"Is that Starry Singer a colleague of yours?"
Bai Zhou remembered that blue-haired girl; she had left a fairly deep impression on him during the preliminary auditions.
"Where is she now?"
"Forget it, it doesn't matter. I'll finish you off first. I'll make sure you all learn the price of overestimating yourselves."
Bai Zhou roared toward the sky and stomped the ground. The entire opera house began to tremble violently as three cracks rapidly spread from beneath his feet toward Xu Xiaoyou.
Xu Xiaoyou's figure flickered, vanishing once more into the smoke. She sprinted ahead as the ground beneath her continued to rupture. Just as the three fissures converged under her feet, she leaped into the air. Simultaneously, countless earthen spikes flew from the cracks like a torrential downpour of pear blossoms.
Earthquake Stomp, a signature skill of berserkers. Xu Xiaoyou's long whip lashed out wildly like a silver snake, continuously crushing and slicing through the earthen spikes. Under the effects of multiple auxiliary buffs, she could clearly see the flight paths of these projectiles.
Suddenly, Bai Zhou burst through the smoke from the side, his eyes crimson.
"Let's see where you hide this time!"
Xu Xiaoyou tilted her head. The final earthen spike whistled past, grazing her blonde hair. Thunderous energy on her gloves gathered at the tip of the whip. With a flick of her wrist, it shot toward Bai Zhou.
The Hundred-Bone Whip clashed head-on with Blood Monarch. Dazzling lightning met a crimson blood mist, separating after a brief moment of contact.
In a span of time imperceptible to the naked eye, the two exchanged a flurry of blows that split the floor and severed steel bars. The pouring crimson blade-light and pale blue lightning intertwined and coiled around each other like a dance.
The clashing of weapons provided the soundtrack for this dance of death. Scorching blood sprayed out, dyeing the smoke red. Their competing heartbeats sounded like the rapid pounding of war drums.
Then, they vanished into the mist again, their silhouettes crossing back and forth. Their weapons collided and separated instantly. Each clash between the blue and red figures produced a brief flash of blade-light. They were like two seasoned hunters in a primeval jungle.
Whoever spotted the other in the thick fog first would hold the initiative in the battle.
Sprinting at high speed, Xu Xiaoyou used a Vitality Potion, recovering the stamina spent in the previous fight.
She came to a halt. Two Dynamic Perception cards appeared in her hands. As they turned into light, she swept them across her eyes, a fleeting flash of brilliant gold passing through them.
This was a hunter's talent resonance. They were born with sensory perceptions far exceeding normal people. After using this skill card, she calmed her mind. Her dynamic vision expanded outward. The world of light and shadow reconstructed itself before her eyes; white lines traced outlines, and an invisible, massive web spread out with her as the center.
Just as a spider could feel a fly hitting its silk, she saw a blurred, high-speed contour moving through the white mist.
Xu Xiaoyou raised her heavy sniper rifle and fired decisively in that direction. The rhythmic flashes of gunfire reflected off her mask.
The figure in the white mist fell. Beneath the mask, Xu Xiaoyou's brow furrowed. In the next instant, she sensed an intense crisis. Four figures were rushing toward her simultaneously through the fog!
Was it a clone ability?
She didn't panic. Instead, she turned her muzzle toward a different direction. Bai Zhou's eyes were filled with a surging battle intent as he raised Blood Monarch and broke through the dust.
No... it was simply because he was moving so fast that he created multiple afterimages of himself on the field.
Through Xu Xiaoyou's Gaze of Spiritual Vision, two of the three figures lunging at her vanished. Only in the eyes of the central Bai Zhou did a look of a successful scheme flash, as if he had anticipated she would fire.
To his surprise, Xu Xiaoyou didn't dodge the incoming strike. The eerie light on her laughing mask deepened.
The bullet, enchanted with Headshot, gained increased power and a homing effect.
Seeing this, a flash of hesitation crossed Bai Zhou's face. A strong sense of danger surged from the back of his head.
The red-tipped bullet violently tore through space, carrying terrifying kinetic energy as it appeared before him in an instant!
That bullet should have missed!
Bai Zhou didn't have time to think. His body moved almost purely on instinct, shifting to the side. The 12.7mm caliber bullet instantly blew off his entire upper shoulder. A rain of red fell from the sky.
He gasped for air, watching Xu Xiaoyou's figure in the mist slowly fade away like a life-reaping phantom. He knelt on the ground as his nearly severed shoulder healed rapidly. A bullet of that caliber was enough to shatter his skull. Had he not instinctively tilted his head just now, his brains would have splattered all over the floor.
Having just brushed past death, Bai Zhou's expression became grave to the extreme. This person was nowhere near as simple as she appeared. He could not afford to be careless any longer.
Bright blue thunder patterns covered his skin. Stray arcs of electricity coated him in a layer of light. The rolling thunder acted like a barrier protecting his body.
Thunder Armor. Through their previous exchanges, Bai Zhou judged that she was likely a lightning elementalist or a lightning swordsman. Thunder Armor not only significantly enhanced his physical attributes but also made him immune to lightning-based attacks.
However, the presence of the armor didn't bring him any peace of mind. He had never fought such an eerie opponent. Clearly, her presence wasn't that powerful—even far weaker than his—yet she had endless tricks and rich combat experience. She could put him in peril and even nearly take his life.
Suddenly, a ridiculous possibility occurred to him. The codenames she used—Fate, Dark Gold Rose—and the sense of weakness she projected...
Could he really be fighting someone who used to be a luminous prism grade fixer? Perhaps she had just been left with a chronic ailment for some reason.
Bai Zhou shook his head to dispel the absurd thought. He began to hesitate, unsure whether to manifest his divine endowment, Tyrant's Blood Garment.
He was confident that at this level of combat, manifesting his divine endowment would end this struggle in an instant without suspense. The greatest difference between a grade 4 and a grade 3 lay in the divine endowment—realizing a deep exploration of the self and liberating the deepest emotions within one's heart, thereby manifesting an armament woven from one's own emotions and mental strength.
The biggest difference from mimicry was that a divine endowment was necessarily an armament that covered the self. This was because it was the shell that sealed off the depths of one's heart, protecting the once weak, lost, and trapped self.
Similarly, the self was the source of everyone's pain. When the self was liberated, it meant they had to face the source of all their painful emotions head-on.
Bai Zhou had only recently reached grade 4. Once a divine endowment was manifested for the first time, it would pollute the user's spirit sea like a slow-acting poison. Most of the grade 4 combatants in the association didn't die in urban legend incidents; rather, because they couldn't cross the threshold of grade 5, their spirit seas became completely polluted by their divine endowments, causing them to fall into madness and be killed by their former comrades.
With his current Thunder Armor, as long as he stayed on guard against that strange whip and the tracking bullets, he should be fine. Her lightning-based abilities wouldn't be able to harm him.
Bai Zhou stood up. Greeting him was Xu Xiaoyou rushing out of the mist. Thorns grew beneath her feet, and her body was covered by a water barrier. Light like star sand flowed along her whip, and violent fire elements spun rapidly around her into a flaming tempest.
A forced, bitter smile appeared on the corner of Bai Zhou's mouth.
Section Head, where the hell are you at a time like this...?
Rate on N.U.
