Chapter Ninety-Two: Teammates

After that insignificant little interlude, their resolve toward the target was proof enough.

The meddlesome pest had finally been forced to withdraw ahead of schedule. As for whether the jeep’s owner had survived the explosion, no one present cared in the slightest.

“Bastards, how dare you interrupt my plan? You’ve really pissed me off! Just you wait—I’ll tear every last one of you to pieces sooner or later!”

Out of the blazing inferno strode a charred figure. He wiped the ash from his face and roared furiously toward the direction from which the attack had come.

Before he could even finish speaking, another rocket slammed toward him.

The attacker in the distance curled his lips in disdain. He was prepared to grant the man, who should have already been dead, a final and lasting rest. He was simply far too talkative.

“Hey, are you ever going to stop?”

Seeing the incoming attack, Zhao Qing’s eyes flared with anger. With a resentful motion, he drew a lighter from his pocket. On the surface it looked like a windproof lighter; in truth, it was simply a lighter.

Zhao Qing hurled it with force. The arc it traced through the air intersected the rocket’s path, and the missile was detonated instantly in midflight.

After delivering that brilliant counterstrike, Zhao Qing did not press the advantage. Instead, he turned and fled using the thick black smoke rising from the flames, without the slightest hesitation.

Everyone there froze for a moment. Even the speeding truck faltered briefly and drifted off its proper course.

Judging by Zhao Qing’s displayed strength, he clearly had the power to fight back, yet he chose to avoid battle. That only made everyone more wary. No one knew when that powerful madman might re-enter the struggle for the prize.

“Is that a human?” Tanya asked stiffly. She had not sensed any trace of a ghost on Zhao Qing, and so she was deeply uncertain about his condition.

Or perhaps he was some new kind of being she did not know. After being exposed to another layer of the world, she truly found it difficult to judge matters by ordinary reasoning anymore.

“That’s right, he is indeed human! I’ve already caught the scent of humanity on him. How nostalgic, truly nostalgic!”

“Hah, hah, hah!”

A voice as thin as mist drifted into her ear. That hoarse, malicious voice was unmistakably not Chu Ning’s. Tanya broke into a cold sweat at once and quickly searched for the source. She did not know when the enemy had secretly crept close to them, and yet Chu Ning showed no abnormal reaction at all.

But her efforts came to nothing. She failed to detect even the slightest stir in the surroundings, and most importantly, Chu Ning still showed no response whatsoever. That was what frightened Tanya the most.

“Hey, have you noticed the enemy around us?” she asked Chu Ning anxiously. If she had not seen him still lying in ambush with such calm composure, she would already have bristled and leaped straight off the ground the moment she heard that voice.

She did not possess the nerve to remain unruffled in the face of danger. Tanya had never forgotten that she was a novice, and she had never claimed to have fully adapted to this new role in battle. Yet life had forced her to confront things far beyond her capabilities, and that seemed profoundly unfair.

But all injustice in this world comes down to the insufficient ability of the person involved.

Chu Ning stared blankly at the scene before him. He still remembered coming here for the enormous bounty. Right—the bounty from the poster.

At that thought, Chu Ning’s train of thought finally cleared. Whatever he could not remember for the moment, he might as well set aside. He knew very well those were not pleasant memories, and that they were things he wanted to avoid.

Seeing the expression on Chu Ning’s face, Tanya immediately understood what had happened. From repeated experience, she knew that another personality had taken over his body, and she was certain of it.

Even though they shared the same body, their personalities were utterly different. After spending so much time with them, Tanya had gradually come to understand how to tell them apart. But lately she had the strange feeling that the two of them were becoming harder and harder to distinguish.

“What were you trying to ask just now? Sorry, I didn’t hear clearly. Could you repeat it?” Chu Ning looked at Tanya with a face full of confusion. He vaguely remembered that she had asked him something.

He tapped his head, which seemed to have grown rusty. That was really rather bad.

At this moment, Tanya felt utterly hopeless. Just moments ago, she had a teammate who was brave and formidable, someone she could easily cling to, leaving her only the simple task of charging through battle without using her brain.

Now, however, it was clearly a different teammate altogether. Even if Chu Ning could now bring out far greater strength than she could, that sense of disparity could not be changed.

A match that should have been an easy win in favorable conditions had been forcibly dragged into a dead heat. Tanya did not even know what to say. Perhaps this was simply a calamity fated to befall them.

“Oh no!”

Tanya suddenly remembered that the enemy had not yet been fully discovered. So much time had passed that the foe might already be preparing a fully charged strike. In a panic, she reminded Chu Ning to pay close attention to their surroundings.

As for her own safety, that could be placed in a secondary position. She knew perfectly well what her own combat ability was, and preserving their living strength was the most important task; only then would they survive until the end.