Players, Please Board the Train

Regardless of whether they had emerged from Origin Stones, the changes remaining on these ores were worth observing.

Xu Huo kept his mental space confined to the area around himself and began selecting ores.

“Are those stones useful?” Ding Wei and Zhao Jiahuai came over to take a look too. They had traded ores before and had a basic understanding of their quality. Zhao Jiahuai even took out a detection tool, but after testing several pieces, he lost interest.

Seeing that Xu Huo had no intention of leaving just yet, Shangguan Xi and the others simply rested where they were and had something to eat.

“Little brother, did you know Brother Xu before?” Zhao Jiahuai asked Shangguan Xi.

Shangguan Xi gave him a lazy glance. “What do you mean, Little Brother Xu? Brother Xu is forty.”

“You can’t tell.” Zhao Jiahuai looked back and forth between him and Xu Huo with suspicion. “Brother Xu doesn’t seem like a player who just reached C-grade.”

“Geniuses are naturally different from ordinary people.” Shangguan Xi patted his shoulder, his tone carrying a hint of smugness. “Don’t be discouraged. Maybe by the time you’re forty, you’ll be able to reach this level too.”

Zhao Jiahuai really had no idea how to respond. He pushed Shangguan Xi’s hand away and simply sat a little farther off.

“He’s an idiot. Why bother talking to him?” Because of their earlier clash, Ding Wei had taken no shortage of verbal abuse from Shangguan Xi along the way. “It’s honestly impressive how a grown man can talk so much.”

Shangguan Xi stuffed the bread into his mouth in a few bites, then fired back without missing a beat. “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re being sexist!”

Ding Wei forced a smile. “I’m complimenting you. Whether it’s a man or a woman, nobody likes a chatterbox.”

“Only because I’m doing it for Brother Xu’s sake.” Shangguan Xi spotted a car approaching in the distance and immediately ended the conversation as he stood up. Ding Wei and the others also moved beside the car.

Xu Huo walked out from deep in the Gobi desert and watched the car approach from afar.

From the front, the driver was a man with a face full of stubble. A bald man sat in the passenger seat, with two more people in the back.

As the car drew near, it deliberately veered away from Shangguan Xi and the others. The rear door was open, and laughter from a man and a woman came from inside. They waved. “You’re heading to W19 too? We’re going the same way!”

Everyone seemed to be in high spirits. They even drove around Shangguan Xi and the others once before continuing on. As they passed Xu Huo, the female player took the panda lollipop from her mouth and whistled at him. “Hey, handsome, want to come along…”

Before she could finish, the man standing by the roadside flashed forward and slammed into the front of the car. The entire vehicle lurched forward under the impact. As the Eye of the Dead swept out from the driver’s seat, the bald man in the passenger seat and the couple in the back were all thrown out of the car!

The sun glinted off the Long Sword as it swept through the air, trailing a spray of blood. Before it even hit the ground, the man from the car had teleported in front of the bald man. The lightning-fast blade crashed against a Metal Shield with a resounding boom, and the two sides immediately sprang apart. In less than a second, they clashed twice more. But when the bald man charged forward a third time, Xu Huo passed through space, slipping past him and appearing in front of the couple behind him!

“We’ve been waiting for you!” the female player shouted. The bracelet on her wrist sprayed out a large amount of molten metal. It wasn’t very hot, but it hung in the air as if it were alive, then swiftly swarmed toward Xu Huo. The moment the liquid touched a person, it solidified. In the blink of an eye, one of his arms was locked in place!

Unfortunately, the molten metal immediately turned to dust. Mobile Metal blocked three attacks from the female player’s items, while Like Repels Like sent the male player, who was closing in at the same time, flying several meters back. Just as the female player used an item against Xu Huo, he vanished from where he stood and appeared behind the retreating man. He used his sword to forcibly break through the man’s defensive shield, then tore through the spatial barrier he had opened with his bare hands and seized him by the throat!

The fifty-square-meter laser barrier created by This Road Is Blocked instantly stopped the female player and the bald man as they rushed after him. Once the light faded, the two vaulted over it from above, but Xu Huo was already gone. Only the male player’s corpse remained on the ground.

“He has an invisibility item!” the bald man shouted as he hurriedly retreated, throwing a black ball onto the ground. “Where there’s light, there’s shadow!”

The instant the black ball appeared, the sky became blindingly bright, while the ground grew somewhat dimmer. Under the stark contrast between light and shadow, tiny silhouettes that were hard to notice were rapidly magnified. The bald man’s eyes darted around, searching for Xu Huo, who had blended into his surroundings, but a long shadow with no one attached to it appeared behind him!

“He’s behind you!”

Almost as soon as the female player shouted, the bald man sensed someone behind him. The two acted in perfect sequence. First, the bald man threw a transparent glass ball. Light poured from it like a thin membrane, spreading across a five-meter radius to form a sizable sphere. Xu Huo, wearing a transparent Protective Suit, appeared as a silhouette beneath the light, moving somewhat sluggishly. The bald man then took out a lottery ticket. “Here, have a lottery ticket!”

But neither item worked. Xu Huo didn’t engage the bald man head-on, nor did he linger inside the sphere. With a single wave of his hand, he easily went up and out.

“Spatial restriction items don’t work on him!” The female player pushed off the ground and shot into the air, but she wasn’t trying to intercept Xu Huo. Instead, she called in his direction, “Day doesn’t understand the darkness of night!”

The instant the words left her mouth, the surrounding space turned pitch-black.

The bald man shouted at her, “What’s wrong with you?”

“It wasn’t me! My characteristic can only target one person!”

But now both of them were trapped in endless darkness.

“It’s an illusion!” The bald man took out a Square Box. As soon as he opened it, a white bird made of condensed light flew out. It immediately headed off in one direction, and the bald man and the female player hurried after it. Two seconds later, the bird crashed into an invisible wall and was sliced in half!

The two quickly backed away. The bald man hastily threw out an Arch. Once the location item opened, it seemed to push back the darkness a little. The area affected by the mental interference couldn’t cover the entire item’s range, so the two easily spotted its left corner in the light.

The bald man tossed out a storm item to clear the area first, then headed over. But halfway there, he suddenly stopped. His body blurred into a double image, but less than a second later, the image was torn in half by invisible knives and swords!

Realizing it was a trap, the bald man immediately recalled the item. He raised his hand, and an item shaped like a wheel appeared beside him. He bent down and crawled into it. The wheel, bristling with sharp spikes, began to spin at high speed and shot forward in an instant!

Seeing this, the female player ran in the opposite direction and made a door-opening gesture. “Light, guide my way forward!”

One of them was using an item that served as both defense and offense to smash straight ahead, hoping to charge directly out of the mental interference zone. The other was using her characteristic to open a path of light through the darkness. Both methods could counter mental interference, but the bald man was clearly out of luck.

Xu Huo had chosen him.

The 101 Emergency Shelter blocked his path. The wheel rebounded, and as it fell back, Balloon String pinned it in place. But before it could rise into the air, the bald man recalled the item and emerged, then took out a kaleidoscope and twisted it. The surrounding space instantly filled with brightly colored patterns. The patterns had no physical form, but as they spun, they created a disorienting visual distortion.

Xu Huo closed his eyes, caught up to the man, and quickly finished him off. Then he stepped through space and caught up with the female player, who had already run out of his mental space.