It took her a moment to come around. With a sullen look, she spat out the blood still in her mouth. "Ptooey... You could've said so sooner. So you're one of us, too... What, have you set your sights on my livelihood?"
Chen Xuan didn't answer. He lifted his leg and kicked toward her face. Thanks to the Mind Method, he could now easily pull off the "gymnastic" moves that had once been beyond him.
"I invoke—Coin Toss!" Fei Wuniang shouted at the same time.
Tick.
The light around Chen Xuan instantly dimmed. His kick felt like it had struck a wad of cotton. Though his foot had touched her face, he felt no impact at all.
Fei Wuniang wore a triumphant smile as she slowly stood up. "It's no use. From this moment on, you won't be able to touch me at all. Come on, let's have a little wager!"
Chen Xuan pulled back his leg and tried to grab her, but no matter what he did, it was as if he were pinned in place. He couldn't move more than a few inches from where he stood.
He could still control his body, but some force had cut him off from the world around him. Chen Xuan realized the dim light was the same. It wasn't that the sky had darkened; light from the outside could no longer reflect into his eyes.
At the same time, three enormous hands and an eye appeared between them, each about half a person tall. They were pale blue all over, solid yet seemingly made of gas.
"What is the wager?" a voice asked from beyond.
"The loser forfeits all their abilities! Best of three!" Fei Wuniang cried, exhilarated.
"Then... the two parties are bound by the wager." The eye turned toward Chen Xuan, and a bolt of lightning pierced his forehead.
In an instant, Chen Xuan learned all the rules of the ability. The hands would toss three coins: heads represented a snake's head, tails its tail. If one side appeared more than twice, that side won the round. For example, heads-heads-tails counted as heads, and vice versa. The three hands would open one after another. Either participant could call their guess in advance or wait until they were sure, but each could only guess once. The first to call the correct answer won.
Once the game began, it couldn't be ended early or disrupted by outside forces. Its rules were absolute.
"She used that move," Chen Xuan murmured.
"You've already fought her?" Lin Qing asked, relieved. "Good... Fei Wuniang thinks that as soon as she uses this ability, she's guaranteed to win."
"What are you muttering about?" Fei Wuniang asked, narrowing her eyes.
"What kind of ability is this?" Though he already knew, Chen Xuan still had to play along and act a little surprised.
"Didn't it already tell you?" She pointed at the eye. "Anyone I touch can't refuse a wager I propose. Your biggest mistake was slapping me in the face! You're too late to regret it now, boy. Once I've stripped you of your abilities, I'll crush your bones one by one!"
Her confidence wasn't unfounded.
Chen Xuan already knew this ability existed, and he also knew its rules weren't as "fair" as they seemed. The hands actually held four coins, one of which was a cheat coin. The dealer could decide whether it landed heads or tails. In other words, once Fei Wuniang used that coin, the outcome was no longer left to chance.
That was why, despite Fei Wuniang's lack of combat prowess, the Dimensional Limit Organization had rated her a six-star threat.
Lin Qing suspected that the team sent to capture her had lost more than one member to her.
As they spoke, the coins for the first round were already in the air—
Each coin was nearly as large as a person's palm, making them quite conspicuous as they spun through the air.
Smack!
The three hands swung out together and caught the coins in their palms before they hit the ground.
"Well, now... heads or tails?" Fei Wuniang grinned, blood still on her lips. "Don't rush. I'll let you guess first."
"Heads." Chen Xuan made his call before the first hand even opened.
"You..." His opponent paused, then sneered. "You're calling without even thinking? What, are you feeling lucky?"
"I've always trusted myself."
"Fine, then I'll guess tails."
The first hand opened. Tails.
But when the second and third hands opened in turn, both showed heads.
"Nice. Looks like my luck really is pretty good today," Chen Xuan said, pretending to be pleased.
A hint of scorn flashed through Fei Wuniang's eyes. "Boy, that was only the first round. I'm guessing... your eyes are especially sharp, right? You even saw my sneak attack just now."
"..." Chen Xuan said nothing.
He really had activated the Divine Eye Technique the moment the coins were tossed. Until the hands closed around them, he could see exactly which way all three coins faced.
"Just as I thought... I've run into one or two people like you." She raised a hand and pointed. "How about this?"
Three more hands appeared beside the original three. The moment the coins were tossed, the additional hands blocked their entire path as they fell!
"Your little trick won't work now, will it?" Fei Wuniang grew more excited. "Guess!"
This time, Chen Xuan didn't call his guess right away.
They both waited for the hands to open.
The first hand turned over: snake head.
Chen Xuan immediately called, "Heads!"
Under normal circumstances, this gave him the best chance of winning. He only needed one of the next two coins to show heads.
For an instant, he caught a glimpse of Fei Wuniang's eerie smile from the corner of his eye. She seemed to be enjoying the sight of him walking step by step toward his doom.
The second hand slowly opened. Snake tail.
Only then did Fei Wuniang shriek, "I guess tails!"
The third coin was indeed tails. Tails-tails-heads meant snake tail won.
"Hehehehe! That makes it one to one!" She licked her lips. "I wonder if you'll cry and beg me when you lose all your abilities. I've met plenty of people far stronger than I am. Their abilities were like their backbones: the stronger they acted before, the more pathetic they became once those abilities were taken away! They'd rather kneel and lick my toes than die like stray dogs."
"So this is how you treat the losers? Isn't that a little inhuman?"
"Inhuman?" She looked as if she'd just heard the funniest joke in the world. "Aren't people without abilities just livestock, there for anyone to slaughter? What, are you some rookie who only got his abilities recently?"
Fei Wuniang no longer bothered to hide her anticipation of tormenting him. "How about this? I'll give you a handicap and use only one hand this time. Keep your eyes open and watch closely!"
With that, she withdrew the three extra hands.
The coins for the final round were tossed at that very moment.
Chen Xuan saw everything clearly with the Divine Eye Method. As the hands closed, the coins showed tails, heads, tails.
He stopped pretending and called, "Tails."
"Then I'll pick heads." Fei Wuniang looked at him as if he were already dead. "I'll make sure to take good care of you afterward."
The first two hands opened normally, just as he'd seen. Just before the third hand opened, Chen Xuan suddenly said, "That one's the cheat coin, isn't it?"
Fei Wuniang's expression changed. "What?"
"You lost." He revealed the answer at once.
The hand opened, and the coin was indeed tails. It trembled slightly, as if trying to flip over, but it couldn't move. A miniature Thousand Thoughts Sword had been driven through its center, pinning it in place like a nail.
Chen Xuan had started by fighting her hand to hand instead of summoning the Thousand Thoughts Sword because he needed to meet the conditions and force Fei Wuniang to use Coin Toss as quickly as possible. That was the plan he and Lin Qing had agreed on: rather than beat her half to death and force her to hand over her abilities, they'd get her to put all of them on the table herself. After all, the moment Fei Wuniang showed up, the Dimensional Limit Organization's capture team had already been heading this way.
"What is..." She tried to step forward and pull out the sword, unable to believe what she was seeing, but the wager wouldn't let her move. "You cheated!"
"Right back at you," Chen Xuan said with a shrug.
The plan wasn't foolproof. If Fei Wuniang had used only regular coin tosses from the start, leaving everything to chance, things would have become quite difficult. But Lin Qing had estimated that the odds of that were under one percent. From the recorded cases, Fei Wuniang wasn't after the thrill of gambling. She enjoyed playing people like puppets and taking everything they had.
The three hands disappeared.
Only the eye remained. Through it, Chen Xuan seemed to glimpse an inscrutable darkness. The next second, he felt a force surge toward him and cram itself into his body—that was all of Fei Wuniang's abilities!
But the woman who had proposed the wager let out a cry of pain.
Her body shriveled. Her skin lost its luster, and her cheeks sank in. She looked nothing like the alluring Fei Wuniang she'd been before.
A mere transfer of abilities wouldn't cause side effects this severe.
Chen Xuan realized that some other things had been bound up with the abilities stripped from her... Without them, her life could no longer sustain itself.
"No... They're mine. Give... them back..."
Fei Wuniang struggled forward a couple of steps and reached out to him... It was the last thing she could do.
"Leave now. Don't let the Dimensional Limit Organization find out you're here," Lin Qing warned him through his earpiece.
Chen Xuan waited another two minutes. Only after confirming she had taken her last breath did he turn and leave the abandoned room.
Before you continue