Player Reload
Chapter 461 - 427: Decayed Corpse

Chapter 461: Chapter 427: Decayed Corpse

The mental state of the Card Emperor was obviously abnormal, with the corners of his mouth stretched almost to his ears and gums constantly bleeding.

He held the camera, babbling to himself, with no logic in his words, saying things like "He’s already caught me."

"Eight shadows, eight possibilities, hehehe..."

As the camera shook, everyone was able to clearly see the video background—the place where the Card Emperor was located, right in this abandoned town.

Binary Tree’s pupils shrank, and the upper right corner of the DV camera had a timestamp showing that the video was recorded two and a half hours ago, with the ground littered with the severed limbs of other players.

The second batch of players, including Lorent, were attacked and killed by the Card Emperor immediately upon teleporting here, unable to make an emergency exit.

The third batch of individual players who entered later faced the same fate.

"Wait, is the Card Emperor really that strong?"

Red Spider found it unbelievable. The later players, even if only slightly weaker than the first who entered the Secret Realm, averaged level Lv25. How could the Card Emperor effortlessly defeat them all?

"Take a close look at the cards on the ground."

Blood Lion Roar, experienced, pointed to the video footage, where black and gold two-tone cards were inserted haphazardly into the ground. "There is a connection of spiritual energy between the cards, forming an array that has a suppressive effect."

Red Spider frowned slightly and then realized, "He was brainwashed and controlled by anomalies like Horse-headed Man S or Meat Mountain L, so he knew the players on the surface would teleport out here and waited in advance."

"Probably."

Blood Lion Roar felt a headache, rubbing his brow. The anomaly was hard enough to deal with, and now they had a rebellious Card Emperor...

"Dad, don’t hit me, Dad!"

The mentally unstable Card Emperor screamed and cried, clutching his throat, then knelt on the ground, sobbing for more than half a minute and suddenly laughed,

He first flicked his hand to retrieve all the cards,

and then hummed an unknown tune, like a scavenger picking up trash, collecting the scattered body parts into a burlap sack, finally leaving the camera and walking alone into the darkness.

Just before disappearing off-screen, the Card Emperor seemed to think of something, turned around and, with extreme speed, said laughingly, "Chayu Ji..."

These three words were like a curse, and as the sound echoed above the town, the black waters in the center of the ruins suddenly began to boil, bubbling furiously.

’This is bad.’

The same thought rose simultaneously in the players’ minds, realizing the Card Emperor, controlled by the anomaly, intentionally left the camera to trap newcomers at this moment.

Plop!!

The surface of the black lake exploded, and rapidly decaying human corpses leaped out from the lake bottom, attacking the players.

The speed at which these corpses moved rivaled the previous Vietnamese Female Ghost. Their movement defying physical laws, they floated and drifted directly.

Gray Rain swung the Skull Shattering Power Hammer in a wide arc, smashing one decayed corpse, not expecting another was clinging tightly behind, its already bony arms swinging toward him.

Gray Rain quickly retracted his neck, his entire head sinking into his chest cavity, avoiding the claw strike with corpse fluids.

The arm bone of that corpse continued with undiminished momentum, chopping against the brick wall, which neither cracked nor tore, but rather directly dissolved.

As if being erased by the PS software’s eraser tool.

Meanwhile, Red Spider also pulled from the void an ancient wooden birdcage.

[Item Name: Old Hundred Jing Bird Cage]

[Type: Ritual Item]

[Quality: Fine]

[Special Effect: Cage the birds. Upon opening the birdcage, creates a suction from thin air, attracting objects related to "flight," "birds," "wings", shrinking their size, imprisoning them for 10 minutes]

[Consumption: 150 Spiritual Power Value]

[Cooling Time: 1 hour]

[Use Conditions: Must hold a property certificate within the Five Rings of Baijing]

[Note: Unable to attract objects too large or too small, or those flying at high speed]

[Note: Guess what, the masters of Baijing are just masters, spending their days eating, drinking, and caging birds and fighting crickets, nothing else. My life, my father had already completed the tasks for me when he entered the pass]

Red Spider did not specifically block his teammates, and Li Jineng could see the full description of the birdcage item directly through the Information Integration Glasses, and internally exclaimed "What the hell..."

This [Old Hundred Jing Bird Cage] was clearly from the same series of items as the [Old Hundred Jing Ape Man Skull] he sold before, the difference being this was Fine quality, a notch below the perfect ape man skull.

No wonder the Ape Man Skull required holding Baijing’s household registration and Baijing accent. While this birdcage just required a property certificate, not even a courtyard house within the Second Ring.

Clack.

Red Spider opened the birdcage door, and a fierce wind roared as the multitude of corpses hovering in the air were sucked into the birdcage, shrinking to the size of crickets.

The only issue was that the number of corpses seemed endless, continuously crawling out from the lake.

"Gather by the truck!"

Blood Lion Roar shouted, his fingers pressing repeatedly on the central control panel of the heavy truck, retracting the rocket launchers into the weapon compartment, replaced by a machine gun turret.

All the machine guns fired simultaneously, the muzzle fire even overshadowing the drone’s lights, and the brass shell casings, enlightened at Wudang Mountain, Shaolin Temple, and Confucius Temple, poured down like a waterfall.

"I’ll assist you." Binary Tree crossed his hands, and green data streams flowed from his fingertips, infusing into the machine guns.

He took temporary control of the heavy truck’s fire control system, loading an automatic tracking program into it and combining it with the drone’s laser radar.

The drones were responsible for identifying, tracking, and locating targets,

The electronic brain of Binary Tree calculated and predicted the movement trajectories, transmitting the data to the truck’s fire control system, directing the machine gun turrets to fire, providing cross-cover, and forming an impenetrable firepower grid.

With only a minimal consumption of Spiritual Power, the hit rate and lethality of the machine guns significantly increased.

The machine gun bullets, with trace amounts of Spiritual Power after enlightenment from the three schools of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, disintegrated the corpses— their offensive and defensive capabilities were not proportional, easily breached by firearm bullets, turning to ashes.

"The number of enchantment bullets is limited. We need to run."

Blood Lion Roar stepped on the gas, attempting to break out with the group. However, the swarm of corpses, unlike the slow-reacting Meat Mountain L, leveraged their numbers to block the front of the heavy truck, continuously depleting ammunition.

Even worse, in that "Old Hundred Jing Bird Cage," hundreds of miniaturized corpses used their hand bones coated with corpse water, possessing annihilation effects, to attack the birdcage bars, making them creak and seem on the brink of collapse.

At the critical moment, Red Spider took out a large bucket of quick-drying glue from the backpack and dunked the birdcage into it.

The glue quickly solidified, "freezing" all the corpses inside. Even though their hands still had annihilation effects, the rest of their bodies were immobilized, making it difficult to escape in a short period.

This trick wasn’t Red Spider’s own idea, but he spent 100 Game Coins to hire a consulting company to test it out—

In the slum, there were professional information companies specifically testing combinations of skills and items for players,

For a bit more money, you could even get one-on-one coaching from a high-level gamer above Lv30 to help plan a Power System.

It was similar to the think tanks behind those officially backed guilds with national backgrounds.

After temporarily sealing thousands of corpses, Red Spider casually handed the birdcage to Li Cheng, then donned his sunglasses and stylishly jumped onto the roof of the heavy truck.

Pifu, Blood Lion Roar, and Binary Tree had already contributed, now it was his turn.

"Activate!"

Red Spider roared, activating each skill and item in succession.

[Eight-armed Asura]—grew six extra arms.

[Death God’s Eye]—increased neural reaction speed, making time feel slower subjectively.

[Tactical Goggles]—improved aiming efficiency by 100%, ensuring bullet accuracy.

[Gun Fighting Skill]—enhanced bodily coordination, allowing bullets to curve by violently shaking the gun upon pulling the trigger.

[Overload Overheat Never Overheat]—used Spiritual Power instead of physical bullets, increasing rate of fire and damage to Dead Spirit units.

...

Stacking all the skills and items together, the final effect, as seen by Li Cheng and the others, turned into...

He started spinning.

Bang bang bang bang bang!

Red Spider turned into a blur, the eight handguns in his hands comparable to high-caliber machine guns, creating a barrage of bullets that accurately hit the forehead of every charging corpse, perfectly substituting the about-to-exhaust-their-ammo machine gun turrets.

"Activate, wasn’t activation as in skills, but rather hacking activation."

Gray Rain genuinely admired, took out his phone, turned on the camera, recorded a video of Red Spider, and uploaded it to his single-player version of TikTok, titled "All I saw were my teammates’ sweat and effort."

"Stop filming, give me a hand." Li Cheng handed the birdcage to Gray Rain, then rushed toward the lake.

Binary Tree quickly shouted upon seeing this, "Wait, where are you going?"

"Find the source."

Li Cheng didn’t look back. Eventually, Red Spider’s Spiritual Power would run out, and the abnormal increase in the number of corpses continued, the only way out was to find the source of the corpses.