Chapter 188: 181 A Great Melee of Houses

In the dead of night, what does it feel like to have a sun suddenly appear before your eyes?

What does it feel like to have a sun ten times as bright appear before your eyes?

The sound was immense, deafening one might say, and the light was bizarrely bright, perhaps blinding enough to make one sightless.

As the attacker, Tang Zhao was well-prepared; he had put on sunglasses and even squinted early on, yet even through his eyelids, he was nearly blinded by this tenfold glare.

Fortunately, Tang Zhao was prepared after all; he activated the Rune Formula, the door below opened, and a massive golden radiance swept across the night sky—

Golden Silk Sword!

Yanggu Sword, the fastest and strongest single-target Sword Art!

Although a Rune Formula can recreate a Sword Art, its power is limited by the materials and energy ceiling. He had previously made an Art Tool of the Golden Silk Sword, and the results were barely satisfactory, but at this very moment, with the house as a base and the tenfold power amplification, the brilliance of the Golden Silk Sword surged, in no way inferior to the Sword Art of the Yanggu Sword.

That is the Sword Art of a Sword Immortal!

Sword silk, sweep!

This Rune Formula was imprinted under the house, so the attack was launched from the ground floor, sweeping across the ground like a sweeping leg kick.

Although the house is large, the modular Rune Formulas that can be broken down are limited. There are a total of nine Rune Formulas that can be filled and amplified. Among them, four are on the front, four on the back, and one on the roof. And the four on each side are generally two upstairs and two downstairs.

Usually, two side-by-side Rune Formulas can be arranged for one attack and one defense, which is comprehensive; the top floor has the best field of vision, so reconnaissance and surveillance types of Rune Formulas are generally placed there.

However, many people like to place attacks on the second floor and defense on the first, which is influenced by human anatomy. They think of the building as a person: the first floor is the legs, the second floor is the arms; using the legs to anchor to the ground makes the defense more solid, and using the arms to attack is faster and more flexible.

Tang Zhao, however, did not think so; instead, he placed the strongest and fastest Sword Art-turned-Rune Formula on the first floor.

Fast means yin... hidden. The Golden Silk Sword is inherently bizarrely fast, and under the amplification of the perfect answer, it is as fast as the speed of light.

The first moment you see the light, the light has already arrived!

Have you ever been swept by light?

A Tie Wu bore the brunt of it; it was swept by the light, and its lower half was instantly swept through, collapsing in an instant!

The Golden Silk Sword continued to sweep forward; next to it was a Rock House. When it swept past, it seemed to encounter resistance, but before Tang Zhao even exerted force, the resistance had already quietly shattered, and the light had passed through the rock, sweeping toward the third house.

It was a Paper House!

Paper is the thinnest and has the lowest defense, but when the light swept past, the shape of the Paper House changed abruptly!

In an instant, the first floor of the square Paper House flattened. The front wall instantly pressed against the back wall, leaving only a thin sheet of cardboard supporting the second floor. The light swept past by a hair's breadth, not touching it in the slightest.

This is the advantage of the Paper House: it deforms like origami, moving back and forth with ease.

The fourth one...

That silver-made building floated up in an instant, and a phantom appeared behind it, letting it hover in mid-air to dodge this sweep. The golden silk then made contact with the fifth house, which was also the second Tie Wu. Light and iron intersected, emitting a "zi-zi" cutting sound, cutting inward inch by inch, but after all, it was at the end of its strength at this point, lacking follow-up power, and finally left a shocking scar before dissipating.

Tang Zhao saw the scene outside from within the building and suddenly let out a "Heh."

One sword, broke two houses, injured one house.

The first strike is also a show of power.

The Tie Wu that was cut horizontally by the light had completely collapsed, split into two sections, top and bottom. But the Rock House actually didn't fall. It turned out that the Rock House wasn't necessarily harder than the Tie Wu, but the walls were thick. The front wall had an arc-shaped cut, and while the middle of the cut completely penetrated the wall, the two ends only scraped halfway in, leaving the ground covered in stone powder, and with two semi-load-bearing walls for support, it could still hold up for a while without falling.

The Rock House, having survived a disaster, was clearly frightened and took a step back.

Just then, the Silver House beside it squeezed forward a step.

Both were massive in volume and happened to scrape against each other; a decorative corner on the Silver House got stuck, neither more nor less, in a crack in the rock wall. The Silver House didn't stop, moving forward another step, dragging the crack with it, causing the Rock House to fall to the ground with a thud.

Rock, after all, cannot withstand a fall.

It was already damaged, and it happened to land on the damaged side; the entire wall collapsed instantly with a clattering sound, leaving only a second floor lying obliquely on the ground.

This one had completely withdrawn.

The previous six-on-one had instantly become four-on-one.

No, it was...

At this moment, the remaining people finally began to counterattack.

The other Tie Wu that could still stand, although it had a gap, had iron plating flipping outward from the gap that looked exceptionally ferocious. At this moment, the iron plating seemed to come alive, continuously flipping outward along the crack and curling into blades, blooming like a chrysanthemum. On the iron petals, sparks even began to emerge.

Iron flowers!

The blooming iron sheets and iron flowers were like a ferocious giant mouth, wanting to bite off a person's flesh.

While this Tie Wu only seemed to have opened its mouth wide, the Gu Wu on the other side, which had not been affected, took the opportunity to completely deform. Each white, ghastly bone emitted a "clacking" sound, and the building lowered itself.

If Yi Zhixin's bone building could simulate simple movements, letting people use their imagination to think of it as a monster, this bone building had completely turned into the form of a beast; its head and four limbs were distinct, and its shoulders and back were arched, exactly the state of a beast before pouncing on a person.

Although this bone building had a bestial foundation, it was still a house after all. That it could be adjusted to such a vivid degree through a mere few Rune Formulas shows that the Talisman Sword Master inside has outstanding attainments and must have relevant unique skills.

Tang Zhao also focused his attention and prepared; he had snatched the initiative with the sneak attack, greatly weakening the enemy, but one can do it once, not twice. The two in front were clearly not to be trifled with.

Since it was a team battle and they had closed to this distance, everyone tacitly chose a close-combat posture to avoid friendly fire.

Most had a tacit understanding...

The Paper House opposite, which had originally flattened its first floor into a wall, had instantly returned to its original shape. Suddenly, four windows opened, and countless Paper Cranes flew out!

The Paper Cranes were dense, like paper money dancing in the sky, maintaining their formation and gathering to form a winding paper dragon. Countless wings flapped, emitting a buzzing wind sound, like a dragon's roar.

Just hearing this wind sound, it was not something paper could produce.

Tang Zhao looked back at the group of Paper Cranes and a thought suddenly flashed through his mind: a swarm of wasps?!

Before he could think it through, the bone beast had already pounced over—at such a short distance, it arrived almost in the blink of an eye—

Block!

Tang Zhao did not hesitate; with a flick of a Rune Formula, the roof was dismantled and fell, turning into a row of horizontal wooden shields to block the front.

Crack! The giant bone beast crashed into the horizontal wooden shields, its bones turning into a ramming horn, plunging into the wooden row.

Although Iron Wood is hard, the bone was even harder, and this collision immediately pierced deep into the wood. However, the wood had resilience; being pierced through did not shatter it, but instead pressed down on the bone, making it unable to pull out for a moment.

Detach!

The Rune Formula rotated, and the horizontal wooden shields immediately detached from the wooden house, flying to the side along with the giant bone beast due to inertia. Tang Zhao's wooden house suddenly moved horizontally, arriving in front of the Tie Wu, facing the ferocious gap blooming with iron flowers.

Just as he was about to launch another attack, he heard a whistle from behind.

A sharp whistling sound, like a bugle call to launch an attack, was followed by the sound of countless wings flapping!

The Paper Crane dragon has descended!

Tang Zhao did not need to look back to imagine the scene of thousands of Paper Cranes flying toward him; unable to spare time for an attack, he instead lunged forward.

Ahead was the front of the Tie Wu; at this moment, the Tie Wu not only had fangs exposed at the gap, but countless iron spikes had also risen on its walls, turning it into an iron porcupine. Anything, even if it were made of steel, would be impaled on the iron spikes if it crashed head-on. Unless one dodged at the very last split second.

Dodge?

Dodge my ass!

The house could move, but it was not a person after all; its movements were inevitably clumsy, and relying solely on the Rune Formula to control it, it could not perform high-difficulty maneuvers like dodging.

Therefore, Tang Zhao chose to go straight through.

Rune Formula—Shuttle!

Even if it was a Rune Formula he had only obtained a few days ago, with the help of his eyes, he could immediately put it to use.

Under the amplification of ten times, the massive house transformed into a phantom, passing straight through the front of the iron porcupine and out the back, forcibly reversing the front and back of the two houses, turning the Tie Wu into his own shield instead.

Whoosh—

The Paper Cranes flew over like a paper dragon, crashing into the Tie Wu.

Sss-sss-sss!

The Paper Cranes and the iron hedgehog collided head-on. Countless Paper Cranes slammed into the sharp spikes, being impaled like meat skewers, then roasted into charcoal by the iron flower flames; countless iron spikes were slashed by the wings of the Paper Cranes, leaving behind streaks of damage or even snapping off.

This was a perfect match.

The wings of those Paper Cranes were incomparably sharp, and the momentum of their frontal impact was immense, yet by some twist of fate, the Tie Wu had set up the most suitable response: the mass spike formation!

Only with the dense spikes on the front, where the indentations could catch the bodies of the Paper Cranes and the tips could directly pierce through them, splitting the Paper Crane swarm, could it withstand the impact of the Paper Crane flock.

It was just that there were simply too many Paper Cranes; those sharp spikes were soon filled with them. As soon as the front Paper Cranes were scorched by the high heat, the ones behind them pierced through as well. The Paper Cranes piled up, filling the gaps between the spikes and cutting off the air; the iron flower could no longer burn, and the Tie Wu seemed to have been pasted with a layer of paper wall, instantly losing its vision and swaying precariously under the weight of the paper.

"I'll give you another good thing!" Tang Zhao waved his hand and threw a wooden ball through the window at the back of the Tie Wu. Then he shifted away—

Boom!

A white shadow attacked from behind, slamming hard into the Tie Wu; it was the Bone beast.

At this moment, it had already broken free from the wooden raft and was attacking from the rear, yet for some reason, it veered slightly in mid-air and suddenly crashed into the iron-skinned house.

The iron-skinned house could not bear the weight of the Paper Cranes and was already about to collapse backward, but then a Bone came from behind and also crashed into the iron wall; both sides exerted force at once, and the iron-skinned house in the middle stood firm, but was crushed flat.

"How miserable, is the person okay?"

Tang Zhao expressed some Human Dao concern, then saw the iron-skinned house sway, and the Lamp on its roof went out.

The test paper had been taken away; who knew if the person had been teleported away directly, or had snuck out through the window?

If they snuck out, it didn't matter; once knocked out of the house, they were out of the competition, and one should not pursue a desperate foe.

Then now, only... the Bone remained!

"Damn it! Why won't my Paper Crane listen to commands? Why does it keep piling up on the Tie Wu?" Inside the Paper House, a quiet girl flicked through the Rune Formula. But no matter how she urged it to change direction, the Paper Cranes still piled up on the Tie Wu, insisting on charging inside.

This was the effect of the forced-demand Rune Formula. The Paper Cranes were also an attack, and could only charge at the wooden ball Art Tool inside the iron-skinned house. The girl, however, had protection from the Paper House and was surprisingly not too affected.

"This move seems to be a waste; next..." Just as she was about to activate another Rune Formula, a silver thread suddenly flew in through the window and out the other side, actually stringing her Paper House.

Silver?

Sss-sss-sss...

Several silver threads pierced in from behind, crisscrossing. Instantly, they turned her attic into a silver-stringed zither.

Sneak attack!

The quiet girl rolled on the ground, dodging the silver thread attack, and suddenly her heart chilled: No, the enemy came from behind, who is picking up the scraps—

Wait... silver thread?

Zzz...

A dangerous sound rang out, making the girl's whole body go numb in an instant.

Thunder!

On the silver threads, Thunder Light exploded, and the entire room was electrified!