Chapter 2686: Pursuit
A few melon seeds landed in his hand, and the kangaroo hopped away with the procession. Like the other puppet people in the city, all the puppets in the carnival parade had their own behavioral patterns.
Following the parade made it less likely to be attacked, so Xu Huo simply went along with it. From time to time, puppet people would approach him to peddle their wares, many of them forcibly stuffing items into his hands without asking for payment. Before long, he was covered in all sorts of trinkets—most of them cheap toys. The small snacks, of course, were fake, but most of the bracelets and necklaces were ground from bones, and it was impossible to tell with the naked eye whether they were human or animal bones.
He casually tossed these things to Qi Cong, who was following behind, then grabbed a handful of fluorescent powder from a passing puppet person. Taking a few quick steps, he slapped it onto the kangaroo.
"Keep an eye on that kangaroo," Xu Huo reminded.
Qi Cong quickly nodded, not daring to look away for even a second.
Xu Huo bought all the balloons from one puppet person, changed the markings on them to 3.0, and coated them with fluorescent powder to ensure they stood out among the crowded balloons. After keeping a few for himself, he released the rest into the air.
The carnival parade was long and drew everyone's attention. If the balloons flew out from here, the Painting Woman and Dai He should be able to find him quickly.
The Painting Woman and Zhu Bu's group of four arrived even faster. The Painting Woman was fine, but Zhu Bu and the others were in a sorry state. With their personal panels restricted, even though they had prepared instruments, they were insufficient in an environment like Clown City. One member of the group was seriously injured, to the point of needing support.
The Painting Woman had swapped her frog costume for a white bear one. Towering half a head above Xu Huo in the plush suit, she reached out a claw to pat his head.
Xu Huo tilted his head, and the furry bear claw landed on his shoulder. The massive bear head leaned in, its lifeless eyes staring straight at him.
He patted the bear's nose and said, "I found Jia Yu. Stay close."
The white bear nodded, shuffling along behind them, occasionally snatching a toy from the carnival procession.
Zhu Bu approached, his voice low. "You didn't follow the agreed-upon signal."
"Clown City suddenly switched to night mode, and it's dangerous everywhere. Even if I wanted to meet up with you, I couldn't," Xu Huo said. "But the area around the carnival parade is relatively safe."
Although the carnival parade was circling the city, it was enough to buy time. With their current preparations, it would be difficult to approach the castle without significant losses.
Zhu Bu didn't say much more and followed behind him.
About half an hour later, Dai He finally found them. He came alone, covered in injuries, the smell of blood impossible to hide. This also drew the attention of some puppet people immersed in the parade.
The area around the parade was relatively safe, but there was no guarantee that the puppets and puppet people in the procession weren't aggressive. Moreover, they were clearly different from ordinary puppet people, likely not inferior to the instance props that occupied their own venues. Dai He didn't dare take the risk. After two failed attempts, he decisively gave up and followed at a distance.
The parade lasted five hours before it began to wind down. The end of the route was a circus grounds. As the procession gradually entered, the puppet people who had been following to watch the spectacle slowly dispersed.
Xu Huo and the others waited outside. For a full half hour, there was no movement from within the circus grounds.
"I'll go in and take a look," the Painting Woman said without a hint of fear. Unlike Xu Huo and the others, the time she had spent before finding the carnival parade was no different from visiting a real amusement park.
This cordoned-off circus grounds likely had a mini-boss guarding it. Yan Jia Yu had become part of the parade and probably couldn't come out on her own. The Painting Woman going in was the most suitable approach.
Xu Huo told her about the markings on the kangaroo puppet, and the Painting Woman confidently entered.
From the outside, it was impossible to hear what was happening inside... but within two minutes, a deformed white bear came charging out, holding its crooked head, followed by a string of performing mutant animals!
Don't come near me!
The attack power of the puppets in the carnival parade was not to be underestimated. When the Painting Woman was chased out, the performing puppets also gained the ability to act autonomously, locking onto Xu Huo and the others as they followed her!
The carnival parade had several hundred performers. When they all swarmed out, even the puppet people active on the streets switched modes, and a city-wide siege gradually began!
Caught in the rush of the crowd, no one could look out for anyone else. The moment Xu Huo released his spiritual realm, he felt a sharp pain in his head. From hundreds of meters away, he noticed the singer from the carnival parade looking in his direction.
His eyes darkened. He could only shrink the range of his spiritual realm and toss Qi Cong, who was closest to him, to a farther location—he couldn't be sure that the person inside the kangaroo puppet was really Yan Jia Yu. If it wasn't, he might still need Qi Cong later!
In the blink of an eye, the singer had already caught up to him. Several strands of spatial power shot from her fingers, slicing horizontally. Everything they swept across—puppet people, instance buildings—was cut in half. This was on a completely different level from the instance props they had encountered before!
He immediately used a spatial interference device. When it proved ineffective, he supplemented it with a defense device. Hexagonal barriers stacked around him in over a dozen layers, moving with him as he shifted.
The singer's attacks came continuously. With each wave of her hand, more spatial power tangents filled the air, cutting through large swaths of the street, shattering countless puppet people into pieces.
Seizing the opportunity, Xu Huo used a small-scale hurricane device. The broken puppet people were swept up and hurled toward the singer.
This only slightly slowed the singer's pace, doing little real good. She clearly had no intention of changing targets. She pressed her palms together to form a triangle, and a triangular containment barrier immediately covered several kilometers of the street.
Xu Huo was certain he had been targeted because of his mental evolution. The singer pursued him relentlessly, completely different from the instance props before. This made him hesitate several times about whether to use his time power. The Clown City instance, while not activated, always followed the principle of "the stronger the destruction, the stronger the siege." Even if he used time power, he couldn't kill these instance props in one go, and the bigger the commotion, the more likely it was to attract the Box Carrier back...
Wait a little longer!
He chose a direction away from the castle and moved quickly toward the edge of the triangular barrier. Locking onto the faint blue barrier in the air, he gripped the Black Blade with both hands and stabbed upward!
"Boom!"
The Black Blade was less than half a meter from the barrier when a black shadow suddenly shot out from the side, slamming hard into him, carrying him down into a transfer station dozens of meters away!