052 The Formidable Type 1 Model

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“Boss!”

A foreigner with dreadlocks let out a wild roar, brandishing a light machine gun and spraying bullets at the police and military officers, trying to suppress their fire and retrieve the corpse of the bald man.

Thud.

Another fishing rod tip plunged into the dreadlocked man’s head from the side. The tail of the rod quivered incessantly, and so did the entire body of the man.

“Ian!”

Rat-a-tat!

The police and special forces showed no mercy. Seeing the dreadlocked Ian standing stiffly with a rod in his head, a SWAT assault trooper seized the opportunity and fired two precise shots into his chest.

Two blood blossoms bloomed on Ian’s chest as he collapsed, following the bald man’s fate.

However, the SWAT captain yanked the assault trooper back behind cover, hissing into the comms, “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Watch out for hidden shooters!”

Indeed, two consecutive rod tips had struck two criminals in the head—anyone could tell this was the work of a sniper. But the question was, where was this hidden arrow coming from? Friend or foe? If these shots couldn’t keep up their accuracy against the criminals, the police would rather not have this kind of “help” at all.

But fate cared little for the will of anyone inside the building. With a sharp whistle, the tip of a rod lodged itself into the right eye of one of the only two female criminals, who fell backward clutching her face, not even managing a scream.

“Lucy!”

This time, the criminals were truly terrified. Lucy had been hiding behind a massive pillar, in a dead angle that even gunfire couldn’t reach—who could tell where the hidden arrow had come from?

A black criminal finally cracked under the pressure of the sniper’s silent slaughter. Taking advantage of a lull in the gunfire as both sides observed, he leapt out, screaming in hysteria, “Who? Who the hell is it? If you’ve got the guts, come out and fight me one-on-one!” His taunting cry ended abruptly as a fishing rod tip sprouted from his left forehead.

A shoddy rod, certainly not carbon fiber, thought a SWAT officer who was also a fishing enthusiast.

Meanwhile, on the rooftop of Tianxing Tower.

Yang Tang, huddled beneath the railing, felt a bit spartan.

Killed four humans, gained forty sin points!

Instantly received 3.5 virtue points and 176.5 sin points carried by these four!

Prevented these four from killing another thirteen people in the future, gained 130 virtue points!

Received a combined total of 8.3 secondary virtue points and 1.6 secondary sin points from those thirteen!

The death tally was four, which meant Yang Tang had killed four criminals with four consecutive arrows.

But he knew his own circumstances best—before firing the fourth rod tip, he’d only used the type-1 mode’s reticle to lock onto the black criminal’s head. Suddenly realizing that after three quick shots, his upper body was dangerously exposed above the railing, he’d hastily loosed a fourth arrow in a random direction, roughly ninety degrees away from the black criminal.

Damn, that must have been a ninety-degree angle, right? Yang Tang recalled the direction of the fourth shot and instantly realized that, while a sixty-degree deviation could be corrected by a horizontal curve, could it handle ninety degrees? What about an obtuse angle? He was beginning to figure out the true nature of this type-1 mode.

But to confirm, Yang Tang needed to test it. He peeked out from behind the railing, locked onto the second female criminal inside Flower Tower with the type-1 reticle, then hunkered back down, leaning against the railing. He drew his bow and fired the fifth rod tip in the opposite direction from Flower Tower.

Five meters.

Ten meters.

Fifteen meters.

Yang Tang watched as the rod tip, after flying over twenty meters, began to curve, finally drawing a huge reverse arc in the fading light and hurtling straight toward Flower Tower.

A homing arrow?

Killed one human, gained ten sin points!

Instantly received 0.7 virtue points and 26.8 sin points from her!

Prevented her from killing another two people in the future, gained twenty virtue points!

Received a combined 0.4 secondary virtue points from those two, secondary sin points negligible!

It really was a homing arrow!

Strictly speaking, this “auto-targeting” wasn’t exactly a homing arrow. In the game Xuan Yuan Sword nn, the aiming shot skill was classified as a spell. In those old games, for ease of operation, spells and magic attacks, once locked onto a target, were almost guaranteed to hit—missing was rare!

After the aiming shot mutated into the aiming sniper shot, this quirky trait was faithfully inherited, which was why Yang Tang mistook type-1 mode for a homing arrow.

Yang Tang was both shocked and delighted. Meanwhile, with the last female criminal falling dead, the remaining criminals inside Flower Tower were on the verge of madness.

“Retreat, retreat, retreat!” shouted the second-in-command, the man with downward-slanting triangle eyes, over the comms.

But as the scattered criminals tried to regroup and withdraw, they were relentlessly picked off by the unseen arrows. The rod tips appeared out of nowhere, stabbing into their heads at impossible angles, leaving them defenseless and terrified.

“What the hell is going on?” someone yelled over the comms. “Have we angered a demon?” Before the words were finished, there was a dull thud—he too was struck in the head, dying with his eyes wide open.

In total, another four criminals’ lives were claimed by the fishing rod tips. To do this, Yang Tang had only peeked four times, then huddled behind the railing and fired blindly, gaining 122 virtue points and 168.5 sin points from those four.

Fortunately, no one else was on Tianxing Tower’s rooftop, or they would have surely gone mad after witnessing Yang Tang’s miraculous marksmanship.

“Only eleven rod tips left!”

Yang Tang began to worry about running out of “arrows.” But in truth, after his consecutive kills, the once fierce and resilient criminals were now suffering a massive blow to morale.

Yes, morale.

Whether in ancient or modern warfare, in close combat, the morale of both sides is often the key to victory or defeat.

The original gang of nearly thirty criminals had only lost one dead and three wounded in the firefight with the police and military. But ever since Yang Tang’s sniping began, with nine killed—nearly a third of their force—no matter how tough their minds, their morale had started to waver.

In contrast, the police and military were different. They were fighting on home ground, each with the pressing thought, “If I cower, what will happen to my family?” So their morale remained above average.

As one side’s morale waned, the other’s grew fiercer, their gunfire nearly chasing the criminals down the halls.

In their rushed retreat, the criminals didn’t have time to execute the hostages one by one. Instead, they sprayed bullets into the meeting room where the hostages were held, not caring whether they finished them all off—escape was all that mattered.

Thus, the battle raged from the densest cluster of criminals on the tenth floor, down to the seventh, and then the fifth.

In the stairwell on the fifth floor, a sudden explosion inflicted heavy casualties on the police vanguard. The retreating criminals were still dissatisfied, and someone shouted over the comms, “Shit, only three men got hit!”

“Baum, what the hell are you yelling for? Hitting any cops at all is good enough. Did you want to blow up the whole building?”

“Hmph, if I’d had time to rig the place, I could have blown it up whenever I wanted—”

“Baum?”

“Baum’s been hit by the demon’s arrow, move it!”

The comms fell instantly silent.

“Tenth one.”

The tenth criminal brought Yang Tang 31.3 virtue points and 42 sin points.

Yang Tang let out a heavy sigh. He hadn’t wanted to kill so many, not even if they were vicious criminals. But to avoid leaving trouble for his parents in the future, he had to nip the threat in the bud.

Night gradually fell.

Hawkeye seemed to see even more clearly in the dark.

Through the building’s one-way glass, Yang Tang originally couldn’t distinguish the faint green on the police or the crimson on the criminals. He had to lock onto targets through broken windows. But as the sun slipped below the horizon, the green of the police and the red of the criminals inside the building became strikingly vivid.

“Can it penetrate?”

After locking onto a target, Yang Tang hunkered down behind the railing, nocking and drawing another arrow.

Whoosh!

A few seconds after firing, he peeked over the railing to track the arrow’s path. He watched as the rod tip pierced the building’s glass and struck the targeted criminal.

Yet, no notification of awareness arrived.

“Not dead? Must not be powerful enough,” Yang Tang quickly surmised.

At that moment, the criminal struck by the arrow was laughing madly, “Mehahaha, the demon’s arrow is losing power! It barely went an inch into my forehead!”

Relieved sighs filled the comms.

“So the hidden shooter isn’t a demon—boom!”

Before the words were out, another criminal watched as his companion’s head, as if smashed by a pneumatic hammer, turned to pulp.

“Wha—what was that sound?” someone asked over the comms.

“Si—Sill’s head just exploded, bit by bit. It’s more disgusting than cow dung!”

The other criminals didn’t ask how Sill’s head exploded—they all guessed the cause.

“Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!” The man with downward-slanting triangle eyes shouted again, but as soon as he finished, a sharp pain shot through his head, his vision shattered and then went dark.

Almost simultaneously, someone else called out, “Rattlesnake’s down, triangle-eyes just got his head blown off by the demon’s arrow! Who’s still breathing, sound off!”

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

“Four—anyone else still here? For real, just us five left?”

“What do we do?”

“I say we surrender—at least we won’t die right away!”

So the five remaining criminals shouted their surrender, threw down their weapons, and lay flat on the ground.

Seeing this, Yang Tang couldn’t help but curse under his breath.

…