Odd Containment Specialist.

Chapter 961 Who is the Tightrope Walker?
Sprite and Shangguan Yan are now like two acrobats standing on the same tightrope, only able to constantly vibrate the tightrope to affect each other's balance.

It has been said that the battle of forbidden knowledge is like a tightrope walk.

For someone who doesn't understand forbidden knowledge, facing someone who does is like an ordinary person standing on a tightrope facing a skilled tightrope walker. The tightrope walker can easily make the ordinary person fall from a great height with just a slight movement of their foot.

But for acrobats like Shangguan Yan and Sprite, who are extremely skilled, no matter how much they shake the wires and affect each other, they can easily cope by simply adjusting their center of gravity.

However, this does not mean that it is impossible to determine who is better. Even if both are masters of tightrope walking, there is bound to be a difference in skill level.

When both touch the "scar" that serves as a steel wire, the intensity of their competition using forbidden knowledge will reach an unprecedented level of fierce competition.

This is like two performers on a tightrope getting so close that their arms can touch each other. If one of them reaches out to attack the other, it will inevitably cause the other to fall.

Shangguan Yan knew very well that if it came to that, she would not be able to defeat Sprite. Although she was known as the Dismemberer and the Torture Demon, she was still self-aware.

There is no doubt that Sprite's understanding of scars surpasses hers.

But... she wouldn't give the other party such an opportunity. As long as she avoided falling into that situation, it would be equivalent to sealing Sprite's use of forbidden knowledge. And without the ability to use forbidden knowledge, Sprite's combat power would be below hers!
Shangguan Yan leaped high into the air and slammed down with his fist. A large number of invisible slashes cut into the ice behind Sprite. The giant ice, which was originally a single piece, was cut into small pieces. The ice sand, which was more than ten feet high, splashed up high under the violent impact, like pale waves.

The next second, everyone saw Sprite fly out of the snow waves, and then, without warning, the church by the lake in the distance collapsed.

The massive pillars supporting Twilight City emitted a sickening groan, and three hair-thin, purplish-black cracks spiraled upwards from the bottom.

Where the crack passed, the stone melted as if a hot knife were cutting wax, and the column, weighing over a hundred tons in the middle section, slowly tilted.

Before the rubble could even hit the ground, it was crushed into dust by subsequent strikes. Only a few boulders crashed to the ground and shattered into pieces.

Those watching from afar were dumbfounded. Charles I and the other vampire nobles were completely blank-minded. They couldn't understand why Xia Shou's henchmen possessed such formidable fighting power.

Of course, they couldn't understand why Rosa's successor, the pinnacle of the Blood Dynasty, was lying aside and not participating in the battle!
From the moment Xia Shou withdrew from his formless state, everything became very strange. The power of blood and fire seemed to have disappeared, as if... as if all the power Rosa had given him had vanished.

Other spectators hiding in the shadows also began to be unable to understand the battle between the two.

There are so many things we don't understand. Nobody knows why Shangguan Yan could ignore the collapse of his fighting spirit and attack Sprite, and nobody knows why Sprite didn't shred Shangguan Yan like he did that EX-level monster.

Judging solely from the performance, it seems as if Sprite was holding back.

However, even with restraint, the aftershocks of this battle are quickly exceeding the limits of what the spectators can tolerate.

Many of the attacks from both sides were invisible to the naked eye, and the red-haired woman seemed to be able to unleash attacks similar to sword slashes.

The two men's strikes were as powerful as sword energy in martial arts novels, and they were invisible!

The most terrifying attacks are those that are unseen. In addition, these two fought without regard to targets or distance, and even buildings thousands of meters away on the shore were neatly sliced ​​up like fruit.

In the distance, Flandre stared intently at the center of the battlefield through her binoculars.

"How did the witch manage to bypass the collapse of fighting spirit? Is it the same technique as Xia Shou? Can this method be used by multiple people? Then why did the Bureau of Control collapse on several earlier historical fronts?" Flandre fired off a series of questions like a machine gun.

"Should we keep watching? I think it's best to stop while we're ahead," Edward said.

"What do you mean?" Flandre asked, puzzled. "The stands are no longer safe. My professional instincts tell me that now is the best time to evacuate." With that, Edward turned and walked away.

On the frozen lake, thousands upon thousands of hailstones, relentlessly slicing through the air, fell in bursts. Because they were so fine, they melted at room temperature, turning into showers of cold rain—the frozen lake was transforming back into a liquid lake in a way that defied imagination.

When Sprite emerged from the rain again and came into view, he had many more wounds on his body.

That wasn't a real wound, but rather a "wound that had appeared but hadn't actually appeared" that had been transformed through forbidden consciousness after the injury.

Shangguan Yan also emerged from the rain curtain formed by the shattered ice, ceasing his exaggeratedly high-speed movement.

The corners of her mouth turned up in an uncontrollable smile, the curve more pronounced than ever before. Her slightly hunched posture made it seem as if she was ready to start running at high speed at any moment. The position of her arms, her taut shoulders, her slightly raised heels, and her ankles stretched to their limit... Even though she was still, every detail of her body was filled with a dynamic sense of movement.

Rain fell on her body, soaking her shirt. A large amount of steam enveloped her, making it hard to tell whether it was evaporating sweat or evaporating lake water.

The only thing that could be clearly felt was that domineering and terrifying madness.

Anyone could see that her fighting spirit was at its peak.

At this moment, some people finally understood the true meaning behind the nickname "witch".

"Not bad," Shangguan Yan chuckled, praising in a low voice, "Truly a tough nut to crack!"

She hadn't encountered such resilient bones in a very, very long time. As a torturer, she had never encountered such a suitable body for torture.

Sprite's eyes were brighter than before.

He looked down at his chest, where a trickle of blood was flowing from the edge of the "unresolved wound."

That wasn't a visual image seen through strange scars, but real blood—the remnant blood newly created from the blood in his body after that man turned it into flames.

This body... is bleeding.

This is an injury that cannot be transformed into something that never happened by the suppression of consciousness.

It's not that the prohibition of knowledge has failed or been affected, but rather that there is a parallel, non-conflicting force hindering the realization of the prohibition of knowledge.

This result excited Sprite.

He suffered truly irreversible damage.

The desire to transform existing wounds into those yet to fall is indeed ongoing, but as we slowly approach the end, the speed of this transformation becomes slower and slower.

This process seems to have no end in sight.

...as if time were gradually freezing.

(End of this chapter)