Chapter 2295: Fish Scale Gaps
Although the memory quickly faded, the body's instinctive reactions and emotions had not completely disappeared. That surge of anger reached its peak when One-Third Game notified him that there was still a third round.
Xu Huo opened the door and stepped out. Facing Zhu Xiaojin, Old Cai, and the others who looked somewhat worried, he said directly, "Let's go check out the city center."
Everyone outside the door was startled. Aside from Old Cai, who had wanted to go anyway, and the Painting Woman, who was just there for the excitement, Zhu Xiaojin, Tang Yu, and the other players resting here were not optimistic. Setting aside the issue of unlocking the area, they simply didn't want to touch that place in the city center, afraid of triggering more Water Cubes or destabilizing the already relatively stable Buliucheng.
But Xu Huo had already made up his mind. After executing a batch of wanted criminals, he headed straight for the city center with the Painting Woman.
Apart from Old Cai, Zhu Xiaojin and the others did not follow. However, some players who had been lurking nearby saw people approaching and hid in the distance to watch the spectacle.
Since Xu Huo had survived and won both the first and second games, entering again shouldn't be a big problem. And since the third game was already scheduled, there was no escaping it anyway. The restrictions of unlocking the area were no longer relevant to him.
"It's just ahead." Old Cai pointed to a building. "Basically, that street is the boundary. Everything inside is fake—it's just an imitation of the original street. Any instrument that enters will disappear immediately."
The Painting Woman sent a small recorder over. Sure enough, as it crossed that horizontal street, the recorder vanished as if swallowed by the sky. The remote control signal was lost, and the screen went dark.
Not a single sound came from the other side of the street.
"Inside and outside are completely cut off. No matter what happens inside, you can't hear a thing from out here," Old Cai said. "It should be blocked by space. Probably still unstable space, otherwise no one would have been able to get in."
Xu Huo observed from a close distance. What isolated the city center was indeed a chaotic space. The disorder of the Space Rays was similar to that of the "Cube Space," but unlike the Cube Space, the space power in the city center was far more lethal. Its state was closer to the collapsed form of a space entity he could briefly pull up after exiting the game, filled with Space Ray Blades resembling fissures.
Fortunately, it wasn't completely stable. Although it interfered with the Spiritual Realm, there were still gaps.
Leaping down from a tall building, he walked to the front of that horizontal street and released his Spiritual Realm from fifty meters away.
Delving deeper, he could better sense the chaos of the space power in the city center. Not only that, but Time Power occasionally shot through, appearing and disappearing abruptly—this was likely the main reason players who entered vanished.
The city center was cordoned off separately. Although it was called the city center, it actually occupied about one-tenth of Buliucheng's total area. Given Buliucheng's overall size, this area was larger than an average city. From outside the horizontal street or any other vantage point outside the city center, the scenery inside and outside didn't seem interrupted—it still looked like urban architecture.
But after going deeper, Xu Huo realized that the buildings in the city center had almost been leveled... Calling it "leveled to the ground" might not be accurate. Many houses and streets had simply disappeared, as if bitten off by something enormous. What remained on the ground were all uneven gaps.
Everywhere he looked, there were semicircular or circular gaps, like a rippling wave or fish scales that hadn't been properly scraped clean.
Limited by the space power, Xu Huo couldn't see farther, but after careful observation, he found that there were still gaps for people to pass through—they just had to be careful.
As for the Time Power within, its appearances were too brief to effectively evade.
The environment here was much better than the chaotic space that had appeared in District 014. At least it had some pattern, though that pattern could also turn into another kind of danger.
So far, he still hadn't figured out how those gaps were created.
This was the limit of his Spiritual Realm; he couldn't go any further. Just as he was about to look around nearby, he suddenly felt as if the sky was splitting open above his head... Instinctively looking up, he saw a patch of darkness descending. Before he could react, his Spiritual Realm felt as if it was being crushed by a heavy weight. His brain instantly endured an unbearable pressure, his Spiritual Realm was forcibly shattered, and his consciousness was expelled from the city center!
Outsiders couldn't tell what was happening inside the city center. They only saw Xu Huo stagger, blood trickling from his nose, and his expression turning extremely grim.
"Are you alright?" Old Cai asked hurriedly. "Could there be Spiritual Interference in the city center too?"
Xu Huo took the handkerchief handed to him by the Painting Woman, wiped the blood from his face, and stared darkly in the direction of the city center.
That wasn't Spiritual Interference. The moment they collided, he understood—it was Space Power. Although he couldn't see clearly how Space Power had achieved that form, he was certain it was Space Power.
Space-Time Power could also interfere with Spiritual Power. When he had fought Xue Lang before, the latter had used Space Rays to cut through his Spiritual Power. From a certain perspective, Spiritual Power was also a materialization of elusive forces, which was why Xue Lang's space cutting had worked. The same thing had just happened—the city center had used space crushing to expel him.
He wasn't sure if it was specifically targeting him. But if even the channel of the Spiritual Realm was blocked, then either the city center was under someone's control, or it had been meticulously designed. This was no longer a matter of a single item or instrument.
Xu Huo turned on the Under Dimension and entered relevant information, trying to find similar clues.
The content of the One-Third Game couldn't be transmitted to the Under Dimension, but he could describe related characteristics. The District Government had previously tried describing the Water Cube, only to be met with ridicule. Some thought they were delusionally trying to apply Time Power without any actual basis, while a few genuine Evolvers came forward to deny the possibility.
Xu Huo didn't directly describe the state of the ground in the city center. Instead, he searched for known applications of Space Power.
Different evolutionary focuses led to vastly different uses of Space Power, but overall, Space Power tended to disintegrate objects from the inside. Therefore, it generally didn't leave very regular marks—Ray Blades, space entities, or explosions all produced similar results.
But the gaps in Buliucheng's city center were likely related to Space Power.
After exchanging ideas with several people, a player finally said, "What you're describing probably isn't Space Power, but rather relatively regular space gaps."