Chapter 130: Bullet Time

The battle concluded, and the two members of Truth were forced to retreat amidst Huo Ye's eerie smile. Before leaving, Kim Pu-hyeon cast a resentful, bitter glance, clearly unwilling to concede, yet he stopped short of recklessly engaging Huo Ye in a direct confrontation. As he departed, he spat out, "The midterm exams are in twenty days—we shall settle this then!"

Huo Ye felt a phantom toothache at those words. It wasn't that Kim Pu-hyeon posed any significant threat; it was simply... why another exam? Hadn't they just finished one? Did Bancroft Academy enjoy torturing its students so much? No wonder the graduation rate was in the single digits—it was downright brutal! They deserved it!

No student enjoys exams. If he could, he would prefer to live out his school days carefreely, though he knew that was nothing but a pipe dream.

"Tell me... can someone explain what on earth these midterm exams are?" Huo Ye slumped onto the sofa after Kim Pu-hyeon had left. His face seemed to broadcast the message: "Why am I not a salted fish? I want to be a salted fish."

Freshly recovered from severe injuries, he had barely returned to the club when someone came to stir up trouble, only to be hit with news of some confounded midterm exam. The succession of events felt like adding insult to injury for the weary youth. Could things get any worse?

Yes, they could.

Because now that he was out of the hospital, he had to resume the devilish training sessions under Eddie and Ke Zhen. Life, he mused, was just a process of ups and downs, downs, downs, and then a final, irreversible face-plant.

"Battles between life and death can lead to great growth. You've had this experience—show me what you've learned," Eddie said before the training began.

Huo Ye pondered for a moment before replying, "I've been sorting through these memories for the past two days. Much of it is based on experience that is hard to describe in detail; it feels more like intuition helping me grow invisibly. But as for an actual ability technique, I do have one."

"Then show me," Eddie commanded.

Huo Ye nodded and turned to Alice. "Xiao Ai, give me a hand."

"Oh, sure."

The two walked to the center of the training ground and put some distance between them. Huo Ye instructed, "Use the shotgun with BB pellets and fire at me."

Alice was confused. "Brother, I understand using non-lethal BBs, but why a shotgun?"

"Don't ask, you'll see in a moment," Huo Ye teased, keeping her in suspense.

"Oh, alright." Alice didn't press further. She drew her pistol, humming a tune as she lazily produced the magazine Huo Ye had requested, and then... within half a second, she had loaded, chambered, and fired in one fluid motion. Everyone saw only a flick of her wrist as the magazine slid into place, followed by a burst of pellets released at a speed invisible to the naked eye.

Huo Ye curled his lip. The girl was still trying to play a prank on him, hoping to catch him off guard. To that, Huo Ye could only think: You are too naive, my foolish sister!

Huo Ye closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

When he opened them again, the world had changed. In Huo Ye's perception, everything—every single thing—had slowed down. The black lightning crawled sluggishly through his body. His eyes were blood-red, and his hair and clothes drifted like long serpents. They didn't appear to be blown back by force, but were swaying of their own accord, moving in slow motion. The incoming pellets looked like a vast net, but one filled with too many gaps. Alice had one eye half-closed—a habit of hers when shooting—and the way her eyelid lifted incrementally looked somewhat bizarre.

Everyone seemed to be caught in forced slow motion. One could see their intent to move, but to Huo Ye, it was agonizingly slow.

It was as if the world had been set to five-times-slower playback, or perhaps even more. As he observed, the pellets reached him. Huo Ye reached out and caught them, picking them out of the air one by one and dropping them into his palm, as casually and joyfully as a child collecting river stones to take home.

When the final pellet was gathered in his palm, the slow-motion effect ended.

Alice quickly holstered her gun and looked around, bewildered. "Where are my bullets? Where did all my bullets go?"

Huo Ye opened his palm, and the pellets cascaded out, clattering onto the ground with a crisp, melodic sound that echoed through the empty training hall.

The others from the Star group were stunned. Was this... "Lightning Speed"? No, that wasn't right. Huo Ye had previously said his dynamic vision couldn't keep up with Lightning Speed, forcing him to rely on muscle memory. The bullets were moving at high velocity; it would be impossible for Huo Ye to memorize their positions and calculate their trajectories simultaneously. It would take the combined brainpower of Jiang Feng and the computational skill of Lei Li-mi to even come close!

Before anyone could ask, Huo Ye boasted, "This is my new ability technique. I call it—Bullet Time. The principle is simple: use Lightning Speed to boost physical velocity, then flood the retina, eyeballs, and optic nerves with energy to forcibly enhance dynamic vision. This puts a certain strain on the body. The eyes turn blood-red from the congestion first, and then the cells begin to die off little by little. The longer you hold it, the greater the damage. Of course, as long as it's only for a few minutes, the eyes will recover, but if you push it too far, the energy cost outweighs the benefit."

Bullet Time was a photographic technique used in film, advertising, and video games to simulate variable speeds, such as enhanced slow-motion or frozen time. The most vivid example was Quicksilver from the 21st-century film series *X-Men*. When Huo Ye used Bullet Time, he was essentially in Quicksilver's perspective. Unfortunately, he wasn't a chosen one blessed with a destiny halo; his power came with a cost.

If he were to lose his sight in the middle of a battle, it would be no different from suicide. As the old saying went, Huo Ye's self-healing ability wasn't strong enough yet to act recklessly.

The group remained in shock. Bullet Time—his visual perception finally catching up to his incredible speed. This was a god-tier skill! If he encountered a swarm of low-level calamities, Huo Ye could probably tear them to shreds in the blink of an eye. As for their remains—once they were shredded, there wouldn't be much left to call a body.

It was said that of all martial arts under heaven, only speed was invincible. As long as one was fast enough, even the most powerful enemy would appear riddled with flaws. There was a martial arts master from the 20th to 21st century who created a sword technique called the "Nine Swords of Dugu," which had no set moves—it relied entirely on one word: Speed! A single "fast" could break every martial art in existence. How elegant!

Eddie, however, remained calm as he asked, "How long can you hold it?"

"One minute at my limit. At the speed of Lightning Speed, that's roughly a five-kilometer dash," Huo Ye replied.

Eddie nodded, offering a rare compliment: "Not bad. Keep strengthening it."