Chapter 12: This Game Is Going To Blow Up
“Amazing! He really is worthy of being called a master of the heavy spear!”
“The White Feather Gang guys weren’t lying!”
Hou Fei, whose body was over three meters tall, could not help but burst into loud laughter. Though the hands gripping his sabre were trembling violently, and his body had taken significant internal injuries from the impact of weapon clashes, his gaze toward Qin Mu was burning hot.
“I have one last move left in the Wind Slicing Blade, Windless. If you can take this move, I will admit defeat!”
As Hou Fei spoke, many on the Crystal Race’s side revealed expressions of surprise.
“Is Hou Fei going all out? Once he uses that move, he’ll be bedridden for two or three days.”
“Is that human really that strong? I remember with that Windless move, Hou Fei could fight a Quasi-Martial Artist head-on in the wilderness without falling behind at all.”
“Anyone who can earn a title in the wilderness is indeed not simple. But to force Hou Fei to use this desperate move, he really wouldn’t be losing unjustly!”
The Crystal Race crowd looked at Hou Fei, who had already assumed his blade stance, muscles swelling all over his body and gradually turning dark red. One by one, they turned to look at Qin Mu, who stood less than ten meters away.
Qin Mu’s condition at this moment was no better than Hou Fei’s. His hands trembled, his qi and blood surged all over, and his muscles burned with pain, clearly showing that taking the hits head-on had left him in bad shape.
On the human side, everyone’s gaze on Qin Mu was tense. Some even wished they could rush up to replace Qin Mu and block Hou Fei’s final strike for him.
While the human vagrants were nervous and uneasy, Fang Zhen and Wu Shang, watching from the back row, had expressions that were unusually calm beyond their initial shock.
“That NPC aside from having strong physical fitness, doesn’t seem that great.” Fang Zhen looked at Hou Fei, who was about to unleash his final strike, and said with slight disappointment, “Each strike is so fast you can’t see it clearly, but if you watch enough, you can tell every slash has a very fixed attack position. The attack pattern this manufacturer designed for the NPC is really a bit monotonous.”
“Indeed, it is fast, but every time the attack targets the neck. Against someone weaker, he can quickly end the battle.” Wu Shang nodded and commented, “But if he meets someone about the same level, or stronger, this becomes too easy to block, and the attack range is too fixed. The maximum attack radius is about 2 meters, and it’s not concealed at all. Once the enemy retreats to 2 meters away, that Crystal Race NPC can only be dumbfounded. This game really is still in the internal test stage; the NPC’s combat intelligence is still a bit low.”
The whispers of Fang Zhen and Wu Shang left Lin Qi, watching nearby, utterly stunned.
“Who on earth are these two?”
Lin Qi glanced at the two who were clearly disappointed in the NPC Hou Fei, and for a moment did not know what to say. He had watched for a long time without finding Hou Fei’s weakness, yet they had spotted a pile of issues in mere moments. Their observational skills were outrageous.
At the center of the street.
“The final move?” Qin Mu watched as Hou Fei took step after step forward, gripping the sabre on his back with one hand while constantly gathering power. After taking a deep breath, Qin Mu stomped his foot, clenched his spear with both hands again, and shouted loudly, “Come on!”
“Good!”
Hou Fei looked at the fully prepared Qin Mu and could not help but laugh. He suddenly stomped, his lunge shooting forward like an arrow, rushing straight to Qin Mu’s front. At that same instant, the hand holding the sabre slashed down.
Windless!
In that instant, it was as if even the wind stopped. There was no sound at all, only a black shadow lunging straight toward Qin Mu. Its speed made everyone present gasp in shock.
Supersonic!
This was a strike that truly surpassed the speed of sound; the sound was left far behind the blade!
“So fast!” Lin Qi’s expression darkened at the sight of this strike. He immediately shouted a warning to Qin Mu, “Maintain a distance of 4 meters from him!”
A slash that completely surpassed the speed of sound was not just fast. After all, kinetic energy depended on the mass and speed of the object; the faster it was, the greater its power.
This strike should have exceeded Hou Fei’s limits in all aspects.
To be safe, Lin Qi decided to increase the maximum attack distance by ten percent.
“4 meters?”
At that moment, Qin Mu also heard Lin Qi’s reminder from afar. Without doubting it, he advanced instead of retreating against Hou Fei.
He stepped forward directly, planting his foot at the extreme limit of Hou Fei’s 4-meter attack zone. His foot halted and turned, his whole body pivoted sideways, and his neck brushed past the black shadow of the blade, as he stepped to Hou Fei’s side.
“You!”
“Microscopic… already?”
Hou Fei’s eyes went wide as he stared fixedly at Qin Mu standing beside him. He could only watch helplessly as Qin Mu’s spear swung along with his movement, slamming directly into the armor at his side waist.
Bang!
Hou Fei’s body, over three meters tall, was sent flying more than ten meters away and crashed heavily to the ground.
This scene also made Fang Zhen and Wu Shang, who had been discussing Hou Fei earlier, simultaneously turn to look at Lin Qi, their eyes filled with nothing but shock.
“Damn! So this is our hall master’s strength?” Fang Zhen stared at Lin Qi in front of him, at a loss for words beyond amazement. “Exactly 4 meters, not off by a bit. That prediction is terrifying.”
“Is this the true strength of the NPC who controls permissions over us players?” Wu Shang’s gaze on Lin Qi was full of astonishment and shock as well. From the earlier battle, she had been very sure of Hou Fei’s maximum attack distance. It should not have been any farther, yet Lin Qi had judged it even more accurately than she had.
You had to know that in Pilgrimage, she was one of the rare geniuses. In terms of combat intuition, she could rank in the top three of the entire Pilgrimage.
Yet now she had been surpassed by an NPC. It was simply unbelievable.
For a moment, both Fang Zhen and Wu Shang felt that the hall master arranged by the game manufacturer was far from being as simple as they had imagined.
“Won?”
“Brother Qin won!”
The humans watched Hou Fei lying on the ground and could hardly believe it was real.
“The Microscopic Realm?”
Lin Qi looked at the unscathed Qin Mu, his heart filled with shock so strong he even forgot the joy of victory.
In the high martial arts world, control over one’s body was divided into three levels: basic, proficient, and microscopic. Generally, only martial artists could reach the microscopic level.
Anyone who reached this level could control their body as precisely as a robot, using the attack distances of both sides to the fullest to make the best counterattacks and responses.
For Qin Mu to brush past the blade and dodge Hou Fei’s attack so precisely under the Windless strike, it would have been impossible without reaching the Microscopic Realm.
On another street, Hou Fei slowly stood up, his expression tinged with dejection.
“I lost. We will leave here as agreed.” After taking a deep breath, Hou Fei glanced in the direction from which the reminder had come, then looked at Qin Mu with deep emotion and said, “I really didn’t expect that among you humans, besides you there are other experts. But to lose to a Microscopic master like you, I have no complaints. It’s just that someone like you hasn’t considered joining the martial arts halls in the city to strive for the Martial Artist Realm, and instead is willing to stay in a place like this. Our luck is really terrible.”
“Don’t underestimate the abandoned area on our human side. I am not the only expert here.” Qin Mu also glanced at Lin Qi within the crowd behind and nodded to express his thanks. He had already remembered Lin Qi’s voice earlier, but he had not expected that this kid living in a rundown martial arts hall was actually a hidden master who could see through Hou Fei’s maximum attack distance with perfect accuracy.
After greeting Lin Qi, Qin Mu turned back to Hou Fei and said firmly, “As for your doubts, I’ve lived here since I was a child and I am used to life here. If I joined those martial arts halls, I would not be as free as I am now. Besides, someone has to stay in this place, just like those people back then.”
Hou Fei had no rebuttal to that.
“What are you planning to do next?” Qin Mu asked curiously. “With your skills, it wouldn’t be hard to join those martial arts halls.”
“Me?” Hou Fei could not help but smile. “Of course I’m going with everyone to look for the next area we can live in. After all, like you, I’m used to freedom.”
“Then I wish you good luck.” Qin Mu watched Hou Fei leave, then turned and went back to his residence.
After Qin Mu won this wagered duel, the vagrants living in this area burst into celebratory cheers. Many unregistered nomads even went specially to the outskirts of the city to purchase large amounts of food and alcoholic beverages they usually could not bear to buy, to taste and celebrate together with Qin Mu for his victory.
Night, Obsidian Martial Arts Hall.
“Good thing we had Brother Qin this time, or I would have had to leave this place.” Looking at the map of faction distribution in the abandoned area laid out on the table, Lin Qi felt an urgent desire to improve his strength. “Among the many races in the abandoned area, the Crystal Race doesn’t even rank, and this time, because of the influence from the Half-Scale Race, some powerful races left their original living areas.”
“I must improve my strength as soon as possible. Otherwise, the next time the defenses fall, I will have no choice but to obediently leave this martial arts hall.”
Lin Qi then set two directions for becoming stronger.
The first was to thoroughly search the martial arts hall again to see if he could find more cultivation methods and martial skills for players to learn and improve.
The second was that he needed to think carefully about how to assess and select genius players. After all, he only had seven quotas left, but the number of reservations had exceeded ten thousand, and in the short term it would be difficult for him to complete the martial arts hall repair task. He would have to conduct strict selection.
Blue Star, Huxin City, Tianya Pavilion High-end Residential Area.
In a bedroom as luxurious as a palace, a woman in a white T-shirt and jeans with shoulder-length hair, brows full of anxiety, quickly stepped out of a virtual game pod.
This woman was none other than Luo Wu Shang, the famed vice president of the Heavenly Might Guild in Pilgrimage.
“Qing Wei, has the president logged off?” Luo Wu Shang opened a call to the president’s secretary, her voice full of excitement.
“Miss Luo, my great Vice President Luo! Do you know what time it is now, in the middle of the night? You’re being harsher than a work mule.” The female secretary named Qing Wei yawned and complained, “The president has not logged off yet. Right now he is probably in a meeting with the senior officials of several guilds. He likely won’t be free until early tomorrow.”
“So late?” Luo Wu Shang’s brows knit slightly as she said directly, “I need to contact the president now. I have found a new game that can replace Pilgrimage!”
“A new game to replace Pilgrimage?” The secretary Qing Wei woke up a bit more and said with a smile, “I didn’t expect you to be so capable, Miss Luo, finding a replacement for Pilgrimage so quickly.”
“But quite a few people in the guild have also found some impressive new games lately. If you want to make a recommendation, I have a form here. Describe in detail the potential of this new game, and I’ll submit it to the president and the others for review at tomorrow morning’s meeting.”
“The potential? Describe in detail?” Luo Wu Shang thought of the battle scenes and said excitedly, “All I can say is that this game is going to explode. It will completely reshuffle the virtual game world!”
