Players, Please Board the Train

This couldn’t be blamed on the Painting Woman. Since they dared to come, these people were definitely not afraid of death. They just hadn’t had time when they were caught. Still, there was one left.

He remained expressionless and silent. The Painting Woman nervously touched the medal on her chest, then automatically pulled out a small handkerchief and went behind him to wipe the water off his head.

The Oxygen Supply made a squeaking sound under her rubbing, but since rain was falling from the sky, no amount of wiping would help. Yet she worked enthusiastically, wringing out the soaked handkerchief before starting again.

A love of labor was worth praising.

Xu Huo gave her a handful of candy and told her to go play elsewhere.

The World Within the Painting lay before him. Xu Huo rested his elbows on his knees, turning the cube in his hands as he spoke to the oil painting man, “This kind of conversation isn’t convenient.”

As he finished speaking, a pattern of black and white squares extended from beneath his feet, rapidly connecting him to the painting frame. The squares rose around them on all sides and sealed the top, forming a closed spatial environment.

The stone beneath Xu Huo turned into a chair. Code Name A also emerged from the boundless black space and sat down across from him.

The moment they faced each other, A shot his hand out like lightning toward Xu Huo’s throat. But when he tried to stand, his clothes were fused to the chair. The chair was fixed in place, so he was naturally pinned down.

“No need to be impatient. Let’s talk first.” Xu Huo motioned for him to calm down.Code Name A sat back with a calm expression. “It seems I won’t be leaving here alive today. How did you do it? Making a player lose their abilities.”

“Just an item.” Xu Huo said indifferently. “This isn’t that amazing. It can’t compare to this thing.”

He raised the cube in his hand.

A glanced at the item. “No matter how powerful it is, it’s ended up in your hands.”

“So you know that even if the item is taken away, the black rain won’t stop.” Xu Huo said. “It seems the black rain stopping or not has little to do with whether the item comes into contact with large amounts of water.”

A didn’t speak, simply closing his eyes.

Xu Huo smiled silently, then continued, “But for the item to take effect, there has to be some connection. So it must be within the rainfall area?”

“It has to come into contact with rainwater?”

A still showed no reaction. Xu Huo changed the subject. “Such an important item should be held by one of your players to facilitate its escape. But your backup plan doesn’t look like that.”

“The players and mutants split into two routes. If the player guarding the task fails, they become a decoy to draw the Special Defense Department’s attention, allowing the mutants to take the item away. If you hadn’t been discovered, the mutants could have covered for you instead.”

“But this isn’t the safest method. With so few of you, forcing a second attack isn’t wise.”

A opened his eyes. “If you hadn’t appeared here, no one would have found us.”

No one would have discovered the secret of the depression. Moving the item later wouldn’t have been difficult. Making the black rain fall across the entire city wasn’t an impossible task.

Xu Huo didn’t change his view because of A’s words. “That sounds reasonable, but being completely undiscovered is the most impossible thing of all.”

“Even if the Special Defense Department didn’t notice Wenshan, you and the mutants entering headquarters territory would definitely draw attention. This place is full of surveillance. Tracking your movements wouldn’t be hard. The mutants would be even more obvious.”

“No matter what you do, ensuring the item can be safely recovered is the most important thing.”

He observed the subtle expressions on A’s face. “It’s not that you didn’t want to, but you couldn’t. This high-level item can’t be held by any one of you.”

A smiled, his expression as if to say “guess all you want.”

Xu Huo knew he was on the right track. “This item is clearly inseparable from water. Toxic rain doesn’t come out of nowhere. There’s always a source. Rain can’t fall from another space, so it must be transferred from one place to another.”

He turned the cube in his hand, then suddenly stopped. His sharp gaze pierced directly into Code Name A’s eyes. “The item in my hand isn’t complete.”

No matter how well trained a person was, they couldn’t fully control their reactions. Xu Huo stood up and said with a smile, “Thank you for your answer.”

A’s expression finally changed. He opened his mouth to say something, but the black and white square space rapidly faded. As black rain fell from the sky again, he reappeared inside the painting frame, roaring at Xu Huo with unwilling fury.

Xu Huo withdrew his gaze and tossed the cube to the Painting Woman. “Try throwing it above the rain clouds.”

Since killing the item holder wasn’t an option, the remaining method was to throw the item away.

“When the thing was buried in the depression, the gravity on the water’s surface was clearly chaotic. Since it could attract the rain, it might also be able to draw it away.” Xu Huo looked at the distorted face of the oil painting man. “Give it a try for now. If it doesn’t work, I’ll find a way to send it back to your homeland.”

The Painting Woman made a small basket out of paper, lifted it up, and flew into the air. She quickly crossed the relatively low rain cloud layer. Strangely, the moment she passed through the clouds, the heavy rain stopped abruptly as if the sky had sealed its mouth. A few seconds later, the black rainwater accumulated on the ground began to flow backward into the air!

Xu Huo was inevitably surprised. After a moment, he turned to face the painting frame. “This reversal is truly unexpected.”

The oil painting man’s expression froze. Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated this situation either. But then his face fell. “It’s over…”

In a small country neighboring Nation X, Country Y had established a temporary base beside a natural lake.

Before the base was completed, they had paid a considerable price. On one side, they had to defend against player ambushes from the small country. On the other, they had to collect large amounts of mutant blood from around the world. They had gone through countless hardships to transport it here. After a month of preparation, they finally managed to pollute the lake. If everything went smoothly, this single lake could throw Nation X into chaos!

But before they could see the explosive growth of mutants in Nation X or the domestic turmoil, the rain that had fallen for less than a night suddenly reversed course. It surged back like a tidal wave, instantly sweeping away the temporary base!

Thousands of unprepared staff in the base, including some players, were contaminated by the mutant toxin in the black rain. Cries of agony rose from all directions.

Country Y’s high-ranking officials in the distant safe zone quickly contacted the operation’s leader, only to be told that the leader was already dead. He had been killed by the falling black water, which had snapped his cervical spine.

Country Y’s upper echelons fell silent. Before using the black rain item, they had known it was a double-edged sword. But they hadn’t expected the sword to turn back on them before it had even been drawn for a single night. With the situation reversed, the item couldn’t be recovered either.

Thus, before the sky fully brightened, Country Y conducted an emergency evacuation. The military entered the base to clean up the evidence. The dense sound of gunfire lasted for several minutes before it stopped. By the time the planes left the base, nothing remained but towering flames.