Chapter 450 - 416: Phantom Lady

Chapter 450: Chapter 416: Phantom Lady

The midday sun scorched the earth, and the air was thick with the smell of hot dust.

The normally bustling training grounds had been cleared. Even the most tireless cicadas seemed to have sensed the oppressive atmosphere and had fallen silent.

Velin stood in the shadow of a high platform, clutching a secret letter from Tristan’s father. The edges of the parchment were already wrinkled from the sweat on his palms. The letter’s description of "breaking through to Level 5" was only a few short sentences—the kind of experienced advice that could only be left by the very few who had set foot in that realm.

"According to the letter, has everyone not involved been moved five hundred meters away?" Velin asked in a low voice, his gaze locked on the petite figure in the center of the field.

"They’re gone. Not even a rat is left."

Ola stood beside Velin. The usually carefree, burly man seemed exceptionally anxious now. He subconsciously rubbed the handle of his battleaxe, his Adam’s apple bobbing. "My lord, what the hell is this ’sensation of the world stripping away’ the letter talks about? We’ve never seen anyone break through to Level 5 before. This girl... can she really do it?"

"I don’t know." Velin shook his head, raising a monocular to his eye. "But we are witnessing history, Ola. This is a qualitative leap, from ’Forged Iron’ to ’Adamantite’."

The air was taut with the tension of a drawn bowstring—a mixture of reverence for the unknown and anticipation for the birth of a high-tier combatant on their side.

Tristan pushed up his glasses, holding an alchemical pocket watch used for recording aether fluctuations; its needle was trembling slightly. Meanwhile, her teacher, Kael, stood like an Obsidian statue at the closest edge of the field. His right hand rested on his sword hilt, and though his face was expressionless, his eyes, fixed on Xiaolan, were filled with an unprecedented gravity.

They were all waiting.

Waiting for the moment described in the letter as a "miracle."

The midday sun was just right.

Suddenly, the training grounds fell dark.

No clouds covered the sky, no wind howled. It was a simple "loss of color blocks." The golden sand, the verdant treetops, even the gray stone walls of the distant castle—all faded in an instant.

The world became a monochrome sketch.

"It’s happening!" Velin exclaimed in a low voice. "Just like the letter said!"

Sound, too, was devoured by some force. The wind ceased, and all was silent.

In the center of the field, Xiaolan stood quietly. The shadow at her feet seemed to come alive, no longer bound by the light, but spreading outward like a pool of thick ink.

The ink boiled.

There was no earth-shattering explosion of energy, only an incomprehensible distortion of space. It was as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and snipped this patch of space right out of the real world.

The petite figure began to blur. Not a visual blur, but a thinning of her very presence. She was clearly there, yet if one closed their eyes to sense her, there was only a void.

This strange phenomenon lasted for a full ten minutes.

Until the black-and-white world shattered like glass with a CRACK, and color flooded back in.

The sun was still brutal, the smell of dust still pungent.

Xiaolan stood where she was, swaying slightly as if unsteady on her feet. Other than that, everything was as before. No pillar of light shot into the sky, no great tremor shook the earth.

A dead silence fell over the training grounds.

"This..." Ola’s eyes widened. He scratched his head, dumbfounded. "Is that it? That was a huge spectacle, but there was no bang at the end. Did she... fail?"

Velin frowned too, his grip on the monocular so tight he nearly crushed it. It was too quiet. Unsettlingly quiet.

He couldn’t help but lean forward and shout, "Xiaolan! How do you feel?"

The girl in the center of the field didn’t seem to have come to her senses yet. She blankly raised her hands, looking them over and over, then tentatively stomped her foot.

"I... I don’t know."

Xiaolan’s voice was faint, as if coming from far away. "The world seems... very thin. Like a sheet of paper that could be pierced with a touch."

"Then you succeeded."

The man in black who had been standing guard nearby moved.

Kael didn’t move to help her. Instead, he drew the shortsword from his waist and pointed its tip directly at Xiaolan.

"Talk is useless. Attack me."

Kael’s voice was flat, but the muscles in his good right arm were taut. His entire body was like a fully drawn bow.

Xiaolan froze for a moment, then her gaze hardened. A faint ring of silver-gray light now shone within her once-dark pupils.

"Be careful, Teacher."

She took a deep breath, and her figure shot forward.

But as she took that first step, her body twisted strangely. Like a toddler who had just learned to walk trying to run, her foot didn’t land on the sand but stepped into an invisible ripple.

"BLEGH—"

The intense spatial dislocation made Xiaolan’s face turn white, and she almost dry-heaved. Her figure flickered violently in the air, like a holographic projection with a bad signal, before she tumbled awkwardly from mid-air and crashed onto the sand.

"Too slow! Too clumsy! What are you hesitating for?"

Kael shouted harshly, his shortsword showing no mercy as it sliced through the air and stabbed downward. "On the battlefield, no one will wait for you to get used to the nausea! Treat space like water, not a wall!"

The blade grazed Xiaolan’s scalp, severing a few strands of hair.

The cold touch of death instantly jolted Xiaolan’s nerves. Ignoring the churning in her stomach, she instinctively rolled backward.

"When you treat it like a wall, you’ll just end up bashing your head against it!" Kael pursued her relentlessly, his sword flashing like a net, sealing off all her escape routes. "Merge with it! It’s a part of your body!"

’Merge... with it...’

Xiaolan gritted her teeth, her eyes locked on the inescapable net of sword light. To a normal person, it was a deadly gleam, but in her eyes now, the flashes of the blade were merely severing one fragile spatial node after another.

The world deconstructed before her eyes. Distance was no longer a straight line but countless folded planes.

Kael thrust his sword toward her left shoulder.

This time, Xiaolan didn’t dodge.

In the instant before the sword tip touched her clothes, her body abruptly "bled" outward, like a drop of ink falling into water.

Kael felt his hand lighten as his blade passed through Xiaolan’s afterimage without any resistance.

"What was..." Ola, on the high platform, sucked in a cold breath. "Did it pass right through her?"

No, it didn’t pass through.

Xiaolan’s form solidified three meters to Kael’s right. Though her face was still pale, the nauseating feeling was fading, replaced by an indescribable sense of control.

"Again!" A sharp light flared in Kael’s eyes. His fighting aura erupted, and his speed increased to its absolute limit.

If before he was just testing her, now it was a true life-or-death battle.

But Xiaolan had changed.

Facing Kael’s stormy offensive, she no longer fled in disarray. Her figure began to flicker frequently across the training grounds.

POP.

With a soft pop, she vanished from beneath the blade.

POP.

Another pop, and she appeared behind Kael, her dagger tracing a silver line through the air.

Kael spun to block, and sparks flew with a loud CLANG!

Then came a third pop, a fourth...

The air filled with muffled popping sounds, like bursting bubbles. Xiaolan’s movements defied the laws of physics. One moment she was on the left, the next on the right. She even appeared directly in mid-air once, stabbing downward while upside down, only to vanish again before gravity could take effect.

At first, her movements had a stiff pause; she had to stop and catch her breath for half a second after each flicker. But as the fight continued, that half-second pause disappeared.

She was like a Ghost weaving through a world of mirrors. One second she was ten meters away, the next the chill of her dagger was already at Kael’s neck.

The pressure on Kael increased dramatically. He found that his prized experience and predictive abilities were failing against this completely unreasonable power. ’You can’t predict an enemy who doesn’t exist in your current dimension.’

’So this is Level 5...’ Kael marveled inwardly, but his sword strikes grew even fiercer. "Good! Then let me see your limits!"

He stomped his foot hard, and his fighting aura exploded outward in a ring, attempting to force Xiaolan’s true form out with an indiscriminate area-of-effect attack.

Dust and sand filled the air, completely obscuring his vision.

In that very instant, the silver-gray ring in Xiaolan’s eyes spun to its maximum intensity.

That clumsy, halting feeling was forcibly broken through. She didn’t choose to go around the area of the exploding aura; instead, she did something astounding—she charged straight into it.

Or rather, she "folded" her way in.

Kael’s pupils contracted suddenly.

In his eyes, Xiaolan hadn’t vanished. Instead, with an extremely awkward posture, she had directly crossed the barrier of fighting aura, "folding" her way to him without warning, as if passing through a curtain of water.

CLANG!

A crisp ring.

The shortsword was knocked from Kael’s hand, sent spinning through the air to land in the sand a dozen meters away.

Xiaolan panted heavily, her forehead covered in cold sweat, but her eyes were frighteningly bright. Her dagger, "Silence," hovered, trembling, before Kael’s Adam’s apple, less than a millimeter from his skin.

Phase-shifting.

No longer a simple flicker, but an absolute charge that ignored obstacles and bursts of energy.

Kael stared at the gray blade. On his face, usually as cold as ice, astonishment gave way to softer lines.

"It seems I have nothing left to teach you."

He reached out and gently patted the top of Xiaolan’s head.

The scene held for two seconds.

Then, an earth-shattering roar erupted from the high platform.

"HOLY SHIT!!!"

Ola slammed his hand on the railing, snapping the sturdy oak wood. "Did you see that?! Was that a teleport? That had to be a teleport! My god, this girl’s become a monster!"

Ryo was also unable to hide his excitement. "She did it! A Level 5 Ranger! We have a true strategic-level deterrent now!"

Tristan’s hands trembled slightly as he looked at the erratically jumping needle on his pocket watch. "It’s not just that she’s Level 5... This affinity for space, and the talent to adapt and evolve so quickly in battle... it’s simply unheard of."

The cheers and gasps of amazement made Xiaolan a little embarrassed. She sheathed her dagger, and the silver-gray ring in her eyes faded, returning her to the somewhat introverted young girl she was.

"Teacher Kael... are you hurt?"

"No."

Kael picked up his sword and returned it to its sheath.

Nearby, Ola’s face was dark. He wiped the greasy sweat from his brow, his eyes, bloodshot and staring in their direction, filled with the unwillingness of someone who had been thoroughly provoked.

"Dammit, they’re all a bunch of freaks."

Ola cursed as he scratched his messy beard. "Even a little slip of a girl is Level 5. If she’d come at me with that last move, my head would’ve been sent packing! If I don’t break through soon, how can I even show my face anymore!"

Although he was cursing up a storm, anyone could see that the Baron of Shiyan Town was truly fired up this time.

Kael walked over to Velin, glanced at the agitated Ola, and quietly twisted the knife: "I’m close, too."

Kael looked at his own palm. "In that moment, to push her potential, I too was hovering between life and death. That kind of enlightenment is truly the best key. I can already feel the doorknob to that door."

Velin nodded. The smile in his eyes faded, replaced by the authority of a lord.

"Good. But high-tier combatants alone aren’t enough."

He turned and walked toward the castle hall. "Inform everyone. Tomorrow, we’re holding a meeting by the sea."