# Chapter 3: Technique
Su Xiao didn’t even glance at the reward from killing the mechanical eye. He held Dragon-Slashing Flash horizontally behind his back, and with a clang, deflected a bullet.
Just after blocking a bullet that came from who knows where, Su Xiao raised his left arm to his side as a crystal layer climbed up his arm.
Bang!
Su Xiao was blasted away by a warhammer spewing blue flames. While midair, several bullets and various forms of elemental attacks came at him, mixed in with a pink energy arrow and a pitch-black smoke mass.
A boom rang out as flames engulfed Su Xiao.
“He should… be dead, right?”
A tall, slender girl holding a blue-flame warhammer stretched her arm. She was a contractor from Holy Light Paradise, with above-average strength. Her teammates called her Cold Flame, which related to her abilities.
Su Xiao fell from the flames and crashed to the ground with a thud, a pink energy arrow still stuck in his shoulder. This was clearly a control-type ability.
Cold Flame saw Su Xiao land and immediately judged that he wasn’t dead, and was likely under some kind of control effect.
A gleam flashed in Cold Flame’s eyes. She rushed forward, leaped when she was a few meters away, raised her blue-flame warhammer high, and smashed it down toward Su Xiao’s head.
Boom!
The ground cracked, and icy flames spread outward. The hammer missed, but this was within Cold Flame’s expectations. She had already noticed that the enemy used a blade, and blade techniques could cultivate the mind. At a certain level, they granted immunity to mental control.
“Freez—”
With a slash, blade light appeared before Cold Flame. Her arms immediately went numb.
Two severed arms, still gripping the warhammer, fell to the ground. Cold Flame turned to flee. Clearly, she had picked the wrong opponent.
Clang, clang. Clang…
A flurry of slashes appeared before Cold Flame. Before she could dodge, a tremendous force struck her from the side.
With a loud bang, Cold Flame was sent flying by Su Xiao’s side kick. While midair, Banishment burst out from within her body. Before she even hit the ground, she was already a corpse.
Su Xiao patted the dust off his shoulder. He had basically gauged the strength of Holy Light Paradise’s contractors. They were a bit stronger than he expected.
Just as Su Xiao was about to continue pushing forward to complete the decapitation, over a dozen contractors blocked his path.
“Careful, this guy is strong.”
“As long as he’s not one of those monster-level types, we’ll be fine.”
“He’s good with blade techniques. Mental control is useless against him.”
Among the dozen or so contractors, two were from Death Paradise, four from Holy Light Paradise, and eight from Apocalypse Paradise.
Fourteen in total, semi-surrounding Su Xiao. Su Xiao held his long blade diagonally toward the ground. Clearly, killing all of them wouldn’t be easy. But when dealing with the previous two, he hadn’t used his self-developed blade techniques.
“Move!”
A man with sea-blue short hair roared, and his surrounding teammates all charged at Su Xiao.
‘Blade Path Sword: Time’
Su Xiao gripped his blade with both hands and stabbed downward. The tip of the long blade sank into the ground. A wave of energy spread, slowing everything around him.
‘Ring Break.’
Zing~
A pale blue ring-shaped blade light expanded. As it spread, its speed multiplied.
‘Blade Path Sword: Blood Blade.’
Su Xiao suddenly vanished from his spot, leaving a trail of blood in the air. When he reappeared, he was behind a female contractor. This girl from Holy Light Paradise had at least six types of shield abilities layered on her.
Crack, crack…
The shields shattered one by one. The girl’s eyes widened in disbelief as she raised her hand to touch her neck. Warm blood appeared on her fingers.
The effect of Blade Path Sword: Time wore off. The remaining thirteen contractors charged at Su Xiao, completely surrounding him.
‘Blade Path Sword…’
Five minutes later.
Drip, drip…
Blood dripped from the tips of his hair. A few blood-soaked contractors leaned on each other for support.
“Is single-focusing on blade techniques this strong? Cough, cough, cough…”
The young man who spoke coughed dryly, blood seeping through the gaps between his fingers.
“What I’m more curious about is how much holy power he has. He must have used… dozens of skills by now, right?”
The mature woman leaning on the young man also spoke. Her condition wasn’t great—half of one arm had been severed.
“What the hell is holy power?”
“It’s mana.”
“…”
Of the thirteen people who had surrounded Su Xiao, only six remained. Their fighting style was fundamentally different from Su Xiao’s. These people relied on skills and equipment-based abilities to fight.
Equipment-based abilities were strong, but skills learned through scrolls had obvious energy fluctuations or charging processes before use. Even if those abilities had extremely fast attack speeds, the startup movements were too noticeable.
Su Xiao was currently standing on a broken sword that was stuck diagonally in the dirt. His body seemed weightless. This was technique.
“Is that all?”
Su Xiao lightly flicked the blood off his blade. He was also injured, but not seriously. Besides, he had plenty of recovery potions in his storage space.
“Don’t get cocky. You can take on a dozen, but you can’t handle dozens of us, or hundreds. Even if you’re strong, you’re still only Fifth Rank.”
The one-armed mature woman wiped the blood off her face. Though she talked tough, she was planning to retreat first. She didn’t want to end things here. Born into a well-off family, she had no desire to be chopped into pieces like a vegetable.
Su Xiao ignored the one-armed woman. He raised his hand and pressed the wireless earpiece.
“Bubu, how’s the preparation?”
“Woof.”
Bubu Wang’s bark came through the earpiece. Su Xiao jumped off the broken sword.
“Here he comes! Don’t let him within ten meters. Every time he stabs the ground with both hands on the blade, it slows down the surrounding area. What the hell kind of ability is this? Does it have no cooldown?”
The one-armed woman cursed under her breath. Su Xiao had used ‘Blade Path Sword: Time’ twice in a row, and it had already made them question their existence.
“Ten meters… isn’t exactly safe either.”
The blood-soaked young man glanced at a corpse not far away. It was an assassination-type contractor. He had personally witnessed the guy get one-shot by a black blade light over ten meters in diameter.
After seeing Su Xiao’s blade techniques, the young man suddenly regretted not specializing in one ability. Instead, he had piled up combat power with various skills. Now at Fifth Rank, he couldn’t even clearly define what class he was. He wasn’t weak in melee, and he had ranged options too, but the consumption was too high.
A wild, arrogant laugh came from not far away, followed by a powerful suction force.
“These lunatics…”
The young man and the one-armed woman turned and fled. Su Xiao also leaped away a few times and vanished from his spot.
Ink-like black liquid splattered, and a massive black sphere appeared. A few seconds later, a semicircular crater was left on the battlefield. Su Xiao had seen this ability before, used by Danzo. It was called ‘Four Symbols Seal: Darkness.’
This was a contractor from Reincarnation Paradise who couldn’t withstand the siege and chose to die together with the enemy. This wasn’t happening once or twice—it had happened at least a dozen times.
A contractor from Apocalypse Paradise, whose lower body had disappeared, crawled painfully across the ground. He raised his head. He wanted to leave this damn place. He didn’t want to fight those insane people anymore. When they couldn’t win, they just took everyone down with them.