Chapter 2224: No Place to Escape
Just as he was speaking, Xu Huo felt the blockade barrier made of space power begin to loosen, and at the same time, the person trapped in the middle also underwent a change—though the other party appeared to still be in the same spot, the person he was seeing now was no longer the same one from before. The overly realistic state made it difficult to tell at a glance whether he was actually a real person.
But whether he was real or not didn’t matter. After Xu Huo’s spiritual power was further enhanced, he could cover both the front and rear carriages. As long as the other party couldn’t freely teleport anywhere on this train, he wouldn’t escape!
Vertical pupils replaced his eyes, appearing in several carriages ahead and behind. They didn’t hide their traces but deliberately appeared before the players. Faced with the vertical pupils, most players were highly vigilant, but because the situation was unclear, they only remained on guard, and no one immediately turned and ran.
Only two people, upon sensing the spiritual power, fled without looking back toward the farther carriages.
Xu Huo opened three spiritual gates beneath their feet, bringing them back to his own carriage. To prevent them from escaping again with items, he simply used an A-grade defense item to lock them in with him.
The coverage of the defense item wasn’t large, so the distance between them wasn’t far. The player who had launched the attack, seeing the situation was unfavorable, immediately crushed a poison gas item. As the purple-black gas spread, the other party used the smoke to obscure vision and attacked again!
Xu Huo didn’t move. Glancing at the tangent item that had been suddenly removed by the other party, he reactivated the space ray blades. However, these ray blades only pierced through two layers of defense on that player. Advanced players naturally wouldn’t have only two or three defense items, so the other party charged forward recklessly.
The space ray blades slowed down that player’s speed, giving Xu Huo enough time to peel off the layers of defense items one by one. But defense items weren’t single-use either. After nearly twenty seconds of this repeated consumption, Xu Huo finally released the tangent to destroy the last layer of defense on the other party. As the tangent entered, the spiritual power materialization also went in, splitting the person in two from the middle.
Yet this person still didn’t die. After being cut open, he directly disappeared from within the defense item, as if everything that had just happened was an illusion.
There was blood on the carpet.
Scanning another player who was on high alert, Xu Huo took out the eye that the Goddess Cult had enthusiastically gifted, which had been modified into a hand lantern.
He had already inspected this item. The modification was quite crude—it was only a B-grade spiritual-type item. Its function was to plunge people into an illusion in an extremely short time. It was a non-discriminatory attack item, and the holder would also be affected by the attack. But Xu Huo withstood it well, and the other players in the same carriage also held steady. The injured person, however, was different.
Painful groans came from the transition car behind.
Xu Huo turned his head and saw that player trying to move toward the rear carriages again.
“Stop him,” Xu Huo ordered the few cannibal players in the transition car. He could achieve strong control by concentrating his spiritual power into a point, but the duration was very short. Often, the controlled person might wake up while executing the command. Still, that was enough, because one cannibal player happened to be at the door. Hearing the order, he took a step and stood in front of it. Before he could steady himself, he saw the injured player charging at him. Activating his defense item, he threw a hard punch, sending the injured player, along with his defense item, flying back to crash into the carriage door.
Xu Huo took the opportunity to pull him back.
“Your item is quite interesting,” he said, turning to face this person. “How about this: you give me that escape item, and we’ll call it even for what happened before.”
The man wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth as he stood up. “Do you really think you can kill me?”
“Unless you get off the train right now, as long as you’re still on this train, no matter how many times you escape, I can kill you,” Xu Huo said, stroking the rolling eye again. “Perfect timing to try out this newly acquired item.”
The other party stepped back warily. The closer he got to the eye lantern, the stronger the spiritual interference became. No normal person could endure this environment for long.
“Then let’s see who’s the better one!” the man suddenly shouted, looking behind Xu Huo and addressing the person who had been pulled over with him. “Why haven’t you made a move yet!”
Taking advantage of the moment Xu Huo turned his head, the other party once again fled through the door. But this time, what greeted him was a compressed cube that automatically exploded in midair. Even without the instrument “Cube Space” to amplify it, the blast wave from twenty to thirty layers of stacked compressed cube barriers was enough to send him flying back.
Then, the materialization silently coiled around his neck.
His head hit the ground, and he vanished into smoke.
After dealing with this one, Xu Huo turned back to look at the other person. “It’s probably useless to interrogate him. What about you?”
This time, he didn’t waste words. A mass of materialization spread like a shadow, covering the entire carriage and then wrapping around this player’s body.
“I have no ill intentions toward you!” the other party quickly raised both hands. “I came here completely confused. I don’t even know that person, and I’m not his companion!”
“Then why did you run?” Xu Huo raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve encountered other spiritual evolvers before. I know you can kill people directly with spiritual power. I didn’t want to get dragged into trouble, so I ran first.” This player was fairly honest, immediately explaining the cause and effect. He also stated that he had only boarded the train recently and was just going to watch the competition for fun, with no intention of actively causing trouble.
The other party seemed extremely afraid of spiritual evolvers. Glancing sideways at the black, flowing substance that had already wrapped around his shoulders, he swallowed his saliva before saying, “Can you put that eye away?”
He was referring to the eye lantern in Xu Huo’s hand.
As the eye lantern disappeared, the oppressive force in the carriage instantly dissipated. The other players acted as if nothing had happened, and no one paid attention to the corpse on the ground. Xu Huo collected the items from the dead man and called the flight attendant to clean up. Then he examined the items left behind by this person. None of the items matched his repeated escapes, suggesting it was likely a special evolution trait or a single-use item. Additionally, no suspicious clues were found.
“Actually, this is very common,” that player volunteered. “Players often attack others on the train. I guess he saw you alone, without companions, and chose to target you.”
“Is that so?” Xu Huo smiled. “Anyway, there’s still some time before lights out. Why don’t you tell me about the spiritual evolvers you’ve encountered?”
That player naturally didn’t refuse and stayed in this carriage.
“All super evolvers, except for the early stages when they’re neither here nor there, become extremely powerful later on. The super evolver I encountered once directly controlled an entire city’s population to attack another city. Many of the game’s current districts aren’t considered backward; they have large-scale lethal weapons. Having people fight their own people—you can imagine how brutal the battle was. It nearly wiped out the entire nation.” (End of chapter)