Free Web NovelChapter 203: Chapter 193: Leak 1
’A lone person? Is he just taking a stroll?’
’Strolling in the Fog Area?’
A flicker of doubt crossed the man’s mind, along with a hint of vigilance.
TAP.
The Original Blood man landed softly, his eyes fixed on Lin Hui as he emerged.
"Interesting. Four masks? First time I’ve ever seen someone so stupid. Couldn’t you have just gotten a hood? With gaps that big, what can you possibly hide? Idiot?" the Original Blood man couldn’t help but laugh.
Lin Hui’s leisurely pace came to an abrupt halt.
He stopped in his tracks, looking at the Original Blood man through his masks.
"Really? They don’t hide anything?" he asked, frowning.
"Duh. In the eyes of the strong, your aura, your physique, your Inner Strength and Void Power... they’re all identifying features. What’s the point of just covering your face? I’ve never seen such a stupid Martial Artist." The man was amused, taking the rare trouble to explain.
"You know, you’re pretty damn annoying," Lin Hui said in a low voice.
"Yeah, a lot of people tell me that. So what?" the man said with a laugh.
"Didn’t your parents ever tell you? When your words are that ugly..." Lin Hui looked up, his hand gently resting on the Ruyi Sword Handle. "...your head might just fall off all by itself."
"What?! Are you threatening me!?" The Original Blood man’s eyes widened as if he had just discovered something incredibly amusing.
He pointed to his own neck.
"This is great. Go on, right here. If you’ve got the guts, then kill me! Come on!"
As he spoke, he grabbed his head, which was slightly askew, and took it off, attempting to place it back on straight.
"Wait!?" Suddenly, his movements froze.
’My head... why did it just come off?!!’
Only then did he realize that the four-masked, sword-wielding man who had been standing nearby was long gone.
And it was only now that an excruciating pain finally registered from his neck.
But by the time he realized any of this, it was already too late...
His vision rapidly faded to black as the Original Blood man fell backward to the ground with a THUD.
Even at the very end, he couldn’t comprehend what had just happened.
Perhaps he guessed his opponent had killed him, but... how could it have been... so fast!?
Behind the headless corpse, Lin Hui’s figure slowly materialized. He flicked the blood from his blade and sheathed his sword. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
"How interesting. In all my life, I’ve never seen someone so eager to die. Happy to oblige."
His gaze swept over the woman in the nearby fog, then shifted to the large ship by the coast, barely visible in the distance.
’A passing merchant ship?’ He had often seen such merchant caravans and ships in the Fog Area before and had no interest in interacting with them. He turned, chose a new direction, and headed into another part of the Fog Area.
This place was already off the map, so he was essentially wandering without purpose.
While he wandered, he also mentally updated his own topographical map of the area.
He made his own notations, marking which areas had stronger monsters and which had weaker ones.
"Benefactor! I can never repay you for saving my life! If you ever need anything, please come find me at the Mo Ji Tavern in Xingdiao!"
The rescued woman shouted after his departing figure.
Lin Hui paused for a moment, then promptly put her words out of his mind. He had saved many people during his time in the Fog Area, but it was usually just something he did in passing.
He had not gone far, however, when he suddenly stopped and looked down at his wrist. On the wrist of his sword hand, a thin red line was glowing faintly in the fog.
The red line was about the length of a finger and as thin as a hair. He would never have noticed it if it hadn’t suddenly begun to glow.
’What is this?’ Lin Hui narrowed his eyes, staring at the thing. ’Did I get this from killing that guy? Some kind of tracking mark?’
He was a little surprised.
He had killed many people over the years, but this was the first time he had encountered a tracking method that could be placed on him without him noticing at all.
’Interesting.’
He immediately circulated his Inner Strength, causing it to surge and flood the area around the red line.
His Inner Strength, infused with the powers of Purgatory and Extreme Cold Heaven, roared over the red line. Not only did it fail to overwhelm the line, it actually made the thing glow even brighter.
The surprise in Lin Hui’s eyes deepened.
He pondered for a moment, then raised his other hand, extended his index finger, and began to activate his Typhoon Swordsmanship.
A web of power began to vibrate, continuously drawing immense, formless, and terrifying power from the outer void.
This power surged into Lin Hui’s body and immediately began to rapidly decompose the Purgatory and Extreme Cold Heaven powers integrated into his Inner Strength.
This was the first time Lin Hui had formally activated this Special Effect since acquiring Wind Disaster Affinity.
He had intended to use it on the strange red line on his wrist, but to his surprise, the moment this bizarre power emerged, it charged directly for the Purgatory and Extreme Cold Heaven Power.
Amidst the fog, Lin Hui stood frozen in place, completely still.
A flash of red light suddenly appeared behind him. Within its glow, the tall, savage figure of a man in dark-red armor thrashed and roared frantically.
But it was helpless to stop itself from fading, growing ever more distant.
Half a minute later, the phantom of Purgatory faded completely and vanished.
Immediately after, a massive, blue-and-white female face appeared, floating in the air behind Lin Hui.
The female face’s eyes were shut tight, its lips trembling slightly, as if it sensed what was coming.
The face’s lips trembled as it struggled, its eyelids straining to open even a crack.
But before it could open its eyes, the face’s entire outline slowly faded, vanishing completely into thin air.
In the end, everything converged into an formless wind swirling around Lin Hui. It possessed no will, offered no temptation—only endless devastation and destruction filled its being.
After another half minute, Lin Hui slowly opened his eyes. He raised his hand, sensing the state of his Inner Strength.
The Purgatory Aura was gone.
The aura of Extreme Cold Heaven was gone, too...
He looked at his wrist where the red line had been. The skin was clear; nothing remained.
’This is just too... overbearing...’ The only sensation Wind Disaster Affinity gave him upon activation was one of absolute tyranny.
It refused to allow any other power to exist alongside itself.
This was the defining trait of the Wind Disaster.
Unlike Purgatory and Extreme Cold Heaven, which both contained the faint presence of another living will.
It was more like a pure force of destruction. And because it was destruction, a product of order like a ’will’ simply did not, and could not, exist within it.
’If this power is the ultimate form of destruction, then how am I able to contain it within my body at all?’
For the first time, Lin Hui became deeply curious about the fundamental nature of the Blood Seal.
The Wind Disaster felt like pure destruction. Therefore, the Blood Seal that could contain it must be a power superior to the Wind Disaster itself. Otherwise, it would be impossible to forcibly restrain such a force within his body.
’Theoretically, a will is a construct of ordered bio-electrical clusters. A collection of a group’s consciousness. Pure destruction couldn’t possibly produce a will. No... not necessarily. What I’m guessing is just based on the knowledge from my past life. What if there are other ways for a will to exist? In other words, can a will truly only be created through bio-electricity?’
As these complex questions flashed through his mind, Lin Hui reined in his thoughts and continued deeper into the fog.
He had only taken a few steps when a massive, almost tangible aura washed over him from above.
The aura acted like a physical wind, forcibly clearing a large patch of fog above his head and revealing an open cavity in the mist.
"This is it! This is near where we lost contact with Young Master Wu!"
An old man’s voice drifted down from the sky.
"The relic was still reacting to the trace a moment ago. Why is it gone now?" another voice, that of a young woman, asked in confusion.
"Did the relic break?" the old man asked in surprise.
"Impossible. I’ve only ever heard of relics disintegrating after reaching their limit, never breaking in the middle of being used," the woman’s voice explained.
"Either way, it’s somewhere around here, right? If we can’t find the target, forget it. Let’s just eliminate everything alive in the vicinity and be done with it," the old man said impatiently.
Lin Hui’s heart stirred. He guessed they were likely here for that incredibly arrogant man from earlier.
’That guy was an Original Blood? All this fuss for him?’
The Original Blood were the core echelon of a city district, second only to the Fogman City Lord. They were the absolute ruling class, and given their small numbers, every single one of them definitely had all sorts of safeguards and fail-safes in place.
That man had died so quickly that Lin Hui hadn’t even considered the possibility.
After all, someone that weak was no different from a roadside animal in his eyes. There was no way he could have been an Original Blood...
A pampered class like the Original Blood would probably be too embarrassed to leave home without a dozen or so protective relics on their person.
But the sudden appearance of these two and their conversation made his earlier assumption waver.
"The murderer is definitely long gone. To dare to premeditate the murder of a member of the Original Blood Nobility, and to be able to destroy all of his protective relics at once, not even giving him time to activate his distress Protective Talisman... It speaks to a deep cunning. After so much time has passed, there’s no way they’re still in the area," the old man quickly surmised.
’Protective relics? So he did have them? How did I not notice?’ A question flashed through Lin Hui’s mind. ’No, wait. From the sound of it, the person they’re talking about can’t be the one I killed. The guy I killed didn’t put up any fight at all. Someone that weak couldn’t possibly be the member of the Original Blood Nobility they’re describing.’
This line of reasoning put Lin Hui’s mind at ease.
He stopped walking and waited for the two to appear.
They were conversing via voice transmission in the Fog Area and had deliberately cleared the fog above his head; it was obvious they were here for him.
Rather than play dumb, it was better to stop and talk to them. He might even be able to learn something about nearby ruins from the pair. freeweɓnovel.cøm
Soon, the fog overhead roiled, and two white-robed figures flickered into existence.
One was an old man with white hair, the other a young woman with blue hair. Both carried sharp, black short spears on their backs, suggesting they were from the same school.
The edges of their white robes were trimmed with silver. Lin Hui had seen many people wearing this attire at the Moon Tower; in fact, the vast majority of people in the Moon Tower wore silver-trimmed white robes.
It seemed the Inner City had strict regulations about this. Even scions of great clans, like Wang Yueheng, often favored wearing silver-trimmed white robes.
"Is there something I can help you two with?" Lin Hui offered a friendly smile, taking the initiative to greet them.
"You are... alone in this Fog Area, sir?" The old man’s first impression of Lin Hui was that he was clean.
Yes, clean. Everyone who traveled through the Fog Area was irritable and exhausted, their bodies more or less stained with the blood of slain monsters.
Even without bloodstains, one’s robes would never be so neat and tidy after a fight.
But the Lin Hui before him looked like a rookie who had just entered the Fog Area from a No-Fog Zone. His clothes were unwrinkled, and his face showed no sign of fatigue or impatience. It was as if the fog had no effect on him at all.
Based on these observations, the old man adopted a cautious tone.
