Chapter 343: Timely Rain Song Zeji
Translator: BinBin92 Editor: EllisBLV13
Despite her poor shape, Lin Sanjiu had to muster the strength to stand up and confront the person in front of her. As she jerked up from the ground, a sudden feeling of pain struck her abdomen. It almost tore her apart. Then, everything swirled together.
She was in a life or death situation, and Lin Sanjiu knew full well that she could not fall victim to the giddiness now. She blinked hard and made a considerable amount of effort to chase the feeling away. Only then did the blurry King Henry become clear again.
"Why…"
Her question stuck in her throat. For a moment, she didn't even know what question she had to ask.
King Henry ignored Lin Sanjiu's unfinished question. He spun his body around, like slow-motion in a movie, and faced Lin Sanjiu. Half of his face was hidden in the shadow, showing only his mouth—now-curled into a sly, devilish grin under the glimmer of light.
Suddenly, waves of eldritch force field came pouring out of him. Lin Sanjiu could see that as the force field moved, it distorted something in its path. Even the light emitted from candles looked a little bit crooked to her now.
Set against this strange phenomenon, Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but roll her metal board backward. At the same time, she activated her hypersensory and [Defence Forcefield]. After finishing casting her defensive stance, Lin Sanjiu shifted her attention to the man again.
The space in front of her now looked like a piece of shattered glass, fragmented and craggy.
"Isn't that obvious?"
Then, King Henry moved two silent steps forward. Once he stepped into his 'domain,' he looked disfigured as if he had been refracted countless time.
"Because...I am a player too," King Henry looked out at her, smiling amiably. Then, he went off to finish his sentence, with his ever gentle voice, "My mission in Time Travel is to find a character named Gabrielle, so I can kill her."
Although Lin Sanjiu knew his hostility all along, his words still turned her blood to ice. Her throat felt raw as she forced out her doubt, "It is impossible. You're not stepping on a metal board—"
"From my side, you're not stepping on a metal board either," King Henry chipped in, his words full of mockery, "You look just like an ordinary woman in the Middle Ages."
As soon as those words were spoken, he raised one of his hands forward, and one behind his back.
Although she had kept her eyes peeled, Lin Sanjiu was still taken by surprise. She felt something heavy pressing against her organs from her back like a million pounds of pressure. She couldn't hold back the urge and vomited a mouthful of blood. At the same time, she concentrated her [Defence Forcefield] around her back, trying her very best to counteract the intense pressure that came from nowhere.
She struggled to look over her shoulders, but it was a wasted effort. There was nothing at her back. The side palace was empty, void of anything even sound. After that, she tried to inch to a side, yet she was thwarted for the second time. The pressure had completely pinned her on the ground; she could not move at all. If she struggled harder, she would hear her bones cracking as if they would shatter at any moment.
After waiting for some time, King Henry frowned. He was quite surprised that the woman in front of him was still resisting.
"Hoh? You don't seem to be using any special ability, yet you can resist my special ability. I guess I've underestimated you. Your body is quite strong," as he spoke, his smile gradually left his face until it turned into a thin line, "Seems like I made a good decision last time by not attacking you recklessly."
Then, King Henry lifted his hands again, seemingly preparing for another move. Regardless of what he wanted to do, Lin Sanjiu knew that once he finished his action, she would be doomed.
The intensity of the pressure that kept her pinned on the ground was getting stronger. It was so immense that calling it a "force" would be to trivialize it. Lin Sanjiu felt she was a mouse trapped inside a jar, and the jar was collapsed right above her immobilizing her.
Under such circumstance, taking another of King Henry's attacks head-on was something she did not welcome. Seeing that her opponent had already raised his hand, she quickly summoned one of her cards.
Bam!
Something heavy fell in her hands. She had no idea what kind of thing she had summoned in the heat of the moment until a heap of bright orange cat litter spilled from the bag opening and shrouded her in orange dust.
"Hmm?"
The person who had been trapped in his special ability had suddenly gone into the ether. King Henry was stupefied, and he stood in his original spot in a trance. As he subconsciously lowered his arms, a woman rolled out from the thick orange fog.
Lin Sanjiu did not dare to stop as she had a minimal time to make her moves. She grabbed a handful of cat litter and threw it at King Henry. Then, seizing her golden opportunity before King Henry could return to his senses, she frantically rushed to the very far end of the side palace that had not been affected by King Henry's special ability.
Even after she successfully freed herself from King Henry's clutches, the feeling of being almost crushed to death was still fresh as if it had been seared in Lin Sanjiu's body. Right until this point, she still had no idea how she escaped from that domain. When she skidded to a stop with her battered body and spread opened her bony wings, Lin Sanjiu realized that she had forgotten something.
Right now, King Henry was standing beside her metal board. He seemed to look for something.
"Your board… It should be around here, right?" Lin Sanjiu's metal board was invisible to anybody but her, so King Henry couldn't see where the board was. Since he could not see it, he just simply kicked the air twice to test his luck. However, the Goddess of Luck seemed to have abandoned him. His attempts narrowly missed Lin Sanjiu's metal board twice.
"What if he can take my metal board—" Lin Sanjiu's heart beat in a flustered rhythm as the thought emerged.
She quickly calmed herself down and forced a cold smile on her face, "You can't find it. I've kept it well-hidden. Now, all I have to do is kill you within one minute and return to my board."
Tilting his head, King Henry glanced at Lin Sanjiu doubtfully. He couldn't tell whether was Lin Sanjiu telling the truth or telling lies. As such, he decided not to leave Lin Sanjiu's original spot and grunted.
"Come and try for yourself," as he spoke, he waved his hand and shattered another piece of space beside him, turning it into another of his domain, "Just throw everything you got at me."
[Picasso]
The seemingly incomprehensible cubism and abstract painting had shown fantastic utility after it became an ability. Just like Picasso could present his multiple-dimensional masterpiece on a flat canvas, the master of this ability could break any space into smaller pieces and combine them into any planar drawing that he desired.
Of course, objects that existed in the space would change according to the space. In the painting "Weeping Woman," the positions of the mouth and nose of the woman completely defied the natural human body structure. The master of this ability was fully aware of this, and he knew full well that this could cause death. However, in comparison to the greatness of art, the life of human worth nothing.
"Anything that gets past this domain will become part of my painting," King Henry stared at Lin Sanjiu as he kept his two hands in the air. It seemed that his [Drawing of Picasso] would be revoked once he placed his hands down. He continued to taunt Lin Sanjiu, "Show me what you got. I would like to see how can you come near me."
Lin Sanjiu panicked. She found the task was getting more difficult.
She was severely injured, and King Henry's special ability was extremely tricky to deal with. Fighting him in close quarters was unwise as his [Picasso] gave him both an unbreachable defense and offense. Also, she was unsure whether King Henry still had something else up his sleeve. For example, a special stand-off item would be deadly to her. While she was looking for a countermeasure, the narrator began to countdown. It seemed to her that killing King Henry within a minute was an impossible mission.
Beads of cold sweat oozed from her forehead. Lin Sanjiu searched her inventories from one Special Item to the next in her mind, but she could not find anything that could save her right now.
Mrs. Manas once criticized her that she relied on her items too much. Hei Zeji also told her that she would one day meet her nemesis if she refused to change her combat style. However, it was too late. Lin Sanjiu could do nothing now but curse herself inwardly for not realizing this problem earlier.
As the minutes ticked on, King Henry became more relaxed.
He knew that Lin Sanjiu couldn't harm him. She was like a rat in a hole. Even if he remained standing in place doing nothing but letting time tick away, there was only one end for the "Gabrielle" in front of him: death.
Just as Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth and planned to launch another blind attack on King Henry, the familiar sound of wings flapping drifted through the air into her ears.
"Hey, I just warded off an assailant. I guess you should be in trouble now," Never once had Lin Sanjiu felt that Hei Zeji's unenthusiastic voice would sound like the voice of an angel to her. She held her breath and listened carefully to what he was going to say next, "To be honest, I doubt this paper crane can find its way to you. Nevertheless, if you can hear me, from now on, do as I said."