The cramped supermarket was a scene straight out of Hell.
A dozen or so survivors scrambled to flee, each fighting to get ahead of the others.
Heedless of everything, some even ran into the fire, screaming as they burst back out.
Neither the shop owner nor his daughter managed to escape.
They never had a chance to escape at all.
The two Bakatan had already taken full control of the situation; they were merely toying with their prey, feeding these people the illusion that they might actually escape.
What they enjoyed was exactly this — watching these humans feel hope, only to watch that hope shatter before their very eyes.
So, of this father and daughter, they killed the daughter first.
The Bakatan raised its gun barrel and with a single shot blew apart half the body of the daughter who had abandoned her father, her remaining lower half gushing blood as she swayed and then crashed to the ground.
Only then did it lower its head, savoring the twisted face of the shop owner beneath it, and slowly raised its gun barrel.
The shop owner's expression held bewilderment, sorrow, and something stunned and twisted all at once.
He seemed to have never imagined that his own daughter would push him out to face this.
By now, he had already forgotten to struggle.
But he didn't die.
Because it wasn't his head that was blown apart — it was the Bakatan's.
Lin Qun had already closed the distance to ten meters.
He hadn't watched as the shop owner was shot down by the Bakatan.
Perhaps the man had been a money-grubbing, black-hearted shopkeeper, and in the end his own scheme had backfired and left him dumbfounded — but without him, these people might not have been able to buy that last batch of supplies.
All that could be said was that he was a pitiful fellow.
The Bakatan was dead, yet the black-hearted shop owner seemed to have forgotten to flee for his life, sprawled on the ground, unmoving, as if he'd lost his soul.
The other Bakatan, seeing its companion killed, was clearly caught off guard, retreating on instinct and immediately taking cover.
In an instant, Lin Qun lost sight of his target.
And Lin Qun was also moving rapidly, shifting angles.
The enemy exposed, himself hidden — that was his greatest advantage.
The Bakatan, even as it hid, was frantically searching for Lin Qun's Figure, thrusting its gun barrel out from behind Cover and spraying fire wildly.
But in the next instant, the hand holding its gun exploded with a bang.
A shrill scream tore out from behind the Cover.
The survivors were all stunned, their faces breaking into wild, overjoyed expressions!
Lin Qun, meanwhile, moved like a ghost, circling around from another direction, fixing his gaze on the target, and going straight for a headshot.
The Bakatan had been hiding behind Cover, calling out something through some kind of Communication Equipment, its liver and gallbladder split with terror, utterly unprepared, and died on the spot in an instant.
It wasn't part of the Bakatan Regular Army.
Two Contribution Points came in.
Along with a hundred points of experience.
A flicker crossed Lin Qun's eyes.
His Regional Ranking climbed, back up to sixth place!
On the Regional War Zone Leaderboard, the gap between fourth and tenth place wasn't large at all — only a few Contribution Points apart.
Behind him, the survivors were gathering, closing in around this spot.
Lin Qun thought for a moment, then casually picked up a Zhu Bajie mask from the ground and put it on his face.
He didn't want anyone else to know his true appearance.
If he was going to lie low, he might as well commit to it fully.
The supermarket had nearly been reduced to ruins, the Supplies boiling away in the Sea of fire, all of it wasted.
The survivors were overjoyed, all crowding closer — some expressing gratitude to Lin Qun, others hoping to gain his protection.
An Old Man cradled a corpse that had only half a body left, tears streaming down his face as he wailed, "They killed my son, my child — thank you... thank you... you must survive, you must help me kill more Monsters..."
Trembling, he pulled a few bags of instant noodles, almost crushed to pieces, from inside his coat, wanting to hand them all over to Lin Qun.
Lin Qun said in a low voice, "I can't protect you."
"No... child, you're the most formidable person I've ever seen... take these things, my son is dead, my wife is dead, I don't want to live anymore either. This is all I have left, along with the keys to my home — take it all, use whatever might be useful to you, and kill them, kill them all!"
Listening to the old man's words, Lin Qun fell silent. He had actually assumed the man was trying to cling to him for protection, and now a wave of shameful regret rose in his heart. He pushed the old man's outstretched hand back gently. "Keep it. Stay alive. Watch me kill those Monsters."
There was an indescribable feeling in his chest, and not knowing what else to say, that was the only thing he could manage.
But just then, he suddenly heard a piercing roar from behind him.
He whipped around, and what he saw nearly sent his soul flying from his body.
At the street corner outside the Residential Community behind them, a garishly colored, battered open-top Airship had rounded into view, flying low, only a dozen or so meters off the ground, with four Bakatan aboard, howling madly as they closed in on this spot.
The thing was shaped much like a Blue Star jet ski, but with a rear-mounted rocket Thruster, cutting sharp turns in midair and accelerating at high speed — and it even had a twenty-millimeter Autocannon mounted on it, spraying fire wildly!
Outside the Dragon City Imperial Scenery Residential Area, the street had long since been jammed solid with wrecked vehicles. Some kind of chaos had clearly broken out here before — people from the surrounding communities had tried to drive out and escape, only to end up gridlocked, one wrecked vehicle after another. Now, as the gunfire swept across them, one of the vehicles went up in a Sympathetic Detonation, flame light surging skyward!
Damn it, they were the companions of those two Bakatan!
The survivors scattered like startled birds once more, panicking, all of them breaking into a mad sprint.
The old man didn't run. He crouched down, holding his aged body tightly around the half-body corpse of his child.
He didn't want to run anymore.
Lin Qun, however, felt his soul nearly leap from his body too, and he spun around and ran, heading in the opposite direction from where the old man was.
There was nothing he could do for the old man, and he didn't even know whether it would be better for him to live or to die right there.
At the very least, he didn't want to become their target.
As Lin Qun saw it, with so many people fleeing together, and no sign written on his face that he was the one who'd killed two Bakatan, the odds of the Airship chasing him specifically should have been less than one in ten.
But to his shock, somehow, faced with a crowd of survivors running for their lives, that Airship had locked onto him specifically, and was now chasing right on his tail!
"What the hell is this?!"
Lin Qun was dumbfounded.
At that moment, he saw something launch, wobbling unsteadily, from beneath the Airship — a "topsy-turvy" Missile, flying straight at him!
The Urban area where Lin Qun was located was far from Modu's Core Battlefield. The ones active here now were, if not small fry, mostly Bakatan Armed Civilians of wildly uneven skill, relying mainly on modified Equipment and exchanged Weapons — nowhere near representative of the Bakatan Regular Army's true level. But even so, the Firepower of a junk Airship like this was still dangerous to Lin Qun as he was now.
Without hesitation, Lin Qun immediately activated Mario's Skill, launching in an arc and covering a dozen or so meters in a single leap.
He went straight from the Residential Community's gate to the street outside it!
Whipping his head around, he saw the gate of the Dragon City Imperial Scenery behind him blown to pieces!
And behind him, the group of Bakatan howled madly, the rocket Airship surging forward at high speed, its machine gun sweeping the ground with fire.
There was no way Lin Qun could go head-to-head against this kind of Firepower.
Before he could even close the ten-meter distance, he'd be cut down where he stood.
"Damn it!"
There was no going back to the Residential Community now. Lin Qun sprinted down the street, leaping wildly.
This time he understood exactly how Li Xinghe must have felt — chased and hunted, forced to leap and scramble like a stray dog being driven off, knowing that one moment too slow meant being shot dead on the spot.
There was nothing he could do about it — they had an Airship, and it closed distance far too fast. Even though Lin Qun had just killed two Bakatan and turned to leave without wasting even half a minute, they could still catch up to him. And once they locked on, there was simply no shaking them off!
On the Airship behind him, the Bakatan howled ferociously.
"It's him!"
"Our exchanged detector shows he just gained Contribution Points! Kill this Human!"
"He killed our companion — don't rush to finish him off in one shot. Spray his legs first, I want to shatter his legs first, then crush his Bones one by one, and make him die in the most extreme agony!"
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