Of course this Player wasn’t some pushover. The moment he was forced through the Space Portal he was already prepared; the instant they met, several cold flashes slashed toward Xu Huo and the others from different directions.

The Props had no clear trajectory and attacked everyone in the corridor indiscriminately, including the Player’s own teammates behind him. As for him, he let out a weird laugh, spread his arms wide and then slammed them together toward the center!

This clapping-like move hit Xu Huo’s Defensive Barrier. The barrier remained intact, but his attack force passed through without any obstruction and went straight for Xu Huo’s ears!

Taking a Double Peaks Piercing Ears like that without any defense, it wouldn’t be surprising to lose your life on the spot. Xu Huo had plenty of Defense Props; a single "Spatial Sphere" bounced the other party’s attack away together with the outer Defensive Barrier layer, and then the Materialized Item turned into slender blades and swords twisting toward the man in front of him!

"Vmmm!" The Player dodged while backing off, pressing the watch on his wrist at the same time. A powerful interference force burst out, instantly dulling the Materialized Items surrounding him, turning them into black shadows with little lethality.

It was perfectly normal for a Player to carry instruments to guard against Mental Interference. Xu Huo hadn’t been counting entirely on Psychic Power either. As the other retreated, the Black Blade swept straight across the corridor, cleaving at everyone in front of it at waist height!

The Players were forced one by one against one side of the corridor by the Black Blade’s edge. Some of them had Defensive Barriers that held up under the attack, so no one died, and with that strike, both sides officially kicked off the melee.

The first to move was the little girl at the back; she hurled bombs forward like they were free. After only two went off, someone knocked a flying bomb back, and it hit a Defensive Barrier and dropped.

"I’ve thrown so many bombs—did you really think I never considered someone batting them back?" Obviously that sealing barrier had been created by her; it was there specifically to prevent her own bombs from backfiring.

"Break!" A Player on the opposite side stepped up, raised two fingers at the barrier in a scissor gesture, and the next second the barrier vanished. Immediately after, that Player also disappeared from where he’d been and blinked to the girl’s side, his right hand snipping at her neck.

He was fast—over a certain distance, not only did he cut open the girl’s Defensive Barrier, he even nicked her neck. If his fingers had managed to close, the girl might not be alive.

"That’s damn sneaky!" The girl backed off as she spoke, yielding her position to the Girl in the painting who stepped in to block for her. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The Girl in the painting didn’t do anything fancy, just clipped a device between that Player’s two fingers and then twisted hard.

The other followed the force of her motion and retreated, then turned and attacked the round-faced Player next to him.

While fighting the two Players in front of him, Xu Huo still found a moment to glance back and say, "His finger scissors have a range limit. When he uses them he probably can’t activate a Defensive Barrier. Next time he uses it, take the chance and kill him!"

Many Defensive Barriers can’t cover both defense and offense. While protecting the Player, they also prevent him from attacking while keeping the barrier intact. So next time that Player uses his finger scissors, as long as two people coordinate, they’ll have an opening to kill him!

"You sure are relaxed, seeing that from so far away." The crew-cut man suddenly charged. The Prop covering his arm slammed down on Xu Huo’s Black Blade, and with brute force he drove Xu Huo into the wall, then used Auxiliary Props again and again to stack more power, like he wanted to pin Xu Huo there for good.

"I’ll help you!" Shi Shuai, who had been dodging around in the gaps between people, shouted from a distance, then threw a metal can into the corridor. A flash of intense light followed—even without looking directly at it, everyone in the corridor had their eyes stabbed with pain, the whole corridor plunging into a blinding white. Everyone took the indiscriminate hit except Shi Shuai.

But this didn’t really affect the Players’ fighting; they could still fight with their eyes closed.

So before their vision and eyes recovered, everyone in the corridor shut their eyelids. That inevitably meant missing enemy attacks or mistaking teammates for enemies and enemies for teammates. With high-efficiency fighting, reaction time was short and decision time even shorter; they could only rely on instinct.

Maybe because someone saw they were heading toward mutual destruction, before long another bunch of Players joined in, turning it into a three-way brawl.

Three sides, over twenty people crammed in one corridor, constantly bumping into each other. Some wide-area Props were completely useless. After nearly ten minutes of close-quarters fighting, realizing that dragging it out here was pointless, some Players started to withdraw.

The first to pull out were the latecomers, because their entry position had been bad—they’d ended up on the side mainly occupied by the crew-cut Player’s group. And that sloppy-looking Player, after several attempts to ambush the round-faced Player and the others were intercepted halfway by Xu Huo, directly switched targets, so that group took heavy losses.

Gradually, some of the Players gathered around the crew-cut man’s side also slipped away quietly.

Xu Huo’s side had few people to begin with; only the round-faced Player ran off. Shi Shuai might be half-assing it, but every so often he’d toss out a Prop that hurt both sides. As for the Girl in the painting and the little girl, both of them belonged to the type that only got fiercer the longer they fought.

By the end, it was obvious neither side could take the other down, but no one was willing to just give up, so they kept grinding.

The crew-cut man kept trash-talking Xu Huo, trying to make him retreat first.

"You want to save face, so do I. I’m not backing off first. If anyone walks, it’s you." Xu Huo’s Black Blade was only visible as a Shadow, steadily suppressing the crew-cut man.

The crew-cut man was gradually running out of steam. Xu Huo was almost flawless; he might not have many Props, but every critical area was covered. Breaking his Defensive Barrier was difficult enough, and even if you did break it, he still had the flowing metal suit underneath as a last line. Trading injury for injury with him basically meant trading a major wound for a minor one. Not to mention his focus in battle—most Players see their concentration and reaction speed drop in a prolonged fight, but this guy didn’t!

After knocking aside yet another attack, the crew-cut man prepared to bolt. But as soon as he turned his head, someone spoke behind him:

"You think you can just walk?"

The crew-cut man swung a Prop backhand, but hit a Spatial Barrier instead. He failed to force Xu Huo back and got kicked into the wall!

The Black Blade pressed against his neck and pinned him to the wall. At some point, black Shadow had also crawled over his body, coiling around his neck and binding his hands and feet.

"Don’t move." Xu Huo warned him. "Careful—move even one finger and you’ll be short an arm."

The crew-cut man tilted his head up to look at him. "What do you want?"

"Let’s go back to what you brought up when we first met," Xu Huo said. "What’s the deal with the Mermaid Mask?"