The whole nation is trying to survive on the cable car; I'm choosing one of three options at ea

The target changed from monsters to humans. Someone who could simultaneously target Lin Yuwei and the Black Kill Squad, and someone even someone of Bai Liuxi's caliber had to treat with caution.

This person possesses a treasure that Lin Yuwei covets.

Anything that Lin Yuwei has her eye on must be valuable. Su Mu knows that woman's eye for talent... She can even make oil lamps from those tattered quilts and sell them for hundreds of meals, so any treasure that she's thinking about even in a life-or-death situation is definitely not ordinary.

Su Mu quickly weighed the pros and cons in his mind.

Acting alone is too risky. The fact that person could target Lin Yuwei and evade Bai Liuxi's search demonstrates their strong stealth and counter-surveillance abilities. Leaving alone risks being ambushed en route. Rather than being passively attacked, it's better to act with the Black Kill Squad. They have numerical superiority, detection equipment, and various combat capabilities; their chances of defeating one person are far greater than fighting alone.

Moreover, Lin Yuwei said that the person had a treasure on him.

Su Mu took a deep breath and looked at Bai Liuxi.

"How much information do you have about the target?"

Bai Liuxi did not answer immediately. She walked to a broken concrete block by the roadside and sat down, placing her hands on her knees, her light-colored eyes looking towards the dark area deep within the shadows, as if she were organizing her thoughts.

"We call him The Hunter," she said, her voice soft but each word clear. "A remnant of the Seventh World. His exact identity, age, and real name are unknown. He's been on our wanted list for a long time, but we haven't been able to catch him."

Su Mu leaned against the wall, waiting for her to continue.

"We suspect he is a member of the 'Restoration' organization. That organization is composed of people who survived the destruction of the original Seventh World... not the generation born later, but the group who witnessed the destruction of the Seventh World and crawled out of the ruins."

Bai Liuxi's tone remained calm, but Su Mu noticed that her clasped hands tightened slightly.

"Their philosophy is simple. This world shouldn't exist, and the people in this world shouldn't exist either. Destroying everything is the only way to find liberation." She paused. "They believe that living itself is suffering. The only way to end this suffering is to reduce everything to nothingness."

Su Mu was silent for a moment, then asked, "Are they out of their minds?"

Old Wei snorted but didn't say anything.

Zhao Cheng, holding the Tang sword, lowered his head and said softly, "They're not mentally unstable. They're insane."

Su Mu didn't refute. The idea that destruction is liberation... to normal people, this certainly seems insane. But he'd seen far too many people like this, and he knew that what made them the most difficult to deal with wasn't their strength, but their lack of moral boundaries. You couldn't predict their behavior using common sense, because they simply didn't care about the consequences.

"How much do you know about his abilities?" Su Mu changed the subject.

Bai Liuxi glanced at A Qi. A Qi looked up from the screen, his voice a little dry: "We don't have much information yet. But we suspect he possesses a strange ability to increase his power by killing."

Su Mu frowned slightly.

"It's not a permanent enhancement," Ah Qi added, swiping his finger across the screen to bring up a densely packed record. "We analyzed several crime scenes he attacked and discovered a pattern. The more people he killed in a short period, the more exaggerated the damage left at the scene. But at two crime scenes separated by a longer period of time, the level of destruction returned to a relatively stable level."

She looked up at Su Mu: "We speculate that the more people he killed, and the stronger those people were, the more terrifying his strength became during that period. But this enhancement is temporary and will decay over time. Of course, he may also have some kind of permanent growth method, but its efficiency should be far lower than the increase brought about by temporary killing."

Su Mu mentally compared this information with his previous combat experiences.

When the Hunter appeared, he didn't make a move. Not because he didn't want to, but because he dared not. With his strength at the time, he had no chance against the five members of the Black Kill Squad plus himself. But if he had been allowed to kill dozens of survivors first and stack up his temporary buffs, the outcome might have been different.

"It's all just an excuse to find a way out," Su Mu said in a low voice. "It's just an excuse to kill someone."

Bai Liuxi glanced at him but didn't say anything.

Su Mu went through the information in his mind and then asked, "Are there many people like him in this world? I mean, people with this kind of non-system ability?"

Bai Liuxi shook her head: "Not many. Most people in this world are ordinary people. They are born here, grow up here, and die here, no different from humans in another world. But a small number of people... the proportion is very low, maybe less than one percent... will awaken a special ability at some stage."

"It can be innate or acquired," Zhao Cheng continued, his tone still lazy. "Some are born with a certain talent, some awaken it suddenly at the critical moment of life and death, and some, like the hunters, acquire it later through some means we don't know."

Su Mu noted down this information. One percent might not sound like much, but considering the total population of this world, the absolute number wouldn't be small. These people might be the true "upper-level power" of this world.

"How do we track him down?" Su Mu asked. "You guys should have a way, right?"

Bai Liuxi stood up and patted the dust off her combat uniform: "A-Qi brought a drone."

Ah Qi pulled a thin antenna from the metal box on his back, twirled it a few times in the air, and then pressed a button on the side of the box. The top of the metal box opened automatically, revealing a drone folded up inside.

The thing's design was unlike any drone Su Mu had ever seen. It wasn't a typical quadcopter, but a flat, hexagonal disc-shaped object covered in a gray-black coating, with no exposed propellers or wings. A Qi took it out of the box, held it in his palm, and then tapped a few times on the control panel on the box.

The drone emitted a soft hum and slowly rose from Ah Qi's palm. It had no propellers or jet nozzles, simply hovering in mid-air like a black petal blown by the wind.