Chapter 55: The Raid

The moment he saw the fish, the expression on the skinning artisan shifted instantly. He stepped right into the shallow water, grabbed the fishing line, and weighed it in his hand. "Good grief, over half a catty! I've been here for almost half a month and haven't managed to catch one this big!"

Watching the skinning artisan seamlessly switch expressions and personalities, Yang Can felt a mix of shock and uncertainty. Just as he was hesitating whether to exit the instance, Xu Huo suddenly stood up and pointed toward the factory. "Over there! It's on fire!"

The skinning artisan leaped out of the river in a flash, rushing toward Yang Can with the momentum of a crashing mountain. He grabbed Yang Can by the head, slapped him fiercely across the face twice, and then dragged him back toward the building. "I'm going to slaughter you little bastards today!"

The skinning artisan's five fingers gripped Yang Can's head as if clamped in a vice. Completely unable to resist, Yang Can could only let himself be dragged back to the factory.

The three of them entered through the front door. Seeing that the pelts were safe, but noticing heavy smoke billowing from the pigsty and someone shouting for a bucket brigade, the skinning artisan casually grabbed an empty bucket and charged into the workshop!

"Bang!" The moment he stepped inside, his feet slipped out from under him, sending him crashing flat onto his back. A flying cable shot out from the side, wrapped tightly around his ankle, and hoisted him up to the rafters!

Recognizing the whip as Qin An's prop and realizing the others had made their move, Yang Can rushed into the workshop in a single bound. A three-meter-long, slender white bone materialized in his hand, one edge honed to a razor-sharp blade. With a whistling sound, he slashed it viciously toward the skinning artisan's neck!

However, the expected scene of a head parting ways with its body did not occur. The upside-down skinning artisan bent his arm to shield the side of his head, and the bone blade struck as though hitting solid steel. Not only did it fail to make any headway, but the impact also cracked the weapon in two!

Yang Can's expression fractured right along with his weapon. Heartbroken, he cried out, "My prop!"

"Stop worrying about that!" Tang Pei swept past him like a gust of wind. "Cripple his left leg!"

Toxin-coated darts whizzed around the skinning artisan, drawing his fire while simultaneously smearing poison across his skin.

The violent thrashing of the skinning artisan put immense pressure on Qin An, who gritted his teeth and pushed himself to the limit. "Hurry up! I can't hold on much longer!"

"Almost ready!" Tang Pei and Xian Dazhi had already climbed up onto the main beam. Xian Dazhi held the skinning artisan's legs down while Tang Pei wrapped both arms around his ankle, shouting, "You are not you, I am not you, you are me, I am..."

Before Tang Pei could finish her sentence, the skinning artisan ignored Peng Fengnian's distracting darts, swung his body with all his might, and grabbed a wool-scraping machine with one hand, smashing it savagely toward the main beam!

The beam collapsed with a deafening crash, forcing Tang Pei and Xian Dazhi to retreat from above. The billowing dust temporarily obscured their vision, but Qin An was yanked violently forward a few steps by his own whip. His face draining of color, he moved to retract the weapon, only for the tension on the other end to suddenly vanish. A severed piece of the whip's tail was tossed back out at him!

Seeing a tall shadow rise amid the swirling dust, all the players' expressions turned grim.

"Clang! Clang!" The skinning artisan swung his iron-like arms, hurling stones indiscriminately as he roared with unbridled fury, "I'm going to twist every single one of your heads off!"

The players retreated repeatedly, but right at that moment, the skinning artisan's foot slipped, and he crashed heavily to the ground. His left leg was dragged into the rubble beneath the collapsed beam as if snagged by an invisible anchor!

"Do it!" Peng Fengnian leaped in through the window and lunged at the skinning artisan!

Xian Dazhi, Qin An, and Yang Can immediately swarmed forward, throwing their combined weight onto the skinning artisan's arms, while Tang Pei seized the opportunity to grab his leg.

"You are not you, I am not you! You are me, I am you!"

The moment she finished chanting those words, her expression relaxed noticeably. In the next second, she hoisted a heavy stone and smashed her own left leg to pieces!

"Crack!"

"Crack!"

One, or perhaps two, snapping sounds echoed through the workshop. An instant later, the skinning artisan let out a howl of pain, kicked Tang Pei away, and jerked his upper body upright. With a fierce sweep of his arms, he flung all four players away.

Having no intention of getting bogged down in a protracted battle, the players went with the momentum and retreated. Xian Dazhi even scooped up Tang Pei and carried her away.

As the players put distance between themselves and their target, Xu Huo retracted the piano wire he had used to trip the skinning artisan. He stared at the artisan's left leg; when Tang Pei shattered her own left leg, his had broken right along with it.

"This is that female player's trait," Sima Xiaoer said, coming up behind him. "The guy named Peng said he wanted to cooperate with us to rescue people, so I had them help out. He told you to hurry; this trait can only last for five minutes."

Xu Huo turned his head to look at him. "They cleared the instance using human skin?"

Sima Xiaoer nodded. "You guessed right. The human skin required to clear the instance is hidden among those animal pelts."

If human skin was the key to clearing the instance, then Zou Weichang's death was purely a matter of bad luck, and the human skin truly was the skinning artisan's prized possession. Remembering how the skinning artisan's alternate personality had briefly regained clarity when the players cleared the instance, a thought occurred to Xu Huo. Lowering his voice, he said, "Make your move."

Sima Xiaoer nodded and turned to head outside.

Inside the workshop, the skinning artisan discovered that his left leg was broken and began pounding the ground in a frenzy. He punched deep craters into the thick concrete floor one after another, delivering over a dozen blows with the raw, exposed fury of a wild beast.

This display rooted the players, who had been planning to exploit his injury and land a few more blows, firmly to the spot, entirely too terrified to approach.

At that moment, the front door of the workshop swung open, and Xu Huo walked in, looking at the scene with a faint smile. "Mr. Carl, your skills aren't all that impressive, are they? Would you like me to lend you a hand?"

Peng Fengnian and the others were dumbfounded: What kind of game was he playing?

The skinning artisan's face flushed crimson as he stiffened his neck and roared, "I've made a fool of myself in front of Brother Wang! What's a broken leg? Even with just a pair of hands, I can still wipe out these few minnows!"

"Don't move!" Sima Xiaoer vaulted in through the window, holding up the woman's portrait and a piece of burning firewood. "Let the people in the pigsty go, or I'll burn her to ashes!"

The woman in the painting was trapped within the frame by a layer of transparent tape. Seeming to feel the encroaching heat, she cowered while silently expressing her agony, finally stretching a hand out toward the skinning artisan as if pleading for rescue.

The skinning artisan's teeth ground together audibly, and he actually leaped on one foot, lunging directly at Sima Xiaoer!

Forget Sima Xiaoer—even Xu Huo was startled. Fortunately, Peng Fengnian and the others reacted quickly, immediately looping a whip around the artisan and hauling him down.

Sima Xiaoer managed to escape, fleeing pale-faced toward Xu Huo, only to be halted by a sharp, warning glare from the latter. He immediately pivoted and bolted toward Peng Fengnian instead.

Xian Dazhi and Qin An each grabbed one end of the whip, tightening it around the skinning artisan's neck to barely pin him in place. Just as they were struggling to hold down the enraged artisan, Xu Huo spoke again. "She's just a woman. Why let her ruin your business? Finish these people off already."

"Besides, that's nothing more than a prop. It looks like a person, but it's not a real human."

"Surely you aren't going to let people go for her sake, are you?"

The players glared furiously at Xu Huo, but the skinning artisan kept his eyes locked on the woman weeping bitterly within the painting, a look of unbearable anguish crossing his face. Seeing the flames about to lick the edge of the canvas, he ground his teeth and snarled, "Fine! I'll do it!"