Clash II (Thanks, Alliance Leader AuroraLin)

Thrust, withdraw.

Thrust, withdraw.

The lightning-fast feints made Wan'er burn with rage, yet there was nothing she could do.

She had no cards left to play, but her opponent clearly did not believe her and was still cautiously probing her.

Palm strike after palm strike missed, and the fury in her heart continued to mount.

"Got the guts? Then stop running!!" she finally roared.

Pfft!

Blood burst forth in an instant.

Wan'er's figure halted, frozen in place, utterly motionless.

Slowly, she reached for the longsword embedded in her chest, but the instant her heart was pierced open and lost pressure, she no longer had the strength to exert herself.

With another pfft, the sword tip was pulled free, trailing a streak of bright red.

Wan'er fell backward helplessly, the scene from moments ago replaying over and over in her mind.

"What... just happened?"

"I was ambushed by someone else??"

She had clearly still been exchanging blows with that person, yet in the next instant, a sword had abruptly pierced through every one of her defenses and stabbed into her heart.

She did not even know how it had happened before the battle was over.

Even at the very end, as Wan'er's eyes sank fully into darkness and she lost consciousness, she did not know how she had lost. Perhaps she did not believe she had lost at all—only that she had been ambushed by some sinister bastard lying in wait nearby.

Lin Hui's figure solidified beside the corpse.

Looking at the motionless woman on the ground, he bent down and picked up her bag of materials.

"Special Effect: Metamorphosis really is formidable. Activating it for just an instant triples my speed, and I can barely even feel the drain."

To be honest, he felt that the woman on the ground was no weaker than his senior brother—perhaps even somewhat stronger.

Yet even a fighter of that caliber could not react when her opponent's sword speed suddenly tripled in the middle of an exchange. In the blink of an eye, she was dead.

When exchanging blows with external techniques, without inner strength covering the body for defense, one mistake meant mortal danger.

Life and death were decided in an instant.

"Wan'er!!" An enraged roar rang out.

In the next instant, Lin Hui flashed away, retreating several steps in rapid succession to evade a palm shadow of white light striking at him from behind.

Although that white light was much dimmer than before, it still gave him a powerful sense of danger.

Then he saw Granny pounce to the woman's corpse, bend down to support her, and inspect her condition.

Clang!

Lin Hui drew his sword without hesitation.

He was not an idiot. Why would he wait for the other party to finish examining the corpse and prepare herself before attacking? If he did not seize an opening when it appeared, what was that if not stupidity?

The killing move of the Nine Section Fast Sword, Wind Passes Without Trace, suddenly drew out a string of afterimages as it shot toward her.

"You deserve to die!!" Granny set down the corpse. Her inspection interrupted, she had no choice but to rise and send a palm strike straight at the sword.

As white light flickered, tiny petal-like motes of light seemed to radiate faintly from her palm.

Moreover, that single palm strike carried the exaggerated might of seemingly covering the area within five meters around it.

Lin Hui's heart tightened. He turned his sword tip, trying to withdraw once more and avoid a head-on clash.

He was not in the Inner Strength Realm, but his master was. He knew what happened when inner strength collided.

He had once sparred with Mingde to test it. Every weapon they could find, including his Clear River Sword, would meet the same result when clashing with an inner strength expert without being coated in inner strength: so long as the other party was prepared and circulated their inner strength, he would be unable to hold onto his weapon and would be disarmed and defeated instantly.

At the moment of impact, inner strength would race along the weapon like lightning, like an electric current, forcibly numbing his hand and leaving him unable to grip the weapon.

Therefore, once he truly fought an Inner Strength Realm opponent, he had to avoid their inner strength.

But the moment he drew back, the other party's palm shadow suddenly swelled.

In an instant, it was as though a vast fan-shaped expanse of white palm shadows lit up before Lin Hui's eyes.

Palms scattered with petal-like motes of white light pressed down upon him in dense succession, like a white wall!

A white wall five meters high and five meters wide!

There was simply no time to change moves now.

His speed was fast, but not so fast that he could change moves once and then change again.

His opponent was an Inner Strength Realm expert, not some slow-moving snail.

"Too late."

Lin Hui had originally wanted to use the perfected Nine Section Fast Sword to exchange a few more moves with her, but now it seemed that without activating the special effect, he probably could not even withstand a single move.

The gap between external martial arts and the Inner Strength Realm was simply too vast.

"Forget it."

A thought flashed through Lin Hui's mind. His body shot backward at high speed, evading a white palm imprint about to strike him head-on.

He looked up, his eyes fixed on the palm imprint.

Everything around him seemed to slow and freeze at that instant.

"Special Effect—"

"Feather Transformation."

BOOM!!

Everything around Lin Hui instantly blurred.

The white palm imprint before him froze, retreated, and vanished.

He gripped his sword in his right hand, his body as light as a feather.

"Clear Sword."

"One-Hand Brushing Clouds..."

In an instant, the blade in his hand swept to the side, drawing out streak after streak of afterimages, as though gently brushing through invisible clouds.

Layer upon layer of silver sword shadows formed a fan-shaped sheen of silver light, then froze.

Whoosh.

Lin Hui vanished.

Along with him vanished the faint sound of wind dispersing through the air.

The next moment, he appeared soundlessly behind Granny, his sword tip already resting against the right side of her neck.

CLANG!!!

A terrifying crash suddenly exploded.

The white glow of inner strength around Granny's neck rapidly caved inward, forming a deep dent.

Her attention was still fixed on Lin Hui's afterimage before her. She had not realized at all that the true enemy had already arrived at her rear flank.

In that terrifying state of extreme speed, her reactions seemed like a heavily slowed film.

By the time shock and fury appeared on her face, and she turned and raised a hand to seize Lin Hui's true body—

That true body scattered in the blink of an eye, becoming an afterimage once more.

The next moment, a crisp burst erupted from the left side of her waist as well, and a spark of golden fire scattered outward.

Inner strength and sword tip collided again.

Before she could recover, another spark flared from the center of her back the very next instant.

HISS HISS HISS HISS!!

An unceasing barrage of sparks burst from vital points all over her body, scattering in every direction.

Her inner strength, under such rapid expenditure, swiftly faded and dimmed.

"Just who are you...?!"

Pfft!

A sword tip suddenly broke through the white glow and pierced into her abdomen.

Granny opened her mouth to cry out, both hands shooting toward the blade.

Unfortunately—

The blade suddenly slashed upward, cutting open her chest from her abdomen in a single stroke and leaving behind a straight, razor-sharp, horrifying gash.

Blood sprayed out like a fountain, taking all the strength from her body with it.

The enormous, vivid bloody wound ran from Granny's abdomen through her chest to her chin, nearly splitting her whole body in two.

The last thing she saw was the sword lifting, flicking diagonally to shake off the blood, then slowly sliding back into its sheath.

"You..."

A gentle breeze brushed past. Only then did the white glow on Granny's body completely vanish. Her final inner strength had been forcibly torn apart, and she had been disemboweled alive.

Thud.

The corpse fell backward onto the ground, eyes still open in death, blood flowing out to dye the earth red.

Mist filled the surroundings. Not another sound remained.

Lin Hui stood where he was, closing his eyes as he savored the feeling of using the Clear Sword through Feather Transformation just now. That wondrous sensation of becoming the wind itself amid extreme speed gave him a devilishly intoxicating sense of comfort.

That feeling completely suppressed the tightness in his chest from killing someone for the first time. All that remained was the exhilaration of casually swinging his sword, as though splashing ink across paper to write.

After a long while, the faint howls of monsters drifting through the surrounding mist jolted him awake from that wondrous sensation.

Only then did he bend down and swiftly gather the valuables from the corpse.

Each corpse had a money pouch and a pair of gloves. As for the other clearly custom-made accessories, he did not take them. Those things were far too distinctive—hard even to fence.

After stuffing all the banknotes and gold from the pouches into his own bag, Lin Hui threw the pouches away as well. He turned and left the spot, then went to lure two One-Horned Spiders over. Only after hearing from afar the spiders shoot silk, bind up the corpses, and drag them away did he leave in peace.

The One-Horned Spider's trait was to spit silk and wrap its prey into a ball, then carry it back to its nest and slowly suck it dry.

Only then did he return to the No Fog Zone with his bag of materials, strolling leisurely toward Qingfeng Temple.

Not until he was completely back in his own room did Lin Hui's guard gradually ease.

Master Mingde and the martial uncles from the other two branches were nearby. With three Inner Strength Realm experts holding the fort, this place was far safer than the outside world.

Only then could he relax and look back over the slaughter just now.

Sitting cross-legged on the cloth mat, Lin Hui calmed the surging blood and qi within him and slowly replayed the battle.

"That Wan'er's practical combat attainments should be just a hair stronger than Eldest Senior Brother's. She was at the peak of external martial arts Body Tempering, and activating Feather Transformation for an instant made short work of her. But that Inner Strength Realm old hag afterward was much harder to deal with. Her inner strength could travel along the weapon and numb my palm. During the finishing strikes, it slowed my sword speed every time. Luckily, only a thread of inner strength came through each time, and the slowing effect was brief."

"In other words, I was simply too fast. She wasn't an Inner Strength expert specializing in speed. Otherwise, the outcome of this battle really would have been hard to say."

An Inner Strength Realm expert!

At that thought, something in Lin Hui's heart suddenly loosened. He had actually killed an Inner Strength Realm expert!

Though she had merely been a non-speed type who had been worn down by countless monsters for a long time, inner strength was still inner strength. No matter how he had done it, he truly had. By himself, he had completely dealt with her.

"The effect of Feather Transformation really is terrifying. In that state, even Master would probably find it hard to catch up to my movement technique."

Master Mingde was a speed-type Inner Strength Realm expert. Lin Hui had seen the speed he displayed when paired with the Clear Sword. Compared to himself, it was roughly twice his normal speed at most.

It was nowhere close to the terrifying effect of tripling his speed.

"By that measure, could I count as an Inner Strength Realm expert too?" Lin Hui estimated inwardly.

Feather Transformation now consumed very little. He could keep it active for an entire day without any problem. If he used it intermittently, he could basically chain it endlessly.

Not to mention the more concealed sealed poison that he had yet to use.

Rising to his feet, Lin Hui gently drew the Clear River Sword, took out sword oil and a silk cloth, and maintained the blade.

"But the numbing effect and extraordinary defense of the Inner Strength Realm are too troublesome. If I'm careless and get numbed into losing my weapon, I basically won't pose any threat to an Inner Strength Realm expert."

"And when their inner strength is full, my attacks would probably have to grind away for a long time before they could inflict any actual damage on an Inner Strength Realm expert. That's a problem."

Lin Hui had also asked his teacher whether there were any divine weapons capable of breaking through inner strength protection, but the answer had been no.

Inner strength protection was more like a force field. It kept weapons from making contact, slowing them in midair, suspending them, and blocking their penetration from all directions.

With such a method, a weapon's sharpness simply could not come into play.

"I still need to break through to the Inner Strength Realm. That's the true path... As I am now, I'm still far too unsafe."

With that final thought, Lin Hui let out a long sigh and quietly recovered from his physical exertion, preparing to take the materials tomorrow and exchange them for money.

By now, he had realized that his efficiency at amassing wealth by hunting monsters far surpassed everyone else's. There was no need for him to take on any missions or employment at all.