Chapter 65 Victory

Cracks began to spread across the indestructible bone armor, but this was entirely within Lu Qingyu's expectations. Leaving the situation in a stalemate would only waste the time he had to survive, so his objective from the very beginning was to break the stalemate and completely defeat his opponent.

Following the extreme heat with ultra-low-temperature freezing, the alternating heat and cold would cause the sturdy bone armor to undergo rapid thermal expansion and contraction, shattering its structural integrity. At this moment, the armor had become so brittle that even he could easily shatter it.

The dust settled, and this move was finally checkmate!

Lu Qingyu raised his hand, and countless icicles instantly surrounded the bone armor. The armor was now riddled with flaws; a single strike with an icicle would be enough to pierce through the cracks and assassinate the Esper inside the armor.

This game—he had won.

Just as Lu Qingyu was about to strike, a woman's voice suddenly rang out from within the bone armor: "Wait!"

Lu Qingyu frowned. He saw the shattered pieces of bone armor suddenly peeling off one by one, as if disassembling themselves actively from the inside out. Immediately following this, an exceedingly sultry and curvaceous body was exposed from beneath the armor.

As the final piece of bone armor stripped away, a pitiful-looking woman appeared before Lu Qingyu. Qin Changsheng, who had arrived just in time to catch up, couldn't help but freeze at the sight: "Th-this... what is going on?"

Lu Qingyu's hesitation lasted only a split second before his gaze turned icy cold, and an icicle immediately lunged toward the woman's throat.

The woman was startled. In her panic, she closed her eyes and screamed, "Wait! Spare me! I was wrong! Listen to my explanation!"

Lu Qingyu did not stop, but a black tentacle instantly wrapped around his wrist, forcibly halting his movement. Blocked in his action, Lu Qingyu flew into a rage: "Qin Changsheng! Stop messing around, let go of me right now!"

"No!" Qin Changsheng, currently controlling Momo and gritting his teeth, persisted in blocking Lu Qingyu's action. "She has already surrendered voluntarily."

"Did your lower half take control of your upper half or what?" Lu Qingyu was beyond patience. "She says she surrenders, so you believe her? Have you forgotten that she was just trying her absolute best to send us to our deaths? If we don't kill her now, in a moment she'll be the one killing us!"

"She won't!" the woman hurriedly explained. "I have already completely disengaged the Bone-Horned Roc. Right now, I pose no threat to you whatsoever!"

"Bone-Horned Roc?"

"It's my Shanhai Beast." The woman bit her lower lip. "Please, just listen to me. My Shanhai Beast, the Bone-Horned Roc, is a solid-form Shanhai Beast. Once fully disengaged, it takes at least ten minutes just to re-summon and reform it into armor. In that amount of time, you'd have more than enough time to finish me off, wouldn't you?"

The woman's words caused Lu Qingyu to pause momentarily as he demanded, "Why did you do this? What on earth is your goal?"

"I have only one goal—I just want to stay alive." The woman looked pitiful, her eyes reddened. "Please, believe me! The only reason I attacked you was because I was too terrified..."

"Terrified?" Lu Qingyu was laughed out of anger. "This is the first time I've ever heard of someone needing to kill others just because they were scared!"

"I really was terrified!" The woman's tone grew urgent. "I know only twenty people can survive. If I didn't make a move, I would definitely die here. Please, don't kill me!"

"My Shanhai Beast has already been disengaged, and before the armor can re-condense, all the oxygen is gone too. Ten minutes without oxygen, and I will definitely die at the bottom of the water," the woman continued to explain. "Please, spare me. W-we can cooperate! You've already witnessed the ability of my Shanhai Beast. As long as you let me join you, I will definitely be useful in the games to come!"

Watching the woman plead for her life, Qin Changsheng couldn't help but feel a shred of pity for her.

After all, he had walked this exact mental path himself. Being dragged into a death game, acquiring powerful yet terrifying abilities, and being forced to slaughter those of his own kind—he had resisted it intensely at the start as well, but hadn't he now been forced to accept this reality?

This woman was just like him: unwilling to kill, yet driven by coercion to murder.

However, Lu Qingyu's attitude remained utterly resolute: "Don't even think about it. I'm not open-minded enough to spare someone who tried their hardest to put me in an early grave. Besides, if the roles were reversed and we were the ones trapped in a dead end, would you show mercy?"

The woman was instantly left speechless, her gaze of desperate appeal shifting to Qin Changsheng instead.

"Please, I really don't have any ability to resist anymore." The woman's tears dissolved directly into the cold lake water. "If you really can't let me go, just leave me here to die. I'll just drown to death anyway."

Those words struck Qin Changsheng's heart like a knife.

Qin Changsheng sighed. "Forget it, spare her."

"What kind of madness are you on?" Lu Qingyu could no longer contain his fury. "Do you think you're being merciful? Do you understand that this is pure irresponsibility? If you let her go, will she let you go? Have you ever thought about what will happen to the people who are already bound to your fate? Are you just going to abandon their lives or deaths?"

"I want to care! I don't want a single person to throw away their lives for nothing because of a stupid game like this!" Qin Changsheng was stubbornly unyielding. "Let her go. She won't pose any threat to us."

"You fucking asshole!" Lu Qingyu instantly exploded with rage, countless icicles expanding and unfurling from his body like a giant octopus.

However, Qin Changsheng wasn't a pushover either. The moment Lu Qingyu's icicles spread out, the tentacles transformed by Momo also enclosed him completely in an instant.

Qin Changsheng said decisively, "I'll say this one last time: let her go."

Lu Qingyu glared fiercely at Qin Changsheng. Although he believed that the hostage in his hands would keep Qin Changsheng from attacking, he also knew full well that when dealing with an idiot completely driven by emotion, you couldn't push them into a corner.

After all, idiots never followed logic.

After a brief stalemate, Lu Qingyu decisively dismissed all his icicles, vented a bitter breath, and snapped, "Damn it, I really misjudged you. Rather than wasting time here with you, I might as well go eliminate the other Espers first."

Seeing Lu Qingyu disarm himself, Qin Changsheng secretly breathed a sigh of relief inside.

That's right, this was fine.

He didn't want to completely break ties with Lu Qingyu, and deep down, he knew that Lu Qingyu's approach was the correct one. But for Qin Changsheng, some things could not be decided solely on whether they were right or wrong. He felt that once he took that step, something fundamental would vanish from him forever.

Lu Qingyu cast a cold glance at the woman standing aside. Seemingly realizing she had escaped death, the woman revealed a smile of a survivor.

Everything should have ended right here.

Right until Lu Qingyu suddenly reached out his palm and lightly swept it across the woman's neck.