Fate Play (2)

As he threw a heavy kick, Lu Mingfei spun around quickly, the zanmadao pressed diagonally against his back in a thrust. It was almost an instinctive reaction born of killing, a response forged through a hundred trials of blood.

The hunting knife in the other man's hand turned for a diagonal cut. The two weapons met, their edges grinding before they snapped apart, sparks flying.

The two of them tangled while half off the ground, avoiding each other's blades. Their legs locked together, and they rolled to the floor. After several grappling exchanges on the ground, Lu Mingfei, unwilling to be locked down, rolled over and drove down with a bent-arm Right Planting Fist, but missed. Cracks spread through the blue bricks of the underground mall. This time, his kick was clearly faster.

His opponent was sent flying. While flipping onto his back, he grabbed the escalator to bleed off the force and vanished into the blue mist.

More than ten seconds later, the black hunting knife in the newcomer's hand flickered in and out of sight amid the blue mist. Having adjusted himself, the enemy prowled around Lu Mingfei without the slightest intention of taking the initiative or leaving.

Both sides were waiting. Lu Mingfei, who had somewhere to be, was undoubtedly the one who could not afford to wait.

"Are you... Mr. Lu?"

The question drifted from the mist, tinged with uncertainty. The voice was unexpectedly calm and gentle.

An acquaintance?

Did acquaintances greet people like this?

Lu Mingfei's pale gold eyes tracked the hunting knife's blade. His dynamic vision far surpassed that of ordinary mixed-bloods, allowing him to occasionally catch its afterimage. His opponent might not have known that.

That hunting knife was an oversized Ontario Cavalry Saber, with an absurdly sharp edge.

He had also caught sight of a strand of blond hair just now.

The hunting knife Dictator?

No, it did not seem to be Caesar's. From this angle, the hunting knife's shape was simply too similar, as though it had come from the same craftsman's hand.

This was a little troublesome.

Lu Mingfei's heart sank slightly, but he grew even calmer. Nearly all his killing techniques had been honed for fighting Deadpools. He had fought mixed-blood elites only a handful of times, and the panel had rated his untrained killing arts at merely "A-." That was his greatest weakness.

His opponent was a bad matchup for him, the kind of technical master he did not like encountering.

During the grappling just now, if his strength and reactions had not surpassed his opponent's, he might already have been dragged into the other man's rhythm. Gen Chisei had used similar techniques when fighting Caesar and Chu Zihang: a practical style combining Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with the Japanese Takenouchi-ryu and Tenshin Shinyō-ryū, pursuing not an unbeatable killing move but victory through changes and variations.

And in such low visibility and open terrain, if he was entangled by jiu-jitsu groundwork, it would be difficult to make use of his physical advantages.

After a brief consideration, Lu Mingfei seized Wrath and sprinted wildly in the direction behind him. At the same time, he released Blood Sickle, and fragments of shattered airflow brought back echoes of the wind.

His opponent hesitated slightly, then held his breath and gave chase after judging the direction. Inevitably, he collided with the wildly flying Blood Sickles and was disrupted by them, while Lu Mingfei had already vanished into the blue mist.

Now, one side had not only lost the other's position, but had also exposed his own location completely.

Lu Mingfei closed in at high speed through the turbulent wind currents and swung a slash that ordinary mixed-bloods would have found impossible to evade, bringing the blade down with all his strength.

"Wait."

His opponent seemed to know quite a bit about Blood Sickle. Dark gold light lit up in eyes that had been hidden beneath golden hair, and in a short span of time, he found a blind spot in the wind trails through the air.

As he leaped backward, he chanted softly.

Word Spirit: Dustless Land.

The user issued commands to all living and nonliving matter within the domain, excluding anything that had not been permitted to enter. Airflow revolved at high speed, forming a huge repulsive force-field barrier around him.

"A nearly instantaneous Word Spirit?" Lu Mingfei's first slash stalled in midair, as though countless invisible hands had seized it. He adjusted his stance slightly, bent low, and delivered a second slash while recalling every Blood Sickle he had sent out.

He had no experience pitting Word Spirits against others. Gritting his teeth, he simply gambled on it.

Pride erupted with the luster an alchemical blade ought to possess, its body vibrating rapidly.

This alchemical weapon had been born to kill pure-blooded dragons. In theory, no matter how strong a mixed-blood was, it should not have had any interest in killing one. When fighting mixed-bloods, the living spirit within an alchemical weapon usually withheld its effort, greatly reducing its effectiveness, and its suppressive power against mixed-bloods was not obvious.

But that depended on who held the blade. Pride, in Lu Mingfei's hand, was always eager to prove itself.

The alchemical patterns connected and lit up as Pride was rapidly activated.

All the wind blades converged on a single point. The dead Kamaitachi swarm frenziedly tore at that point, piercing through Dustless Land with overwhelming force.

The blond man had no choice but to raise the black hunting knife high. The two alchemical weapons collided at a precise angle, and after a thunderous boom, the difference between them was immediately clear.

"Don't get too worked up right now. We still have a boss to fight later."

Lu Mingfei softly restrained Pride from fully awakening, but he had no intention of withdrawing his blade. In exactly the same stance and along exactly the same path, he delivered a third slash, striking the same point on the black hunting knife.

Pride obediently dimmed, choosing not to consume too much of its master's stamina.

Then came the fourth slash, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth... With every blow, the black hunting knife shuddered violently, and the blond man staggered back several steps.

The seamless chain of afterimage slashes left no room to breathe. Often, before the sparks from the previous strike had faded, fresh sparks burst forth. In the end, the sparks became dense as a woven net.

Thirteen Consecutive Slashes, the most solid and unadorned downward-slashing technique, could jokingly be called the New Year Blade Technique, or more commonly, Violent Tree-Chopping. If one shouted, "Happy New Year, big brother and sister-in-law!" while using it, it would probably prove exceptionally effective against enemies.

The same angle, the same motion, repeated in consecutive slashes: overwhelming the enemy with momentum and forcing him with strength, compelling him to meet blades and seeing whose strength ran dry first. The more consecutive swings there were, the stronger it became. Legend said that a swordsmanship master in history could strike thirteen times in succession, concentrating the force of thirteen blows upon the same spot on his opponent's weapon in an instant, ultimately cutting the opponent's blade in two. Thus, it was also called Thirteen Consecutive Blade-Breaking Flashes.

Lu Mingfei, one of the finest among mixed-bloods, could naturally perform far more than thirteen consecutive slashes. Once he found the rhythm, even five or six hundred in a row would not be a problem.

This was the pursuit technique he had learned from Chu Zihang and used most often. It was also the only slashing technique he himself could wield with complete ease. Supposedly, everyone at the city youth center knew how to use it, and it was famed for its plain, brutal power.

In his view, this move was far stronger than those flashy, difficult-to-grasp techniques he had learned from Gen Chisei and Caesar.

"Cough—" Suppressed by the succession of heavy blows, the blond man blocked and retreated with difficulty. At the seventeenth clash of blades, the bones in his left hand finally cracked from the vibrations, and the hunting knife Augustus flew from his grasp.

He chanted softly, trying to use his Word Spirit again, but the eighteenth heavy strike came immediately after.

Even an instantaneous cast could not ignore a zanmadao practically in one's face.

The blond man was slammed into the wall by the impact, shattering an advertisement featuring a glamorous female celebrity. The fluorescent tubes burst, and shattered screen glass scattered across the floor.

The Dustless Land he had mastered to perfection was ultimately activated again. This time, the Word Spirit's range was clearly smaller than before, but its defense was more concentrated, protecting the parts of his body that should have been cut.