Chapter 801: One Day You Will Die Before Me
(To be revised later) Of course, not all xenomorphs were particularly sensitive to scent, but this amount of time was already enough to cancel out most of the item's effect duration. Coupled with the "progress bar disappearing," after forcing back the first wave of xenomorphs, Xu Huo regained his mobility. He carved a bloody path through the clustered monsters and returned to the central intersection of the gallery, but Jiang Jiang was no longer there. The moment he stepped into it, the eight corridors began to warp and spin!
For the first time, Xu Huo experienced the downside of having too sharp eyesight. In just a few seconds, he was significantly affected, even feeling dizzy, unable to look directly at his surroundings. He simply closed his eyes.
Sensing the environment around him, he turned and stepped into one of the corridors.
After cutting down a few xenomorphs that lunged at him, he suddenly felt a strange force appear right in front of him. He instinctively dodged to the side, but a sharp claw tore open his left shoulder!
Xu Huo snapped his eyes open and saw a xenomorph standing directly before him. He swung his blade horizontally and severed it. The corpse that fell to the ground retained the form of a wild beast, but what spilled out from its belly were entirely plants and flowers.
"It seems not all the xenomorphs in these paintings are real."
At that moment, the corridor changed. The original wall coverings were replaced by black-and-white checkered patterns. The entire hallway was obscured by a giant snow screen, and the path ahead and behind completely vanished, leaving only endless darkness.
Xu Huo opened a door in the wall. Stepping out, he found himself standing at a high vantage point. He jumped down and landed back in the gallery, but this was no longer the same gallery as before. Turning back, the place he had jumped from was merely a painting flickering like a snow screen.
In other words, he had come out of a painting.
Switching to the "Crimson Sword," Xu Huo opened a second door, but again emerged from a painting. This time, the painting depicted a wall with a black-and-white checkered painting hanging on it.
Pushing open the third door, the painting's content added the previous scene on top of the original.
It was like a painting that could be infinitely magnified—this gallery and the paintings were trapped in an endless loop.
It was as if it were telling the trapped person that every time they found an exit, the predicament would only deepen.
However, Xu Huo only stood still for two seconds before continuing to open doors. He didn't stop until he had opened over a dozen doors—not because he had found an exit or Jiang Jiang, but because a black picture frame appeared before him.
His spiritual world also contained a picture frame symbol. Clearly, the Octagonal Flower Gallery was not an ordinary location item; it also had spiritual interference. Xu Huo, trapped inside, would inevitably be suppressed. Opening his own spiritual world would not be easy, let alone materializing it.
But having found the picture frame, he had already succeeded.
Raising his hand, a door appeared before Xu Huo. He pushed it open and walked down a moving spiral staircase. Before long, Jiang Jiang's figure appeared on the stairs.
Seeing him, Jiang Jiang couldn't hide her surprise. "I didn't expect you to have undergone Super Evolution!"
The staircase was constantly moving. Xu Huo seemed to be descending, yet also seemed not to have moved at all. But the staircase delivered him right in front of Jiang Jiang. He raised his hand, and the two of them were transported from the stairs into the library tower.
Looking up, the seemingly endless library tower was vast beyond imagination. Jiang Jiang swept her gaze over it, and a look of astonishment appeared in her eyes. Then, she drew a semi-transparent picture frame in the air and stepped into it.
Unfortunately, the next second, she emerged from the opposite side of the same floor in the library tower.
From a distance, Xu Huo waved at her.
Jiang Jiang tried again but still failed. She seemed to want to summon the Octagonal Gallery again, but the location item couldn't break through this spiritual world. Or rather, the item had already been deployed, but she was trapped and cut off from the outside.
Spotting the round table at the bottom, she quickly jumped down and swung her pen to strike the materialized object on the table. However, the item didn't destroy the materialized object as intended. Instead, the black thin sheet on the table rapidly liquefied, instantly wrapping around her hand and pulling her entire body toward the table.
Jiang Jiang was definitely not Xu Huo's equal in terms of spiritual evolution, so she couldn't handle things with the same ease as Bai Kou had back then. Panicking for a moment, she slapped her waist, and a visible shockwave burst out. Not only did it repel the black substance enveloping her, but it also created chaotic, pixel-like craters inside the library tower!
Although it recovered the next second, Xu Huo inevitably took the impact. He gripped the railing as blood trickled from his nose.
"Opening the door is indeed risky." Wiping away the blood, he concealed the round table and used the staircase to send Jiang Jiang up, tossing her into one of the rooms in the library tower.
Every floor of the library tower was a large ring enclosing smaller rings, layer upon layer. It wasn't the core of the entire spiritual world. Even if she started demolishing things inside, the impact on Xu Huo wouldn't be too severe. But before their next conversation, it was best to wear down her energy first.
*
Jiang Jiang was indeed trapped.
She used every item she could, but only a couple could open a spiritual world. The problem was that she herself was affected. She seemed to be destroying the library tower, but she might not be facing the real spiritual world at all. Or perhaps she thought she was using items, but she actually wasn't.
Under the influence of spiritual interference, players sometimes couldn't distinguish between reality and illusion.
Jiang Jiang knew a bit about this as well, so she understood that the longer this went on, the more disadvantageous it would be for her. Thus, she used a second item specifically designed to counter spiritual power.
The room did collapse, but it quickly reassembled, giving her no chance to escape.
The facts were clear: either Xu Huo's spiritual world was larger than she had imagined, or his spiritual Super Evolution far surpassed mental evolvers of the same level.
Neither scenario was good news for Jiang Jiang.
In fact, she had known about Xu Huo earlier than he realized. Although she had never seen him before and didn't know his name or identity, she had vaguely seen his figure when she first started predicting death.
As she had said, her death paintings were scenes she saw using her trait. Once seen, they couldn't be changed. The time of death might shift, but the manner of death would not. She had predicted her own death scene more than once, and after confirming that the location was District 009, she still chose to stay here.
It wasn't until before District 009 merged that she fully saw her death scene: dying in a gallery, standing beside a handsome man—the Xu Huo she had seen at the hotel earlier, not this ugly face now.
Jiang Jiang was waiting for death, but she wouldn't actively seek it out. She was a C-level player, and based on Xu Huo's evolution rate, he was at most D-level. From their previous encounter, he was a combat-type player, stronger than players of the same level, but not outrageously so. As long as the gallery could be opened, her chances of winning were over half...
That should have been the case. But who would have thought that a combat-type player would achieve Super Evolution in the spiritual aspect, perfectly countering her, and even rendering such a good item as the gallery nearly useless.