A Card In Hand

Chapter 77: Boss, A Cup of Scarlet Apple Dew Please

The tall guard listened and his expression briefly flashed with astonishment.

Once he recovered, rage followed swiftly. His hand swept across his chest, pulling out a purple card that transformed into a swirl of dark light. His body quickly became covered in a layer of thick armor.

Not just that, as he withdrew the hand that had swept across his chest, it now held a double-bladed bull-head axe: “Trying to trick me right to my face? Who do you think you are? What do you think this place is? It’s too late for repentance now. I can’t even be bothered to hang you; a direct axe sending you to the depths of death is my response! What do you think of that, bumpkin?”

“Wrong answer,” Li Ao continued in a tone devoid of human emotion.

He, of course, knew what this place was.

Otherwise, why would he have come all this way?

If not for being reborn, several deacons of the Wild Wind Black Cross Summoners Association would relocate to Silverlight City in six years, establishing a regional association known as the Silverlight Black Cross Summoners Association.

In fact, all the Black Cross Summoners Associations across Tianfeng Continent are parts of the Venomous Fang.

Li Ao couldn’t wait six years to move against Venomous Fang in Silverlight City.

As a reborn individual.

He knew too many secrets about the Venomous Fang.

With these in hand, Li Ao could make a preemptive strike, causing maximum damage.

And why did Li Ao need to disguise himself as a mechanical race assassin?

That held another secret.

At this moment, the Celestial Realm’s God of Mechanics was waging war against the God of Slaughter from the Bone Wastelands.

Among the five dark summoners associations in Tianfeng Continent, Venomous Fang had intricate connections with the God of Slaughter.

More accurately, behind the five dark summoners associations, there were evil gods supporting their nefarious deeds.

Otherwise.

How could they infiltrate so deeply?

The reason Venomous Fang and the other dark summoners associations were so secretive and difficult to eradicate, apart from their considerable power and deep-rooted influence, which involved various powers of Tianfeng Continent making it hard to segregate and separate them, was another factor.

No matter how they were purged.

They could always revive with the support of evil gods, impossible to completely eliminate.

Facing various difficulties in reality, although the Pantheon of Myriad Realms secretly often sent people to secretly strike at these dark summoners, they rarely publicly pursued a large-scale purge.

Perhaps the Pantheon of Myriad Realms internally knew there were insiders and were waiting for the right moment.

At least, for the past two thousand years, there had been no open purge.

Until five hundred years after Li Ao ignited the divine fire.

At that time, Li Ao was waging war with the gods.

Fighting fiercely without end.

The Pantheon of Myriad Realms once carried out a large-scale purge that affected most of the Tianfeng Continent.

Unfortunately, by the time Li Ao received relevant information and returned to Tianfeng Continent, the purging operation of the Pantheon of Myriad Realms had already ended with much ado about nothing.

The purge was superficially a complete victory, but in reality, it did not achieve a thorough clean-up.

The operation only struck at some insignificant low-level figures, and the higher-ups were hardly accountable, so strictly speaking, the purge was a failure, at least it did not meet the expected objectives…

The purge operation of the Pantheon of Myriad Realms was too remote.

Li Ao could not make use of it.

And thinking about it now is useless, it’s still several hundred years away!

However, the current enmity between the God of Mechanics and the God of Slaughter, with both sides fiercely waging war, was something Li Ao could utilize.

In his previous life, the God of Mechanics had never sent assassins to Tianfeng Continent.

Being part of a neutral camp, the God of Mechanics did not want to overly provoke the benevolent gods guarding Tianfeng Continent.

However, Li Ao decided to pin a huge blame on the God of Mechanics.

After all, in his previous life, Li Ao had fought with the God of Mechanics for over a decade and had suffered greatly from him.

If he did not take this opportunity to trap him, how could he repay the God of Mechanics for the grand gesture of blasting a black hole in his avenging god body with the God-Annihilating Star Cannon?

That terrifying black hole had taken Li Ao three years to barely recover from in his previous life!

So, not to mention setting him up once, Li Ao planned to trap the God of Mechanics until he was beyond tears, otherwise, it would not be enough to quench his resentment!

“Wrong answer?”

The tall guardian sneered as he pressed an internal alarm on the wall before turning to Li Ao with a cold and ruthless gaze: “Dear bumpkin, you’ve successfully angered me! Now I have time to play with you, hope you don’t disappoint me!”

“Adding to the erasure list, countdown, three, two, one.”

Li Ao started counting down, mimicking the tone of the mechanical assassins under the command of the God of Mechanics.

“Acting! I’ll let you act enough!”

The tall guardian, furious, lifted his Minotaur great axe and viciously chopped at Li Ao.

Clad in a silver cloak, Li Ao raised his arm.

A fully charged energy cannon extended.

Boom!

A violent beam of energy blasted out a shockwave in the air.

At the center of the shockwave, the energy beam was unstoppable, directly piercing through the tall guardian’s heavy armor, instantly creating a massive hole through his chest and the door behind him…

The door burst apart with a loud crash, turning into a cloud of wooden splinters.

The energy beam blasted into the castle.

Piercing through several walls.

Then causing a massive explosion.

“…”

After all the smoke cleared, the tall guardian was terrified to find a gaping hole through his chest.

The great axe he had swung down earlier had been shaken off to the ancient castle’s wall, deeply embedded into the stone.

Clad in the silver cloak, Li Ao continued to pretend he was a mechanical assassin of the God of Mechanics.

Step by step, he mechanically walked past the tall guardian.

The tall guardian’s fingers twitched slightly.

His mouth seemed to want to say something.

However…

He could no longer sustain his injuries and fell to the ground with a loud crash…

In the hall of the Wild Wind Black Cross Summoners Association, chaos reigned.

Several low-powered servants were killed by the shockwave, their bodies strewn across the debris and rubble.

A few lower-tier summoners from the Venomous Fang barely survived the explosive shockwave.

They were severely injured and writhed in pain on the ground, their cries of agony continuous and overlapping.

Li Ao pretended to be a mechanical assassin.

He walked up to the deserted bar.

Ignoring the chaos before him.

He stretched out his finger and tapped the countertop mechanically, “Bartender, a glass of Red Blossom Apple Dew, please.”

“Ah…”

Not far away, a summoner with a blood-covered face screamed frantically as wooden splinters deeply pierced his thigh and lower abdomen, blood spurting like a fountain.

“Wrong answer.”

The silver-caped mechanical assassin impersonated by Li Ao immediately commenced a new killing spree.

Raising his hand.

A small cannon was already fully charged.

Bang!

A light bullet instantly nailed into the forehead of the blood-covered summoner, shattering his contorted face and sending blood and brain matter spraying everywhere.

The other summoners in the hall, who were still wailing, were terrified out of their wits.

But it was too late for them to stop their screams.

The energy cannon was constantly recharging.

Flashing with light.

“Wrong answer.”

Li Ao walked mechanically towards them, the cannon shifting, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…

All the injured dark summoners wailing in the hall were executed without exception.

Li Ao killed every surviving target in the hall.

Then he walked back to the counter.

His finger, trying to mimic human action but still mechanical, tapped the surface again, “Bartender, a glass of Red Blossom Apple Dew.”

Suddenly, a tall, thin summoner ghostly spun down from the second floor. This man, dressed in dark green tights, appeared to be between thirty and forty, with a distinctly prominent hooked nose and a sinister gaze.

His limbs were long and thin, and his movements were extremely agile; in a blink, he had silently appeared behind Li Ao, three venomous fangs growing out of the knuckles of his hand.

He gently pressed the razor-sharp, eerily glowing blue fangs against the back of Li Ao’s cloak at the head, “Friend, I advise you not to move!”

Li Ao, of course, knew who this man was.

Frankly.

He was one of the targets Li Ao most wanted to kill tonight.

This tall, thin man with a hooked nose was called Green Python, and he was the first steward of the future Silverlight Black Cross Summoners Association, also known as Venomous Fang.

He had a subordinate named Horned Viper, the crazy assassin who failed to recruit Li Ao and immediately turned hostile, only to be successfully counter-killed by Li Ao.

When Green Python learned of Horned Viper’s death, he was furious, believing that the dignity of Venomous Fang was not to be challenged.

He led more than a dozen stewards in a full-scale attack to kill Li Ao.

The first wave of the attack.

Li Ao almost fell victim to the green python’s treacherous ploy, but after breaking free, he slew six executives of the Venomous Fang, leaving the green python, whose combat power far exceeded Li Ao’s, helpless and disgraced.

Emitting a signal, the green python was relentless in his pursuit to eliminate Li Ao.

Soon after, the district president of Silverlight City, Ban Ria, and the vice president, Dark Bat, arrived.

Surrounded by the three leaders, Li Ao stood no chance of resisting and, severely wounded, could only clench his teeth and flee desperately.

After Li Ao’s harrowing escape, the green python, in a fit of rage, led his subordinates to mercilessly slaughter Aunt Niu Shui’s family.

This murderer.

Li Ao had long since marked him for death.

“Wrong answer.”

Disguised as a mechanical killer, Li Ao replied in a mechanical tone devoid of human emotion, his arm cannon beginning to charge rapidly.

“?!”

The green python, his hawk-like nose crinkling, hesitated not a moment before thrusting three poisonous fangs towards the back of Li Ao’s head.

Snap!

The poisonous fangs, capable of piercing through refined steel, instantly snapped upon contact with the silver cloak.

Before the green python could react, the fully charged cannon was already aimed at his face.

With his neck stretching rapidly and snaking about, the green python narrowly dodged the lethal shot aimed at his face.

Boom!

A terrifying column of energy shot out, unstoppable, obliterating the wall behind the green python.

Li Ao’s other hand extended another cannon, projecting a deep red laser beam.

With a gentle sweep backward.

Everything in its path.

Was seamlessly sliced apart.

The green python, watching in horror, flicked his elongated neck, moving his head just in time to a less vulnerable spot as he rapidly retreated, escaping the bizarre attacker.

“Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…”

Li Ao, operating the energy cannons, pursued relentlessly as wood chips and stones flew about, the hall riddled with holes.

The green python frantically crawled across the ceiling, but the barrage of energy bullets was closing in fast.

At that moment.

A figure suddenly appeared from the shadows of the ceiling.

With a sweep of his black cloak, he and the green python vanished together.

Reappearing on the second-floor staircase, they were now out of the bullet’s reach.

“Dark Bat, thanks!” the green python breathed a sigh of relief, his opponent’s mode of attack too peculiar; he had been too close and had almost failed to dodge the rapid onslaught.

“Be careful, this guy is abnormal!” Wrapped in a black cloak, resembling a handsome man, Dark Bat had barely finished his sentence when his eyes widened in horror.

For at that moment, down in the hall, Li Ao was seen shouldering a massive energy cannon.

The mouth of the energy cannon.

Was flashing wildly with fierce energy light…