Strength I

Three choices.

Lin Hui rarely hesitated like this, but at this moment, he truly paused, his eyes fixed on the words emerging from the Blood Seal.

"I should check how much time each one needs first."

He opened the detailed information for the three evolution branches one by one.

1—Perfect Clear Sword Technique

Required resources: one steel sword, one year of stored energy.

Required time: one year.

2—Clear Sword Technique: Hell's Breath Version

Required resources: one steel sword, five years of stored energy.

Required time: five years.

3—Clear Sword Technique: Extreme Cold Whisper Version

Required resources: one steel sword, five years of stored energy.

Required time: five years.

"As expected..." Lin Hui sighed inwardly. Looking at it this way, he basically had no choice but the first one.

The other options took far too long. Five years was simply too much. Other than the Perfect Version, the other two paths had far too little value for the cost.

Without further hesitation, he immediately broke the technique down and began evolving it from the first move of the Clear Sword Technique.

Since the end result would be the Perfect Clear Sword Technique anyway, it was more worthwhile to evolve it piece by piece.

Formless Wind Direction: the opening stance of the first move of the Clear Sword Technique. Available evolution branches: 1.

1—Boundless Wind Direction: the perfect form of Formless Wind Direction.

Required resources: one steel sword, five days of stored energy.

Required time: five days.

Seeing the newly appearing prompt from the Blood Seal, Lin Hui immediately felt much better.

Compared with the first move of the Seven Section Fast Sword, which had taken him so long to enhance before, a single move of the Clear Sword Technique now required only five days. The improvement was enormous.

This was probably because his total daily energy had increased, while the difficulty of comprehending and learning the Clear Sword Technique had decreased, bringing the required time down to just five days.

And with such a short duration, he could easily pause the Blood Seal midway and temporarily evolve other things. It was far more convenient than evolving the entire Clear Sword Technique at once.

He made his choice without delay and immediately confirmed the evolution.

The Blood Seal's words slowly blurred, then changed into a countdown for the evolution of the first move, Formless Wind Direction.

After confirming it, Lin Hui stopped looking and closed his eyes to rest.

But the moment he shut his eyes, he heard his master outside in the main hall, practicing his sword with sharp swishing sounds.

"Dad, are you seriously not going to sleep? You're still practicing this late at night?!"

Senior Sister Wei Wei's voice drifted in from outside, carrying helplessness and a trace of irritation.

"Almost there! Just a little more! I'll be done soon!" Mingde's excited voice faintly carried over.

"..." Lin Hui was speechless.

He had not expected his Perfect Version swordsmanship to affect his master so profoundly. The Seven Section Fast Sword had never stirred him like this.

He closed his eyes, pondering the reason as he gradually drifted off to sleep.

When he woke, dawn had arrived.

Early the next morning, just as the mist dispersed.

Lin Hui got up and quickly finished breakfast: a vegetable-and-meat flatbread cooked by Senior Sister Wei Wei. Then, carrying a waterskin and the rest of his supplies, he left his master's house and entered the rear grounds of Qingfeng Temple for morning practice.

Xiao Hu and Little Fat had also arrived at the rear grounds and were already waiting there. When they saw Lin Hui approach, they hurriedly saluted him.

"Good morning, Senior Brother!"

"Good morning, Uncle Lin!"

"Morning to you too. Today, we'll continue practicing the Seven Section Fast Sword from before." Lin Hui patiently began guiding the two through the basic forms again. After correcting them slightly, he went on to perform ten rounds of Body Tempering by himself. Then he sheathed his sword and left the rear grounds ahead of time, before Wei Wei and the other students arrived.

Today was the day he had already arranged to go cultivate in the Mist Zone.

With his sword in hand and all his prepared supplies packed into a cloth backpack, Lin Hui strode toward the small path behind the temple.

Following the path straight through the small woods, he soon reached the place he had visited before, where he had carved the words "Lin Hui was here."

Ahead lay one of the entrances to the Mist Zone.

Just as Lin Hui was about to enter, he suddenly spotted two figures among the trees some distance to his right, one tall and one short, standing before the mist and quietly discussing something.

One was old and one was young. They seemed to be a teacher leading a disciple into the Mist Zone for training.

Such pairs were quite common in the Mist Zone. Besides, this was one of the relatively safe entrances to the surrounding Mist Zone, so quite a few people came here to enter.

Lin Hui had encountered similar pairings when he came here to pick things up before, so he was not surprised to see them now.

Both were women. The older one was bent-backed and covered in wrinkles, holding a black staff of refined iron in her hand, her bearing anything but ordinary.

The younger one wore a cold, stern expression and had delicate features. She held a short blade in each hand, dressed in brown leather armor, with her legs wrapped in pitch-black fitted leather trousers. A silver-gray diamond-shaped skirt armor protected her lower abdomen. Her equipment was quite complete—at the very least, far more serious than Lin Hui's light attire.

Lin Hui saw the two women, and naturally, they noticed him as well. Their eyes shifted toward him.

Their gazes met, then immediately withdrew. Neither had any intention of speaking.

"Teacher, that man is entering the Mist Zone without even preparing armor. With such confidence, his strength must be extraordinary."

"Or perhaps he's poor," the old woman said abruptly. "There are actually quite a few ordinary Martial Artists like this, coming into the Mist Zone to make a fortune. Especially lately, after Martial Artists from Xingdao came over to snatch up the market."

"Enough. I've told you all that needs to be said. Once you go in this time, watch out for the several kinds of monsters I warned you about. Remember, your goal is to gather and hunt as many monster materials as possible. Those materials are the most important proof for your assessment when you return to the family. This concerns your place in the line of inheritance," the old woman reminded her.

"Yes." The woman nodded solemnly.

Swish.

Not far away, Lin Hui's figure plunged headlong into the mist. When the two women looked over again, he had already vanished without a trace.

Before long, the two of them also entered the Mist Zone from where they stood and disappeared.

Hiss!

Within the gray fog, a giant eyeball with masses of gray Tentacles growing from beneath it like legs came charging madly toward Lin Hui.

The giant eyeball was dark red all over. Its thick outer membrane was coated in large amounts of dark yellow secretion, much of it dripping wetly downward like mucus.

The eyeball alone was as large as a human head. Including the Tentacles beneath it, it stood nearly two meters tall. It ran without a sound and was quite fast.

Pfft!

As it drew close, a slit suddenly tore open beneath the eyeball, shooting out a stream of pitch-black, highly poisonous slime.

The slime flew like an arrow straight at Lin Hui.

Before it even reached him, wisps of white smoke could be seen rising from the black mucus, carrying an incomparably foul stench.

"Thousand-Foot Eyeball. Its primary attack is spraying highly poisonous slime. The instant it is killed, it self-destructs, covering everything within a three-meter radius. The poisonous liquid splashed out by the explosion is extremely corrosive and must not be touched."

Mingde's teachings from the past naturally surfaced in Lin Hui's mind.

Though this monster looked fragile, it was actually the most dangerous among the four kinds of monsters in the area.

"Fortunately, despite its high danger, the black lens inside a Thousand-Foot Eyeball's core is extremely valuable. It is an important supplementary ingredient in many medicinal tonics. One piece is worth one thousand to fourteen hundred coins."

Even in Tuyue, some Martial Artists who were truly short on money came here to hunt monsters and support their families. If they were efficient enough, then after deducting the cost of Ning Xiang, a day spent killing desperately could still earn them quite a bit.

The danger was still high for anyone below the Inner Strength Realm, because aside from using inner strength to protect the body, other protective equipment was not particularly effective against the monsters of the Mist Zone.

Especially against highly venomous monsters like the Thousand-Foot Eyeball.

Lin Hui watched the venom flying toward him and lightly shifted aside, dodging it perfectly.

The venom splashed onto the ground behind him, instantly corroding a washbasin-sized pit into the gray-black mud and releasing large amounts of pungent poisonous smoke.

"In theory, against a Thousand-Foot Eyeball's speed, offense, and defense, I would previously have needed at least dozens of breaths to circle around and search for an opening before killing it in a single blow. But now..."

Lin Hui raised his hand. The Clear River Sword slid soundlessly from its sheath, silver light flashing.

Shk!

His figure left a string of afterimages as he instantly pierced through the Thousand-Foot Eyeball and appeared behind it.

Then, with a puff, the Thousand-Foot Eyeball's entire body froze in midair and abruptly swelled, about to explode.

But the swelling did not last. Like a punctured balloon, all the poisonous liquid inside came pouring out onto the ground.

A black crystal the size of an adult's fist rolled out from within.

Lin Hui flicked it aside with the tip of his sword, rolling it out of the poison and to one side. Then, using a leather pouch prepared in advance as a barrier, he put it inside.

Carrying the pouch, he continued deeper into the Mist Zone.

"The power and speed of the Nine Section Fast Sword's perfect version really are far, far beyond the ordinary version..." Lin Hui had fought with the Nine Section Fast Sword before, but at that time, the Blood Seal had not yet completed its evolution. He simply could not achieve such a decisive result.

But now, one sword strike was all it took.

His footwork and sword speed had already made it completely impossible for the monster to react.

After easily killing a Thousand-Foot Eyeball upon meeting it, his confidence surged. He began to quicken his pace, rapidly searching for wandering monsters nearby.

This entire area was Thousand-Foot Eyeball territory. Before long, the leather pouch in Lin Hui's hand contained nearly thirty black lenses.

That represented a full thirty Thousand-Foot Eyeballs slain by his sword. And the Clear River Sword truly deserved to be called the fine weapon his teacher had gifted him. Despite being constantly stained with highly poisonous slime, it showed no trace of corrosion. With a light shake, the mucus was flung away.

Dragging a leather pouch weighing over twenty kilograms, Lin Hui first stored it in his teacher's temporary wooden hut. Then he emptied the pouch and continued hunting nearby.

But after repeatedly encountering nothing but Thousand-Foot Eyeballs, he had no choice but to expand the range of his hunt.

Because his purpose in coming this time was not to hunt for money, but to test where his own limits truly lay.

Before long, after steadily widening the circles of his search, Lin Hui spent an hour repeatedly hauling his spoils back to the wooden cabin to pile them up. Then he expanded his hunting range once more. As he neared the high-risk Swallow Mountain region, he finally encountered a monster unlike any he had seen before—a powerful mutated Mist Barbarian.

Within the gray mist.

Beside a dried-up streambed, Lin Hui gripped his sword and watched the towering figure slowly approach from straight ahead, his expression turning solemn.

It was a powerful humanoid monster standing two and a half meters tall.

Its entire body was covered in gray-black skin and a thick black horny layer resembling scale armor. Its upper body had four arms, each gripping a crude spiked wooden club.

"A breed I haven't encountered before. A four-armed Mist Barbarian. According to the classifications—harmless, nuisance, dangerous, high-risk... I wonder what level it is. Maybe I can find some worthwhile materials..."

Lin Hui cautiously observed its movements.