Chapter 117: Someone Wants to See You
Chapter 117: Someone Wants to See You
The chaotic street brawl sent pedestrians screaming and scrambling for cover.
Then again, this was just a typical day in the South District.
Life in the South District was inextricably linked to the gangs.
With gangs of all sizes constantly at each other's throats, a turf war today and a retaliation tomorrow was simply par for the course.
A withered, sallow old woman lay curled up on the street, seemingly doing her best to avoid the commotion.
Her evasion became even more cautious when three Intern Holy Knights appeared ahead; she froze, absolutely terrified to twitch a single muscle.
Only when the holy knights charged at a man with an inverted pentagram on his chest did the old woman begin to quietly crawl away, slinking toward a nearby side alley.
After putting some distance between herself and the fray, the old woman immediately used a puddle of murky street water as a mirror to check her disguise.
She paid special attention to her face and hands.
Satisfied that there were no flaws, she scrambled to her feet and hurried off in the opposite direction.However, after covering a short distance, the old woman spotted a figure blocking her path.
The man stood at the mouth of the alley, a sword fastened to each hip.
"Dual swords?" The moment the old woman saw him, she immediately lowered her head in feigned terror, crouching in place as if too petrified to move.
"Enough. Drop the act, White Fox," the Dual Swordsman stated calmly. With a flick of his wrist, one of his blades slid smoothly from its sheath.
"So you tracked me down after all." The old woman stood up. The moment she heard the name White Fox, she knew she had nowhere left to run.
Sure enough, when she glanced over her shoulder toward the other end of the alley, a tall, lanky figure with oddly short arms had silently appeared just a short distance away.
White Fox straightened her posture and aggressively wiped her face. A thick layer of crumbly grime peeled away, shedding the withered, sallow visage to reveal her original fair and youthful complexion.
As she cast off her hunched posture and stood tall, her alluring figure returned in full display.
Ever since her subordinates had entangled themselves with the Floating World Society, she had been forced into hiding. Her secret operations—harboring wanted criminals and refining human elixirs—had been completely exposed.
Left with no other choice, she had abandoned the criminal empire she had painstakingly built from the ground up, opting to disguise herself and flee for her life.
"Handsome, whatever is it that you want me to do?" White Fox purred as she slipped out of her tattered rags, her hands sensually stroking her own curves.
The wrinkled, elderly skin that had covered her body peeled and flaked away like dried mud.
"I am willing to do absolutely anything." Her bewitching tone, perfectly paired with her seductive, bare figure, was potent enough to ignite raw desire in anyone.
Body-Magic Art: Physique of Allure!
Human nature was inherently greedy. Many practitioners coveted both the supreme physical vitality of the Life Path and the versatile, fluid mental power of the Soul Path.
Thus, certain visionaries combined the Meditation Method and the Breathing Technique.
They pioneered the Body-Magic Art, substituting deep meditation with rhythmic breathing to fuse spiritual energy with life force, thereby actively remodeling their own bodies.
However, these Body-Magic Arts remained extremely niche due to their severely restricted upper limits. More often than not, once a practitioner's attribute value reached five or six points, their progression would completely stagnate, making any further advancement nearly impossible.
"Just as I thought. You're no ordinary prey." Unfazed by her bewitching charm, the Dual Swordsman simply flicked his wrist, his sword letting out a crisp, ringing hum.
"Let's fight!" Pushing off the ground with a light tap of his boots, the Dual Swordsman shot toward White Fox with blistering speed.
In his mind, there was nothing left but the sharp, resonant vibration of his blade.
"If you lack innate talent, the only way to transform yourself is to push your craft to the absolute extreme." Nemus's teachings had become the core philosophy driving his swordsmanship.
"Make the sword your everything!"
The steel hummed as his twin blades converged in a blinding flash.
Within the confined space of the alley, the two crisscrossing swords seemed to seal off every possible avenue of escape.
White Fox could acutely sense the lethal force riding on those slashing edges.
'He's slightly weaker than me.' White Fox was a genuine prodigy; had she not walked the path of the Body-Magic Art, she might have already broken through to the Iron Rank. Unfortunately, all orthodox cultivation methods in this world were tightly monopolized.
Merely obtaining a fringe cultivation method was a stroke of tremendous luck in itself.
At present, White Fox boasted an attribute value of eight, perhaps even edging close to nine.
In a fraction of a second, she mapped out an escape route. Her agile body sprang from the dirt; she kicked off the brick wall and vaulted toward the adjacent rooftops.
White Fox possessed a wealth of combat experience. She had long discarded concepts like modesty or shame in the name of survival. She knew perfectly well that if she didn't eliminate these two mysterious pursuers, a successful escape would be impossible.
Soaring through the air, she launched a blistering kick aimed squarely at the Dual Swordsman's head.
Throughout the brutal motion, her every move exuded an enchanting, natural grace, unleashing the full, hypnotic radiance of her Physique of Allure.
The Dual Swordsman narrowed his eyes to slits. With a twist of his wrists, his blades slashed upward to meet her.
White Fox's diving kick packed enough power to obliterate his skull, but he was absolutely certain he would sever her leg in the process.
A mutual crippling was an outcome White Fox flatly refused to accept. She splayed her arms wide, slamming her palms against the opposing brick walls of the narrow alley. Using the friction, she violently shifted her center of gravity, hurling herself upward to abort her attack and evade the deadly upward slash of the Dual Swordsman.
Before she could regain her bearings, she heard the chilling whistle of wind slicing through the air behind her.
The tall, lanky figure from the end of the alley leapt into the air, splitting into two distinct individuals mid-flight.
It was a pair of Halfling brothers. The brother who had formed the top half wielded twin daggers, while his counterpart gripped a single blade.
The two diminutive assassins instantly pounced from opposite angles in a deadly pincer maneuver, looking to impale White Fox on the spot.
"Damn it!" White Fox cursed, instantly realizing the gravity of her situation.
Her greatest weapon was completely useless against these foes.
White Fox's most devastating asset was her superhuman allure.
Yet, she was currently facing a battle maniac who harbored nothing but swords in his heart, and a pair of Halflings whose aesthetics wildly differed from baseline humans. To a Halfling, human proportions were grotesquely elongated, leaving them entirely immune to her supernatural charms.
"I was just a hair away!" White Fox seethed with bitter resentment. If she could just push her Physique of Allure to the Iron Rank, her enchanting aura would undergo an unprecedented, world-shaking amplification.
At that level, her allure would transcend mere sexual attraction; it would elevate into a conceptual charm—the primal allure of beauty itself compelling any sentient being.
The sheer scope of her power would exist in an entirely different dimension.
Despite the dire odds, White Fox refused to surrender. She recalled a rumor from just last night—a one-armed man had supposedly managed to escape from three Intern Holy Knights.
As an elite warrior inching toward the Iron Rank, slipping past these three grunts shouldn't be an impossible task!
Twisting her impossibly lithe body, White Fox narrowly evaded the twin backstabs. Moving as if her limbs were entirely boneless within the claustrophobic confines of the alleyway, she seemingly folded herself in half, squeezing her frame into the minuscule millimeter of dead space between the Halfling brothers' daggers and the Dual Swordsman's sweeping blades.
To the Dual Swordsman, time seemed to slow to an absolute crawl.
The devastating sword technique he had practiced tens of thousands of times under Lord Nemus's strict tutelage finally flared to life.
Sword Skill: Void Tremor!
The steel screamed. As the twin blades blurred through the air, the extreme vibrational force instantly shattered one of his swords.
A devastating cloud of jagged shrapnel erupted from the splintered blade, brutally tearing into White Fox's violently contorting body.
Her evasive momentum was shattered. Before she could recover, the Halfling brothers struck, stopping one dagger mere millimeters from her eye and hovering a second lethal blade directly over her heart.
She tensed, desperate to break free, but the cold steel of the Dual Swordsman's surviving blade was already pressed firmly against her throat.
"Come with us. Someone wants to see you."
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