Chapter 15 Struggle

"Be careful!" Just as Liu Jia was by her side, Wang Xiaohui pushed her, and the wheelchair slammed forward. The moment it touched the middle-aged woman, a semi-transparent column of light sprang up around her. The attacker's knife seemed to hit a spring, not only failing to penetrate but the tremendous rebound force sent both the person and the knife flying!

The middle-aged woman crashed into the glass window, filled with both shock and rage but not daring to entangle further. She scrambled up and rushed toward the front door, but the moment the door slid open, a shadow shot out in front of her, a hand swiftly skimming across her neck!

Bright red liquid gushed out, as the figure pushed the middle-aged woman back into the carriage, and followed her in!

This was a very tall man, his hand smeared with blood as he wiped it across his mouth, his eyes, however, were fixed on the other passengers in the carriage.

The closest to him was Xu Huo. The man's gaze wandered before skipping over him and landing on Yan Jiayu, two meters away!

After two days on the train, the players all possessed basic emergency skills. Therefore, when the middle-aged woman was murdered, the trio of Liu Jia, Wang Xiaohui, and Professor Han backed off.

Wang Xiaohui's ability wouldn't take long to be unavailable, Liu Jia and Professor Han were not capable of physical confrontation, and furthermore, Professor Han was injured. That left only Xu Huo and Yan Jiayu able to fight!

Yan Jiayu, the target of the man's focus, exchanged a look with Xu Huo and edged a bit toward the broken window, kicking away the table beneath her.

The First-Class Seat Cannibal Player glanced at the table, then shifted his gaze back to her face, moving in for the kill without hesitation. Despite the injury to his left arm forcing him out of the first-class seat, and given the condition of the occupants in Second Class Seat - wounded and disabled - even with an injury, taking down a young girl was expected to be easy. So with a knife blade held in his right hand, he planned to dispatch Yan Jiayu in the same manner.

Yan Jiayu stood by the window, seemingly cornered, but she was extraordinarily calm. Drawing her right leg back into a lunge, she quickly shifted her weight down and dodged the attack with precision. As the blade swept over her head, her fist, veins bulging, crashed into the man's chest!

"Ha!"

No one knew the strength of that punch, but the sound of bone cracking reverberated three times. The man spit out blood, hunched over, and stumbled backward, only to be hit under the chin by Yan Jiayu's rising knee. As he fell, his head turned at an impossible angle for a living person, and he was instantly lifeless.

Yan Jiayu tousled her hair and let out a breath, murmured "Amitabha," and moved to drag the body aside. But as she approached, the man's rigid eyes suddenly began to move, and like a ghost in a horror movie, he lunged at her throat with his teeth!

Xu Huo was right behind Yan Jiayu. He pulled her away while simultaneously stabbing the male player with his knife, only to hear a "crunch" — the man had caught the blade in his mouth, biting down on it with his teeth!

Feeling the pull on his hand, Xu Huo grasped his knife-wielding wrist and pushed it sideways, slicing through the man's cheek and elbowing him hard in the temple while doing so!

Even for a formidable Cannibal Player, the temple was an extremely vulnerable area. Although the man tried to instinctively turn his head, he was still struck hard enough to make his eyes roll back. Yan Jiayu followed up with a kick, sending the man crashing into the glass window. After a muffled groan, he closed his eyes.

"He's not dead yet!" Liu Jia pointed to the man's twitching fingers, and along with Professor Han, they grabbed chairs and frantically bashed the man until his body was a bloody mess before carefully tossing him out the window!

Watching the man disappear down the cliff, Professor Han finally exhaled, "The Cannibal Player from First-Class Seat were too formidable."

That he could feign death in such a manner was terrifying. If Xu Huo hadn't reacted quickly, Yan Jiayu might very well have lost her life.

"It's not that the players in first-class seats are any stronger," Xu Huo said. "There is no distinct strength hierarchy among players; it's just that the ones we've happened to encounter are all novices."

Only the heavily made-up woman in second class is relatively strong. The other players, in everything from physical condition to experience, simply don't cut it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been taken down so easily. If it had been him, half of the ordinary players in the first-class seats would have died on the first night.

The third-class seats blew themselves up, otherwise, with the level of fighting they had, there certainly would have been players escaping. And if among them there were players who transformed into monsters, it would be hard to say whether the metal doors could hold up against them.

As for the middle-aged woman, she was just unlucky.

Yan Jiayu felt a chill and said, "I will block the front door in a bit."

Liu Jia looked at the body of the middle-aged woman and asked puzzledly, "Weren't there only six people? How come there's an extra one?"

"I know now. The woman killed the night before last wasn't the Cannibal Player."

"If it wasn't her, it must have been Chen Yi." Xu Huo squatted down to check the middle-aged woman's belongings, and there was a family photo. The faces of the two elderly people and a middle-aged man had been scratched out, leaving only the middle-aged woman and a young girl.

He covered her face with the bloodied apron, then turned around and gave a brief explanation about Chen Yi's affairs.

If his goal was simply to feed, his first choice should have been Liu Jia; the two were close, and it would be easier to subdue a female college student than a grown man. Perhaps it was for the White Notes, or maybe for a potential game reward, that he chose Xu Huo as his target.

Of course, it was also possible he wanted both, but for a Cannibal Player with an urgent desire to feed, this was clearly not cost-effective. And, "It makes a big difference whether you board the train on an empty stomach."

The others in the carriage fell silent. They hadn't noticed at all. When boarding, they had been so hungry their stomachs were stuck to their backs, and the carriage was filled with the scent of others. Just suppressing the desire to attack others was already very difficult, let alone sparing any energy to observe the other passengers.

"You don't look like you boarded the train on an empty stomach either," Yan Jiayu suddenly said.

The emotionally tumultuous Liu Jia and the others looked at them with unsettled souls, their gaze wandering uncertainly between the two.

Xu Huo casually lit a cigarette, unhesitatingly blew out a puff of smoke, and said with composed ease amid the chaos, "What do you think?"

"I think you're a good person," Yan Jiayu said as he emptied all the dried fruits from the small pocket of his Patchwork Clothes. "Let's crack some walnuts to eat."

The time that followed was peaceful. With the last of the White Notes, they bought a small amount of food and water, and along with some snacks, that ravenous hunger seemed to have completely withdrawn. After having lunch, they even took turns sleeping.

When it was close to lights-out, Professor Han moved a table to the back door on his own initiative. He was in much better shape than in the morning, but it was uncertain what might happen at night, so they decided to stick to the plan as discussed, with Yan Jiayu keeping watch over him.

That left the remaining three to guard the holes in the left and right windows, and the front door.