The Perfect Hunting Ground

Soft as water, moonlight caressed the forest in the small valley, casting dappled shadows that mingled with the dense undergrowth.

Dew hung from branches and leaves, lending the summer mountains a touch of cool freshness.

Suddenly, a stone in the valley grass began to shake violently.

Moments later, the smooth rock slowly melted, forming a pool of pale golden light on the weed-covered ground.

Lou Shisui crawled out of the light, dressed in black.

Moonlight fell on him, revealing a faint reddish-purple metallic sheen on his black hoodie.

He stepped out of the circle of light and stood in the grass. The hem of his hoodie fell to his hips, while its oversized hood hung down, covering his entire head.

In the light, overlapping panels of fabric were visible at the shoulders on the back of the hoodie, as if something were hidden beneath them.

The small pool of light gradually disappeared, changing back into an unremarkable stone. Shisui lingered no longer and vanished into the valley in a flash.

"Tap."

Lou Shisui landed lightly in a big-leaf banyan a kilometer from a small town. Its broad, dense, leathery oval leaves perfectly concealed him.

He was already on the bank of the Spirit Resonance River. It had taken Shisui less than ten minutes to get here from the small valley deep in the rainforest's outer reaches, and he had not even used his Ukaku.

Shisui paid little attention to the speed he had expected and used his perception to "scan" the distance for the first time.

He carefully controlled the Psychic Energy in his body, spreading it little by little, his perception extending along with it.

His perception first touched a roadside marker at the edge of town, then focused and probed deeper toward the town.

Towering buildings and sleeping humans and Beastfolk gradually appeared in his perception.

His perception extended in a straight line for 1.5 kilometers before slowly coming to a stop. The slight stabbing pain in his brain warned him that beyond this distance, perception would become sharply more difficult and its accuracy would drop just as abruptly.

Lou Shisui withdrew his perception and gently rubbed his temples. His powerful self-healing ability instantly erased the dull ache in his head.

His range of precise perception covered a circular area with a radius of one kilometer, or extended 1.5 kilometers in a straight line.

This was not Shisui's limit; his reserves of Psychic Energy were absurdly vast.

But it was the limit of what he could control precisely, reflecting his current lack of control over and understanding of Psychic Energy, as well as the mismatch between his realm and his abilities.

His techniques for using Psychic Energy were mostly slow and clumsy, just like his perception this time.

After all, although he knew many more new techniques of this kind, every last one of them had come from books in the Lou Family's inheritance. He had never had the conditions to practice them before, so it had all been theory on paper.

What he needed now was a place where he could gain combat experience without drawing pursuit, as well as somewhere he could obtain large amounts of energy to molt.

Lou Shisui quickly sifted through the information in his memory, searching for a place that met those conditions.

A moment later, a faint smile spread across his face. Like an old farmer about to reap a harvest, he lightly jumped down from the big-leaf banyan.

Like a ghost, Shisui glided silently toward the town, passing the grayish-white stone marker at its entrance in the blink of an eye.

The roadside marker looked rather old. Lichen and moss dotted its surface here and there, neglected for lack of care.

But the three large characters for "Meifeng County" were engraved on it in bold, vigorous strokes, lending it an antique charm that seemed to hint at secrets hidden within the town.

With a clear destination in mind, Shisui slipped into Meifeng County, spreading his perception as he ran in search of landmarks.

Five hundred meters south from the entrance marker, then left and straight ahead. After seven hundred meters, turn right and continue straight to the Silverglow Pawnshop. Finally, enter the narrow alley to the pawnshop's left.

Shisui glanced up to confirm the pawnshop's name. Pulling his hood back into place where his rapid movement had blown it up, he melted into the pitch-black alley like ink.

"Tap, tap, tap..."

His footsteps shattered the stillness of the night, and the utter silence around him made his stride sound especially brazen.

The alley was short, and he soon reached the end.

Shisui stopped. In the suffocatingly cramped darkness, the faint rustle of growing Kagune sounded.

Just then, the clouds drifted aside, allowing moonlight to spill into the narrow alley.

Under the stark white moonlight, black gloves gradually covered Shisui's hands, fitting his skin perfectly. They were armor separated from his Koukaku, shaped like latex gloves.

A moment later, the sound quietly faded away.

Then Lou Shisui raised a hand and knocked on an area in the middle of the wall, varying the length of the knocks and producing a series of soft taps.

"Click."

The wall split down the middle, slowly revealing a dark square opening. Strands of cheering and cursing drifted out from within.

Lou Shisui stepped into the secret passage without hesitation. The wall closed again, and peace and quiet returned to the alley.

Lou Shisui walked into the underground cavern with an air of nonchalance, his keen senses gathering information about his surroundings at every moment.

He did not rashly spread his perception. He had yet to master that technique, and an experienced expert would very likely detect it.

Deafening cheers and foul curses filled the air, occasionally mixed with the chilling sounds of bodies colliding and bones breaking.

Overlapping pleas for mercy mingled with frenzied laughter, while a faint smell of iron lingered in the vast, enclosed, dim underground space.

"Hello, welcome to the Silverglow Underground Fighting Arena. Is this your first visit?"

Lou Shisui deliberately looked around, soon attracting a staff member.

The newcomer was a beautiful woman with a sizzling figure. Her revealing uniform showed off the smooth lines of her body, while the dim surroundings cast a hazy filter over her.

Lou Shisui's eyes swept over the woman's muscle definition from beneath his hood. Sensing the surging Psychic Energy inside her, he lightly ran the tip of his tongue over a sharp canine.

"A friend recommended it. I'm here to watch the fights."

As the waitress's gaze suddenly turned sharp, Lou Shisui casually flipped his hand, and a black card with silver trim appeared.

The card was held between two black-gloved fingers. Its design was identical to the sign outside the pawnshop.

The waitress's demeanor instantly softened, and a brilliant, fawning smile spread across her face.

"What kind of fight are you interested in, sir? We have many formats here, including ring matches, prop matches, hand-to-hand fights, and no-rules fights."

Speaking in a cloyingly sweet voice, the waitress respectfully led Shisui toward the fighting grounds, then added, "If you'd like to support a fighter you favor, you can take part in our pre-match predictions. A successful prediction can win you up to a hundred times your stake!"

"Take me to the hand-to-hand arena."

"Of course, sir."

Shisui followed the waitress deeper into the arena, seeing numerous fighting cages arranged throughout the venue along the way.

After walking some distance, they arrived at the area marked as the hand-to-hand arena.

"Sir, this is the hand-to-hand arena."

"Mm, that'll be all."

"Yes, sir. Enjoy the fights."

Lou Shisui paid the waitress no further attention and strode into the hand-to-hand arena.

The heavy scent of blood and flesh stimulated him. Beneath his hood, both his eyes had already turned into Kakugan.

Somewhat excited, he looked toward one of the fighting cages, where two humans were currently fighting each other barehanded.

They had clearly been fighting for some time. One man's arm was bent backward, and more than half his teeth were broken.

The other fighter had both arms broken and was attacking his opponent with his feet and teeth.

There were many more such fights to the death throughout the venue.

These fighters were all battle-hungry people with extensive combat experience, above the Third Realm and below the Fifth Realm.

Stepping into a fighting cage meant accepting that defeat was death, and no one even cared what happened to the loser's corpse.

Lou Shisui took a deep breath. The sweet, bloody scent, imbued with Psychic Energy, flowed down his windpipe and into his lungs, putting him in an exceptionally pleasant mood.

Wasn't an underground fighting arena, a gray area where people killed freely, the perfect hunting ground for him?