Chapter 2266: Xu Huo's Portrait
"What's the point of that? That's like saying nothing at all," a player couldn't help but remark.
"Didn't you guys insist on asking?" the short man pouted. "If there were a unified standard for becoming a super player, there would be way too many super players in the game right now. Top-tier A-rank players aren't exactly rare in the game."
Xu Huo knew several super players himself. They were all super players active at E-level wormhole points. As for players at other wormhole points, since he usually left after completing one instance, he hadn't looked into them too closely. However, it was common knowledge that "super players don't show themselves easily." Additionally, becoming a super player didn't seem to require completing one instance per month anymore. If someone possessed a super instance, they could even protect a district from random instance invasions.
Among the top-tier A-rank players, the most formidable he had encountered was the Magician. During the Ember Maiden instance, the Magician had fought against a group of A-rank players single-handedly, reaching a level where other A-rank players recognized his strength at a glance. Yet he still wasn't a super player.
Perhaps he could ask that question if they met again in the future. That is, if he remembered to.
"What I mean is, the more powerful your super evolution, the more likely you are to become a super player," the short man said, once again looking at Xu Huo with envy. "Dual temporal-spatial evolution—as long as you don't go out of your way to court death, you'll probably become a super player in the future."
He respectfully handed over a business card with his Under Dimension account written on it. "We absolutely have to become friends."
Xu Huo accepted the card but smiled and said, "There are plenty of people with dual evolution in the game. Are there that many super players?"
"I don't think super evolution should be the standard for judging super players."
Lawrence Li and Huahan Werner went without saying, but the Paper Servant Master and the Box Carrier didn't seem like people who had pushed their super evolution power to the extreme. So super evolution was just icing on the cake, not a prerequisite.
"That doesn't matter," the short man said with a full smile. "Whether it works out or not can be discussed later. Let's just be friends first."
The others present felt a bit tempted—setting aside super players for now, in this venue, only Xu Huo had learned to control time power. Even sharing a little experience would be good. But they couldn't bring themselves to lower their pride, hesitating and not stepping forward.
At this point, there wasn't much time left before eight in the morning. The "prisoners" had to start looking for rooms, while the "guards" had to begin memorizing the key numbers of occupied rooms.
"You still haven't found the guard key?" Xu Huo asked Mi Qiaonan.
Mi Qiaonan shrugged. "I really don't know where they hid the keys. It might also be players we've never even crossed paths with. The maze is so big, there's always somewhere we can't cover."
"I'll probably have to leave by eight, but with so many people below me, I feel a bit better. You guys keep it up."
The third day of the hunt began.
After achieving his expected goals, Xu Huo spent most of his time on the space core.
Having understood time power, his perception of spatial changes and fluctuations had become sharper. However, unlike borrowing time power, the strength of spatial power still depended on the evolver's level of evolution, with no shortcuts.
And so another day passed.
By the fourth day, the guard keys became even harder to find. Even though he rushed into the maze first and searched many places, he couldn't find a single one. The players he encountered didn't have any either. Moreover, these players had seen the patterns of the previous two days and began cautiously avoiding him. Some even teamed up voluntarily, signaling each other from great distances.
This made collecting prisoner keys and forcing prisoners to reveal guard keys a huge waste of time.
But that wasn't a major problem. Someone always had clues; he just had to ask one after another.
With the interference of spiritual power, it took Xu Huo two hours to find the first guard key.
These players were quite amusing. They passed the guard keys around like a game of hot potato—some reported locations, others passed them along. In short, they wanted to avoid him and force him out.
Today, after the "prisoners" were replenished, there were still five hundred of them, but the number of "guards" had increased to ten. Guards weren't enemies of each other, so Xu Huo had recruited three "partners."
For every person who wanted him out, there was someone who wanted to befriend him. That day, he received quite a few business cards. After separating these cards from Mi Qiaonan's and the others', he started his daytime work again.
There wasn't anything particularly noteworthy to pay attention to, until he killed the sixteenth "prisoner" and found a portrait of himself in the man's pocket.
With the item becoming invalid, after entering the space prison, everyone appeared with their true faces. This was the same for all players. Only a very few used masks, scarves, or other items to cover their faces, but it wasn't very effective.
Beneath his portrait were a few lines of text.
"Dual Temporal-Spatial Super Evolution," "Mental Super Evolution," "Physical Super Evolution."
Among them, "Physical Super Evolution" had a question mark after it.
Xu Huo crouched in front of the corpse, carefully studying his own portrait for a moment before letting out a light laugh. "The drawing is pretty good."
He naturally put the drawing into his pocket.
Kicking the corpse aside, he moved to the next room. After subduing the person inside, he didn't kill him immediately but asked, "Do you know who else is drawing my portrait?"
Getting the answer wasn't difficult. No one could change their appearance. The only problem was that the person he asked might not know the numbers. So when he found a second person, Xu Huo added another question: the people and room numbers they could remember.
Everyone was affected by spiritual interference to varying degrees. To save time, Xu Huo no longer considered the answers of those who weren't cooperative enough, only filtering out some to deal with.
With several hundred players, it was nearly impossible to find all of them and stop the information leak. Xu Huo could only reduce the numbers as much as possible. He had no choice but to find a headscarf to cover his face and alter his height and body language—in short, the less recordable information, the better, and the more misleading, the better.
After resting for a while, he continued knocking on doors.
He worked until noon, took a nap, and then rushed back to the space core without stopping.
After eight in the evening, once he exited the maze, he no longer hung around with Zhu Xiaojin. Zhu Xiaojin was smart enough to go chat with the other two "guards."
Finding one person among ten wasn't hard, especially since no one was covering their faces. But when the incoming players increased again, the number of masked people also grew. By the time they entered the maze again, it wasn't so easy to identify Xu Huo at first glance, especially since he tried to avoid crowded areas.
This time, he used an item to trade with a "prisoner" and smoothly obtained his own "guard" key without any trouble. (End of chapter)