165 Living to win, losing to...

As for the other two arrows, Du Ruo did not even spare them a second glance. They were merely meant to restrict his movement; once he shifted out of their expected trajectory, those two arrows completely lost their purpose.

"Damn—he's got some skills. No wonder he's so arrogant."

The skinny man up in the tree held a pair of high-magnification binoculars, observing Du Ruo's maneuvers clearly. He couldn't help but curse under his breath, though he wasn't overly concerned yet.

Catching arrows fired from over two hundred meters away wasn't actually that strange. They were arrows, after all, not bullets, and two hundred meters was already a considerable distance. From the speed at which Du Ruo had been running, it was clear he was an expert.

"Get down from there and prepare. This target is a tough nut to crack."

Old Hu had a different feeling compared to the skinny man. He had seen Du Ruo smile at him just moments ago, and that look and smile had sent a chill down his spine, making him feel as though he were being watched by a tiger.

Therefore, after uttering that warning, he couldn't help but tighten his grip on his bow and arrow, preparing for the next round of shots.

In the brief moment of hesitation, Du Ruo had surged forward another fifty meters, placing himself squarely within Old Hu's optimal shooting range. Missing this window would make it easy for Du Ruo to close in on him.

Against an expert like Du Ruo, Old Hu had no confidence in his ability to handle him in close-quarters archery combat, which meant he needed the skinny man's cover.

"Whoosh! Whoosh-whoosh! Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!"

Old Hu loosed several arrows in rapid succession. This time, he didn't waste arrows trying to seal off Du Ruo's dodging space; he could already see that Du Ruo intended to meet him head-on, so every single arrow was aimed straight at various parts of Du Ruo's body.

Moreover, the rhythm of his shots varied, converging in a conical formation as they hurtled toward Du Ruo.

He didn't dare hesitate for even a second, sending arrow after arrow flying.

Because in his field of vision, Du Ruo was neither dodging nor weaving. Wielding an arrow in each hand, Du Ruo would deflect, parry, or directly hurl the arrows back like throwing darts to knock down incoming projectiles, effortlessly catching other incoming arrows with his free hand all the while.

His entire performance was as relaxed as a stroll in a leisurely courtyard, executed with fluid, effortless grace. This sight began to break Old Hu out in a cold sweat. Even the skinny man nearby grew tense, clutching a cloth-wrapped, rod-shaped object as he braced himself for battle.

Furthermore, the distance between Du Ruo and the two men was rapidly shrinking. In the blink of an eye, Du Ruo was only a hundred meters away.

Old Hu's eyes narrowed. With his right hand, he unslung the quiver from his back and placed it in the most accessible position in front of him. Then, assuming a half-squatting horse stance, he began drawing feathered arrows dipped in various distinct colors from the quiver.

Some of these arrows flickered with a faint blue light, others had arrowheads shaped markedly different from the rest, and still others were clearly dusted with a milky-white powder. These were Old Hu's trump cards.

Du Ruo's current distance was precisely where a bow and arrow could unleash its maximum lethality.

Thus, these poisoned, anesthetic-laced, and specially crafted armor-piercing arrows were best suited for use right now.

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!!!"

Old Hu unleashed all the arrows in his hand in an uninterrupted sequence with extremely short intervals. While it couldn't possibly compare to Du Ruo's instantaneous barrage resembling eight arms sprouting from his ribs, his right hand drawing the bowstring had become a blur, and the speed of the arrows was frighteningly fast.

"Hmph—is that all your tricks?"

Du Ruo looked at the incoming rain of arrows, their tips occasionally flashing with strange, eerie lights. Combined with the prickling sensations of warning from his spiritual perception, he knew instantly that these arrows were in a completely different league from the previous ones.

Yet Du Ruo did not flinch. With a flick of his left arm, a steel wire wrapped in red mist snapped forward from his wrist out of the coiled dragon thread.

While still in motion, Du Ruo used the arrow in his left hand to loop around the steel wire once to prevent it from cutting his hands, and then violently spun his body in place like an alligator performing a death roll.

Du Ruo's body spun like a crocodile, and the taut steel wire, propelled by the rotation of his torso, acted like the reptile's gaping jaws, forming a veritable storm of steel wire in front of him that chewed every single arrow to pieces.

Old Hu's rate of fire was extremely fast, launching nearly ten arrows in two seconds. Before he could finish the rest of his quiver, his right hand had turned bright red and was trembling uncontrollably.

Yet all those arrows had been thoroughly pulverized shaft and head by Du Ruo's single death roll.

Completing this sequence, Du Ruo flicked his left hand, retracting all the steel wire. His pace, however, never slowed; instead, his upper body dipped forward, both hands touching the ground, and his speed suddenly surged. Bound by bound, he bounded forward like a tiger covering a dozen meters at a time.

"Monkey!!!"

Old Hu could no longer care about the congestion and trembling in his right hand. With eyes wide open, he stared at Du Ruo charging toward them like a tiger, shouting at the top of his lungs while retreating a step.

"I'm on it!"

The skinny man had lost his earlier nonchalant demeanor. Stepping forward, he positioned himself in front of Old Hu, looking down at Du Ruo from their elevated vantage point on the slope, his left hand still gripping the cloth-wrapped object.

It was a simple positional swap, yet Du Ruo had already closed the distance by forty or fifty meters. By now, Du Ruo had cleared the grassy patch ahead, reached the base of the hill, and begun his final sprint like a fierce tiger ascending a mountain, his eyes locked onto every movement of the two men above.

At that exact moment, the skinny man known as Monkey abruptly raised the cloth-wrapped item in his left hand, pointing it directly at Du Ruo.

"Danger!!"

The instant Monkey raised his left hand to aim at Du Ruo, the hair on Du Ruo's body stood on end, his heart hammered wildly, and the vital essence, energy, and spirit within his body began to circulate furiously.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!!!"

Monkey raised the cloth-wrapped object with his left hand, but the one firing was his right hand. At some unknown point, Monkey had slipped his right hand toward his waist, and the very moment he lifted his left hand, he drew a pistol with his right.

The pistol had barely cleared his lower back before he began firing straight from the hip without even raising his arm.

Eight consecutive shots emptied the magazine in a flash.

Unfortunately, the moment Monkey's left hand rose, Du Ruo had already sensed the danger and instantly shifted his trajectory sideways. Red mist flared around his limbs as he executed several rapid bounds, shifting nearly twenty meters horizontally in a single breath.

The pistol bullets grazed past Du Ruo's body and drove into the dirt without hitting him. Moreover, as Du Ruo dodged sideways, he had continued moving upward, meaning the actual distance between them was still closing.

Though he had evaded the gunfire, Du Ruo did not relax; in fact, he grew even more vigilant, as his body continued to send out warning signals, the intensity even higher than before.

This forced Du Ruo to abandon his tiger-pounding momentum. He slowed his pace, stood upright, and switched to the explosive force-generating method of Bajiquan, using his feet to stamp the ground and propel his body forward rapidly. However, rather than relying on a reckless Bajiquan charge, he reserved three-tenths of his strength.

By adopting the body-control techniques of the Ziranmen school to zigzag forward—combining Bajiquan's explosive power with Ziranmen's elusive footwork—he left himself room to maneuver and made his movements thoroughly unpredictable, while keeping his eyes locked firmly on the muscles of Monkey's arms.

The tiger-pounding approach relied on the hips and pelvis for propulsion, leaving the body airborne during the leap—a massive vulnerability. When airborne, dodging was impossible; if the enemy seized the right timing, they could shoot Du Ruo out of the air like a sitting duck.

"Bang!!!"

The moment Du Ruo altered his movement pattern, taking a step forward to the left before abruptly cutting back to the right, a thunderous gunshot rang out from the cloth-wrapped object in Monkey's left hand. It turned out that what Monkey was holding was actually a double-barreled shotgun.

Sadly, this shot missed completely. As if gifted with precognitive insight, Du Ruo had altered his path beforehand to evade the blast, leaving the shotgun's storm of pellets to shred the turf and rip the grass away, exposing the bare earth underneath.

In an instant, cold sweat broke out all over Monkey's body. His earlier feint with his left hand and the ambush with the pistol in his right had been calculated to gauge Du Ruo's reactions while setting him up.

Once the pistol rounds were spent, he had fired the shotgun just as Du Ruo appeared to relax, preying on his momentum and movement habits.

Who could have guessed that Du Ruo's evasive reflexes would be so lightning-fast, shifting trajectories mid-stride in a way that defied all scientific logic?

The double-barreled shotgun held two rounds, and now only one remained. But the psychological blow of Du Ruo dodging his previous attack had shaken Monkey deeply. Clenching the shotgun tightly, he didn't dare fire; he knew that if this final bullet missed Du Ruo, the two of them would undoubtedly die.

Furthermore, he dared not let Du Ruo breach a twenty-meter radius. Although he hadn't seen how Du Ruo used the coiled dragon thread earlier, the crimson-gleaming steel wire that had enveloped the entire twenty-meter zone was etched into his memory. If Du Ruo closed within twenty meters, he would undoubtedly use that technique to tear both him and Old Hu to shreds.

"Monkey! Fire!!"

At that critical juncture, Old Hu let out a loud roar. Unbeknownst to anyone, Old Hu had drawn his bow once again, locking his sights onto Du Ruo.

"Bang!"

A deafening gunshot drowned out the whistling scream of the arrow tearing through the air. A flash of red light seemed to streak across the sky as Du Ruo halted his momentum just outside the twenty-meter mark, while Old Hu and Monkey froze in place.

Time seemed to pause in that instant. The irritating buzzing of insects around them vanished, and even the pesky flies and mosquitoes appeared cowed by the three men's murderous intent, not daring to fly close.

"Thud, thud..."

The sound of two bodies collapsing echoed out. Old Hu and Monkey each had an arrow buried deep in their foreheads. The projectiles had pierced clean through their skulls, leaving only the feather-ends visible—they were dead beyond all doubt. Those two fatal arrows were precisely the ones Du Ruo had been holding onto all along.

Opposite them, Du Ruo slowly straightened his posture. An arrow was clamped firmly between his teeth, while the patch of grass to his left had been blasted into a meter-wide crater of churned-up earth by the shotgun round.

Just now, Monkey and Old Hu had launched a perfectly coordinated pincers attack from left and right using gun and bow, with Old Hu effectively sealing off Du Ruo's remaining escape routes.

In that situation, any fool would know how to choose. Du Ruo had dodged the shotgun blast while catching Old Hu's arrow with his teeth.

Simultaneously, he had hurled the two arrows he had been gripping the entire time like hidden throwing weapons.

Clearly, Du Ruo was the victor of this duel, laughing last.

"Bah, a gun is indeed formidable. My physical constitution probably couldn't withstand it either, but... it all depends on who's wielding it."

Du Ruo spat out the arrow in his mouth, along with a mouthful of saliva to purge any lingering toxins from the arrowhead. Glancing at the two corpses, he couldn't help but sigh with emotion. Being able to dodge every single one of Monkey's bullets just now hadn't relied solely on so-called spiritual perception.

Spiritual perception was an obscure, mystical thing; it could never precisely guide Du Ruo's every single evasive movement.

If he had relied solely on spiritual perception, he would have long since been riddled with bullets and turned into a sieve.