Chapter 1676: Traversing Time
The visibility in this chaotic space had never been clear. Since he could barely make out the figure with his naked eye, it meant the other person was already very close to him.
Xu Huo frowned, not because of the relative danger of the distance, but because the person was standing still in place, completely devoid of any aura.
From the attire, the person with their back to him should be Bao Yu from the "Capricious" organization, the player who had entered the chaotic space alone on Yu Qingqing's orders.
Although it was unclear which side of the chaotic space this place was on, it definitely couldn't be the entrance. After all, Xu Huo and the others had tried to go back earlier but failed, so the distance from the entrance here wouldn't be short.
The likelihood of a player who didn't understand spatial evolution walking from the entrance to this point was extremely low. Instead, it was more reasonable for someone like Xu Huo, who had been suddenly snatched by spatial power and inexplicably transported elsewhere.
Bao Yu's standing position was slightly subtle—right in front of the portico of a temple. The upper half of that temple had already been sheared off, leaving only a short wall that happened to be in the blind spot of the space entity's movements. That was why the portico and the person standing before it had been preserved.
But the person was indeed dead.
Standing this close, Xu Huo couldn't sense any sign of life from him.
Following the gaps created by the space entity's movements, he didn't touch the person in front of him but instead circled around from two meters away to get in front of him.
This talented member of "Capricious" had his face frozen in terror, while his limbs remained in a posture as if about to take a step, as though he had just arrived here and suddenly met his death.
There were no obvious external injuries on his body, making it unlikely he died from spatial power. Mental power... Xu Huo didn't think the mental power in this space was enough to scare someone to death. That left only time power.
Although he hadn't seen a time ray on Bao Yu, earlier, when players from District 011 were dealing with the Eerie Sound Knights, someone had used a time ray. That kind of time ray, when hitting a person, could freeze them or suddenly cause fractures.
Of course, the powers in the game were mostly traceable. Since it was related to time, it wasn't hard to imagine that there might have been a localized time change—like time moving forward or backward rapidly—causing the human body to suddenly appear altered. Even though Xu Huo believed that time couldn't be grasped or controlled to move forward, there must be some way to give time rays a different kind of power.
Just then, a tiny piece of dead skin flipped up from Bao Yu's jaw, looking like a bit of dried, shed skin still attached to the body. But when Xu Huo looked more closely, cracks began to appear on Bao Yu's face starting from the jaw!
Not just his face—his neck, head, exposed hands, and even his hair... At this moment, the corpse was like sun-dried earth, cracking all over.
As he watched the cracks repeatedly overlay, splitting the originally intact skin into smaller and smaller pieces, Xu Huo suddenly realized something. He gently raised his hand and brushed against a ray in the air.
The next second, Bao Yu's corpse disintegrated like ash, covered by the falling clothes and pants, scattering far and wide.
This method of death was nothing short of shocking. In the average person's understanding, only in TV shows or movies would something like this happen—instantly reducing a person to ashes. This wasn't just a change in life and death state; it was the crushing impact of another mysterious power that transcended human understanding and could never be achieved.
Crouching in front the pile of ash, Xu Huo picked up Bao Yu's items and other accessories, then couldn't help but look up at the sky. His idea might have been wrong. Time could not only move forward but could also leap forward by decades or even centuries in an instant, to the point of turning a living person back into dust.
The method of resisting mental interference by destroying the eye pattern on the portico was clearly effective. As the space entity's movements gradually slowed, Xu Huo no longer had to flee as desperately as before. But now another problem arose: he too might encounter a time ray.
Having begun his Temporal Super Evolution didn't mean he could change time power. He was just a beginner, just like when he first started spatial evolution. Besides being able to sense the existence of the power, he couldn't yet interfere with time rays, let alone resist their effects. Even the super items he wore might not necessarily save his life.
"Three Seconds of Life" could only rewind time by three seconds at a time. But if a time ray could make a person's body traverse decades of time in an instant, whether this item would even work was unknown.
Still, the silver lining was that he could at least perceive time rays, so he wouldn't die inexplicably like Bao Yu.
Since things had come to this, Xu Huo didn't plan to go back. He intended to go see the end of the "Nine Divine Paths."
Setting aside time and space powers for now, there was still mental power here. The "Divine Eye" mentioned by the believers might no longer exist, but it was possible that other items had been left behind. After all, whoever had wrecked the space like this must have been quite powerful.
After searching for a while in the streets for residual images of power, Xu Huo determined the direction and then walked forward along the road.
In his perception, the space wasn't much different from before. The time rays interspersed nearby didn't seem to have much effect on the space either, though occasionally, images from the past would automatically surface.
Time-space items had the characteristic of being incompatible with each other. Time power and space power should maintain similar traits. However, time-space items were graded by level and strength, but these two powers permeated every corner of every district. They should be mutually inclusive.
These two situations seemed contradictory, but it couldn't be said that time power and space power must coexist peacefully. Perhaps the spatial state he was seeing now was the result of the two powers competing with each other. Of course, it was also possible that the time-space items had been set to be incompatible... These were all hard to say and weren't questions he could figure out at this stage.
Shouldering the "Angel's Eyes," Xu Huo cautiously stepped into the depths of the gray mist.
At the same time, Nie Xuan, who had been moved by spatial power to the other side of the "Nine Divine Paths," was dragging his injured leg and carefully walking through a pile of ruins. His condition was much worse than Xu Huo's. Almost every step he took, he had to use an item to check whether there was time power in the surrounding space.
Because this was a chaotic space, and time fragments kept popping up from time to time, the time power around was inherently chaotic. Even if the instrument could detect time power, it couldn't accurately tell him whether the time ray that had punched a hole in his right foot—which had nearly been altered by spatial power—would reappear.
(Chapter End)