Chapter 23 Late Update Arrives~~~

The guild leaders leaped up from their impromptu meeting places, each returning to their teams with renewed vigor. They drew their weapons on the way, shouting and calling for their members to quickly gather around them and unite to resist the foreign enemy.

But when they returned to their teams, they only saw chaos in the crowd, and no sign of any enemy.

"Where are they? Where are they?" the guild leaders asked their subordinates, vying with each other.

"They appeared suddenly, killed two people, and ran!" someone described.

"Why didn't you chase?" the guild leaders asked.

"We did!" Everyone pointed in a certain direction. Three players stood alone under a tree in the bushes. Of course, they weren't posing there; they were trapped and unable to move. But the traps were just harmless hunting traps. The expressions on the three men's faces were extremely exaggerated in their panic, because flames were still "popping" under their feet.

"Fire Tree Thousand Layer Flame!" The guild leaders, all experts, immediately recognized it.

"What exactly happened?" a guild leader asked.

"Four thieves suddenly appeared, killed two players on the outer circle, and ran away immediately. Everyone rushed to chase, accidentally falling into the traps. Then the mage's flames ignited. Eight people chased faster, and now only those three are left."

The guild leaders suddenly understood. No wonder the three standing still were all warriors. Apparently, they had survived because they had more health. The other five who sacrificed themselves were probably squishy classes.

At this time, the priests kept their distance and cast healing spells on the three warriors. The three were also nervously looking around, fearing that the flames would suddenly rise again. But the enemy never attacked again, nor did they show their faces, allowing the three warriors to return to their teams after the traps expired.

The forest returned to calm.

The enemy launched a wave of attacks in a short moment, taking away the levels of seven Cloud City players. Four of these seven were members of Zongheng Sihai, who had returned to the distant Cloud City and exited this mission. The other three mercenary members also returned to White Stone City, and it would take at least three hours to get back here.

"Everyone be careful around you!" Wu Shi Zhi Jian shouted. Everyone swung their weapons in the air to see if any thieves were approaching. Some mages even launched carpet-bombing attacks around them to verify that there were no more thieves. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, but only slightly. Just because there weren't any now didn't mean there wouldn't be any forever. No matter how many people there were, they couldn't do anything about the thieves' stealth. They couldn't have the mages constantly bombarding the area with spells, could they?

Wu Shi Zhi Jian was gnashing his teeth. He said to Dao Ying Nian Hua, "Find Qian Li Yi Zui and bring him here!"

Currently, he was the only one known who could counter stealth.

Gu Fei came again in response to the call. Wu Shi Zhi Jian looked at him with an appreciative expression. "Brother Qian Li, we have to rely on you again this time."

Of course, Gu Fei knew what they wanted him to do, but his methods also had many limitations. He sighed at Wu Shi Zhi Jian and said, "Guild Leader Wu Shi, I can only guard against one direction at most, I can't take care of everything."

"Why?" Wu Shi Zhi Jian asked.

"My brother Zui knows kung fu. He uses killing intent!" Huo Qiu, who happened to be in this group of people, said triumphantly.

"Who's making trouble? Drag him away." Wu Shi Zhi Jian ordered two warriors to throw Huo Qiu out.

When Gu Fei saw that no one believed him, he racked his brains and explained it with a different concept. "Uh, this is a passive skill. It only reacts when the other party notices me. Take now, for example. I'm standing in the crowd. If there are thieves lurking outside, and they can't see me, I won't know they're there either. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Oh..." Everyone chanted in unison.

"Hmph, you kid, you just revealed your secret so easily!" Dao Ying Nian Hua thought to himself with several more intentions, and even began to think about how to kill someone without being noticed. This proposition seemed very challenging! Dao Ying Nian Hua pondered.

"In that case, as long as Brother Qian Li occupies a higher position than us, wouldn't he be noticed by people outside the circle?" Wu Shi Zhi Jian suddenly said. As expected of the president of the number one guild in Cloud City, his intelligence level was quite high.

But Gu Fei shook his head with a wry smile. "Guild Leader Wu Shi, you want me to be the center of a thousand-person circle? I'm sorry, but my skill range isn't that big. At most, it's only ten meters. It's impossible to take care of a range of over a thousand people!"

"So, you can't even take care of one side!" Wu Shi Zhi Jian's face turned ashen.

"Accurately speaking, that's right." Gu Fei was very sorry. He also understood the current situation and was willing to do his best, but the problem was that he really couldn't do anything.

Just when everyone was helpless, a curse suddenly came from the side, "Damn it, here they come again!"

Everyone's eyes turned. They saw two white lights flashing in the direction of the sound. Four more thieves stealthily approached, suddenly appeared, and quickly killed two people before turning around and running. Learning from the previous experience, no one dared to rush to chase this time. The mages' spells and the archers' arrows all chased after them.

But these four thieves seemed to be very familiar with this business. They stepped away quickly when they retreated, scattering in all directions. After a few steps, they had each stepped behind a tree and disappeared. By this time, the mages and archers who were preparing to attack had just taken their positions, the words of their spells hadn't been recalled, and the arrows they were about to release hadn't been drawn yet!

"Damn it!" Everyone felt resentful for this suffocation. Suddenly, countless fire wheels flashed in the sky above, and the ground also began to glow and heat up…

"Ahhhhh!" Everyone screamed and fled in all directions. This was a mage's large-scale spell.

The thousand-person team was in chaos. Players collided with each other, some fell to the ground, and some dared to step on them. Screams resounded throughout the forest. Wu Shi Zhi Jian kept shouting "Steady, steady!" As a result, a warrior who was dodging a spell frantically dodged into the small circle that was not attacked by the spell and bumped into Wu Shi Zhi Jian's back. Wu Shi Zhi Jian almost bit off his tongue. He turned around and glared, but no one had the mind to pay attention to him. They were all looking at the current situation with terrified expressions.

The spells had already been activated, and there was a sea of fire everywhere. Some died directly under the spell attacks, and others were seriously injured by their own people in the chaotic situation.

Wasn't that right? In order to avoid the sudden attack, many warriors used Charge to dodge. This skill was not only used for attacking, but now it was also used by warriors to dodge or move at high speed. But in the current chaotic situation, it was impossible to guarantee that a Charge would not stab someone in the butt.

Some were pushed directly into the sea of fire, some were knocked into the depths of the forest and never seen again, and more entered a stunned state and fell to the ground without reacting.

Many people suddenly felt a pain in their feet while running around, and they could no longer move. When they saw that they had fallen into a trap, they were all dumbfounded. "How come there are traps here too?" Everyone hadn't forgotten the trap encirclement while dodging, but some people still stepped on it.

The Han Family Elite Team had always been at the back of the team. So when the team was formed, they were also on the periphery. The sudden spell attack just now mainly affected the periphery, and their position also received the reward of the spell attack. With the experience and skills of these veteran experts, it shouldn't have been too difficult to dodge. But the panicked companions were obviously more terrifying than this wave of spell attacks. Han Jia Gong Zi unfortunately got knocked over to the ground by a warrior while escaping.

Fortunately, the chance of being stunned didn't happen to him. Relying on his exquisite priest skills, he stubbornly sat on the ground and survived the fire attacks from above and below. Jian Gui and Yu Tian Shen Ming also quickly stepped in and dragged him out of the continuously burning Fire Tree Thousand Layer Flame. If they didn't pull him out quickly, the possibility of being trampled to death by his own people would be greater than being burned to death.

As the five-second duration of the Fire Tree Thousand Layer Flame ended, the flames gradually extinguished. The mage's fire spells generally wouldn't cause fires in forests, mainly because the fire burned quickly and extinguished even faster. If it weren't for the five-second duration of the Fire Tree Thousand Layer Flame, the burning traces would have been almost negligible with just the falling fire wheels.

However, the five seconds of continuous burning did ignite some of the drier leaves on the ground, but they only flickered with flames before turning into wisps of smoke. The Cloud City players were all covered in dirt and dust, looking extremely embarrassed. Some people's panicked steps still hadn't stopped. Wu Shi Zhi Jian carefully avoided being bumped into while continuing to shout, "Everyone calm down, each guild leader manage their own team members…"

But the mercenary groups had at most a hundred people. How could the difficulty of management compare to Zongheng Sihai's 750 people? Even at this time, the guild leaders still didn't forget to cast contemptuous glances at Wu Shi Zhi Jian.

Gu Fei had already returned to find his partners. "Are you guys okay?"

Everyone looked at Han Jia Gong Zi. He was the one who almost died just now.

Han Jia Gong Zi had a look of regret on his face, looking at some of the residue in the place where he fell just now. "It's a pity about that bottle of wine. I just took it out…"

"What's going on?" Gu Fei looked around.

"A mage secretly sneaked up close! And we didn't even notice... These guys are very familiar with the way to PK in the forest, and they're very familiar with the terrain here," Han Jia Gong Zi said. "We're in big trouble!"