Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 512 The Person Who Breaks the Rules

"Spring Breeze?" Sun Hang was slightly surprised by the name. "The Spring Breeze that doesn't reach Yumen Pass?"

“Bingo!” Yang Qiaoxi nodded. “This is one of the few ‘semi-permanent’ locations in Yumen, and it’s also the location I visit most often… I’m quite familiar with the people in charge of Chunfeng, and I can be considered one of their semi-contract suppliers.”

The four walked about fifty meters further in when Sun Hang suddenly stopped.

"It smells of blood."

"The smell of blood?" Yang Qiaoxi stopped, a hint of doubt in her eyes. "No way... could it be left by an injured hunter returning to the base?"

“Possibly, the smell of blood is rather faint… no, it’s getting stronger, and it’s approaching this way now,” Sun Hang said.

"Don't joke with me, this isn't funny!" Although she had retired from the mercenary trade, Yang Qiaoxi still possessed the skills she had as a mercenary. With lightning speed, she drew the pistol from the holster behind her back, using the handcart piled with boxes as cover, and crouched down behind it.

Zhulong also assumed a fighting stance and said in a deep voice, "Two memetic auras are approaching, and they are not weak."

Xue Yue discreetly hid behind Sun Hang. Only Sun Hang—although he was the first to notice the anomaly—stood straight in the middle of the tunnel without dodging or avoiding it, calmly staring at the fork in the road ahead.

A series of footsteps approached from afar, mixed with intermittent groans and the sound of something scraping the ground.

"Here it comes." Zhulong no longer concealed his chilling aura; a thin layer of white frost covered the ground around him.

Yang Qiaoxi pulled out a small mirror from somewhere and used its reflection to observe the movements around the corner.

Two burly men dressed in black armor emerged from around the corner, dragging behind them a man in tattered clothes, covered in blood.

The two men were surprised to see Sun Hang and his group in the tunnel, but they quickly recognized the handcart. One of them tentatively asked, "Are you Boss Yang's men?"

"Old Hei?" Yang Qiaoxi poked half her head out from behind the handcart. "What are you doing?"

“This guy doesn’t follow the rules of Chunfeng.” The burly man called Lao Hei kicked the hunter who was being dragged along. “He lost a lot of money at the gambling table and held a grudge afterward. He poisoned the winner’s drink and got caught.”

"It seems to be a misunderstanding." Yang Qiaoxi breathed a sigh of relief and put the pistol back into its holster.

"Spring Breeze's rules?" Sun Hang asked subconsciously.

"Anyone who enters Chunfeng, no matter who they are, is our guest, and we have a responsibility to protect their safety," Lao Hei said. "If there are grudges, settle them outside. But if anyone dares to make a move inside the stronghold, they will end up like this guy."

"This guy looks like he's been beaten pretty badly." Sun Hang glanced at the hunter, who was barely breathing. With his injuries, he probably wouldn't survive the night without timely treatment. "What will happen to him?"

“Throw him outside and feed him to the monsters,” Old Hei said. “If his friends can pick him up and save him, then he’s lucky… But in Yumen, friends are… well, let’s just say they’re not very good.”

"Is your boss here?" Yang Qiaoxi suddenly asked.

"Yes, the boss has been holed up in the secret room these past few days, it seems he's been researching something..." Old Hei nodded repeatedly, "Boss Yang, you've finally arrived, the supplies in the stronghold are almost gone."

"Nonsense, the food you've stockpiled is enough to feed at least a hundred people for a year, how can it be almost gone?" Yang Qiaoxi said.

"We have enough food and fresh water, but we're consuming things like tobacco and alcohol at an alarming rate... You wouldn't believe it, but today a single lucky cat figurine is being sold for 300 yuan, and even if you have the money, you might not be able to buy it."

"Three hundred for one?" Zhulong was stunned for a moment. "That's too much..."

Lucky Cat is a cigarette brand produced in Chang'an. The official price of a pack of 20 is 18 yuan. In places like Longcheng where resources are scarce, the price has risen to 30 or 40 yuan per pack. In Yumen, a single Lucky Cat cigarette can buy a full ten packs of 200 cigarettes in Longcheng.

"Oh right, I almost forgot the important thing!" Old Hei suddenly slapped his forehead, and switched his address to Yang Qiaoxi to a more respectful one. "Boss Yang, please don't go in yet. I'll have the brothers sell the last few cigarettes we have stockpiled... Otherwise, once this batch of goods is released, the price of cigarettes will drop drastically in an instant."

"You've got a good business sense," Yang Qiaoxi said with a smile.

"Hey guys, keep an eye on this guy, I'll be right back!" Old Black abandoned the half-dead hunter and turned to run into the depths of the tunnel.

"How much does a lucky cat figurine normally cost here?" Sun Hang couldn't help but ask.

"The lowest price should be between seventy and eighty yuan per piece, these are in high demand," Yang Qiaoxi said.

"Looks like this business is really profitable," Sun Hang patted the boxes on the cart. "These few boxes of stuff of yours, conservatively speaking, must have a net profit of tens of thousands, right?"

"This money is hard to earn," Yang Qiaoxi sighed. "One wrong move and you could lose your life in the Gobi Desert."

“That’s true.” Sun Hang nodded.

Just as he was about to say something, a faint sense of crisis suddenly welled up in his heart.

The next second, the dying hunter suddenly sprang up, a sharp bone fragment piercing through his skin from below his wrist—he grabbed the remaining burly man guarding him with his hand, and the bone fragment pierced the man's throat.

The burly man died instantly. The hunter darted behind him, using the man's body as a shield, and with his other hand pulled out the pistol the man had tucked into his waistband. He then pulled the trigger at Sun Hang and his men.

A series of clanging sounds rang out as all the bullets struck a shield made of condensed liquid metal, leaving Sun Hang and the others behind it unharmed.

"Boss Yang!" The hunter who broke the rules clearly recognized Yang Qiaoxi and shouted, "We have no grudges against each other. You don't need to risk your life for Chunfeng's boss. Let me pass, and I promise I won't hurt you!"

"Won't hurt us? Those shots you just fired were clearly aimed at killing us, weren't they?" Yang Qiaoxi immediately retorted. "If you had killed us, you wouldn't be saying these things, would you?" "I know you hired a hunter as a bodyguard, but if I'm prepared to fight to the death, you might not be able to escape unscathed either!" The hunter's voice was full of energy, completely unlike his previous weak and feeble demeanor.

“Is feigning death… a meme ability, or some kind of technique?” Sun Hang looked at Zhulong, who shook his head and said softly, “I don’t know either.”

“I was thinking, if I killed you, would I make the boss of Chunfeng owe me a favor?” Yang Qiaoxi said. “These days, there aren’t many people as law-abiding as him. Favors from people like him are very valuable.”

"So, it seems Boss Yang is planning to fight me to the death?" The other person's tone suddenly turned cold.

"You don't seem to have the qualifications to fight us to the death." Sun Hang deactivated his liquid metal shield and walked forward.

"Bah!"

Another shot was fired, and the bullet struck Sun Hang precisely in the forehead.

Or rather, it hit the liquid metal armor covering Sun Hang's forehead.

"Damn it!" the hunter cursed, threw down his gun, and dragged his human shield as he quickly retreated towards another fork in the road.

Yang Qiaoxi only realized this at this moment and turned to look at Zhulong beside her: "Sun Hang's ability isn't healing?"

Zhulong pursed his lips: "...I can't say."

"Anyone with eyes could see that. That shield that suddenly appeared, and the ability to withstand bullets with his bare body... Holy crap, could he have actually taken down Chimera Seventeen on his own?" Yang Qiaoxi said rapidly.

The hunter holding the corpse as a human shield was suddenly overwhelmed with fear. The next second, he saw an arm pierce through the corpse in front of him and plunge into his chest.

To his surprise, he did not feel any pain.

It was as if my pain receptors had been completely numbed.

The hunter was filled with fear and tried to control the bones in his chest, just like he had done when he killed the strong man, to generate a large number of bone spikes to attack the arm that was embedded in his chest. But just as he activated his ability, he found that the memes in his body had completely gone out of control.

His eyes widened in surprise. The corpse that had been used as a shield slid to the side, and he stared intently at the smiling young man standing in front of him.

"Strange, monster..."

Although he couldn't control the memes within his body, he could still sense the changes in them. He discovered that his memes were being rapidly extracted and flowing into the other person's body.

An overwhelming sense of despair gripped his heart. He felt like one of those drunken crabs and shrimp dishes found only on southern dining tables—live crabs and shrimp soaked in strong liquor, their senses numbed by alcohol, only able to watch helplessly as a pair of chopsticks picked him up, chewed, swallowed… and finally completely digested.

The hunter's consciousness began to blur, and he felt his body becoming lighter—it seemed that the person was not only absorbing the memes from his body, but also sucking away the flesh and blood inside his body.

"Pfft."

The body, which had completely lost all signs of life, knelt on the ground, then its upper body slumped forward, its forehead hitting the ground hard.

Sun Hang shook off the trace of blood on his hands and shook his head with some regret.

This hunter's meme strength is only average. His ability is to control the skeleton in his body and use the versatile skeleton as a weapon to attack in close combat. At the same time, he can also generate a layer of high-hardness bone armor on the surface of his body or in the subcutaneous tissue to protect his vulnerable organs.

In addition, his physical recovery ability was also enhanced. After the bones that served as weapons retracted into his body, the wounds left on his skin and flesh would heal in just over ten minutes—he looked like he had been badly beaten, but it was all an act; his skin and flesh wounds had already healed to about 70-80%, and the broken bones could grow back at any time.

Apart from the ability to fake death, which slightly interested Sun Hang, all the other abilities had superior alternatives for him. Therefore, after absorbing the hunter's meme, Sun Hang did not hesitate and directly used this foreign meme as nourishment to "feed" the original meme in his body.

These foreign memes were assimilated by Sun Hang almost without any resistance, causing Sun Hang's "blue bar limit" to increase slightly.

Even Sun Hang himself couldn't feel the increase—to make the blue bar cap rise significantly, a hunter of this level would have to devour at least five hundred people at once.

It was only at this point that the guards and hunters at the outpost hurriedly arrived.

"Who fired the shot just now?" Old Black, who had returned, asked loudly. The next second, he saw the body of another burly man on the ground and couldn't help but let out a mournful howl.

“That person is Lao Hei’s younger brother,” Yang Qiaoxi explained softly to Zhulong. “The two of them have relied on each other since they were little. Later, Lao Hei was infected by a monster and became a hunter, so the two of them worked together for the boss of Chunfeng…”

"What just happened?" asked a man wearing thin-rimmed glasses and a suit, who looked scholarly. After spotting Yang Qiaoxi, he immediately switched his question to her. "Ms. Yang, can you describe what just happened to me? We trust you."

"Are you the boss of Chunfeng?" Zhulong asked.

“No, I’m just an accountant,” the man in the suit said.

“That hunter who broke the rules was faking his death. His wounds had actually healed a long time ago.” Yang Qiaoxi pointed to another corpse on the ground. “After Lao Hei left, he suddenly attacked and killed another guard. He originally wanted to kill us as well, but fortunately, the hunters who were with me were all skilled and turned the tables on him.”

“I see.” The man in the suit nodded. “I will relay this to the boss. I would also like to thank Boss Yang and his friends for their help. If this person had escaped, it would have been much more difficult for us to find him later.”

After the man in the suit finished speaking, he gave a wink to the two guards behind him. The two guards immediately began to clean up the battlefield, while the hunters who had come to watch the excitement started chatting amongst themselves. Many of them noticed Yang Qiaoxi's handcart and crowded around, wanting to buy a batch of "fresh goods" before the others in the stronghold.

"It's all my fault! It's all my fault!" After listening to Yang Qiaoxi's retelling, Lao Hei sat down on the ground, wailing and slapping himself repeatedly. "Why the hell did I have to be greedy for the money for those few cigarettes! If I had known... if I had known, I wouldn't have gone back... if I hadn't gone back, you wouldn't have been killed! It's all my fault!"

(End of this chapter)