Chapter 22: Your Enemy Is Me!

Amidst the fierce struggle, Lin Qingqing suddenly felt a chill down her back—the hateful and sickening gaze had returned.

She took a deep breath and abruptly turned, sprinting toward the burning three-story building.

This building had doors at both the front and back; the back door led directly to the backyard. After bursting through the flames, she enveloped her vital points with an ice armor and dashed straight into the yard.

The raging fire could not harm her ice elemental power, nor could it affect Zhou Mang, who wielded fire.

This battlefield was deliberately chosen by Lin Qingqing; she was certain Zhou Mang would follow.

Sure enough, just as she turned, she saw Zhou Mang leisurely passing through the doorway engulfed in roaring flames.

After a while, no one else entered; only the two of them remained in the backyard, with the burning three-story building behind acting as a natural barrier. None of Zhou Mang’s men could get in, and Xiao Pengfei probably didn’t even know she was here.

One-on-one—then old grudges and new grievances would be settled all at once.

“You filthy woman, now no one can save you!” Zhou Mang licked his blood-red lips, his face alight with excitement.

“Your enemy is me. Why drag so many innocent people into this?” Lin Qingqing stared at him intently and asked.

“They all deserve to die, especially you!” Zhou Mang didn’t answer her question; instead, a fireball hurtled toward her.

“You’re the one who should die, you lunatic!” Lin Qingqing swiftly dodged the sudden fireball, gripping her ice blade tightly as she cursed.

“Though we’re both second-tier, my ability level surely isn’t higher than Zhou Mang’s,” Lin Qingqing knew the disparity. While continuing to fend off the fireballs with her ice blade and armor, she calculated their remaining energy reserves.

“Ice counters fire; directly confronting him doesn’t bode well,” she thought. Considering his fiery temper, she planned to provoke him even further.

Since he was already mad, why not push him over the edge?

As for the consequences of angering Zhou Mang, she cast a discreet glance at the small fish pond in the corner of the yard, still half-full of water.

“At worst, I can hide in the water,” she reassured herself.

Calmed slightly, Lin Qingqing began to consider Zhou Mang’s weakness: ruthless and unhesitant in killing, yet unusually obsessed with avenging his cousin’s death.

At that thought, an idea struck her.

“Your cousin told me about you.”

“What?” Hearing his cousin’s name, Zhou Mang froze, the fireball in his hand halting mid-air.

“He told me about your power, and mentioned a method to enhance it.”

“Impossible! What could he possibly know?” Zhou Mang instinctively doubted but couldn’t help feeling a pang of surprise.

Seeing it was working, Lin Qingqing pressed on without giving him time to think, locking eyes with him and speaking deliberately:

“There’s nothing impossible about it. He came to my place for supplies. Seeing he was just a student, I invited him for a meal.

“He told me there was a simple way to boost powers that you used but never told him about. He was disappointed in you, saying that as his cousin, you weren’t as kind to him as money-guy or Feng-guy were.”

“Nonsense! Hui Zi isn’t like that. I’m his brother; I have to be stronger to protect him. No, you’re lying. Today, I’ll kill you and avenge Hui Zi!” Zhou Mang scoffed, refusing to believe her.

Lin Qingqing continued relentlessly:

“Do you even know how he died?”

“He was killed by you!”

“Hmph! You keep saying you’re avenging your brother, but do you know he wasn’t killed by me? It was you! You had the method to advance your powers but wouldn’t share a single crystal core with him. That day, he drank some wine at my place and impulsively went off to fight zombies for crystal cores. Although he died at the hands of zombies, all of it was because of you. You’re the real culprit!”

“Nonsense! Shut up!” Zhou Mang snapped.

“Don’t deny it. You don’t even spare your own wife, let alone your cousin,” Lin Qingqing shot back.

In a flash, Lin Qingqing recalled the woman strangled upstairs, and Zhou Mang’s figure seemed to overlap with that man’s.

“Ah! Shut up! Shut up! You filthy woman, you’re begging for death!”

Hearing this, Zhou Mang seemed struck in a tender spot. He no longer cared whether Lin Qingqing’s words were true or false. All he wanted was to kill this woman who kept provoking him.

His fireballs flew wildly toward Lin Qingqing, now about the size of tennis balls. She had no idea how many crystal cores he had consumed to reach this power, but she knew Zhou Mang had gone completely mad.

Ordinary fighters at least calculated their energy and aimed carefully, but Zhou Mang ignored all of that, sending fireball after fireball as if they cost him nothing.

The backyard, previously filled with vegetables, trees, and a bamboo grape arbor, was now set ablaze by scattered sparks. Lin Qingqing had no choice but to retreat continuously.

She dodged clumsily, her body marked with burns and scrapes.

“That’s about enough,” she thought.

She only used her ice blade and armor to block when she couldn’t dodge, consuming far less energy than Zhou Mang, who had depleted most of his power firing dozens of fireballs.

Perhaps frustrated by missing vital strikes, Zhou Mang unleashed five fireballs in a single volley.

“I can’t dodge them all!” Lin Qingqing’s gaze sharpened, and suddenly nine ice blades appeared around her, splitting into two waves.

Four swept in arcs toward Zhou Mang’s chest, legs, and neck, while the remaining five streaked forward, colliding with the flying fireballs.

“Bang! Sizzle~”

Ice blades clashed with fireballs, erupting into sparks and shards of ice before dissipating.

After the elemental collision, both took two steps back.

“You can manipulate your power remotely?” came a sinister voice.

Though all his fireballs had been blocked, Zhou Mang wasn’t angry. Instead, he examined Lin Qingqing as if she were some rare curiosity.

“No wonder you dared to challenge me. Tell me! How did you do that?”

He had experimented and knew that only by consuming crystal cores of the same element could one enhance power. That was why he hadn’t given his cousin any crystal cores—he had only harvested less than a fifth of fire cores, and both were fire-elemental, so there wasn’t enough to share.

As for ice cores, he had never seen one; their drop rate was evidently extremely low. So her method must be different from his.

“I have a good talent,” Lin Qingqing said without hesitation, wiping blood from her lip.

“Nonsense! Don’t try to fool me. Tell me! If you reveal your method to enhance your powers, I’ll reward you with a whole corpse. How about that?”

Not interested. Who cared about a whole corpse after death? Lin Qingqing thought bitterly, cursing him as a pervert.

“I said, will you let me live if I tell you?” she probed.

“If you tell me, I’ll consider it,” Zhou Mang paused, then said in a cruel tone.

Feigning indifference to his gritted teeth, Lin Qingqing slowly said, “Alright, I’ll tell you. But you can’t tell anyone else. The method to enhance my power was taught by Captain Xiao...”

She deliberately paused, and as Zhou Mang’s attention was caught by her words, her left hand flicked. Two glimmers of cold light flashed and vanished into the darkness.

Surprised by how compliant she was, Zhou Mang thought it might be believable if it really was the soldier who taught her.

“What is it?” he asked eagerly.

“It’s just...” Lin Qingqing’s voice softened.

“You don’t deserve to know,” she interrupted sharply.

Then, with a sudden surge, she launched an ice blade and took the offensive first.