Hunting the Instructors 2

Sun Liao followed the intel Guan Zhongli had fed him without a second thought, making a beeline west.

He drove his men through a stretch of low-lying mountain road, spirits high, not bothering to consider anything else. But the moment their entire team stepped into the middle of that path, gunfire erupted.

Wang Qihu fired five shots in quick succession from the side, dropping Sun Liao on the spot. The smart system on his wrist immediately declared him eliminated. Guan Zhongli shook his head regretfully beside him. "Why couldn't it have been me who got him?"

"You still need practice," Wang Qihu said with a grin.

It was a one-sided massacre—an ambush of over two hundred encircling forty-odd. By the time it ended, Sun Liao lay on the ground, his face still frozen in the terrified expression he'd worn the moment he was hit.

They were wiped out to the last man. Those who scored points cheered; those who didn't sighed. Guan Zhongli, Wang Qihu, and Lin Xiao emerged from the woods on either side, smiles on their faces.

"Damn you! You bastards! You stabbed me in the back!" Sun Liao roared, eyes red. Staring at the three of them, he suddenly pieced together what had really happened! He'd been set up, used as a pawn, and then backstabbed!

"It's Xu Lingqu—she must've cut some deal with you, right? What did she promise you? Especially you, Wang Qihu—you're always circling around her, so she probably—" People like Sun Liao stopped at nothing to smear and attack others, and when it came to women, they always resorted to innuendo to destroy them.

Wang Qihu was sickened. "I'll tear your mouth apart today." He was going to beat Sun Liao into pulp today, rules be damned.

But before he could make his move, Lin Xiao acted first.

A slap cracked across Sun Liao's face, sharp and clear, silencing the entire field.

In everyone's eyes, Lin Xiao had always been a sweet, gentle girl with a good temper. But this slap carried her full strength, splitting the corner of his lip and drawing blood.

"I've wanted to slap you for a long time." She'd been enduring this man since the day of combat training, holding it in all along—at first, she'd even tried to soothe his temper.

Now she saw that talking to someone like him was a waste of time. If you had to respond at all, fists and violence were the only language he understood.

"You dare hit me!" Sun Liao scrambled to his feet, ready to strike back, but Wang Qihu's fist was already there.

His punch whistled through the air, nearly sending Sun Liao flying. He hit the ground, vision swimming, certain he was about to black out.

He lay there convulsing in pain. That was when Guan Zhongli walked over and, unhurriedly, stepped on his hand.

"Be smart and get the hell out of here, or I can't guarantee how many more people will want a piece of you." Recalling that he'd actually called this man "Brother Liao" a few times, Guan Zhongli figured that would go down as the biggest embarrassment of his life.

Sun Liao crawled to his feet, eyes dark and venomous as he stared at them. "I'll go report this to the instructors. He told us to form our faction and take down Xu Lingqu's group first, but you turned around and backstabbed us instead."

Guan Zhongli couldn't have cared less. He made a shooing gesture.

Just then, a drone flew in. Whenever an elimination occurred, the drones came to oversee the eliminated students leaving the assessment area. Any stalling by the eliminated or interference from others would result in point deductions.

None of the others dared say a word. They'd always used Sun Liao as their shield, since he was the only one with a genuine grudge against Xu Lingqu.

The rest of them were driven by pure jealousy and a fear of truly offending Xu Lingqu. They'd thought this final assessment would be their chance to hitch a ride on the main force and finally take her down, piling on with the crowd. They never expected it to end like this.

The whole group slunk out of the assessment area like a pack of whipped dogs.

Kai Ang, Instructor Chen, and Su Li watched the first batch of eliminated students approach.

Sun Liao practically sprinted up to the three of them to complain. "Instructor, Guan Zhongli backstabbed us! He must have some secret deal with Xu Lingqu—she bought him off. He completely disregarded your faction rules!"

Kai Ang looked at Sun Liao like he was an idiot.

He'd actually anticipated this kind of situation. The ordinary students' faction had to go through a split before they could truly unite. Since conflict of interest existed at their core, dealing with a bunch of disliked "troublemakers" first would help them coalesce.

That Guan Zhongli had taken the lead on this actually earned him points in Kai Ang's book.

But what did surprise him slightly was...

"Have Xu Lingqu's group made any moves?"

None of the eliminated students in this batch had been taken out by those five. That didn't match Xu Lingqu's style at all in Kai Ang's eyes.

"Them? Hah, they're all hiding like turtles in there. I searched for ages and couldn't find a single one," Sun Liao said, growing angrier the more he thought about it. If he hadn't been so dead set on catching Xu Lingqu, he wouldn't have let his guard down so completely.

Hiding? Hiding was indeed a good tactic to heighten the enemy faction's anxiety and split them apart. But how was Xu Lingqu so good at concealing herself? How could she be so patient? It was a bit like her style, and yet not quite.

Kai Ang couldn't quite figure out what she was planning. He gave Sun Liao a "benevolent" smile. "I've got it. Go sit over there."

As for how well Xu Lingqu could hide, Xu Xiqin was equally puzzled. "Sis, how did you manage to find such a good hiding spot for us so easily?"

Xu Lingqu blinked.

In the early days of the apocalypse, Mutant Beasts had been colossal, attacking mainly in major cities. Humanity had relied on every modern weapon they had—everything short of nuclear warheads—just to barely beat them back, and even then, the cities were destroyed.

Later, when an enormous swarm of super-sized Mutant Beasts emerged all at once to devastate the energy hubs, humanity had considered gathering every nuclear weapon on Earth to take them down in mutual destruction. But in the end, they couldn't bring themselves to do it—or rather, no one wanted to bear the guilt of wiping out humanity.

After that attack, the super-sized Mutant Beasts vanished without a trace. Once order had completely collapsed, humanity began trying to build new order and establish sanctuaries.

The Mutant Beasts grew more numerous, their sizes shrinking to medium and small. That was why evolved humans could finally contend with them.

At times like that, people in the apocalypse would flee into the deep mountains, using the terrain to avoid them.

Xu Lingqu had grown up in exactly that kind of environment—it was how she'd trained and honed her skills.

But she obviously couldn't tell Xu Xiqin the truth. Xu Lingqu improvised on the spot: "Instinct."

Xu Xiqin accepted that just fine and nodded. Her sister was a genius, after all—geniuses being good at everything was completely reasonable.