"Dogshit, I could tell at a glance you weren't human!" Xu Xiaoshou was so startled by Water Ghost's kick that his soul nearly jumped out of his body.
Fortunately, he never trusted strangers.
Having spent all day deceiving people, he had inadvertently maxed out his anti-fraud skills as well. With his vigilance kicking in early, he ducked low with a sudden shift of his body, barely dodging the kick like an instinctive stress response.
"You dodged that too?"
Water Ghost froze. He truly had not expected Xu Xiaoshou, who had appeared to have completely lowered his guard and had even talked back, to still harbor such a degree of vigilance.
His kick shattered the afterimage Xu Xiaoshou had hastily pulled out in response, but as the fellow rapidly retreated, the emotion undisguisedly written across his face was... not a counterattack, but the urge to flee! Without question, Xu Xiaoshou's strongest means of escape was that mysterious "Vanishing Art."
This fellow was going invisible again!
"Freeze!"
Having failed in one strike, Water Ghost formed a hand seal with his left hand and directly stirred the moisture within the young man's body.
With a hum, Xu Xiaoshou's head spun. He felt his body abruptly slip from his control, trembling violently beyond all restraint.
It felt as though more than one kettle of boiling water had been poured into him, making him unbearably miserable.
At the same time, the thought of activating the Vanishing Art that had instinctively risen in his mind was forcibly interrupted.
"Ambushed, Passive Value, +1."
The information bar flickered again.
It seemed that even at such close range, Water Ghost's attacks moved too quickly for Xu Xiaoshou at his current realm to react to. Every attack was judged by the system as an ambush.
"Not a bad reaction, but