Chapter 134: Handcuffs

Lü Yang checked the items inside the wooden crate. Wow! The crate held flashbang grenades, smoke grenades, hand grenades, even strangely shaped landmines and timed explosive devices! The most surprising thing was something that looked like a small missile. Based on Lü Yang’s knowledge of firearms, this small missile should be used with a shoulder-fired rocket launcher.

“Inside there are still many more things like these. First, I took one of each to show you,” Liu Hui gestured to Lü Yang.

“Mmm, thank you for your effort,” Lü Yang replied as he inspected each piece of weaponry and ammunition one by one. His puzzlement grew deeper.

“Oh, and there’s also a huge, huge gun and two tubes, like cannons…” Liu Hui gestured again to show Lü Yang.

Based on Liu Hui’s gestures, Lü Yang guessed the “huge, huge gun” she described was probably a heavy machine gun. One of the “cannons” might be a rocket launcher. As for the other “cannon,” Lü Yang couldn’t figure out what kind of weapon it was without seeing it in person.

Seeing so much powerful weaponry brought Lü Yang no joy. The more formidable the weapons, the more abundant the ammunition, which only meant there would be more Dark Predators ahead, and they would be even trickier than the ones before. Now, everyone else was dead. Sun Haibo was missing. Lü Yang stood alone and definitely couldn’t carry so much heavy weaponry himself. Besides, he also had to protect Liu Hui to safely traverse the town below, Donkey Tail Town. The difficulty level was simply too high.

Moreover, his own body was now entangled with the Black Mist. While these powerful weapons could kill Dark Predators, a misplaced attack could easily injure him too.

Lü Yang had thought a lot about the difficulty of this last stage, but he never imagined… that the supply point would provide this many super-strong weapons.

Before, throughout the journey, Lü Yang had constantly worried about his weapons being too weak and ammunition running low. Yet now, he was suddenly given all these powerful weapons and practically endless ammunition, which instead made him even more troubled and restless.

“What are you playing with in your hand?” Lü Yang slightly shielded his eyes with his hand and pointed to something reflective Liu Hui was fidgeting with. His eyes were very sensitive to light now; even reflected light made him uncomfortable.

“It’s handcuffs,” Liu Hui handed the handcuffs to him.

“Handcuffs?” Lü Yang took the pair of handcuffs and couldn’t help but frown.

With this huge stash of weapons and ammo sitting here, its purpose was obvious. But why would there be a pair of handcuffs?

That made no sense!

Something unusual was surely up. These handcuffs definitely had to have some special meaning.

The key for the handcuffs was also present…

After pondering repeatedly for a long while, Lü Yang couldn’t figure out what was special about them. He had no choice but to hang them temporarily from his belt.

“This looks a lot like a soda can!” Liu Hui pulled a hand grenade from the wooden crate and pulled out the pull ring on it.

“Holy sh—!”

Lü Yang was startled. He leapt up, snatched the hand grenade, and threw it with all his might over the courtyard wall. BOOM! With a loud boom, the grenade exploded violently upon hitting the ground. The entire courtyard trembled under the impact.

“Don’t you dare touch any of these things randomly!” Lü Yang glared at Liu Hui. He had assumed kids these days played video games and watched war movies, so they’d know a grenade wasn’t a soda can. But Liu Hui was acting foolish enough to treat it like one!

The explosion had also frightened Liu Hui badly. She apologized repeatedly to Lü Yang, promising she wouldn’t fool around with these things again.

Seeing her like that, Lü Yang couldn’t bring himself to scold her further. It was clear she wasn’t like Yi Ya; she wasn’t the brightest girl. Speak too harshly, and she would surely cry.

“I’ll teach you how to use these things,” Lü Yang offered. He felt this final stage probably wouldn’t be easy to clear. In the heat of battle, he feared he might not be able to ensure Liu Hui’s safety. She would need to have some ability to protect herself.

“I don’t want to learn…” Liu Hui shook her head vigorously. The explosion had clearly shocked her deeply.

Lü Yang thought for a long time but ultimately gave up the idea. There was a common saying in shooter games: “It’s not the god-like enemy you should fear, it’s the teammate as dumb as a pig.” Lü Yang had suffered more than enough from such “friendly fire accidents” inflicted by teammates when playing online FPS battles.

With Liu Hui’s timid nature, even if he forced her to learn how to throw a grenade, at the critical moment, she was highly likely to blow herself up with it… or blow Lü Yang up.

He would just have to be extra careful and try harder to keep an eye on her himself. Though he felt no responsibility towards her personally, the task required him to safely escort her out of Donkey Tail Town via the road leading out of the town. He absolutely had to guarantee her safety; otherwise, if the task failed, he would be Erased by the Mysterious Domain.

Lü Yang had this inexplicable feeling… a suspicion that the key to successfully ending this Mysterious Domain event might very well lie with Liu Hui.

…

Lü Yang told Liu Hui to stay in the well-lit safe room. He went alone to the small hill where he and Liu Hui had watched the sunrise earlier.

It offered a great view. The entire mountain path downhill lay in his sights. Looking down, Lü Yang discovered his night vision was significantly better than before. Where only a few meters were visible before, the path now seemed bathed in bright moonlight, everything clear and crisp even far into the distance, with no blurriness.

Clearly, this was a side effect of the Black Mist invasion.

After being invaded by the Black Mist, would he ever be able to safely return to the Real world? Doubt clouded Lü Yang’s mind again.

The path downhill was winding. Surprisingly, there were over a dozen small light-lit Safe Points along the way. Lü Yang counted about sixteen or seventeen of them in total, fairly evenly spaced along the trail.

Looking from afar, the light came from powerful lamps mounted on poles by the roadside. Since there was a light source, it could probably be shot out. If he couldn’t shoot out these lights on the way down, walking under them in his current state would be extremely dangerous.

Between every two small Safe Points, swathes of dark shadows moved furtively. Needless to say, this path down the mountain must be crawling with Dark Predators. Otherwise, the Safe Points wouldn’t have provided such powerful firearms and so much ammunition.

Lü Yang looked around, observing and thinking. Gradually, a plan began to form in his mind. He then turned and walked back towards the compound at the base of the hill.

…

“What is this?” Liu Hui asked Lü Yang.

“A timed explosive device,” Lü Yang said as he carefully studied the device he had asked Liu Hui to retrieve with extreme caution. This was an important task item. Once activated, both he and Liu Hui had to get at least ten kilometers away from the blast site near the town road within the set time limit. Otherwise, the task would fail.

The problem was, before activating the device, Lü Yang couldn’t tell how long the maximum time setting could be. If there wasn’t enough time, it would be very difficult for him to get Liu Hui ten kilometers away to safety before the explosion occurred.

“Xiao Hui, could you try to get those two ‘cannons’ out? I want to see what weapons they are,” Lü Yang requested after finishing his examination of the timed explosive device.

Lü Yang was looking for some long-range, large-scale destructive weapons. These would allow him to avoid the explosive light harming himself while also quickly clearing away the many Dark Predators swarming the path down the mountain. Only this way could he and Liu Hui have a chance to break through the hordes and get through Donkey Tail Town down below, thereby ending this Mysterious Domain.

“Alright!” Liu Hui acknowledged and got ready to go back to the lit safe room.

“Wait,” Lü Yang thought for a moment and added, “While you’re looking, check carefully if there are any other strange items besides weapons and ammunition, anything like those handcuffs in the room.”

“Okay!” Liu Hui acknowledged again and quickly ran back to the small lit room.

The two “cannons” were heavy, but not as heavy as Liu Hui had imagined. She dragged them out of the small room one by one to Lü Yang. This time when she came out, she also described everything else left in the room to Lü Yang.

Based on her description, Lü Yang asked her to bring one more useful item from the room.

A portable searchlight.

This thing emitted light far brighter than a flashlight. Its normal brightness was basically equivalent to a flashlight’s strong beam mode. On its high-power setting, the portable searchlight was more than ten times brighter than a flashlight’s strong beam. Plus, the portable searchlight’s power source seemed capable of unlimited use.

If he had this shield-breaking artifact back in the first stage, dealing with those Dark Kidnappers would have been a piece of cake.

After giving the portable searchlight to Liu Hui to carry, Lü Yang started studying the two “cannons.” Soon, he identified one of them as a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. The other cannon was one he hadn’t seen before. But after careful examination, Lü Yang quickly determined what the other cannon was for.

A flare launcher!

Used together, these two cannons were practically the perfect large-scale anti-Dark Predator weapons. The flares could shred the protective Black Fog Armor of all Dark Predators, and then the rocket could blast every Predator within its range, now unprotected, straight to oblivion.

Lü Yang again told Liu Hui to take temporary refuge in the safe room. He took some flashbang grenades, hand grenades, a submachine gun, slung the flare launcher and then the rocket launcher over his shoulder (or carried them out one after the other), and slowly began walking down the mountain.

The path down was densely packed with huge numbers of Dark Lumberjacks. Among the Dark Lumberjacks lurked some Dark Kidnappers, and even… faint silhouettes of several Black Mist-spitting Mute Old Men! On the ground, countless Dark Pheasants wandered around.

This overwhelming blockade made any progress impossible without large-scale destructive weapons to clear a path!

However, Lü Yang soon discovered something even more important.