stared at him warily as if he saw something he couldn’t understand, and slightly tilted his head.
Specter hesitated for a while, but only for a moment. In the Chaos Chamber Battlefield, any person one met was either a comrade or an enemy! So when one met the enemy, one did not hesitate to kill them!
So Specter raised the muzzle of his gun and aimed at the enemy in front of him before pulling the trigger to fire. To his surprise, Clown, who was standing opposite him, lowered his head a little and dodged Specter’s shot within 0.1 seconds. The distance between them was only ten meters. This kind of reaction speed and awareness were simply unachievable for human beings.
Specter’s astonishment didn’t last long. He fired several shots in a row very accurately. Even if the enemy could dodge one quickly, there was always another bullet that could hit the target, so Clown was shot near the area of his chest and shoulder.
The impact of the bullet made Clown step backwards. He lowered his head to look at his injuries, but his face did not show that he was in pain after he was injured. He was very calm when he raised his head up to look at Specter.
“Obstacles encountered when attempting to accomplish task.” Clown talked to himself in a flat and unsmooth voice as if he had been restructured into a robot while he fixed his eyes at Specter, saying, “Obstacle removal begins.”
When Clown finished speaking, his body slightly bent and leaned forward. It was unknown where in his hands the scalpels appeared out of, but they were now sandwiched between his fingers. He made a kind of preparatory action as if he was about to rush towards Specter. All at once, Specter became alert, and his fighting consciousness led him to make the next action. Specter took his weapons and two guns to block his chest, trying to stand in a defensive position.
However, before he could appropriately position himself defensively, the enemy Clown standing opposite him appeared in front of him at the next moment. That speed was so fast that… for a moment, Specter thought of Duan Li, but although he also had such a fast and outrageous speed, Clown was not Duan Li. Compared to the person who had fought Luo Jian, he was someone completely different now!
In that instant when Clown was approaching, Specter, based on his experiences after many battles, tried to open up some distance between himself and the enemy. However, Clown suddenly threw a concealed scalpel from his hand toward Specter. The blade brushed past him, and Specter could not dodge in time. He soon felt a cut on the side of his face.
Originally, when fighting with the two stalkers, Specter had suffered some injuries. At this time, he realized that his current condition was not suitable for fighting, and the enemy… Specter squinted his eyes. This kind of combat power was totally different from those of the enemies he met before like the vampire team captain.
Specter had seen several members of the enemy team, but he hadn’t seen the little boy. However, he realized that one of the enemies did have the means to confuse people’s minds, such as hypnosis, or some kind of magic skills, but that person was definitely not Clown, who was in front of him. The secret chamber would not give someone special treatment to bestow upon them some skills similar to ‘magic type skills’ as well as powerful melee abilities.
So Specter quickly guessed the identity of Clown. In addition to Clown’s makeup, which was in a mess but could still be seen on his face and his clown costume, Specter guessed that the man in front of him was Clown that Luo Jian had mentioned before and who he had thought he had killed.
But if no other accidents had happened, Clown should have been dead, right? Or rather, who saved him?
When Luo Jian and Specter were together, he once described to Specter how he met Clown in the narrow tunnel and almost desperately fought with him with the idea of dying together but at last he was somehow saved by someone. However, from Luo Jian’s description, Clown should not have been as good in battle as he was now.
This should not be it.
Specter felt he was in a tricky situation. After exchanging several moves, he found that he couldn’t win the upper hand at all, and his injuries were increasing. Clown, who was supposed to be dead and had been resurrected, was like a machine that was disassembled, reorganized, and completely reborn. All his attacks were carried out flawlessly.
At the beginning, Clown’s attacks had slight delays as if his body had yet to adapt to the extremely high-speed movements, but after exchanging several moves, Specter felt that the other party began to adapt. His speed became faster and faster, and large numbers of his weapons, his scalpels, were floating in the air now!
Specter stepped backwards again and again. He was almost fighting and fleeing at the same time! But Clown obviously didn’t want him to run away. He took a scalpel and aimed it at Specter as if thinking about how many pieces Specter should be divided into. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he whispered, “Neurotomy.”
As soon as the voice sounded, Specter immediately felt a penetrating pain that surged from his brain, but the pain lasted for less than a second and stopped immediately. Specter covered his head and looked at the enemy in confusion but saw that Clown was rigid in place, and a person suddenly appeared beside him.
It was the little boy who had disappeared in front of Duan Li and company.
“Don’t hurt him!” The boy placed one hand on Clown’s shoulder, and his face was a little gloomy.
Clown still remained expressionless and mechanical and said to himself, “Obstacle removal ended.”
The boy took a deep breath and said to Clown, “Next command—head toward the exit now and escape from the secret chamber.”
“Task accepted. Execution of task begins.” Clown obeyed the command, turned around, and left. He moved very quickly, but he did not climb the huge tree. Instead, he followed the roots of the tree and jumped into the hole under them.
After Clown left, the boy turned his head and looked at Specter, but it appeared as if he did not want to talk. He turned around and seemed to want to run away. Specter hesitated for a moment and called out, “Wait—who are you? Why save me?”
The little boy paused. He ignored Specter again, and in an instant, he vanished.
Suddenly, Specter was alone. He was covered in all kinds of wounds, but he felt that he didn’t have much time to deal with them because he had heard the boy’s instructions to Clown—head toward the exit now and escape from the secret chamber.
Under normal circumstances, he would not believe these words because it may just be a trap… but—
Specter’s eyes lit up. He got up and followed along the traces left by Clown. He also jumped into the big holes puckered on the ground, left by the roots and vines of the tree. Soon he found that he fell into a dark tunnel, so he found a small flashlight in his pocket, followed the footprints left by Clown, and began to search for the whereabouts of the exit.
T/N: Countdown: 2