Chapter 98: The Killing Night, Blood Floats Away!

This instant Lin Fan felt searing, unbearable pain. The Earth-Root Fruit energy that coursed through his meridians was forced to expand and expand again, even to the point of shattering.

Such a ferocious agony was beyond the limit of any ordinary man. It flooded Lin Fan’s body and mind in an instant. He ground his teeth and swallowed the Earth-Root fruits one after another. It was his only lifeline—he had to endure.

Behind him stood ten men in black, only about twenty zhang away. Each had their inner power raised high, and they had already prepared to strike from a distance.

These ten were different from the previous black-clad men. Back then, with Ximen Yiyi at Lin Fan’s back, those men had not dared to launch remote energy attacks, afraid that one wrong move would kill her. But now he stood alone, so they struck at range without restraint.

Boom! The ground before Lin Fan exploded when a chi-finger snapped it apart. If he had not turned in time, that blast would have shattered his body then and there.

At that same turning, palm-shaped chi blasts, sword-energy, blade-light, even spear-flashes converged from every direction.
Booms, clacks, hissing, rattling—countless blasts of chi hurled at him. He moved like a ghost, weaving through the storm. He was a target now, and the men behind him were hunters, firing at prey.

Lin Fan’s jaw was locked tight, blood even spilling as he bit down. His eyes were bright, deep—and filled with such bitter cold.

Boom!
Creak!
Thud!

The ground split into pieces, great logs were cleaved by fistlike chi palms.

At last he failed to dodge one attack. Thud—he was blasted backward.

A white spatter flashed—he rolled and slipped beneath a finger strike that had already struck the earth. Blood sprang from his mouth. This time he did not flee. He rose slowly, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his left hand, and allowed a faint smile to curl his lips.

In heartbeats, dozens of black-clad men encircled him, watching him with a strange delight, as if it were a cat waiting to play with a mouse.

“Why don’t you run?” one asked. From beneath their masks, the other nine smiled.

They were not like the earlier three groups. Those had been true house retainers of the Ximen clan—fanatics bred from childhood. These men were opportunists who had attached themselves to the Ximen clan, or were seized and broken into obedience. Their mindset differed greatly.

A house retainer thinks only of completing the assignment. Nothing else matters—just execution and punishment. In simple terms, they are people born to follow orders.

But these men not only executed—they also knew how to toy with a trapped beast.

They understood that only when victory was certain do hunters amuse themselves with prey.

Like this one—wounded and cornered before them, he could not even resist even one of their individual energy attacks.

As one of the black-clad men stepped backward, apparently aiming to seize Ximen Yiyi—

“Why should I run? Wouldn’t killing you now be cleaner?” Lin Fan lifted his bloodied left hand toward the sky and looked up, his smile blooming into something dazzling. It was an impossible smile—radiant, almost ecstatic.

The men paid it little mind at first, but when they saw his expression, a prickle of unease ran through them.

Clang!

There was a sound like drawn steel. A flash of blinding white struck the inquirer’s eyes, and in the next heartbeat a massive head flew high into the air.

Pfft!

Blood surged like a spring. Lin Fan stood behind the fallen man with Thousand-Stack Snow in hand, slightly bending his head. His blood-soaked, disheveled hair covered half his face, yet his mouth remained curved in a smile.

Thirteen thousand two hundred fifty-three streams of qi!
Beyond the limit of the Qi-Invoking Realm—breakthrough!

Boom!

Qi waves surged through his whole body as Lin Fan entered the Qi-Channel Realm. In this instant, all of his qi strands gathered and condensed into truer, denser chi. Worse for him, each of Lin Fan’s qi strands was naturally a hundred times denser than those of ordinary cultivators; one strand of his equaled one hundred of theirs.

In other words, it was effectively one million three hundred twenty-five thousand three hundred strands.

And when those strands condensed into a truer form, their quality rose further—about double. Then it amounted to two million six hundred fifty thousand six hundred strands.

What a mass of force is that? Terrifying beyond ordinary measure, enough to shatter the nerve of anyone with a spine still made of flesh.

Early-stage Qi-Channel realm true energy equaled roughly twenty thousand qi strands. Each meridian breakthrough doubled one’s basic combat power.

At its peak, after opening one hundred and seven apertures, power multiplied one hundred seven times.

That is, about two million one hundred forty thousand strands.

Even so, compared to Lin Fan now, it was still far off—almost incomparable.

Even one who had opened all one hundred and eight openings and just entered the Channel-Piercing Realm, with qi transformed into true primordial energy, would still possess only about two million one hundred sixty thousand strands.

Of course, when entering the Channel-Piercing Realm, true energy surged tenfold at the moment of transition. But ninety percent of it sank into the body at once, strengthening flesh and blood.

The Channel-Piercing Realm mainly amplifies the body’s strength and density—power in the span of one instant leaps from the million-jin force of the Qi-Channel peak to the force of an entire *ding* vessel.
And the soul, too, begins to grow with cultivation.

Thus, even an early-stage strongman in the Channel-Piercing Realm begins with about two million one hundred sixty thousand strands, and only later do true energy, body, and soul expand together.

What Lin Fan now held as true qi was far beyond that of a newly risen ordinary master of that realm.

The black-clad men blinked, momentarily stunned. Even the one who had started to withdraw stiffened where he was.

But in a blink they regained themselves and did not hesitate. Chi, furious and wild, crashed down on Lin Fan again.

“This rain-night suits killing,” Lin Fan murmured.

His form vanished from where he had stood. The chi blasts struck empty ground, blowing pits dozens of meters across.

When he reappeared, he was behind one of the men. Whip-like, a white stroke of Thousand-Stack Snow stabbed through his back and out through his chest. Blood dropped in little beads. The blade withdrew instantly, vanished from view, and when it came again it had opened another throat.

“At the same level, it’s murder as easy as poultry,” Lin Fan whispered.

His palm pinched; another man’s throat burst and his eyes went dull as he collapsed.

Puff! Puff! Puff! Puff!

Four more churning sounds of flesh ripping open came in succession. Blood sprayed, the rain-soaked ground turning as red as a trickling stream. Four figures went down.

“Run!”

There was no hesitation now. Under the assault of nine men, Lin Fan had in moments killed seven. The last two fled in an instant to the distance, moving so fast it seemed multiplied many times over when compared to their earlier chase. They had clearly used a secret technique.

Boom, boom, boom, boom...

As the two rushed away, Lin Fan suddenly emitted a series of dull thuds from his body—no fewer than dozens. His face did not change. He watched them run with both hands gripping his blades, tips aimed at them, his knees bent, body lowered like a hunter ready to spring.

Boom!

The earth beneath them exploded. A wide pit yawned across the ground, and rainwater, turned blood-red, rushed toward it. Lin Fan’s form vanished from that spot.

Puff! Puff!

Two headless bodies thudded into the bottom of the pit. The two men stared at each other, eyes wide with disbelief. They had used a secret spell, yet Lin Fan had tracked them anyway—so fast they had no time even to react.

Boom, boom, boom, boom!

Lin Fan stood quietly beside their corpses. Dull impacts continued to rattle through his body; with each one his life-force seemed to swell.

Boom—

With the last of those hidden booms, blood welled from his mouth.

Clang!

Thousand-Stack Snow struck the earth. Lin Fan threw his upper body back and sank down, collapsing backward.

“Bro—big brother!”
In a hazy corner of his fading vision, Lin Fan seemed to see a serpent of several meters in length carrying a little girl through the air toward him, and his lips lifted once more in a smile.

In a valley a few li across within the Cangman Jungle, flowers and herbs crowded everywhere—fo-ti, ginseng, and many others growing in profusion. Yet though the medicines were rich, no person came anywhere near. It seemed a hidden paradise, and even no wild beasts appeared. The silence was eerie.

At the center of the valley lay a pond two meters across, breathing cold mist. In it swam a small white snake about a foot long, darting back and forth in pure delight.

Was this white snake not Xiao Jin, by any chance?

It was only that Xiao Jin had returned to a foot-long form again—his favorite form, no matter how large he grew. Yet this time he had changed once more: on his back were not one pair of fleshly wings but two.

The entire snake was white. Two pairs of pale wings shimmered on its back; coupled with Xiao Jin’s sharp, lively eyes, any observer would know this was no ordinary creature.

“Xiao Jin, why doesn’t big brother wake up?” Ximen Yiyi asked the snake in the pond. Her clothing was stained with blood.

When she spoke, Xiao Jin ceased swimming, lifted his head, and shook it in negation.

“Impudent little Xiao Jin, you know nothing at all!” She puffed up in annoyance and snatched a stone, hurling it into the pond. It splashed high, wetting him completely.

It was already the third day since Xiao Jin had brought her to this valley. That night, Big Brother had sent Xiao Jin with her toward the territory of a fourth-rank beast, and told him to hide beneath a trunk near its edge. For a long time no one returned. She grew terribly worried and stubbornly insisted that Xiao Jin come look for her brother.

Even then, Xiao Jin had been restless, swimming constantly through the dark sky and water.

At last he flew back, exactly in time to witness Big Brother cleaving two villains’ heads before collapsing unconscious.

After seeing him fall, Xiao Jin, without a word, lifted Big Brother in his arms and left that place.

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