Chapter 15: The Struggle

“Watch out!” Right beside Liu Jia, Wang Xiaohui shoved her, and the wheelchair skidded forward, colliding with the middle-aged woman. At the moment of contact, a faint translucent light column burst out around Wang Xiaohui. The woman’s knife struck it as if hitting a spring; not only did it fail to penetrate, but the powerful recoil sent both the woman and her knife flying backward!

The middle-aged woman crashed into the glass window, furious and shocked, but dared not persist. She scrambled up and rushed toward the front door. Just as the door was pulled open, a shadow shot out like a bolt, appearing before her. A palm swiftly swept across her neck!

Bright red blood sprayed out. The person shoved the woman back into the cabin and followed her inside.

He was a tall man. His bloodied hand wiped across his mouth, but his eyes locked onto the others inside the cabin.

Closest to him was Xu Huo, but the man’s gaze flicked over him directly to Yan Jiayu, who stood two meters away.

Having been inside the vehicle for two days, the players all possessed basic emergency skills. When the middle-aged woman was killed, Liu Jia and the others had already stepped back.

Wang Xiaohui’s special ability wouldn’t last much longer, and neither Liu Jia nor Professor Han could fight, especially with Han injured. That left only Xu Huo and Yan Jiayu to confront the attacker.

Yan Jiayu, targeted by the man, exchanged a glance with Xu Huo, then stepped back slightly toward the broken window. She kicked the table beneath it aside.

The first-class player, a cannibal, glanced at the discarded table but quickly fixed his gaze back on her. Without hesitation, he struck!

Though the man had injured his left arm and was forced out of first class, the second-class seats were filled with players who were either crippled or wounded. Despite his injury, handling a young woman was still easy. Holding a knife in his right hand, he aimed to deal with Yan Jiayu in the same brutal fashion.

Yan Jiayu stood by the window, seemingly with no retreat, yet she remained calm. She shifted her right leg back into an archer’s stance, lowering her center of gravity. With impeccable precision, she dodged the blade sweeping over her head, and her vein-bulging fist struck straight into the man’s chest!

“Hah!”

The force behind her punch was unknown, but the sound of cracking bones echoed three times. The man spat blood, hunched over, staggering backward. Yan Jiayu followed with a knee to his chin. As he fell, his head twisted backward at an unnatural angle, and his breath instantly ceased.

Yan Jiayu scratched her head, exhaled, and murmured a prayer. As she bent to move the body aside, the man’s eyes suddenly snapped open with a terrible, monstrous glare and lunged to bite her throat!

Xu Huo was right behind Yan Jiayu. He pulled her away and thrust his knife toward the player. With a grinding sound, the man bit down hard on the blade, clenching it with his teeth!

Feeling the pull on his hand, Xu Huo grabbed the man’s wrist holding the knife with his other hand and pushed sideways, slicing the man’s cheek. At the same time, he struck his temple with a heavy elbow blow!

Even the toughest cannibal player’s temple was vulnerable. Though the man instinctively turned his head, the blow left his eyes rolling back. Seizing the chance, Yan Jiayu kicked him again. The man crashed into the glass window with a muffled groan and shut his eyes.

“He’s not dead yet!” Liu Jia pointed at the twitching fingers. She and Professor Han grabbed chairs, rushing over and wildly beating the man until he was a bloody mess. Then, cautiously, they lifted him and threw him out the window.

Watching the figure disappear over the cliff below, Professor Han finally exhaled in relief. “First-class cannibal players are terrifying.”

Pretending to be dead like that—if not for Xu Huo’s quick reflexes, Yan Jiayu might have lost her life.

“It’s not that first-class players are stronger,” Xu Huo said. “There’s no clear ranking among players. We just happened to face novices.”

Second class only had the heavily made-up woman who was stronger. The others lacked physical strength and experience, or they wouldn’t have been so easily subdued. If it were him, half the ordinary first-class players would have died the first night.

The third class players blew themselves up. Otherwise, given the level of fighting, some would have escaped. If any mutated into monsters, it was uncertain whether the metal doors could hold them back.

As for the middle-aged woman, she was just unlucky.

Yan Jiayu felt a chill. “I’ll block the front door later.”

Liu Jia looked at the woman’s corpse, puzzled. “Weren’t there only six people? How come there’s an extra one?”

“I figured it out—the woman killed the night before wasn’t a cannibal player.”

“Not her. It should be Chen Yi,” Xu Huo crouched down, examining the woman’s belongings. There was a family photo among them. The two elderly people and a middle-aged man in the picture had their faces slashed, leaving only the woman and a young girl intact.

Covering the woman’s face with a bloodied apron, Xu Huo briefly explained the situation with Chen Yi.

If he killed just to feed, his first choice would be Liu Jia—they were close, and subduing a female college student was easier than a grown man. Maybe it was for the cash or possible game rewards that he targeted Xu Huo instead.

Of course, he might have tried for both, but for a ravenous cannibal player, that was clearly inefficient. Besides, “whether you board the vehicle hungry or not makes a huge difference.”

The others inside the cabin fell silent. They hadn’t realized that when they boarded, they were already starving, bodies pressed close together, surrounded by the scent of others. Suppressing the urge to attack others was already a tremendous struggle, let alone focusing on watching them.

“You don’t look like you boarded hungry,” Yan Jiayu suddenly said.

Liu Jia and the others, their emotions still raw, exchanged uneasy glances between the two of them.

Xu Huo leisurely lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke without hesitation, standing calmly amid the chaos. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re a good person,” Yan Jiayu said, emptying all the nuts from the small pockets of her patchwork coat. “Let’s crack walnuts to eat.”

The rest of the time passed quietly. They exchanged their meager cash for small amounts of food and water, plus some snacks. The overwhelming hunger seemed to fade away. After lunch, they took turns resting.

As lights were about to be turned off, Professor Han moved a table to the back door. He was feeling much better than that morning, but no one could predict what might happen overnight. So they stuck to their plan, with Yan Jiayu guarding him.

That left the remaining three to watch the broken windows on the left and right, and the front door.