Chapter 271 – Encountering “Colleagues”
The risks of consuming these abilities far outweighed the benefits they provided, so Li Rui, Xiang Sheng, and Song Bai chose not to eat them.
Tu Ran consumed them all by herself.
At that time, she already had twelve types of intermediate abilities, among which three were not particularly useful and could be discarded. If she gathered four more, she could upgrade her [Illusion Realm].
Unfortunately, in the following days, Tu Ran had not encountered any aliens with inner cores, and these four inner cores remained elusive.
On the sixth day of their journey together, Tu Ran, who usually walked at the front, suddenly stopped.
The three following her immediately became vigilant.
Their experiences over the past few days had taught them that whenever Tu Ran stopped, aliens were sure to appear.
However, today, it was not aliens that emerged.
It was humans.
Two of them.
From their stature, they both appeared to be male.
They wore the same cool black combat suits as Tu Ran, with the words “Pioneer” emblazoned on their chests.
It was likely that they were colleagues of Tu Ran, the three of them speculated quietly.
Tu Ran had never mentioned why she, a person from the First World, wore the combat suit of the Second World when entering the Third World.
She never spoke of her experiences. After spending so many days together, she had only shared various information about the technological world and the world of “Classic of Mountains and Seas,” imparting all that she knew to them.
In truth, they knew very little about Tu Ran.
They were also unaware of the relationship between the two colleagues in front of them and Tu Ran, so the three remained silently observant.
The two individuals across from them noticed Tu Ran, as well as the three following her. After pausing for a moment, they exchanged glances and moved closer to Tu Ran.
Tu Ran slightly tilted her head and quietly told Xiang Sheng behind her, “Take them and hide; don’t show your heads.”
Xiang Sheng immediately followed her orders, pulling Li Rui and Song Bai away. They found a large tree about ten meters away and hid behind the trunk.
Because Tu Ran had emphasized not to show their heads, Xiang Sheng held one of their heads with one hand, preventing them from sneaking a look.
The voices of the conversation soon reached them.
“Tu Ran?” the other side asked uncertainly.
“Mm.” Tu Ran replied with a single, aloof word.
“What a coincidence; we actually ran into each other.” The other side was trying to get closer.
Tu Ran was not swayed by their approach and asked emotionlessly, “When did you come in?”
“Over a month ago,” the other party answered without hesitation and then asked, “What about you?”
“According to Federation time, today is the tenth day.”
“What was up with those three just now? I don’t think I’ve seen them in the Pioneer Team.”
“Ordinary Federation citizens who accidentally wandered in.”
“Besides the Thresholds of Reigaken State and the Federal Center, have there been other Thresholds added?”
“Yeah.”
“It seems like a lot has happened in the Federation while we were stuck here,” one person remarked with a sigh.
Tu Ran remained silent for a moment before suddenly bringing up, “Do you know about inner cores?”
The people on the other side were surprised, their tone confused. “Inner cores? What’s that?”
“Inner cores from aliens. Eating them grants special abilities.”
“There’s such a thing?” They sounded astonished. “Is that for real? We’ve never heard of it before.”
Tu Ran’s tone became profound. “Oh really? I forgot to tell you, I have a special ability: I can discern the truth of every word spoken by the person I’m talking to. If it’s a lie, their body will glow red. Just in the last few minutes, you’ve lit up several times.”
Xiang Sheng and the other two couldn’t see the expressions on the faces of the men opposite them, but after several seconds, the other side finally reacted, responding with a kind of unconfident rebuttal.
The three hiding behind the tree knew that Tu Ran had hit the nail on the head; the other party had definitely lied earlier and probably already knew about inner cores.
“Ridiculous! What do we have to lie about? Your special ability sounds pretty weak,” one of them scoffed.
“Do you think we’re idiots? Who would believe you? That’s nonsense, haha,” the other added.
The two exchanged rebuttals, denying that they had lied before.
However, their tone grew increasingly weak.
In the end, without Tu Ran saying a word, the two even took the initiative to admit it and lowered their stance.
“We mean no offense. We were just passing by, and this was a desperate measure for survival. We hope you can let us go; we’ll go our separate ways.”
Tu Ran remained silent.
However, there were footsteps coming, and the two men passed by the big tree where they were in a dejected manner.
It was clear that Tu Ran had let them go.
Seeing their retreating figures, the three prepared to join Tu Ran.
Just then, the two departing men suddenly turned around, bloodthirsty smiles flashing across their faces, guns aimed at Tu Ran, unleashing a flurry of bullets.
“Tu Ran! Die!”
Xiang Sheng was the first to notice and shouted, “Sister Tu Ran! Be careful!”
Tu Ran was already prepared.
The moment they fired, she darted behind the nearest tree trunk.
A bizarre scene unfolded: the bullets originally aimed at her, which were about to pass by, unexpectedly curved and chased after her position.
Tu Ran was not surprised at all.
[Absolute Hit]
That was the opponent’s ability.
She had seen this ability the moment she laid eyes on the two men.
The other person had [Judgment], which was the ability she had fabricated to determine whether someone was lying.
Both of them possessed superpowers, so Tu Ran did not believe they were unaware of the existence of inner cores.
The person with [Judgment] couldn’t discern that she was lying because [Judgment] was a basic support ability, restricted by higher-level support abilities.
Since she had multiple advanced support abilities, she could directly suppress [Judgment]. No matter how false her words were, [Judgment] could not detect them, yet the person with [Judgment] would trust her completely.
Both abilities were quite impressive, especially [Absolute Hit], which seemed tailor-made for her.
Initially, she had been contemplating whether to take action against them. Now that these two had taken the initiative to strike, she had no reason to spare their lives.
Tu Ran decisively activated [Teleportation], darting around the tree trunk and leaving the bullets far behind her.
The two men continued to aim at Tu Ran, firing bullets that formed a nearly impenetrable net around her, clearly showing their determination to kill her.
Tu Ran’s allure was immense to anyone.
Those who lacked money, upon encountering Tu Ran, thought about capturing her for the ten billion credit bounty.
Those who didn’t need money became greedy for her extraordinary combat power and the inner cores within her that contained an unknown number of abilities.
At that moment, the two men began calculating how they would divide Tu Ran’s inner cores once they obtained it. They even considered whether they should take the opportunity to eliminate their partner to monopolize her rewards.
Their minds were filled with distractions, and by the time they regained their focus, Tu Ran was already charging toward them, a flurry of bullets in tow.
They hadn’t anticipated that Tu Ran’s speed could rival that of the bullets, and she was even slightly faster.
It was hard to believe that on the day she entered the Threshold, her speed had been nowhere near that of a bullet, and she had almost been caught by them.
Who are these losers lmao