Chapter 2625: Execution Team
"Snap!" A stone hit Xu Huo’s palm, and he turned his head, looking in the direction the stone came from. He saw an airship approaching, and a man standing at the open airship door was aiming a toy gun at him, gesturing for him to step aside.
Xu Huo stood still, while the woman who had narrowly escaped earlier turned back and ran in panic. At the same time, a man about five hundred meters from the crossroad, crossing the street, was shot in the head by a stone, coming from a different direction.
Another airship emerged from the side of another building, firing two more shots at the corpse on the ground.
Someone dying on the street suddenly made the few people on the street walk faster. No one stopped to watch, nor did they step forward to help, as if they had grown accustomed to such scenes.
Xu Huo expanded his spiritual world, and found that similar incidents occurred at a few other intersections, with the long street running through the city as the central axis. On both sides, ordinary people were shot by stones while trying to cross the street, and some were lucky enough to escape, hiding in buildings by the roadside afterward. As long as they didn’t attempt to cross the street to the other side, the people on the airship wouldn’t chase them down.
It seemed that both the killers and the killed understood what was happening.
Casually tossing away the stone, Xu Huo crossed the street and entered a shop to buy a map.
Although he couldn’t buy an accurate map of his own country here, he could purchase maps of the other two countries.
The instance he was participating in had two trigger points, one in the country he was currently in—Yongta. The trigger location was a place called Expedition Canyon. This place was not clearly marked on the map he originally purchased, so considering the maps in Beneath the Dimension might have update delays, he decided to buy a map nearby unexpectedly hindered by regional restrictions on information flow, obscuring even the rise and fall of cities.
The second trigger point was in the neighboring country, Moon Corner Duchy’s New Grass Sacrificial Garden. However, these two countries occupied two-thirds of the zone, with vast territories. The borders were frequently opened with defensive barriers due to conflicts. Some spatial teleportation devices might not pass through smoothly.
Xu Huo carefully reviewed the map and used the terminal distributed free by Yunguan City to search. The location of the New Grass Sacrificial Garden roughly matched up, but it was very far from him, and with the recent war at the border between the two countries, it seemed inconvenient to approach.
After hesitating, he decided to first visit the Expedition Canyon.
Buying some items the Girl in the painting liked, he prepared to leave the city. As he passed through the city center, the city unexpectedly began to boil over, with residents shedding their previous lethargy and flocking to the streets, spontaneously gathering on both sides, waving Yongta Country and Execution Team flags, eagerly anticipating something.
Xu Huo noticed that the shooting airships hovering in the sky also stopped, pairing off and positioning themselves on either side of the central street, waiting for something.
Soon, a flying car appeared at the end of the street, with the Execution Team’s silver emblem reflecting light from the car body, but the focus was on the corpse hanging under the low-flying car body.
It was a man, nearly completely naked and covered in blood, his lifeless body already stiff, with arms hung motionlessly. Nearby flying devices would deliberately fly close to spray the corpse with water, causing the congealed blood on the body to start flowing again and drip along the road.
And behind this car, there were about twenty similar flying vehicles, each with a corpse hanging beneath, exposing both men and women naked to public view as a form of humiliation and demonstration.
The crowds cheered, shouting the names of the Execution Team members, madly calling them heroes. Some fans went so far as to dash towards the flying devices just to catch a glimpse from the Execution Team members.
"The people here are sick," said a player from the Outer Zone watching from not far away.
It was quite abnormal. Third-class residents could only work underground, unable to access the surface. The city-wide murder game made people cautiously hide at home, while those participating risked their lives. Yet upon the Execution Team’s return to the city, these cautiously hidden people emerged, ignoring the hanging corpses to enthusiastically pursue Execution Team players, strangely fanatical, as if having undergone a soul change.
"Those should be members of the anti-government alliance," a player squeezed among the crowds said. "I heard they attacked the political officials meeting just now, and now, look, they’re hanging out as a public spectacle."
The tone revealed a sense of lamentation. Indeed, in a place playing human shooting games, the government was unlikely to be innocent, while the anti-government alliance primarily targeted government officials, easily influencing stands and beliefs, especially with public corpse displays, which anywhere would not be considered a just act.
"Let’s go, this has nothing to do with us." Two players left the crowd.
Already in the city center, when the convoy arrived, all car windows were lowered, and almost all members of the Execution Team removed their black veils to reveal their faces. The black-skinned big man in the leading vehicle somersaulted onto the car roof and shouted, "These are the henchmen of the anti-government alliance. Just half an hour ago, they attacked the political officials meeting, kidnapped political officials, and attempted to thwart the new human rights bill’s passage. But they failed, hanging here as their punishment!"
"Anyone who attempts to overthrow the country shall meet this fate!"
"No matter the anti-government alliance’s claims, if they dare to poke their heads out of a rat hole, the Execution Team will chop off their heads and dig up their rat holes!"
"This time, the members of the Execution Team involved in the mission, those three stars and above, are here," concluded the dark-skinned big man, showing a savage smile to the crowd, "It was us who slaughtered these dogs, if the anti-government alliance wants revenge, they’re welcome! We’re waiting!"
Under the cold faces of the dark-skinned big man and other Execution Team members, the crowd burst into a new round of applause. Were there not players maintaining order, these people might have uncontrollably overwhelmed the convoy.
Yet amid this high sentiment and public jubilation, a small figure suddenly crawled out from a sewage outlet, pushed through the crowded throng towards the center of the street, was intercepted by players, then issued heart-wrenching cries to the corpse hanging under the car.
The piercing cries went largely unnoticed, her voice drowned out by the cheers. The player hindering her planned to escort her away, but the dark-skinned big man stopped this action. He jumped from the car to the ground, strode forward, grabbed the small woman’s hair, dragged her beneath the convoy, pointed at the corpse she attempted to embrace, and asked, "Who is this person?"