Increased Difficulty

“Wow, look who it is! I thought it would take a lot more effort to find you guys.”

Ren Anhua had many thoughts beforehand, but when she actually saw Lu Shanshui, only one remained: beat him up first.

However, Ren Anhua’s impulse was different when she saw Bai Rui.

When she saw Bai Rui, she inexplicably wanted to crawl into her arms.

It was as if it were some kind of homing instinct, or a seeking of security and maternal love.

However, this impulse was too embarrassing, so Ren Anhua tried her best to hide it, not showing it at all.

Anyway, one could guess that it was mostly due to the influence of that mind-altering ability, causing a slight deviation between her current instincts and her thoughts.

Fortunately, she was still able to control this deviation.

It didn’t really have much impact; it was more like it had added a new, previously nonexistent habit to her.

But a habit like that could be suppressed by reason.

In any case, she would beat up the mastermind first.

Lu Shanshui was the planner of the whole thing.

Even if she wanted to turn him into a girl, she would have to beat him up first.

If she didn’t, wouldn’t that be too easy on him?

As for the others, Ren Anhua didn’t feel much.

If she had to say, it would be Ke Xingmei and Bai Rui, or strictly speaking, just Bai Rui.

But Ren Anhua’s first thought upon seeing this woman was to sit in her lap, which made it difficult for her to act.

Although she could use reason to suppress this impulse, it would at least make her less willing to hit her.

Or perhaps she should follow the principle of fairness and recreate what Bai Rui had done to her on Bai Rui herself.

Those little gadgets, ankles, and clothes…

Speaking of clothes, Ren Anhua suddenly noticed Ke Xiaoshan.

The woman who had inherited her high-temperature ability was now wearing a skintight bodysuit.

Clearly, this outfit was also made by Bai Rui.

The tight-fitting, elastic fabric outlined the fragile girl’s figure in an incredibly moving way.

But Ren Anhua didn’t care about her figure.

Knowing the secrets hidden inside this kind of clothing, she couldn’t help but wonder if Ke Xiaoshan’s outfit had the same things inside as hers.

And hers was fully enclosed, with only her head on the outside.

Ren Anhua imagined it and felt it was a little too stimulating.

Wouldn’t that be too perverted…?

No, she was wearing the same kind of clothes herself.

This wasn’t perverted; this was perfectly normal.

“Chen Shu, I remember you’re almost Level Three, right? You’ve grown a lot on the way here.”

To shift her attention, Ren Anhua began to arrange combat power.

“With your abilities, can you take on a Level Four or something?”

“I can fight, but I’ll die,” Chen Shu replied honestly.

“What about Shimu? I remember you were very close to Level Four.”

“This humble monk has no major problems. If it’s that team, this humble monk can deal with two of them,” Shimu’s answer surprised Ren Anhua.

“Oh? How can you deal with two of them?”

“This humble monk will sit down and reason with them.”

“Forget it, I’ll just do it myself,” What Ren Anhua wanted wasn’t reason; she needed to vent.

Two Level Four auras: Ke Xiaoshan and Ashe-wen.

Lu Shanshui still felt like an ordinary person, but Ren Anhua believed he wouldn’t be too far behind those two Level Fours in terms of combat power.

Roughly calculated, that was three Level Fours.

Three was fine.

“Hey, wait a minute! We came to find you, not to fight with you,” Lu Shanshui felt that the pink-haired girl’s posture seemed a bit off, and he quickly tried to dissuade her.

“This is a personal grudge,” Ren Anhua twirled the cleaver in her hand in a beautiful flourish, casually throwing it and sticking it into the ground.

Then, she ignited the white flames on her body.

“I think we can skip the small talk.”

“Wait, let’s talk this out! I know about Ke Xiaoshan’s ability. You don’t have any offensive power right now, so why… Crap!”

Lu Shanshui seemed to have a lot more to say, but he no longer had the chance.

Ren Anhua’s explosive rush created a long trail of light, slamming towards Lu Shanshui’s position with the force of a thousand pounds.

Ashe-wen felt as if Lu Shanshui, who had been standing in front of her, had suddenly disappeared.

It was only then that she heard a loud crash from the building on the left.

Things had happened too suddenly.

Ashe-wen had never expected them to start fighting so quickly, and neither had Ke Xiaoshan.

However, the two of them didn’t react much to Ren Anhua’s fight with Lu Shanshui.

They didn’t say they would help either side.

After all, in their minds, Ren Anhua was still a member of their team, just a member with a bit of a tsundere temper who had run away from home and hadn’t come back.

It was precisely because Ren Anhua had seen this that she had directly rushed up to hammer Lu Shanshui.

His women definitely wouldn’t help him, because they were members of the RV team and probably wouldn’t attack someone as cute as her.

Although Ren Anhua wouldn’t say this out loud, she knew it clearly in her heart.

And so, the leaders of the two teams started fighting as soon as they met, but the members stayed where they were like spectators, barely moving.

After all, Ren Anhua had already said it was a “personal grudge.”

The one with the biggest headache now was probably Lu Shanshui, in both senses of the word.

Lu Shanshui fully understood one fact: even without abilities, this pink-haired girl was still an extremely terrifying opponent with just her fists.

Extreme speed, swift attacks, and that experience of discerning the battlefield.

These three things were what made Ren Anhua truly troublesome, but in the past, they had often been obscured by her dazzling high-temperature ability.

Lu Shanshui once again raised his hand to block an attack from above.

His skilled anti-gravity levitation, combined with his extremely high physical strength, allowed Ren Anhua to attack from unexpected places as long as she could find a foothold on the side of the road or indoors.

“Ugh!” A burning pain on his arm made Lu Shanshui quickly retreat a few steps.

The clothes at the spot he had just blocked were undamaged, but they had been soaked a dark red color with blood.

Lu Shanshui knew that the skin there was probably already shattered.

Although he wasn’t clear on the principle, he could roughly guess that it was the white flames on Ren Anhua’s body that were doing the trick.

Every attack from this pink-haired girl had this peculiar effect: her clothes were undamaged, but his skin was often severely injured.

Did Ke Xiaoshan have this ability? He had never heard her say anything about it!

Such a gentle child!

Such attacks, which were unavoidable with physical contact, left Lu Shanshui at a loss.

He had wanted to draw his sword to fight, but Ren Anhua’s behavior of abandoning her cleaver at the start made him a little embarrassed to draw his sword.

Besides, he had come to persuade her to return to the team.

What if he really hurt her and made her angry and unwilling to come back?

He should just obediently take the beating.

Anyway, even if he only relied on his own body to recover, these injuries would heal quickly.

“Hey, what’s with that attitude? Just defending? Aren’t you looking down on people too much, classmate Lu Shanshui? The difficulty is about to increase,” Ren Anhua pressed her thumb on the metal rose and rushed towards Lu Shanshui again.

Lu Shanshui’s plan for Ren Anhua’s attacks was to dodge whenever possible.

It could be said that all his abilities were in this sword.

Without drawing his sword, he, Lu Shanshui, was just an ordinary person with strong physical qualities.

Of course, perhaps that degree of strength couldn’t be described as ordinary.

After all, simply relying on his body to withstand so many of Ren Anhua’s attacks couldn’t be said to be weak.

But there was a limit to any dodging.

Moreover, his speed couldn’t compare to Ren Anhua’s lightning-like movements.

After turning a corner, Ren Anhua suddenly appeared behind Lu Shanshui and sent him flying sideways with a heavy punch.

Then, she flew up again, grabbed his leg, and used the momentum of his flight to draw a graceful arc in the air before slamming him hard into the ground.

But all of this was just a preparatory move.

The real killing move was the Biomass Bomb that Ren Anhua had stuck to Lu Shanshui’s back.

Ren Anhua stood on the fourth floor, looking down at Lu Shanshui, who had made a deep crater in the ground.

She activated anti-gravity and stepped upside down on the edge of the wall on the fifth floor.

Then, she crouched down and gathered strength, making her look like a missile vertically aimed at the ground.

The bomb detonated.

The strong explosion was confined by the surrounding deep pit and turned into a one-way impact, vertically blasting Lu Shanshui into the sky with a huge force.

At the same time, Ren Anhua shot down, the powerful reaction force shattering the floor of the fifth floor, sending her straight towards Lu Shanshui, who had been vertically blasted into the air.

Under the double acceleration impact, the two slammed together like Mars colliding with Earth.

A heavy thud exploded in mid-air, and the invisible shockwave shook a layer of dust off the walls.

It was certain that even Lu Shanshui wouldn’t come out unscathed after taking this blow.

However, the scene Ren Anhua had imagined did not appear.

“Oh? You finally drew your sword. Was that just now your skill or something?” Ren Anhua looked at the sword in Lu Shanshui’s hand, clicking her tongue in wonder.

It was clearly a sword, but it had just acted like a wall, blocking her punch.

Such a strong attack, yet it had been defused so effortlessly.

“This move is called Guard. It requires a little skill,” Lu Shanshui landed on the ground.

Although he had blocked the attack just now, it had still left him feeling very uncomfortable.

He had been flying for almost the entire sequence of attacks, completely in a passive, defensive state.

He had almost failed to draw his sword.

Fortunately, he had used the “Guard” skill at the last moment.

Otherwise, if he had taken that punch, he didn’t know when he would have woken up.

“You’re trying to kill me,” Lu Shanshui moved slightly and felt a burning pain across his back.

He didn’t know what his back looked like now, but it probably wasn’t too pretty.

Although the “Guard” skill could be surprisingly effective in some situations, it also had a lot of limitations.

First, it couldn’t be a particularly high-frequency attack.

Then, it had to be a physical attack with substance.

Finally, there was the matter of timing.

The validity period of “Guard” was only a few tenths of a second.

If he didn’t grasp it well, he would take the damage head-on and die directly.

The guard just now had been the most powerful he had ever guarded since the end of the world.

“Brother Lu is being modest. How could such a smart person be killed by me? And you’re a reborn, how could you be killed by me?” It was clear that Ren Anhua hadn’t forgotten the fanciful lie.

Reborn? She had actually believed his nonsense back then.

Ren Anhua walked towards the spot where she had stuck her cleaver at the start.

She pulled out the cleaver again and stabbed the hollow nail into her wrist.

Now that Lu Shanshui had drawn his sword, that meant they could do something even more exciting.

Blood soaked and stained the long knife red.

Ren Anhua smiled and said, “Now, the difficulty increases again.”