Chapter 1533: An A-Rank Player With Real Strength
"Because people who are good at disguising themselves are not to be trusted." Bai Tiao Yi spoke without changing his expression, launching an attack without any warning. The chains that had previously bound the player from the E26 wormhole point inside the school appeared in midair and shot toward Xu Huo's limbs.
However, although his speed was fast and the prop activated silently, it was not so fast that Xu Huo couldn't react at all. As soon as the space fluctuated, he grabbed the Space Ray to shift his position, using the complex layout of nearby buildings to conceal his movement trajectory.
Bai Tiao Yi didn't seem to want to escalate things. After missing his strike, he pursued but did not heavily damage the city's structures.
Perhaps he was concerned about the rules of the Space Maze.
In just a few breaths, their figures darted back and forth across the area like points moving rapidly between buildings. Each clash was extremely brief, with Xu Huo mostly successfully evading the attacks.
After several failed attempts, Bai Tiao Yi closed the distance between them. During this time, he held a smoking pipe, blew a puff of air into it, and white smoke covered the entire area. Wherever Xu Huo paused, the surrounding smoke would automatically condense into a ring. When the ring took shape, a shockwave up to ten zhang high would erupt, crushing both the ground and the air in an instant. Although this process seemed lengthy, it was actually very fast—relatively precise, the power of this prop was mainly in its large area of effect.
Xu Huo did his best to expand the range of "Cube Space," using Space Ray to teleport while also forming a new barrier with Space Barrier outside his defensive prop. At his current level of evolution, the Space Barrier he formed could hardly effectively defend against high-level props, but space power often worked in unexpected ways, especially when space props were ineffective.
The smoke rings formed more than twenty times in midair within seconds, but none successfully injured Xu Huo.
Bai Tiao Yi observed his movement patterns, then took out a drawer prop. As he pulled the drawer open, the "Lifelike Wax Figure" worn on Xu Huo's body instantly detached and appeared inside the previously empty drawer.
The barrier formed by the A-rank defensive prop did not stop the drawer prop from activating. Xu Huo's expression remained unchanged as he immediately stuffed "Addicted to Theft" into his pocket and used the special prop "A Request Hard to Refuse" to say, "Can you return the prop I lost?"
Bai Tiao Yi was about to close the drawer, but the prop had already returned to Xu Huo's hand.
"Interesting." Although Bai Tiao Yi was not a Super Evolver, a player with an evolution rate close to 90% would experience a qualitative leap in perception. Even though he couldn't directly sense Space Ray, he knew that Xu Huo's repeated escapes relied on Space Evolution power.
He took a few steps forward, blocked the attack of "Snowflakes Falling," broke through the scattered defense of "Stars Falling to the Ground," and thrust his right hand, wearing a semi-transparent glove, toward Xu Huo!
At this point, he was less than a hundred meters from Xu Huo, a distance at which Xu Huo had almost no chance to defend. But unexpectedly, Bai Tiao Yi himself seemed to encounter tremendous resistance, his speed visibly slowing down, even coming to a halt.
The glove was a Space Jamming Device. As soon as it appeared on Bai Tiao Yi's hand, Xu Huo immediately knew it, because when he cut into "Cube Space," new rays appeared in the air and spread rapidly.
This jamming device was effective. Even though the fastest absorption by "Cube Space" occurred, the rays inside the space were still affected, and he lost the speed and efficiency he had before in control.
At the same time, Bai Tiao Yi threw out a black card. The card automatically split in midair, dispersing into twelve cards within a two-hundred-meter diameter circle, maintaining equal distances to trap the two of them inside.
The cards seemed only palm-sized, but they formed a cylindrical barrier in the air, completely sealing off Xu Huo's escape route.
The Space Jamming Device could only work temporarily, so Bai Tiao Yi simply enclosed the person to prevent him from changing places again.
"Look here." As if mocking him with a warning, Bai Tiao Yi instantly closed in on Xu Huo. A kick imbued with prop power directly shattered the "Flower Bloom" barrier, sending Xu Huo crashing into the card barrier!
The immense impact was hard for Xu Huo to bear, and his mind was momentarily shaken. In that extremely brief moment, Bai Tiao Yi closed in again, striking the "Ideal Skin" with his umbrella.
"Ideal Skin" was also an A-rank prop, transparent and colorless, capable of blocking some A-rank prop attacks. However, this prop had a three-minute usage limit and was usually used as a supplementary prop. But in the Space Maze, space defense props like "Inviolable Domain" were unstable, so Xu Huo used it as a substitute.
The umbrella indeed did not pierce "Ideal Skin," stopping just inches from his throat. Nevertheless, the force dispersed on it still pressed him against the card barrier again.
Seeing this, Bai Tiao Yi showed an intrigued expression. "A C-rank player, yet carrying so many good props?"
A trapped turtle in a jar, he wasn't in a hurry to kill. He took out the black notebook and asked, "Name?"
Xu Huo, still pinned by the umbrella, looked at him in silence.
The prop didn't activate, so Bai Tiao Yi asked patiently again, "Name."
Only then did Xu Huo's expression change slightly, but his struggle was more pronounced than that of the player who had previously undergone the "interrogation."
"Don't rush, take your time." Bai Tiao Yi smiled as he watched him. "Those with strength and talent deserve special treatment..."
Before he could finish, the person whose features had been slightly twisted suddenly steadied his expression. With a backhanded slash, he cut the umbrella in front of him in two, then turned the blade toward him!
Bai Tiao Yi's eyes darkened slightly, because the black blade pierced through one layer of his defense barrier, and at the same time, a bright firework exploded around them.
But that didn't matter. He didn't even blink, reaching out with his bare hand to grab the black blade's edge while deploying a fixed prop to immobilize Xu Huo in place.
"Everyone, listen to me." Xu Huo simultaneously activated the two traits "Narrator's Charm" and "Important Notice." Of course, using them didn't mean they would have a significant effect on a player of Bai Tiao Yi's level, but he was buying that brief moment.
As he expected, Bai Tiao Yi's movement didn't pause noticeably. Before his hand touched the black blade, he flipped it in midair, and the black blade twisted under a strong force.
Xu Huo had no intention of sacrificing this A-rank prop, nor did he really believe he could sneak-attack the person in front of him with the black blade. So when Bai Tiao Yi flipped his hand, he opened the prop slot, retrieved the black blade, and released "Magic Man."
(Chapter End)