Chapter 405: Second Sparring Match
"Can wanted criminals return to the game?" Xu Huo asked casually.
"The only way to avoid being sent to a high-risk instance is to leave the original wormhole point. If you enter a new instance at a different wormhole point, the player's identity will be recorded in the game," Butterfly Lady said. "This applies equally to wanted criminals and those fleeing to other wormhole points to avoid high-risk instances."
"There are still ways to avoid high-risk instances." Xu Huo thought for a moment and added, "Can't you hide inside an item?"
"You're talking about container items. Players can briefly detach from the game using container items, but it comes at a cost." Butterfly Lady glanced at him. "If you don't want to do instances, you could hide in the crevices of this castle."
"What cost?" Xu Huo asked, as if very interested.
"Why don't you try it and find out?" Butterfly Lady smiled.
Their eyes met, and neither continued the topic. After a moment, Xu Huo spoke up, "Do you really want to steal Rongxin Group's weapons?"
"Do you have a plan?" Butterfly Lady raised an eyebrow.
"No," Xu Huo said. "But you probably know more than I do. And since you can enter the Enforcement Department to kill someone, grabbing a batch of weapons should be easy, right?"
"Testing me?" Butterfly Lady tossed the gem she was playing with back into the box. "There will definitely be a space blockade near the transaction site. As long as Rongxin brings enough players, wouldn't walking in be like crawling into a trap?"
"Similarly, once those weapons are stored in a warehouse, it's very difficult to get close to them again."
"The only window to strike is from the time they leave the station to when the two sides hand over the goods." Xu Huo picked up her line. "Your map marked a sea station. Rongxin Group has placed a large number of warehouses at the nearest dock, and within a week, a batch of supplies will be shipped in—perhaps the weapons you're after."
Butterfly Lady didn't even look at him. She stood up and headed upstairs.
Her attitude was already clear. The supplies arriving at the dock within a week definitely wouldn't be weapons. The logistics personnel under Rongxin Group's branch hurriedly rearranging the storage room locations was itself a bait.
Just as she stepped onto the stairs, Xu Huo suddenly said, "Want to spar again?"
Butterfly Lady turned on the spot, squinting at him. "You're still full of energy."
Unfolding a spiritual realm to launch a mental attack on an outsider consumes a great deal of energy. She had clashed with Xu Huo with an absolute advantage, so he should have been exhausted. Yet in just one day, he dared to propose a second round.
"Fine." Butterfly Lady raised her right hand, and a golden zipper as tall as the ceiling appeared behind her. As the teeth separated, golden light burst forth, instantly flooding the first floor.
Yesterday, she had entered Xu Huo's spiritual realm. Today, she opened her own spiritual realm and let Xu Huo in.
Xu Huo stood in a vast white space and reached out to touch in front of him. With his movement, a door appeared ahead. He turned the handle and walked through.
The scenery behind the door hadn't changed, but he didn't even frown. He opened seven doors in a row.
Butterfly Lady watched him from nearby. Seeing him act without thinking, she assumed he was just trying his luck. But when he entered the seventh door, she suddenly felt a force invade her spiritual realm.
A massive picture frame appeared before Xu Huo. The thick colors inside the painting churned on their own, spinning like a vortex to form a new portal.
His materialized portal was a door in the conventional sense, while hers was a zipper. And since her book tower contained only books, not paintings, both of them paused when this painting appeared.
Butterfly Lady swung out a zipper to swallow the painting, preventing Xu Huo from entering it. But in the next second, more paintings appeared behind the door he had opened, floating and arranging themselves in the blank space she had created.
Seeing him about to step into one of the paintings, Butterfly Lady used another zipper to swallow it. This time, the painting's position was completely replaced by the zipper, and his portal was overtaken by hers.
"You've opened so many doors. Aren't you afraid I'll find your spiritual materialized object?" Xu Huo looked up slightly at the thing in front of him, which resembled a vertical mouth.
"Try it." A zipper opened and closed twice, spitting out Butterfly Lady's voice.
Xu Huo smiled. He raised his hand and waved, and countless doors and paintings appeared in the space beyond the zippers. He quickly chose the nearest door and walked through, closing it behind him. Facing the endless zippers that reappeared behind the door, he wasn't surprised. He lightly tapped his foot, and layers of stairs grew from the ground, spiraling upward to carry him high into the air.
The spiral staircase was an important symbol in his spiritual realm. Its appearance meant his spiritual power had successfully invaded Butterfly Lady's spiritual realm, just as Butterfly Lady had summoned portals in his book tower. The difference was that Butterfly Lady hadn't exposed her true spiritual realm, while Xu Huo didn't mind showing her a second time.
The appearance of the spiral staircase seemed to tear a hole in Butterfly Lady's spiritual realm. After the white stairs appeared, a milky white liquid covered the original blank space, and the book tower also showed signs of emerging.
Butterfly Lady watched the man being carried higher and higher by the stairs and said in a deep voice, "I just told you not to casually expose your spiritual materialized object. So what if you bring the book tower in? If the materialized object can't be hidden, I can severely wound you with ease!"
Xu Huo didn't respond. Butterfly Lady turned to look under the stairs. Once the book tower formed, the table on the first floor and the things on it should appear. But to her surprise, the book tower had already built five or six floors, yet the central table on the first floor was still nowhere to be seen.
"You're quite clever." Butterfly Lady said with a hint of a smile. "But the book tower is only so big. Where can you hide the materialized object?"
As she spoke, six zippers appeared around her, and her figure suddenly split into six, each stepping into a different zipper to search for Xu Huo's spiritual materialized object within the spiraling book tower.
Xu Huo's book tower was very complex. It itself had a hundred floors, and each floor contained at least ten doors. Behind those doors were overlapping rooms. If you considered the central staircase and the book tower as a complete circle, then countless other circles were wrapped around the outside of this circle. These circles could rotate on their own and were connected through doors, effectively turning the book tower into a massive maze.
Entering the maze was easy, but leaving it was hard. Butterfly Lady had learned that yesterday, but she still walked in without hesitation. The reason was simple: since Xu Huo had unfolded his spiritual realm within hers, he couldn't be too far from his own world. And she didn't need to walk out of the maze—she only needed to break free from his world.
But no matter what, she never expected that in just one day, Xu Huo's spiritual realm had changed again.