The Amethyst War Tiger wheeled around and pounced, its sharp claws gleaming with a terrifying purple light that chilled the heart. Faced with a tiger whose mobility was now a full double his own, Ye Tianxie had lost all ability to flee. His brow set hard, his body suddenly dropped and pressed flat and tight against the ground, and at once a wind carrying the rending power of thunder and lightning screamed past overhead. In a split second he gauged the tiger’s position, tossed off a Double-Bang Firecracker on the fly, then rolled over and over down below the platform, curling his body up.
Bang! Bang!
The sound of the Double-Bang Firecracker exploding came to his ears. He narrowed his eyes, and the Hour of Eternal Fate in his hand suddenly swept upward. And just then, the Amethyst War Tiger’s huge body came sailing down over the platform above his head.
MISS!
The Hour of Eternal Fate struck the tiger’s body, but what it drew up was a great big “MISS.” After all, between them lay a full ten-level gap and an unbridgeable gap in strength. Ye Tianxie swiftly withdrew the move, lit a Double-Bang Firecracker and threw it at the tiger’s landing point, then flipped up onto the platform. Two blasts and the tiger’s furious roar came at once from behind him, and hard on their heels, the swift approach of death’s aura once more…
Every dodge of the Amethyst War Tiger’s attack was a brush past Death’s scythe. Once is swift, twice is a close call, three times is luck, four times is a miracle… and ten times… twenty times…
In his virtual gaming career, he’d once kited a same-level Lord BOSS to death with one man and one bow, never once touched by the BOSS’s attacks from start to finish. Soloing a Lord BOSS was, in the virtual gaming world, an astonishing feat utterly the stuff of legend — and the trial Ye Tianxie faced right now was far harder than wiping out a same-level Lord BOSS unharmed, ranking among the foremost in his entire history of virtual online gaming.
The blood throughout Ye Tianxie’s body boiled madly, every cell in him seeming ready to burst at any moment. Right now he was like an extremely fine thread stretched taut over a thousand meters — the slightest gust of wind could snap it. And right now, let Ye Tianxie’s nerves slacken for even an instant, and he’d perish beneath the tiger’s claws.
The Dark Man-Eating Flower’s pollen was used up, the firecracker strings were used up… even the Double-Bang Firecrackers were now all used up. Facing the Amethyst War Tiger, having exhausted every last thing he relied on, he truly had only this one chance — because the firecracker strings and Double-Bang Firecrackers could never be obtained again in the novice village. But he felt not the slightest fear, only excitement. In his eyes, in his mind, in the depths of his consciousness, all was filled with the Amethyst War Tiger’s purple shadow, his taut nerves making the swiftest, most precise reaction to its every tiny movement.
With the Double-Bang Firecrackers used up, he spared a sliver of his focus to search for that extremely rare, fleeting chance to attack. He ought to thank the Amethyst War Tiger’s frenzy — though it meant facing Death’s pursuit every second, it was precisely because of its frenzy that his attacks gained the ability to wound it, and thereby the hope of defeating it.
When a person concentrates intensely on a single thing, they feel time pass very quickly.
When a person lingers on the edge of life and death, they feel one second as long as ten years, a hundred years.
And Ye Tianxie — his mind gathered tight, lingering on death’s edge every minute and every second — could no longer perceive the flow of time, with no idea how long had already passed.
-69… MISS… MISS… MISS… 72… MISS…
The Amethyst War Tiger’s claws grazed past Ye Tianxie’s body time and again. The tiger, which before its berserk state could still occasionally wound him, now — after its 30% speed increase — couldn’t draw up a single damage number on him at all. Ye Tianxie’s evasion relied no longer solely on his reaction and perception far beyond an ordinary person’s, but also on a latent instinct upheld by the most powerful conviction and obsession, so that each time death drew near his body, it would spontaneously resist, spontaneously evade.
MISS… MISS… MISS… -72… -70… MISS…
-142!
The bodies of the man and the tiger crossed past each other, and a jet-black light swept through the space between their all-but-touching bodies — that first-appearing yellow critical-hit damage floated up conspicuously, emptying the last sliver of the Amethyst War Tiger’s health.
The Amethyst War Tiger let out a long, mournful wail, its huge body holding its forward-pouncing posture as it lunged ahead, pitching to the ground, and after that drawn-out wail it never stirred again. A great heap of items shimmering with all manner of light scattered magnificently from its body…
A big drop! A big drop worthy of the name! A Lord-tier BOSS… killed for the first time, killed across a ten-level gap, killed in a solo fight… any one of these factors alone dictated that the Amethyst War Tiger’s death would come with a big drop worthy of the name.
The final gate of the Abyss-tier trial — this Level 20 Lord BOSS, one that novice players had no possibility whatsoever of defeating, had perished just like that at Ye Tianxie’s hands. This was a miracle born of strength and luck combined, an irreproducible miracle. Were Ye Tianxie to do it over, even he himself was certain he couldn’t succeed a second time.
The abyss stood for despair, yet within that despair it had left the faintest sliver of hope… and the hope left to Ye Tianxie was the Dark Man-Eating Flowers of the second gate’s trial. Without that Dark Man-Eating Flower pollen, Ye Tianxie would have had no possibility of defeating the Amethyst War Tiger.
At the same time, without the strange items bought from Yuan Que at the novice village pharmacy, he’d likewise have had no possibility of defeating the Amethyst War Tiger.
But none of this meant that fate was watching over him. Had the one to challenge the Abyss difficulty been someone else rather than him, possessed of the exact same items, then even a full party of twelve people would likewise have had no possibility of defeating the Amethyst War Tiger. This was a trial belonging to true powerhouses.
Ye Tianxie let out a long breath, and the instant his mind relaxed, a deep sense of weakness welled up from within his heart and throughout his whole body, making him want to sink to the ground and gasp for breath in great gulps. He didn’t know how long he’d taken to defeat the Amethyst War Tiger, didn’t know how many times he’d been but a hair’s breadth from death. A faint, placid smile curled at the corner of his mouth… He’d won, completing a task that should have been impossible to complete.
“Ding… You have successfully slain the Level 20 Lord-tier BOSS, the Amethyst War Tiger. Renown +20.”
“Ding… Your level has risen to Level 11. HP +10, MP +10. You have gained 5 free attribute points.”
The clear chimes eased Ye Tianxie’s nearly-collapsed nerves considerably. He straightened his body, withdrew the Hour of Eternal Fate, and walked slowly toward the Amethyst War Tiger’s corpse. There, two balls of golden light drew his eyes.
That was the light of Gold-grade items!
(End of Chapter 46)