"I must be out of my mind. I've spent too much time around them and caught some kind of disease."
Wind roared past his ears as he sprinted. Thinking this, Zhu Jiaming felt he had degenerated, that he had turned into a complete idiot, and it genuinely made him a little sad.
In truth, his reason for choosing to fight was very simple: the Little Prince couldn't bear to stand idly by and watch Wu Xu die before his eyes.
Yes, that block of wood who hadn't said more than a handful of words to him in over a year of being together. Zhu Jiaming knew Wu Xu was terribly weak lately, but he would never admit it. Even facing three opponents at once, that idiot would never call for help...
He would hold his ground there, fighting, fighting, fighting... until his strength was utterly exhausted, until he died in battle. Perhaps right up to the moment he fell, he wouldn't make a single sound.
Zhu Jiaming had tried to imagine it—imagining Wu Xu dead, just like that, gone from this world forever... and for some inexplicable reason, his chest ached terribly.
So he charged in, probably on a momentary impulse.
Over there, Rusty Sister was pinned down by a super combatant in a perilous situation; Han Qingyu was heavily wounded and had yet to recover; Wen Jifei had only a single bullet left. Here, he was the only one who could still do something...
In a chaotic brawl of nearly two thousand people, the Little Prince gripped his war blade with both hands and charged into the top-tier battlefield from the flank to intercept Fonseca, ranked fifth on the assassin rankings.
Standing there as he silently took on the other two foes, Wu Xu glanced at the Little Prince with slight confusion.
*What the hell are you looking at? If you're touched, go ahead and cry, you damn block of wood.*
Even as the Little Prince cursed internally, *boom!* The war blade in his hands slammed against Fonseca's two-handed horizontal slash.
The disparity in the depth of their source energy showed in an instant. Zhu Jiaming had been the one on the offensive, yet upon impact his body was thrown back violently.
Immediately after, Fonseca pivoted on his heel and pursued relentlessly, hacking down with another slash.
*Clang!*
Zhu Jiaming parried and retreated again. The webbing between his thumbs and forefingers tore open simultaneously on both hands, blood gushing forth so fiercely that he could barely keep hold of his blade.
*Holy shit, he's so fierce...*
*Can we talk about this? Can I take it back, surrender, and pick again? I'll take the other two!*
*No, wait, I'm backing out.*
*I'm not actually close with them at all, we're just superficial brothers! Behind closed doors, we scheme against each other every single day...*
While regretting his choices and begging for mercy in his head, the Little Prince wielded his saber like a sword, refusing to clash head-on any longer. He thrust, or deflected the oncoming blade the instant it touched his, letting it bounce up to cushion the force as he maneuvered desperately to survive.
...
Theodore's condition seemed somewhat bad; his recovery was taking longer than expected. No one knew how Qingzi was doing, and Rusty Sister couldn't press the attack. Wen Jifei stood with his gun amidst the heavily pressured 300-man formation, his gaze sweeping rapidly past bloodstained shoulders, arms, and flashing blades.
Black Tooth slashed his way out, slashed his way back, slashed his way out, slashed his way back... time and again, relying on his still somewhat unpracticed top-tier surge to bitterly endure the overwhelming disadvantage in numbers and combat power.
Wen Jifei had only one bullet left. Elegy of the Square was no longer fragile, yet the ammunition he had once thought was oversupplied was down to its final round.
After making a swift assessment in his head, a crushing wave of powerlessness surged through his heart. For what felt like the first time in over a year, Wen Jifei realized he seemed powerless to change anything... just like back then.
This strongest Dice in history was always looking to pull off a big job, no matter the time, but this time, it seemed he wouldn't be able to pull off anything big.
Whose crisis could a single bullet solve?
The 300-man formation was holding out against the siege; Rusty Sister was holding out against sporadic ambushes while keeping a watchful eye on the super combatant above; Wu Xu was bitterly holding out one against two... yet within Wen Jifei's field of vision, the Little Prince was having the hardest time of all.
The gap in strength between Zhu Jiaming and Fonseca was simply too wide. In just two or three minutes of fighting, Zhu Jiaming's suit had been shredded until it looked like something fished out of a garbage dump, and blood stained multiple spots across his body.
"That's about enough!"
With a diving roll that narrowly evaded a slash, the Little Prince shouted.
"Fuck your mother, you foreigner! Don't push people too far, you hear me?!" Another slash came. The Little Prince parried in a panic and crashed heavily to the ground. Not daring to delay for a fraction of a second, he scrambled forward on all fours, clumsily scrambled to his feet, fired two shots, and bolted.
"I'm done fighting!"
"I'm begging for mercy, damn it!"
Zhu Jiaming's English wasn't very good; when he spoke, it came out half in the Huaxia language and half in broken English.
Fonseca couldn't understand him, and even if he could, there was no way he would stop.
A kill was already within arm's reach. Once he finished this one, the ensuing slaughter would tumble forward like falling dominoes, completely unstoppable.
*Clang!* Once again, Zhu Jiaming was knocked back by a slash, falling and getting back up.
Fonseca also paused to adjust his source energy surge, fixing Zhu Jiaming with a look like a wolf watching a rabbit... He was gathering momentum, preparing to deliver the final kill.
Strangely, this time his opponent didn't scream wildly or run away. Zhu Jiaming eerily held his ground, standing there and staring at him.
"Fine! Fuck you! Remember, you forced my hand!"
"Did you think that as a descendant of the Great Ming's Prince of Shu, as the dignified Little Prince, I really wouldn't have anything hidden at the bottom of my chest?!"
He spoke in a deep voice.
"I..." Zhu Jiaming suddenly held his blade upright and spat a mouthful of bloody water onto the edge. "Spirits of heaven, spirits of earth, by the urgent decree of the Supreme Lord Laozi! Never mind, I can skip the rest of the incantation."
"Today, I'll teach you barbarians what imperial fortune means—sacrificing lifespan to invoke a god!" His expression was resolute.
With that, he stamped his foot.
From Wen Jifei's vantage point, nothing had changed at all.
Yet judging by the Little Prince's expression and aura, it looked as if he truly had grown stronger, as if a god had descended upon him.
*Can things like that actually exist in the world of source energy?* Wen Jifei stared in momentary bewilderment.
In his field of vision, launching his first proactive offensive since their initial clash, the Little Prince unleashed his full speed. As he charged forward, his knees bent slightly... According to basic combat sense, this was the preparatory motion for a leaping slash.
He was going airborne?! Was he looking to die?!
In that instant, even Fonseca, who had grown impatient and was preparing to strike, felt a flicker of panic and confusion. His eyes turned wary, and he cautiously took a step back, falling into a defensive stance.
"Die!"
The Little Prince let out a furious roar. In the middle of his charge, he leapt—except he didn't take to the air; he braked hard, pivoted, and hauled ass in the opposite direction.
"Screw you! Daddy bought another minute!"
So, as expected, those things truly didn't exist in the world of source energy. For a fleeting moment, Wen Jifei felt like laughing, but he couldn't bring himself to do so.
At the same time, Fonseca flew into a rage, forcibly twisting his source energy surge to turn around, his speed erupting as he chased after him with a lethal slash.
He caught up quickly...
"Die already," Zhu Jiaming whispered.
At that exact moment, a spinning war blade arced through the chaotic battlefield, screaming toward Fonseca's temple from the side.
Rusty Sister Dimple Slash... imitation edition.
Within their small circle, Han Qingyu had always been willing to teach his Rusty Sister Dimple Slash to anyone. Once, the Little Prince had asked if he could listen in too, and Han Qingyu had agreed, teaching him just the same.
Later, he claimed he hadn't learned it.
Total bullshit. In truth, of all of them, he had mastered the closest imitation—probably because he was cunning. But he had kept it hidden, perhaps originally intending to use it one day to ambush Han Qingyu himself.
Once the war blade left his hands, it could no longer be controlled. To prevent Fonseca from overshooting the trajectory, Zhu Jiaming braked of his own accord at that instant. Halting his momentum and leaning back, he flipped around and swept his left hand forward, hurling a handful of dart-shaped concealed weapons toward Fonseca's face to draw his focus.
At the same time, his right hand drew the short sword he had always worn behind his waist, and leaning backward low to the ground, he thrust the blade diagonally upward...
*Whoosh!* Mid-pursuit, Fonseca suddenly forced his source energy surge into reverse, accepting the internal organ damage as he coughed up blood, skidded to a halt, and leaned backward.
He had sensed it. Zhu Jiaming's version of the Rusty Sister Dimple Slash was too slow, and the whistle of its spinning flight remained audible; at the final instant, Fonseca dodged it, letting it graze right above his face.
As for the darts, they posed no real threat to begin with, and striking Fonseca would at most leave a nick or two on his skin.
The final hope was that short sword. Its tip lunged toward Fonseca's throat, but after Fonseca recoiled backward... it fell short.
*Click.* Suddenly, the sound of a spring mechanism snapping into place rang out. The short sword in Zhu Jiaming's hand shot out an extra length, driving straight for Fonseca's throat.
...That was all he had.
The Little Prince wasn't strong enough. Despite being a self-proclaimed descendant of royalty, he had no ability to invoke any gods. All he possessed were these unorthodox underhanded tricks and petty sleights of hand, pulled out one after another...
And it was solely on these that he was staking his life, clashing head-on in a one-on-one duel against number five on the assassin rankings.
Chapter 496