Chapter 1 Receiving the Challenge

To actually receive the challenge letter he had dreamed of, Gu Fei's heart was filled with excitement, the complete opposite of the disappointment he felt last night when Hu Die was overtaken in the last minute of the monthly ticket competition.

Admiring the large characters "Challenge Letter" on the envelope multiple times, Gu Fei quickly found the opponent's name: Feng Xing. Immediately afterward, Gu Fei tore open the envelope and took out the letter inside.

The content of the letter was concise: "Duel, dare?"

Gu Fei's blood boiled. He immediately turned on the friend request switch and tried to add "Feng Xing" as a friend, but received the message that the other party's friend request switch was off. If the many guild leaders knew that adding Gu Fei as a friend had such a cheap trick, who knows how much blood they would vomit.

Seeing that private chat was impossible, Gu Fei immediately took out the paper and pen he hadn't used up when writing the reply letter, and concisely wrote a reply: "Dare!"

After dropping the letter into the mailbox, Gu Fei began to circle the mailbox expectantly, muttering, "Reply quickly, reply quickly!"

After circling for several minutes, the system chimed. Gu Fei didn't even look before yanking open the mailbox. Sure enough, it was a reply from Feng Xing: "Time, place!"

"Now, you choose the place!" Gu Fei quickly replied. The time and place were each decided by one party, to show fairness. Gu Fei followed the basic conventions.

"Fighting Arena!" Yun Feng was right next to the mailbox this time, replying very quickly. After sending the reply, he also began anxiously waiting for Gu Fei's reply.

Gu Fei's reply was naturally extremely swift: "How to get there?"

"Fifty meters east of the Martial Arts Hall!" Feng Xing's reply was even faster. The two seemed to be competing at this point.

"See you there!"

"See you there!"

Gu Fei, who had originally planned to log off, immediately turned around and walked towards the Martial Arts Hall. "I'll log off right after the fight." His calculations were quite satisfactory.

Feng Xing, on the other hand, was facing a formidable enemy. Now, the legends about this mage were spreading like wildfire. Many people in the guild had personally experienced a battle with him, and the descriptions they gave were chaotic. But Feng Xing still captured three important points from them: close combat, instant kill, teleportation.

Feng Xing believed that these were undoubtedly the three most daunting aspects of this mage.

Close combat meant unexpectedness.

Instant kill meant you couldn't make a single mistake.

Teleportation meant having absolute speed.

The three keywords together formed a single sentence: Teleport to your side and instantly kill you...

Most people, upon hearing such a fighting style, would probably want to give up already. But Feng Xing wasn't afraid, because in his eyes, as long as it was a mage, there was a fatal flaw: casting skills required incantation.

This flaw meant that when fighting a mage, the key was to watch his mouth. Watch the mage's mouth, and you've already reached the realm of anticipating the enemy's moves. The rest depended on your reaction.

This principle had already been recognized by many people, so mages had also developed corresponding countermeasures. In actual combat PK, very few mages chanted aloud anymore. Everyone kept the incantation to themselves, quietly chanting in a low voice, so that no one could hear them except themselves and the system.

Feng Xing was an exception. He had a skill in life that most people didn't have: he knew lip reading, also known as a lip-reading expert.

Translating someone's speech based on their lip movements might not be foolproof, but translating a mage's incantation wasn't difficult. Because a mage's incantation formulas were just a few sentences repeated over and over. Since Gu Fei also had a special teleportation skill, Feng Xing specifically searched for the incantation for that skill. Once he knew the content of the incantation, lip-reading it was really not a difficult task for an expert like him.

Furthermore, watching was more proactive, while listening was more passive. Feng Xing used sight to grasp the mage's attack methods, which gave him a slight advantage over those who relied on listening. Although it was only a slight advantage, there was a saying: in a battle between experts, life and death often depended on a single thread. This slight advantage gave Feng Xing a hundredfold increase in confidence. He had never been defeated when fighting mages, and he wasn't afraid of facing an instant-kill mage this time either.

Sword of Oathlessness and Reflection of the Moon decided to find an opportunity to set up a trap to make Thousand Miles Drunk and the elite experts of his Young Master's elite group suffer a major loss. Feng Xing didn't object to this plan. But back during the Unsmiling event, he had already wanted to fight this guy to vent his anger, but he didn't know the other party's real identity. After so much time had passed, those emotions had faded. But when today's incident broke out, Feng Xing's impulse, which had already dimmed, rekindled. The difference was that this time Gu Fei's identity was exposed, so Feng Xing didn't hesitate to send Gu Fei a challenge letter in private.

The Fighting Arena wasn't a scene with any special purpose. It was just a backdrop built to cater to the environment of the Martial Arts Hall nearby.

Such a useless place naturally had no players coming. Gu Fei hurried over and saw a fighter standing straight with his arms crossed in the center of the Fighting Arena's platform.

Gu Fei guessed that this person was undoubtedly Feng Xing. He was immediately overjoyed.

He could no longer recognize this person who was one of the three core members of Across the World, whom he had met before. He just saw that the other party was a fighter and immediately liked him very much. On the way here, Gu Fei had been guessing the other party's profession. He thought it was more likely that the other party was a mage. Because in Parallel World, there was still professional class restraint among individuals. A fair duel was generally conducted between the same profession. If you were an archer and invited a mage to duel, it was estimated that no one in the entire game except Gu Fei would pay attention to you.

"Ahem, Feng Xing?" Gu Fei greeted Feng Xing as he climbed onto the platform of the Fighting Arena.

Feng Xing nodded with a cold expression: "Thousand Miles Drunk?" Just as Gu Fei had met him before but couldn't recognize him, Feng Xing also couldn't recognize that Gu Fei was the guy who had poked him with a stick before.

Gu Fei also nodded in acknowledgment: "Can we start?"

"I won't show mercy! Neither should you." Feng Xing's goal was to kill Gu Fei.

"That's for the best!" Gu Fei was also annoyed by matches that stopped at a certain point, because that was actually more tiring than directly killing the other party. Gu Fei wasn't afraid of hard work, but he was afraid that "stopping at a certain point" would prevent the other party from exerting their full strength.

After the two finished speaking, they had already taken their stances. Feng Xing stared at Gu Fei's mouth, while Gu Fei paid attention to all of the opponent's movable joints, such as his shoulders, arms, and legs.

"Come on!" Both of them had this unspoken line as the opening.

"Teleportation, teleportation, teleportation." Feng Xing stared at Gu Fei's mouth, waiting for him to say these four words. Maybe he didn't even need four, just the two words "teleportation" would be enough for him to make a judgment. He wouldn't choose to retreat. He would counterattack at the first opportunity.

Teleportation? Heh, teleporting to my side to be beaten by me is the same as me teleporting! Feng Xing was secretly pleased.

Feng Xing was so preoccupied with thinking about how to deal with Gu Fei's ultimate move that he overlooked a basic reality.

Even an ultimate move had to be used when it was needed!

Gu Fei's main purpose in learning teleportation was to chase opponents who were faster than him. Feng Xing didn't show speed faster than Gu Fei at this time, nor was he running away. He hadn't triggered the conditions for activating Gu Fei's teleportation at all. His waiting was doomed to be in vain.

Gu Fei also wanted to see Feng Xing's skills first, so he was waiting for him to make the first move.

One person stared at the other person's mouth, and the other person stared at the other person's joints. Their purposes were the same: to see through the other person's attack from their actions.

Unfortunately, neither of them had an attack, so the two of them just stared at each other for five minutes.

"Why aren't you attacking?" Gu Fei suddenly said.

As soon as these words came out, Feng Xing immediately took a step to the side and threw a horizontal punch, but stopped halfway through.

"Ah, you're attacking like this..." Gu Fei looked at Feng Xing with a puzzled expression.

Feng Xing turned his face to the side. At this time, his face was like a ripe persimmon, and it might break with a slight touch.

Feng Xing was too nervous and focused. He focused on Gu Fei's mouth, focused on waiting for Gu Fei's teleportation, and focused on attacking as soon as Gu Fei moved.

These thoughts flashed back and forth in his mind, and unconsciously, he had summarized a conditioned reflex: Gu Fei moves his mouth, I move my hands.

So, as soon as Gu Fei opened his mouth, Feng Xing had already thrown his punch without thinking. But halfway through the punch, he suddenly woke up: Gu Fei had opened his mouth, but it wasn't the incantation for teleportation. He was too focused.

Feeling ashamed, Feng Xing refused to turn around for a long time. No matter how rich Gu Fei's combat experience was, he didn't understand what Feng Xing's punch was for. At this time, he saw this guy awkwardly turn around and ignore him, and helplessly asked: "Are we still fighting?"

"Fight! Why not fight!" Feng Xing turned around angrily and punched Gu Fei.

"Shooting Star on Horseback... Is that really the move?" Gu Fei saw him sidestep to the side to let him pass, but unexpectedly Feng Xing canceled the Shooting Star on Horseback halfway through, twisted his body, and wrapped his hands around Gu Fei.

This was a move that he felt confident in. Unexpectedly, he grabbed empty air.

"Did he teleport!" Feng Xing thought and suddenly looked up, saw Gu Fei standing next to him with a smile, stretched out his hand and pushed, Feng Xing, who was still twisted in mid-air, immediately lost his balance and fell to the ground with a thud.

Gu Fei instantly retreated to the side, but saw that Feng Xing was just lying on the ground in a daze, and sighed slightly.

Gu Fei's profession was indeed a mage, but in Parallel World, the profession he knew best was the fighter. His understanding came from private research. Gu Fei understood how the fighter's skills could be matched and how they could be used in different ways. The fighting methods invented by the players had not escaped the scope of Gu Fei's knowledge at all. It was really too difficult for a fighter to defeat Gu Fei.

Because he was facing a true fighter!