Chapter Fifty-Nine: Crisis Draws Near

With his eyes closed, Fang Mu summoned every ounce of willpower to barely suppress the wild beating of his heart, just enough that no one beside him would notice his agitation and grow suspicious.

Yes, the man lying deep in the crevice of the glacier—his face utterly destroyed, his wounds grave, hanging by the thinnest thread of life—was Fang Mu himself.

And the cause of all this… was none other than Fang Mu.

This was a desperate ruse—a “suffering for credibility” stratagem.

It was, in this moment, the only way Fang Mu could conceive of to avoid losing his life outright.

When the golden-mad blade surged out from its hiding place, Fang Mu knew at once: he was in mortal danger.

He had underestimated the terror of a golden evolver and overestimated his own marksmanship.

The enemy moved at near-sonic speed, employing tactical maneuvers to evade—though even without such evasions, to be honest, Fang Mu’s reflexes were simply not fast enough to find a shooting opportunity in such a short window.

At speeds surpassing sound, the distance could be covered in a straight line in twenty seconds at most. In that brief span, Fang Mu would have to calculate the enemy’s advance and the bullet’s speed, seizing upon that fleeting instant to fire.

His neural response was inadequate for such precision.

For a moment, Fang Mu even felt despair.

Escape was impossible. Though his first thought was to run, he dismissed it instantly.

As a sniper, his sense of distance and speed was impeccable. The enemy, moving at near-sonic velocity, would reach the glacier crevice in under twenty seconds. For someone at his Black Iron rank, twenty seconds would suffice only to barely clear the crevice.

Flee? Certain death.

Hide, then? That was his second thought, but it too was immediately abandoned.

He knew well—hiding would be futile.

A golden evolver’s five senses were preternaturally sharp. Truth be told, the reason he’d evaded detection while tailing Changle and the others before was likely due more to luck than skill: the area had been crowded, and those golden evolvers hadn’t anticipated a tail in their carefully chosen ambush site. Thus, he had slipped by unnoticed.

But now? His foe came, burning with rage, intent on finding him.

Hide? Where could he possibly go?

The ensuing events only proved Fang Mu’s judgment correct—he could not run, nor could he hide.

So, what to do? Stand still and wait for death?

Clearly, that was not an option Fang Mu would accept.

Thus, in scarcely three seconds, he made his decision.

He moved faster than ever before, quickly stowing all his weapons in his spatial armament. Then, he dashed behind the body of the last gun duelist he had slain, and—shot himself.

Yes, he shot himself. And he used “Wildfire.”

For this was his only chance at survival.

He gambled.

He gambled that, in the heat of pursuit, his enemy would focus entirely on the surface of the glacier’s crevice, paying no mind to the corpse one hundred and fifty meters below.

He also gambled that his own “Wildfire” would not be his undoing.

He was, after all, merely Black Iron rank—a single “Wildfire” should have been fatal.

But he bet on the fact that “Wildfire” was constructed from his gene source energy, and the cultivation technique he practiced seemed to hold mysteries of its own. He could also regulate, to some extent, how much gene source energy he infused into “Wildfire.”

He gambled that these three factors combined would let him survive his own “Wildfire.”

The result was promising—he lived.

But it was hardly a victory, for now he was in unspeakable agony.

Though he’d fired to only graze his face, not aiming the barrel directly at his head, the shot still tore a bloody swath across his features, a grisly wound.

And worse yet, the burning that followed nearly drove him into true unconsciousness, if not death.

Only now did he realize what those two Bronze gun duelists had endured beneath his “Wildfire”—the agony was monstrous.

And this, despite him channeling only the barest minimum of gene source energy.

Had he not done so, the blaze would surely have consumed him entirely.

Yet his situation was grim. To avoid being recognized, he had all but let the “Wildfire” char his entire body. Even if only the surface flesh, the pain bordered on inhuman, nearly shattering his resolve.

More critically—he could not utter a sound. He had to ensure that, should the golden-mad blade discover him alive, he would seem at least to be unconscious.

Thus, he gritted his teeth, motionless amid the flames, enduring the burning torment in every inch of skin.

It was a pain to chill the soul. Fang Mu dared not remember it. Those brief ten seconds stretched into a lifetime.

By the end, he had shattered several teeth from biting down so hard, his mouth filled with blood.

In truth, Fang Mu could not fathom how he had endured.

At last, the “Wildfire,” fueled by scant gene source energy, burned out, and he lay utterly still, feigning unconsciousness.

He was aware when the mad blade entered; the violent wind brought a hint of “coolness” to his scorched skin, even a touch of comfort.

But he dared not move—not a finger, not an eyelid.

He needed time.

He needed the golden-mad blade to spend time identifying him.

The golden-mad blade approached in a fury; anything that stirred would trigger an instinctive attack or suspicion.

Thus, Fang Mu had to outlast that first, instinctive reaction.

Only once his foe was certain there were no living beings present would his mind shift to rational analysis.

At that point, the first thing he’d notice would be the two corpses by the cliff’s edge.

Upon seeing them, his immediate assumption would be—they were gun duelists stationed here, now slain by the enemy.

A perfectly natural reflex.

And this reflex was crucial. It would shape how his foe interpreted Fang Mu’s “corpse.”

Would he decide it was one of the four gun duelists? Or… the “killer”?

This distinction was vital.

Because once that initial judgment was made, unless a major discrepancy arose—such as the foe discovering the body one hundred and fifty meters below, or recognizing, through his disfigured face, that he was not one of the gun duelists—then Fang Mu’s ruse would be a success.

And that would buy him the most precious thing of all—opportunity.

Judging by what happened, his ruse seemed to have worked.

When his foe found him still alive, he merely kicked him over with his foot, instead of killing him outright or trying to rouse him for questioning.

From this, Fang Mu surmised that, for now, he had passed the test.

“But the crisis is far from over…”

“What comes next will be the real challenge!”

Fang Mu clenched his teeth, coldly aware of this truth in his heart.