Free Web NovelChapter 269: Chapter 256: Infiltration 2
Waves churned and wild winds swept across the sea.
Time and again, Lin Hui struck through the Nine Eyes sealing net, relentlessly cutting and shredding the monstrous bird within.
He, too, was frequently gashed by pieces of the monstrous bird’s flesh, which moved at superhuman speeds.
His Mental Power was constantly being depleted. As time wore on, more than two hours later...
...the Ruyi Sword had shredded the monstrous bird into fine powder for the 1,800th time.
Only then did the jade-green beams of the Nine Eyes finally retract at high speed, condensing into a ball of light that flew into one of the small eyes on his shoulder in the blink of an eye.
’No!! Impossible!! How could I be... ’
The Fog Person’s roar was thick with disbelief before it finally faded into slumber, its consciousness lost.
The effect of the Nine Eyes Spirit-Sealing Array was to force the sealed creature into a deep slumber. The sealing period was nine hundred years.
Looking somewhat exhausted, Lin Hui hovered high in the sky. Only then did he retract his Qingyuan Body and inspect his physical condition.
His hands were severely weakened, and there were over thirty wounds on the front of his body where he had been careless and gotten hit.
Although his body had been strengthened to a ridiculous degree, it was still a far cry from the Fog Person’s.
In its final struggle, as it was about to be completely sealed, the creature’s desperate efforts had become even more outrageous.
If his Wind of Surrounding hadn’t also grown much stronger along with his mastery of wind, he wouldn’t have gotten away with such minor injuries.
’But this time, I’ve finally managed to truly gauge the full extent of a Fog Person’s abilities. They can’t be killed... only sealed.’
Lin Hui fought back his exhaustion. Even for him, this combination of high-intensity sealing and explosive killing blows was a massive drain on his Heart and Spirit.
’If I can gather eight more monster spirit bodies, sealing the next Fog Person should be much easier!’
He glanced toward the sky in the direction of Eagle People Island. Many spectators were secretly floating there.
A grueling battle of this length was bound to attract the attention of powerful experts in the area.
He had anticipated this.
A large amount of Wind Disaster Power lingered at the scene, but he no longer had the spare energy to absorb it all.
His condition was extremely poor; he had to return and recuperate as soon as possible.
Immediately, Lin Hui’s figure flickered. He enveloped himself in Wind Disaster Power, letting the gales sweep him up and carry him into the distance.
He didn’t return directly, but instead passed by the edge of Eagle People Island.
The moment he passed, he swung his sword toward Eagle People Island from afar.
A blue-black sword mark suddenly pierced through the mist and the defensive arrays around the island’s perimeter.
Layer after layer of arrays popped like soap bubbles, punctured in an instant.
None of the Eagle People experts had time to react before they saw the blue-black sword mark strike the center of Eagle People Island like a bolt of lightning.
From the top of a solitary Moon Tower in the island’s center, a tall Eagle Person with pure white feathers flew out.
The Eagle Person gripped a spear with both hands and, with all its might, hurled a golden spear at the sword mark.
BOOM!!
The golden spear and the sword mark collided directly in front of the Moon Tower, erupting into a hundred-meter-wide, grayish-white mushroom cloud.
The explosion shook the Moon Tower, nearly snapping it in half at its waist.
Fortunately, a series of reactivated Relic Arrays restabilized the Moon Tower’s structure.
But even so, the single sword strike had pierced through more than half of Eagle People Island’s defensive arrays.
Only a few emergency arrays were still functioning.
As for the White Feathered Eagle Person who had intercepted the attack head-on, its eyes rolled back in its head as it fell to the ground, severely wounded and unconscious.
Without the aid of a Fog Person, a casual sword strike from Lin Hui was already like a divine punishment to experts of any other caliber.
After witnessing this scene from a distance, Lin Hui sped away.
He had achieved his goal.
Destroy Eagle People Island’s defensive arrays, then introduce a catastrophe, and finally appear at the right moment to save them.
But that would have to wait until he had fully recovered.
*
*
*
「An hour later.」
Qingfeng Dao Academy.
Lin Hui coughed softly, slowly sipping a bowl of freshly brewed medicinal soup.
Beside him, Liu Xiao was dressed in simple, three-point-style armor, over which she had draped a white, gold-trimmed robe. She was preparing to head to work at the Inner City Moon Tower.
"Didn’t you say you’d be back earlier?" Liu Xiao noticed something was slightly off with Lin Hui and asked softly with a frown.
"Did something go wrong with your training?" She couldn’t imagine what difficulties someone at Lin Hui’s level of power could possibly face. ’In Black Cloud City, with the three City Lords backing us, what could possibly threaten Lin Hui and injure him?’
"Mm, just a small issue," Lin Hui replied with a gentle nod. "Don’t worry, I’m fine. Oh, right, I’m craving some White Water Ji Fish from the Inner City. Could you buy two for me on your way back?"
"Okay, sure." Liu Xiao stepped forward, gave Lin Hui a gentle kiss, then turned, vanished in a flash, and disappeared from the courtyard.
Leaving Lin Hui alone, watching Lin Xiaoliu slowly practice her swordsmanship in the courtyard.
Li Yuanyuan was at her side, correcting some of Lin Xiaoliu’s improper stances.
However, she noticed that Lin Xiaoliu’s attention was wandering; she kept unconsciously glancing in Lin Hui’s direction.
"Xiaoliu, your Summoning assessment is coming up soon. You must intensify your training. Now is not the time to be distracted," Li Yuanyuan reminded her sternly.
"Yes... Sister Li." Lin Xiaoliu snapped back to her senses, a look of shame on her face.
She wasn’t usually this distracted, but for some reason, she felt that today’s Brother Hui was a little different from usual.
He seemed to be exuding a strange aura, though she couldn’t identify what it was.
It was just that while practicing her swordsmanship, she felt as if she kept hearing a sound.
It sounded as if someone was crying, roaring, and wailing in agony.
But when she tried to listen carefully, she found there was nothing there.
Soon, Lin Hui finished his medicine and quietly left the courtyard. Only then did the faint sounds in Lin Xiaoliu’s mind disappear.
In the following days, Brother Hui went away on another trip. When he returned, Lin Xiaoliu came back here to practice her swordsmanship and heard the sounds again.
This time, the cries were faint and indistinct, and there seemed to be a woman’s voice mixed in.
The two voices, barely audible, conveyed immense fear and pain.
But no matter how hard Lin Xiaoliu searched, she couldn’t find the source of the sounds.
In fact, when she tried to listen intently, she couldn’t hear anything at all.
In the time that followed, she came to Qingfeng Dao Academy every day to train. In the interim, Brother Hui left three more times.
And each time he returned, the number of pained voices would increase.
Fortunately, after the voices increased to a total of five, they temporarily stopped increasing. Lin Xiaoliu breathed a small sigh of relief.
She guessed that Brother Hui was secretly cultivating some powerful Martial Arts. She wanted to ask, but every time she tried to get a little closer to him, the agonizing wails grew louder and louder, giving her a splitting headache.
Gradually, she grew afraid to go to Qingfeng Dao Academy to train, always making excuses whenever she was asked about it.
She secretly mentioned it to her big brother, Liu Wu Jun. He was silent for a moment, then told her not to mention it to anyone and to keep it to herself.
Lin Hui’s power had already reached a level far beyond their imagination.
Liu Wu Jun didn’t think it was Lin Hui’s fault. Rather, he felt that Lin Xiaoliu’s senses were too keen and she might have overheard some of Lin Hui’s secrets. So he privately found some medicine for her to take, which temporarily suppressed the sounds.
After that, everything returned to its previous calm.
Time slowly passed.
In the blink of an eye, more than a month went by.
Atop Black Cloud’s floating mountain peak.
Gongsun Xinlian sat cross-legged on an open-air, circular white stone array disk. She opened her eyes and watched Lin Hui slowly fly down and land.
"I’ve asked you here this time because I have a couple of things to ask you, and there’s also a matter I need you to handle."
"Please, go ahead, Sister Xinlian. I’ve been training for a long time and was planning to go out for a change of scenery anyway," Lin Hui said with a smile.
"It’s like this." Gongsun Xinlian paused, then asked, "Previously, the surveillance Moon Towers around Black Cloud detected the auras of five Wild Fog People, but they’ve recently disappeared. The surveillance logs also show traces of you going out, so I wanted to ask if you were the one who took action..."
"Yes. I lured those five Fog People out one by one and drove them away," Lin Hui nodded. There was no reason not to admit it.
"That’s good. Now for the other matter. Eagle People Island has recently been hit by a series of mysterious attackers. Their newly restored defensive arrays are defeated and breached in the blink of an eye, time and time again, yet they can’t figure out who’s responsible. So they sent us an urgent request for aid. Ying Sanqiong has requested that we dispatch an investigation team to clarify the situation on the island and temporarily guard it until he returns," Gongsun Xinlian said.
"Are you saying you want me to handle this?" Lin Hui asked.
"Can you?"
"No problem," Lin Hui readily agreed. This was one of his goals all along.
"One last thing." Gongsun Xinlian’s voice softened. "Many people are very curious about you and hope to enter Qingfeng Dao to study Qingfeng Swordsmanship under you. Don’t feel you have to do it for our sake. Just handle it however you see fit."
"Understood!" Lin Hui was taken aback for a moment, then smiled and nodded.
It seemed someone had pulled strings all the way up to the three City Lords.
The news that he, a mere mortal, could fight on par with Tuyue had clearly spread through certain high-end circles.
"By the way, has the Black Cloud medicine vault been sorted out? When will I be able to purchase Treasure Medicine?" Lin Hui asked.
Aside from the fixed quota of Treasure Medicine for a Deputy City Lord, he was also qualified to purchase directly from the medicine vault that only Black Cloud’s top echelon could access.
This was one of the vaults that required special clearance to enter, and only the Blood Ancestor and Deputy City Lords like himself could make purchases.
"Are you sure you want to use this opportunity to buy that kind of medicine? You don’t plan on checking the armory? Black Cloud has an unmastered Evil Soldier. Perhaps if you try, you could..." Gongsun Xinlian reminded him via voice transmission.
"No need. I can go check it out later, but not right now." Lin Hui was indeed curious about the Evil Soldier, but the success rate for bonding with one was extremely low, and failure meant death. He felt it was better not to take the risk.
’This privilege is only granted once every fifty years; using it on that would be too much of a waste. It’s more cost-effective to exchange it for the aphrodisiac.’
’If this goes smoothly, using my fifty percent discount privilege as a Deputy City Lord, I should be able to shorten the evolution time for my Blood Seal by more than half.’
’It might not even take two or three years to complete the Blood Seal’s evolution.’
"Fine. To each their own. By the way, I have some bad news to warn you about," Gongsun Xinlian said, as if she had just remembered something.
"Please, go on."
"The Fourth Princess of the Federation’s Inner Court, Song Feishi, is coming to Black Cloud. And she has specifically requested you to be her host. You must be on your highest guard with this person."
"Is she very strong?"
"She is an Emperor Blood Fog Person. Of course she’s extremely strong. In theory, her power is of a higher order than ours; in a direct confrontation, we would be completely suppressed. But because she’s a princess, she rarely has a chance to fight, so in actual combat, she’s still not a match for Big Brother. However, she far surpasses Tuyue, myself, and Second Brother," Gongsun Xinlian said gravely.
"Is she also coming because of me?" Lin Hui guessed part of the reason.
"Yes. You must be extremely careful. Don’t give her any excuse to make a move, or not even Big Brother will be able to save you."
"What is Emperor Blood?" Lin Hui asked with a frown.
"When true evil fog condenses to its absolute limit, it forms a type of powerful, pure white blood. That is Emperor Blood. Emperor Blood cannot be devoured. A Fog Person who possesses it has immense suppressive power over all other Fog People. This is a suppression on the level of Evil Energy. There are only a handful of Emperor Blood Fog People in the entire Federation. They are basically all descendants of the Fog Person Emperor."
"The Fog Person Emperor? Aren’t we a federation?" Lin Hui continued to ask.
"Once, when the Human Race had only one Fog Person, he was the Fog Person Emperor. Later, as the number of Fog People grew, the emperor was forced to abdicate, and the nation was reorganized into a federation. That’s how we ended up with the current structure of an Inner Court and an Outer Mansion," Gongsun Xinlian explained.
