Chapter 205 |
His mind still churning, Lin Hui made a quick detour to Clear Wind Temple and then doubled back to the Purple Crystal Ruins to retrieve the Water Man.
After confirming the Purple Crystal Purgatory Tyrannosaurus was still sound asleep, he swiftly opened his pack and withdrew a stalk of Purple Cloud Reishi.
He planned to use the Purple Cloud Reishi to offset the bulk of the evolution's cost, with Spirit-Enriching Reishi covering whatever gap remained — leaving nothing wasted.
A single stalk of Purple Cloud Reishi shaved nearly two years off the Blood Seal's countdown. After burning through four stalks, Lin Hui supplemented the remainder with three stalks of Spirit-Enriching Reishi.
The countdown vanished.
The Tyrannosaurus slumped and began to shudder violently. Massive shards of pure Purple Crystal burst through its skin and jutted outward in jagged spires. Within moments, the beast was encased entirely inside a rough, crystalline sphere.
A dozen seconds passed.
Standing in the spacious underground hall, Lin Hui watched the sphere in silence. Then, all at once, long fractures spiderwebbed across its surface.
With a cacophony of sharp cracks, the crystals shattered and fell away.
A massive monster—covered head to tail in purplish-black scales and built like a Stegosaurus—burst free in a single stride. Three horns of dark Purple Crystal crowned its head, and its eyes radiated a steady, faint purple glow. Standing roughly six meters tall and spanning over ten meters in length, its dense musculature projected a low, oppressive weight.
Thud.
The moment the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon completed its evolution, it lowered its head toward Lin Hui and held perfectly still.
"Not bad," Lin Hui murmured, appraising the hulking beast that had cost nine years of Blood Seal time.
The Blood Seal guaranteed its absolute loyalty—a guarantee he trusted without reservation. Even so, he would need a live target eventually to gauge its actual combat strength.
"Can you understand me?" he asked.
The Purple Crystal Flame Dragon nodded.
"Good. Follow me out."
He had no intention of relying on it for combat anyway. Its primary purpose was to supply enough Purple Crystals to sustain Body Tempering across the entire Clear Wind Temple. The crystals had already driven rapid development within the sect; the surge of disciples breaking through to the Internal Force realm was largely thanks to this resource alone. When paired with the Typhoon Sword Technique, cultivating with the crystals effectively doubled a practitioner's advancement speed. Lin Hui treated the supply with the utmost importance.
He set off at a run with the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon loping behind him. It was nearly dusk by the time the man and the dragon arrived safely at the maze ruins in the Outer Mist Zone.
The moment the dragon crossed the Boundary Wall, it trembled and drew up short. It stayed rigid and watchful, as though bracing for a predator to lunge from the shadows at any second—only settling after it stepped into the safe clearing Lin Hui had previously carved out.
"Burrow in here, dig yourself down, and go dormant to form a Purple Crystal vein. Don't wander unless necessary. If trouble comes, contact me directly," Lin Hui instructed.
The Purple Crystal Flame Dragon nodded and stepped to the center of the clearing. It tapped the earth once with its front claws.
Whoosh. Its massive body instantly disintegrated, scattering into a dense cloud of purple crystal powder that drilled straight into the ground.
Over ten minutes passed.
A low, resonant rumble reached Lin Hui through the mind-spirit link.
Roar! (Done.)
It was a bestial sound, yet the meaning arrived clearly. Lin Hui attempted to reply in kind, projecting his mind-spirit back. The sensation resembled Internal Force sound transmission but was distinctly different.
To send a mind-spirit message, he had to imagine the sound emanating from between his eyebrows while maintaining a precise enough fix on the target's direction and distance. Unlike Internal Force sound transmission — which physically vibrated the air at a set location to produce actual sound waves — there was no way to confirm the message had landed except by reading the recipient's reaction.
He tried, and the dragon responded from underground.
Roar! (Understood.)
Can you hear me clearly? Lin Hui sent again. Conducting conscious dialogue through pure mind-spirit projection was entirely new. It seemed that pushing the False Enactment Art to a certain threshold—combined with the significant mind-spirit fortification from his new Body Tempering grade—had unlocked this faculty.
He had shared no such connection with the Water Man before. But now he could faintly sense a thin, blurred tether running from him to both the Water Man and the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon alike.
Roar! (Yes!)
Can you hear me?
Roar! (Yes!)
Can you...
Roar! (Yes...??!)
After more than a hundred repetitions, the Purple Crystal Flame Dragon went still underground and refused to respond further. Thoroughly satisfied, Lin Hui confirmed the mechanics, range, and energy cost of mind-spirit transmission.
Defenders secured—but not enough.
He walked to the stone wall at the clearing's edge, drew Ruyi, and gave a single light slash.
Snikt! A massive gap was cleaved into the rock as if cutting air.
He kept going. He carved into the maze's boundary relentlessly. The ancient stone—dense enough that even Outer Mist Zone monsters couldn't scratch it—crumbled like tofu under Wind Disaster Force, reduced to drifting powder.
Over ten minutes later, Lin Hui surveyed the massive cubic pool he had excavated and let out a slow breath.
If I'd had this kind of destructive power a year ago, I wouldn't have spent twelve months hollowing this place out.
He ordered the Water Man to settle into the pool and strictly forbade it from assuming human form and startling anyone who passed through.
Hiss! (Okay!) The Water Man replied through their link.
Next: find a few Mist Zone monsters that are strong but manageable, and evolve them.
Lin Hui turned his thoughts to the local ecosystem surrounding the maze. This stretch of the Outer Mist Zone bordered the Boundary Wall and held three primary monster populations: the Skull-men near Miyin Village, the Nine-Tailed Scorpions near the Rotting God Sect, and the Phantom Mist Cats prowling just outside the maze. He had gathered this from his disciple Xia Si, who had survived in this area for years and knew the terrain like the back of her hand.
After brief deliberation, he decided to start with the Skull-men.
He had glimpsed them during his commutes over the past year, though his movement speed was so extreme that by the time they registered his presence, he was already gone. He had never actually traded blows with one.
This time, he intended to test their real combat capability—and find out whether they could be beaten into submission.
…
Hundreds of kilometers from Xinyu Town, in Qingfu Town.
At the settlement's edge lay a desolate stretch of twisted dead trees and a ruined temple. The ground was parched, cracked, and blackened.
Clear Wind Temple's support team was moving along Qingfu Town's main road, heading straight for the site of the earlier ambush.
Twenty experts made up the group, led by Chen Sui—formerly the Eldest Senior Brother of Clear Wind Temple. Though he no longer held the top rank, his cultivation had long since reached Perfected Internal Force.
Thanks to the Purple Crystals and the sect's swelling stockpiles of resources and medicine, he was living a life he wouldn't have dared imagine in years past. In the old days of the Clear Wind Temple, earning hundreds of thousands of qian from a single mission would have been a fantasy. Now that the sect was powerful and well-regarded, major clans and merchant guilds from surrounding regions actively sought them out with lucrative commissions.
For a top-ten expert like Chen Sui, casually picking up a mission could easily yield over three hundred thousand qian. With funds like that, acquiring medicine and resources was effortless. Coupled with the Temple Master's refinements to their foundational sword techniques, their martial progress had accelerated sharply — everything falling naturally into place.
Alongside Chen Sui, three other Perfected Internal Force experts anchored the team.
The Hongfei Sect's unprovoked slaughter of Clear Wind Temple disciples was a provocation of a kind the sect hadn't seen in years. After a grim deliberation with the elders, Wang Hongshi treated it with absolute gravity: five Internal Force experts dispatched immediately, the remainder of the roster filled with high-grade Body Tempering disciples—a force assembled to settle the matter thoroughly.
Moving in a loose serpentine formation, the team covered the desolate wasteland at speed.
Chen Sui suddenly raised a closed fist—halt.
Swish, swish, swish! All twenty cultivators stopped dead with startling precision, every gaze locking onto him.
"Who's there?" Chen Sui's eyes swept the terrain. "You've been shadowing us the entire way. Step out."
Among the five Internal Force experts, all practiced secret arts, but Chen Sui was the only one who, upon maxing out his Internal Force and hitting a wall, had turned to the False Enactment Art taught by Lin Hui.
The False Enactment Art was an evolved, simplified offshoot of the Blood Seal's power. Yet it proved unexpectedly compatible with his constitution — because the foundational Void Terror Spirit remained intact, his mastery had advanced at a ferocious pace. His mind-spirit was vastly stronger now, passively sharpening all five senses to an edge keen enough to detect the figures lying in wait.
"The Clear Wind Temple truly breeds fine talents." A voice drifted from the shadows of the ruined temple. "To track our auras from that distance—impressive."
Six figures in black robes stepped into the open. All wore black crowns and heavy metal gauntlets. At their head stood a white-haired old man with a ravaged face crosshatched by dark red scars from brow to jaw.
"I am Xiang Yuntao of the Hongfei Sect. We have been waiting."
"The Hongfei Sect—and you show yourselves willingly?" Chen Sui's anger surged. "Brazen."
They had murdered his juniors and left Qiu Yiren gravely injured, and instead of fleeing, they had laid an ambush for the force sent to answer for it.
"We threw the stone; we prepared for the consequences." Xiang Yuntao's tone was light. "The Clear Wind Temple has kept the Myriad Medicine Villa under its heel for far too long. My sect merely answered the call of justice."
He clenched his fists. With a sharp metallic click, gleaming silver claws sprang from the backs of his gauntlets.
"Prepared for the consequences—meaning you're confident you have the advantage." Chen Sui's heart sank.
His team had moved at maximum speed without rest. Yet the enemy had still predicted their route with perfect accuracy. Only one explanation fit: a spy inside the sect was feeding their real-time position to the other side.
"Isn't it obvious?" Xiang Yuntao smiled. He raised one hand, and the five cultivators behind him deployed their movement techniques simultaneously, surging toward the Clear Wind Temple group.
Steel rang from scabbards on both sides. The two forces collided, and the clash of metal claws against longswords erupted into a continuous, hammering din.
At a safe remove, several figures in black robes stood atop a ruined stone rooftop and watched the battle below unfold.
"Master, what exactly are the higher-ups thinking?" The youngest among them—a fair-skinned girl barely in her teens—frowned, puzzled. "The Clear Wind Temple has a formidable background, and their Temple Master is not someone to take lightly. Even if our influence has reached their borders, there's no need to clash with them openly. And High Divine Officer Liu of the Rain Palace isn't someone to provoke without good reason."
"This isn't the Carefree Pavilion's initiative. The order comes from higher up—from the Su family's Eldest Young Master," the gray-haired man at the front replied evenly. "High Divine Officer Liu has corresponding heavyweights assigned to handle him directly. We at the Carefree Pavilion are simply executing tasks at our designated level."
"It's a coordinated offensive from top to bottom, aimed squarely at High Divine Officer Liu Wujun," the white-haired old man standing to one side added, his hands clasped behind his back. "Liu Wujun is powerful, but his assets are spread across many territories. By striking what he is obligated to protect, the operation will pull him thin and throw him into disarray."
"The Eldest Young Master has been building toward this for a long time. The board is set. Now we ensure Liu Wujun is run ragged enough to underperform at the Inter-City Exchange Meeting."