"Screeech!"
Golden lightning, crimson fire!
The instant Ruby's throat was sliced open.
A colossal fist descended like a mighty warhammer!
Wild, golden hair danced like a lion's mane, framing a figure in orange mismatched stockings, held by garter straps beneath hot pants secured with a large, metallic buckle. An unreservedly open jacket revealed smooth, firm abdominal muscles.
And seventeen centimeters above her navel, even swathed in bandages, it was impossible to conceal the explosive payload—a bounty that seemed to carry the weight of both northern and southern hemispheres. This heavy, quivering, audacious display made Lu Xing seriously question if Armed Dolls truly needed to be designed to such an extreme.
But!
While the powerful visual assault was undeniably captivating, Lu Xing's focus wasn't on that. It was on the orange-red gauntlet worn by the second named Armed Doll, already perilously close!
Lightning and flame.
Two destructive forces, simultaneously converged on the opponent's deceptively "small" weapon.
The mere energy leaking from the gauntlet sent a shiver of threat through Lu Xing—a direct hit from that thing would likely be far worse than having his head blown off.
Radiant Star was still embedded in the earth. Frost's Lament lay askew at his side—forget the inconvenient distance and angle for a swing, even if he could wield it, Lu Xing had no desire to pit a lightweight blade against a crude, brutish weapon like a gauntlet.
The only option available…
"Thud."
His right foot shot forward. After a scant fifteen-centimeter sidestep, Lu Xing successfully wedged his bent, lowered thigh into the narrow gap between Radiant Star and the ground—
"CRACK!!"
A rising knee strike!
To ensure the blow landed true, Lu Xing unleashed both [Power Strike] and [Strike] in unison!
With a dull, resonant impact, the knight lance, embedded in the ground, was launched skyward!
From this angle, neither the tip nor the bladed edges were effective; the only part that could serve as a weapon was the entirely non-lethal haft of Radiant Star.
But that didn't matter! Even a plain wooden spear shaft could kill; a sturdy, heavy lance handle… surely wouldn't be inferior to a steel rebar!
The handle swept out horizontally—
"CLANG!!"
Radiant Star slammed viciously against the descending gauntlet!
And then… it rebounded with ferocious speed!
Time was desperately short. Lu Xing's maneuver was merely a quick-witted, opportunistic improvisation. Though he was quite pleased with his reactive capability, expecting to escape unscathed… was clearly unrealistic.
If the scythe-wielding Armed Doll, Ruby, was a speed-specialized type capable of matching Lu Xing's agility, then this golden-haired one…
Was the pure, unadulterated incarnation of strength.
Radiant Star's handle hadn't even held for a tenth of a second. After colliding with the opponent's gauntlet, it recoiled at a velocity far exceeding its initial thrust!
Lu Xing…
Lu Xing neither dodged nor flinched!
The gauntlet, crackling with lightning and fire, was a mere seventy centimeters away; Radiant Star, even closer, was already grazing his shoulder. Time was too fleeting to allow for a change in tactics, so he simply—
"BANG!!"
————
At the cost of having half his shoulder torn away, Lu Xing successfully broke free from the lightning and fire's embrace. The sand and dust beneath his feet erupted violently, carving a trench over twenty meters long in the ground before Lu Xing managed to skid to a halt just outside the explosion's radius.
But!
The enemy's assault hadn't ceased.
The gauntlet-wielding [Complete Type-VI Smasher (Yang) Armed Doll] was not Ruby's sole compatriot.
The very instant Lu Xing's body skidded to a halt—
"BOOM!!"
Around his landing spot, within a three-meter diameter, the ground exploded outwards like shrapnel!
Chains, wreathed in a crimson glow, burst from the earth, coiling around him like a tornado engulfing the eye of a storm, binding Lu Xing completely in the blink of an eye!
"Crack!"
Simultaneously, as snowflakes drifted lazily from the sky, an ethereal, elf-like figure materialized in an instant!
A spiraling, high ponytail, cascading to her waist, swayed at the side of her head. Its color transitioned from silver to gray, mirroring the top-to-bottom color scheme of her attire, and also the hue of the quadrangular, pyramid-tipped rapier clutched in her hand.
[Complete Type-VI Piercer (Schnee) Armed Doll]
Lu Xing was in a terrible state.
The chains constricting his body were incredibly strong and relentlessly corroded his frame; the Honkai-silicon armor in direct contact was already visibly charred—any longer, and these super-corrosive chains might melt through his shell entirely.
And… the one lurking underground—no, hiding in the shadows—was indeed a master of "binding," her technique bordering on art. The chains' tensile strength was considerable, yet Lu Xing knew he could shatter them with his full power. The problem was, in his current bound state, Lu Xing couldn't muster any strength at all.
Facing the rapier poised to pierce his heart…
"Ha!"
His upper body was indeed immobilized. But the movement of his lower limbs remained unimpeded—Lu Xing lunged forward with a powerful stride, yanking his shoulders back, and with a savage wrench of the fibrous (tentacle) tissues around his scapulae!
"SNAP!!"
A white, navel-baring crop top, black skintight pants. And a pair of black, upright cat ears—"probably for enhanced hearing, though whether an Armed Doll's auditory sense is even functional remains to be tested," Lu Xing mused.
The figure from the shadows was brutally yanked free by Lu Xing's sheer force, dragged out along with her chains!
[Complete Type-VI Hunter (Belladonna) Armed Doll]
This last adversary was sent flying backward, following the trajectory opposite to the chains' pull, careening towards Schnee up ahead—
"THWACK!!"
The two Armed Dolls collided violently.
The immediate threat to Lu Xing was neutralized—the golden one wasn't particularly fast, and the red one was busy reattaching her own head (heaven only knew what kind of bizarre construction allowed that).
Seizing the momentary respite as the remaining two adversaries struggled to regroup, Lu Xing's head had already regenerated completely. Slender, tentacle-like structures erupted continuously from around his Honkai Crystal, rapidly coalescing and mending his previously split-open cranium.
The very instant his head's structure was fully restored.
"Krrrk—"
Lu Xing's neck twisted like that of a long-necked specter from an urban legend, contorting into an angle that would unquestionably prove fatal to any human, and he bit down hard on the chains before him!
It wasn't just weapons and limbs that could execute techniques…
Teeth worked just fine.
"—CRUNCH!!"
The upper segment of the chains shattered into fragments. The remaining lengths were insufficient to contain Lu Xing's power—with a sudden, forceful wrench of his arms, the black chains crumpled into useless scrap metal, clattering to the ground.
Round one.
The clash between Lu Xing and the Armed Dolls ended in a stalemate.
Now, with the initiative completely reversed, the figure standing directly before the newly freed Lu Xing was the Hunter, Belladonna, shouldering a colossal "coffin."
The coffin she carried bore a striking resemblance to an oversized, shoulder-launched missile launcher; however, the elegant and intricate decorative carvings on its surface certainly didn't suggest a disposable, plug-and-play weapon.
Still—its method of operation was precisely as Lu Xing had surmised.
As the Smasher, Yang, appeared behind the coffin and delivered a solid hammer-blow to its rear end.
"BOOM!!"
The entire coffin abruptly bloomed open like an epiphyllum flower at dusk!
And from within, a pitch-black, flower-bud-shaped "missile" was already streaking towards him!