Chapter 2116: A Wrong Choice
An hour passed quickly, and Xu Huo and the Painting Woman had to come out first, then line up again.
Today wasn't too bad; they got in the second time by evening, without having to wait until the next day.
The Painting Woman entered the ruins once and didn't want to go in a second time. After coming out, she went nearby and sold all the instruments she had taken from the boxing ring. With a large sum of money, she bought quite a few firecrackers and children's paper cards and paper sheets from a small shop nearby. After that, she didn't wander around anymore but stayed next to Xu Huo, focusing on folding paper.
She improved her previous paper animals, making them into cone shapes or small knives and swords, and even got curious children who came over to help her.
By the time Xu Huo entered the ruins again in the evening, there were already several piles of folded paper weapons in front of her. Feeling finally satisfied, she tried releasing a few. Immediately, several pits were blasted into the ground not far away, along with quite a few cracked floor tiles.
Probably thinking the effect was decent, she retrieved the few small items that had flown out, but the paper knives and swords were already flattened.
No matter. She smoothed them out, straightened them, and tossed them back into the paper pile beside her.
Unnoticed, the people near the entrance had gradually dispersed. On the empty street, three to five figures suddenly appeared. Two walked over from the front, while three scattered among the surrounding buildings, all staring at the Painting Woman's location.
The Painting Woman naturally noticed them too. She grabbed a handful of paper knives and swords and threw them out. These seemingly harmless paper items then shot toward a player trying to dash into the ruins from the side.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" The paper knives and swords created a series of pits on the ground, forcing the player back several meters. Only then did the Painting Woman point at the people opposite, then at herself, and raise her communicator. "Come hit me."
The few players weren't underestimating her out of arrogance, but they thought holding her back didn't require so many people. So, apart from the two players approaching from the front, the other three charged toward the ruins together.
Not being inside a building space and the territory not being hers, the range of paper the Painting Woman could control was limited. The newcomers had probably gathered some information about her beforehand, knowing she could defend against items. So they started by using instruments against her, first restricting the space, sealing her and the paper weapons together. The two players attacking her also focused on close combat, with very strong practical experience. In no time, they both left wounds on her body.
The Painting Woman wasn't a real person, so she didn't bleed. Ordinary item weapons found it hard to leave marks on her. So the two players coordinating their attacks, after sidestepping and creating distance, realized they had only torn her sleeves. They exchanged glances and quickly launched a second round of attacks.
In their view, the Painting Woman must possess a very high-level defensive item. But high-level items generally had a flaw—they were hard to sustain for long periods. As long as they kept her under control, they would eventually drain her item!
The Painting Woman wasn't skilled in hand-to-hand combat. With her paper weapons unable to do much, and unable to turn herself into paper, she mostly stood still and took the hits. In just a few breaths, her clothes were tattered.
The Painting Woman was no longer the same as when she first came out of the Skinner's instance. Although she lacked human shame, she understood that in the human world, this kind of action carried great malice—even if the two players' original intention wasn't that, the result was the same. So when the two players attacked from left and right again, she stepped back, letting their weapons clash, and then generously gave each of them a slap.
She had promised Xu Huo not to turn back into a painting in public, but she could scratch them with her nails.
Several long bloody streaks appeared on the two players' faces. One of them nearly had his eye gouged out. After pulling back, they looked at the Painting Woman, who shook her hands, then controlled all the paper weapons to repeatedly attack one spot on the sealing barrier. She also pulled a dagger covered in small trinkets from her backpack and stabbed it into the barrier.
This item was clearly of no low level. In a few moves, it broke through the sealing barrier. The Painting Woman ignored the two disfigured players and dashed straight for the ruins' entrance. But before she could rush in, two people came out from inside, stepping backward and brushing past her—these two were holding a strand of space power between them, invisible to the Painting Woman. As she charged forward headlong, Xu Huo suddenly appeared behind her, grabbing her while simultaneously using a spiritual gate to teleport one of the two people back into the ruins.
In less than a second, the two people in the ruins came out again. The five regrouped, surrounding Xu Huo and the Painting Woman once more.
"How did it get like this?" Xu Huo prepared to get her new clothes, but the Painting Woman shook her head. "Anyway, even if I change into new ones, they'll just get ruined. I know they did it on purpose. They covet my beauty."
With that, she pretended to be pitiful and leaned against Xu Huo. "They're all bad guys."
"Bitch! Don't you ruin my reputation!" the player with the scratched face roared angrily. They just wanted to kill people; they weren't lowlifes who harassed women without shame!
The Painting Woman covered her face and pretended to cry.
There were still players watching nearby. They weren't exactly sympathetic to her, but that didn't stop them from laughing at this group and adding fuel to the fire. After some taunting, the five attackers had turned into "villains" who "outnumbered the weak" and "bullied the few," while Xu Huo, a B-rank player, and the Painting Woman, who didn't even seem to reach B-rank, had become the "underdogs."
"Fight one-on-one if you've got the guts!" a player from an outer zone shouted loudly. "You 011 Zone guys rely on numbers to bully the few. Three A-ranks ganging up on one B-rank—have you no shame?!"
These five players were sent by the boxing ring. With the Hecheng government's concession, they were allowed to enter the ruins to capture people, but that was the limit. They couldn't bring more people or cause a larger disturbance, or the government wouldn't sit idly by. However, after fighting until now, Xu Huo hadn't used a "time freeze" item, and they hadn't been able to kill him with space power at the first opportunity. The three A-ranks from the boxing ring had also realized: whether or not this person had time evolution, he definitely had space evolution. Otherwise, he couldn't have dodged their killing moves and even turned back to save someone.
"So far, I haven't encountered a player who can use spiritual power so masterfully, let alone one who is also proficient in space power." The middle-aged man leading the five stepped forward and said, "Though it sounds a bit like a fairy tale... you're not cultivating all three at once, are you?"
He didn't say it outright, but the meaning was clear. Cultivating all three meant mental super evolution, spatial super evolution, and temporal super evolution. Especially temporal super evolution—how many players in the entire game could evolve and afford to use time power?
If that were the case, it meant they had made the wrong choice today, forging an invincible enemy for the future of 011 Zone!