Chapter 306 |
Whoosh!
In the next instant, Leiming's figure began to expand beneath the empowerment of the Righteous Body Law Seal. His already terrifying halo—blinding at any scale—grew more dazzling and searing still, white electric arcs flickering visibly within its depths.
Buzz!
A ring of crushing, oppressive might detonated outward in all directions, with Leiming at its epicenter. The aura of his halo surged, driving his divine force into a realm beyond measure—to heights that even the most formidable among the assembled Venerables could not fathom.
"This... this is—!?" Third Sister Huangque raised her hand just in time, releasing a crimson barrier to contain the eruption of Leiming's aura. "A breakthrough in divine force!?"
"A secret art, or the law seal?" Shenyin asked, focusing her mind.
"Hard to say. The Eye of Life only augments recovery; it could not possibly trigger a shift of this magnitude. It must be... the law seal." Diyun's voice carried visible shock. Among all the assembled gods, he knew best that Eldest Brother Leiming had been stalled at the powerful divine force stage for years. And yet, with the law seal as his fulcrum, he had shattered that barrier in a single motion and stepped into an entirely new realm.
The breakthrough flooded every god present with reassurance.
After a long moment, Leiming withdrew his halo, and his body shrank back to its normal proportions. Standing in place, he bowed deeply toward Lin Hui.
"From this day forward," he declared with solemn gravity, "to see the Dao Master within the Divine Palace is to see me."
Lin Hui smiled and returned the bow. He understood perfectly that the moment Leiming's breakthrough succeeded, the Zhenlong Divine Palace faction was bound to his cause without recourse.
Over the following days, he did not stir from the palace. He remained entirely within the Divine Palace, continuously imparting methods and bestowing seals upon the Mist Gods and Divine Descendants.
The core of what he imparted was the Righteous Body Law Seal, supplemented by the Eye of Life. Together, the two vastly enhanced the recovery capacity and physical constitution of the Mist Gods and Divine Descendants.
Those whose true bodies prioritized physical constitution received immediate, dramatic amplification from the Righteous Body. At the very least, they advanced by an entire rank—feeble divine force rising to weak divine force, for instance. Some gained two ranks. One fortunate individual vaulted from feeble all the way to intermediate divine force in a single bound, becoming a terrifying existence on par with the former four Venerables.
As the law seals and methods spread downward through the ranks, the collective strength of the Zhenlong Divine Palace expanded at a furious pace.
…
Nine days later.
When the last Mist God received the Bestowal Seal, this session of imparting methods reached its conclusion. Nearly every Mist God and Divine Descendant in the surrounding territory had streamed into the Divine Palace to receive his teachings. Mist Gods from more distant regions were still trickling in—but Lin Hui could not anchor himself indefinitely to a single place. It was enough that the strongest among them had completed the process.
Within the current Zhenlong Divine Palace, the foremost in raw power was naturally Venerable Leiming, fresh from his breakthrough. The most unfathomable, however, was the nameless white deer elder who called himself Fan Yuntian. Throughout the entire proceeding, he had conducted himself as an onlooker—aside from a brief flash of surprise when he received the methods and Bestowal Seal, he maintained an expression of placid, unhurried amusement throughout.
Beyond those two, the remaining three Venerables had each advanced to a powerful divine force after receiving the methods. The number of Mist Gods at intermediate divine force surged to thirty-four in one breath—an increase of more than fifty percent. Those with weak divine force more than doubled. Those at feeble divine force or at the Divine Descendant stage climbed into triple digits.
This staggering proliferation—representing only a fraction of the full pantheon of gods in the Jade Sea region near Black Cloud—finally made Lin Hui understand why a district as formidable as Black Cloud City could do no more than entrench itself in place and could not expand. The Zhenlong Divine Palace's surge in numbers was, at its core, a temporary influx of Mist Gods and Divine Descendants drawn in by the lure of the methods.
Yet nine days in, having concluded that they had adapted to and mastered the secret methods, some Mist Gods began to entertain thoughts of departure.
Less than an hour after slipping away from the Divine Palace, a loose coalition of sixteen Mist Gods rapidly reversed course and gathered to blockade the main gate.
"Tell Lin Hui to come out and answer for himself!!"
"Why did the secret methods and law seals suddenly stop working!? You owe us an explanation!"
"All that fine talk—and you turn out to be a fraud! Were the secret methods and law seals just bait to buy our trust!? Lin Hui, come out here!!"
Several grotesquely shaped Mist Gods projected their mind-spirits through the seawater beyond the gates. The sheer force of those emanations caused nearby fish-headed, human-bodied worshippers to vomit blood and collapse.
In the next instant, a colossal, crushing mind-spirit swept over the troublemakers like a tide.
"Every other Mist God is perfectly fine. So why did it fail for you alone?"
"...The reason should be obvious. Lin Hui must have tampered with the methods as he imparted them. The moment we step beyond his control, he pulls the trigger and shuts the power off. Venerables—think about what that means. If we were locked in a duel and our methods cut out mid-fight, the consequences would be…" said a dragon-headed, human-bodied Mist God at the center of the group, his voice cold and measured. "This man named Lin harbors malice beyond all reckoning. We are fortunate to have caught it early. We call upon the four Venerables to exact divine punishment upon him!"
…
Inside the Divine Palace, meanwhile, the four Venerables, the white deer Fan Yuntian, and Lin Hui had been deep in discussion regarding the surrounding pantheons of gods. The moment Leiming swept his mind-spirit outward to investigate the disturbance and then withdrew it, the conversation fell silent. At such proximity, every word outside had been audible to them all.
The gaze of every god converged again on Lin Hui.
"Dao Master Lin…" Leiming's tone carried a quiet edge. "What exactly is going on here?"
"What do you mean, Venerable Leiming?" Lin Hui's expression remained unchanged, his faint smile undisturbed. "I made it clear from the very beginning: this secret method requires one to sincerely acknowledge themselves, in their heart, as a disciple of my Clear Wind Dao for it to remain effective."
"So you are saying," Huangque asked, "that the Mist Gods causing trouble outside no longer consider themselves members of the Clear Wind Dao—at a sincere level?"
"That must be precisely the case." Lin Hui nodded.
Silence fell over the hall.
Previously, they had all assumed the condition was hollow rhetoric. The methods had already been received; they were magnificent Mist Gods. How could some trivial secret method—and the thin sliver of power it was seeded with—possibly read the depths of their hearts at every moment?
So they had treated it as a box to tick. Since none of them had intended to defect at the moment of entry, they passed the initial screening without issue. The belief was that once the benefits were secured, they could eventually disengage at their leisure.
And now some had tried—and paid for it.
On the surface, it looked like nothing more than the stated limitation activating as described. But the core question beneath that surface was singular and pointed.
Could the methods of the Clear Wind Dao read the deepest currents of their thoughts—at any time, in any place?
That was what truly unsettled the four Venerables and the white deer elder Fan Yuntian.
A restriction that had seemed somewhat quaint at the outset—sincere acknowledgment of membership in the Clear Wind Dao—now sat on their chests like a stone. If the restriction was genuine, it meant each of them was already subject to the rules of the Clear Wind Dao. To violate those rules was to invite expulsion by Lin Hui.
For Mist Gods who had long lived in absolute freedom and authority, this was an iron collar around their necks.
"Dao Master Lin." Huangque narrowed her eyes, fixing them on him. "Is there a way to circumvent this restriction?"
"Circumvent?" Lin Hui laughed.
He rose from his seat and swept his gaze across the room. Leiming, the white deer, Diyun, and Shenyin were all silent—evidently of the same mind. No one wanted a hidden leash suddenly cinched around them, and yet no one was willing to relinquish the power they had already claimed.
So it had come to this: seeking a remedy from the very source of the problem.
"All of you want to enjoy the benefits without paying the price?" The amusement in Lin Hui's eyes chilled by degrees.
"Dao Master Lin, your grace in imparting the methods is not something we take lightly," Leiming said at last. "But… with so many Mist Gods and Divine Descendants gathered here, all of them watching you, all of them bound by your sect rules—if you provide no remedy, and trouble is provoked later, even I will not be able to shield you."
Lin Hui gave a slow nod.
"Very well. I had always suspected a day like this would arrive. Now it has."
To gain a tremendous advantage, one must inevitably accept a corresponding weight of constraint.
"Since you cannot help." His gaze shifted slightly upward—not as though looking at the gods before him, but as though looking down at them from a great height. "Then there is no need to force it."
"What does the Dao Master mean by that…?" Diyun asked, his voice low. He had been the one to lead the others back to the palace in the first place; he understood better than anyone where the roots of all this lay. So he was the first to speak.
"Everyone." Lin Hui stepped away from his seat and walked at an unhurried pace toward the high seat where Leiming was enthroned. "For all things in this world—what is received must carry a cost."
"The secret methods have vastly magnified your strength…" A strangely serene smile surfaced on his face. "You didn't imagine that came free, did you?"
"In other words," Huangque said, her voice cooling rapidly, "you are fully intent on using this method to hold us in check."
Lin Hui did not reply. He walked to a stop directly before Leiming.
"Brother Leiming," he said, with a mild, unhurried air, "I suddenly find myself wondering whether your seat might be rather more comfortable than mine."
Bang!
Leiming's eyes went glacial. In an instant, he was on his feet. His right arm blazed with purple electric light as he drove his claw toward Lin Hui's throat at blinding speed. His palm expanded in that fraction of a second, seeming to cover every possible angle, every possible escape. It descended with a thunderous crash—like a mountain range coming down.
The massive, current-like divine force tyrannically swept all foreign energy from the space within several meters, compressing an all-out strike of powerful-divine-force magnitude into the span of a single palm. Within that compact radius, the compression was so severe that a handful of purple-black specks of light appeared in the surrounding air—the annihilation effect born of divine force squeezed beyond the point of containment.
But—
Swish.
Lin Hui's figure slid forward without pausing, brushing right past Leiming and through the arc of the strike.
It missed.
Huangque, Shenyin, the white deer, and Diyun froze where they stood.
A mere human. Not even a Mistborn.
How was that possible?
No matter how potent the secret method. No matter how exceptional his comprehension. His fundamental constitution had not undergone a qualitative transformation; he had not sublimated beyond human limits.
For an ordinary man—facing Venerable Leiming's instantaneous sneak attack, at speeds that far surpassed sound—to have evaded it clean…
Each of them, putting themselves in that position, felt a cold weight settle into their chests. Because not one of them was confident of walking away unscathed from what Leiming had just thrown.
And Lin Hui had.
As the four gods hovered in that stunned hesitation, the next moment drove their disbelief to its absolute limit.
Roar!!
Leiming spun violently and let his body explode outward. He swelled to dozens of meters in the blink of an eye, reforming as a black behemoth—three bull heads on a human frame, purple electric light raging across every surface. Both claws blasted toward Lin Hui simultaneously with a thunderous boom.
Behind him, a seven-colored, rainbow-like halo shimmered in the air, resonating with the chorus of ten thousand believers singing hymns in the distance.
The compressed divine force generated an invisible crushing pressure several times more savage than before—bearing down on Lin Hui like a collapsing sky.
The other four gods shot to their feet in alarm and threw out their divine force to shield themselves. If this strike were to leak outward, even their divine bodies could not fully absorb the aftershocks. Within ten thousand li, every form of marine life would be obliterated in an instant.
Venerable Leiming was going all out. He was treating Lin Hui as a fully equal, genuinely formidable opponent and striking with everything he had.
And yet—
The four gods watched in collective horror as Lin Hui neither dodged nor retreated.
He simply raised his hand.
And extended a single index finger.
Clang!!!
A terrifying, ear-splitting vibration detonated across the hall.
That single, apparently ordinary finger stopped everything—all the crushing divine force, all the thundering pressure—dead.
No matter how Leiming roared, no matter how savagely he bore down, he could not move that finger by a single hair's breadth. Around it, an invisible and unyielding current seemed to halt every ounce of power he had unleashed. Every electric arc, every burst of divine light, was arrested before an invisible threshold—unable to cross by even a single step.
And he had not drawn his sword. He had only raised one finger.
