"Wheeze. Wheeze."
Panting heavily, Ye Chen hid in a dim storeroom inside the mansion. Using Space Storage, he took a lightweight short sword and a long, thin steel wire out of his handkerchief, then tightly bound them to his bloodied, stiff left hand with a bandage.
His long sword had been left in the study, so these two little things were all he had for close combat.
He looked down at the Gold-Patterned Black Cloak, which had a deep dent in it and was slowly regaining its shape. Then he glanced at his left arm, which had lost a large chunk of flesh, and his bruised, swollen waist and abdomen.
The boy then circulated the Auling Power through his blood, sweeping away all the Abyss Matter writhing excitedly inside his wounds and eradicating every disgusting worm that had tried to further damage his body.
Fortunately, in the instant Xiaowaluwen had shot him with the sniper rifle, Ye Chen had protected his abdomen with his left arm and the Gold-Patterned Black Cloak. More crucially, he had also twisted his body ever so slightly, greatly reducing the damage from that Abyss Bullet and leaving him with severe injuries only to the surface of his body.
Otherwise, at least one or two of Ye Chen's organs would have been ruined, leaving him unable to fight and causing him to fail the Third Trial.
Ye Chen endured the pain that kept reverberating inside his skull, took a bottle of painkillers out of his handkerchief, and popped several pills into his mouth.
Then he tore off some excess bandage and hastily wrapped his left arm and waist. He also took a thin cord from his handkerchief and tied the grip of his revolver to the wrist of his still-usable right hand.
Before Ye Chen set out, Lyle had mentioned only one target for the Third Trial, from beginning to end: Lord Xiaowalus. At most, he had told Ye Chen to clean up everything connected to the Abyss within the Xiaowalu Family.
Beyond that, Lyle hadn't mentioned Lord Xiaowalus's younger brother, Xiaowaluwen, who was also one of Those Who Hear Its Song. Nor had he mentioned that the man's Spirit Art happened to be the hardest ability to guard against: Invisibility.
As a result, Ye Chen had been caught completely off guard. His left hand was half-crippled, and his waist and abdomen were injured. He was clearly at a crushing disadvantage.
However, Ye Chen wasn't particularly angry about Lyle's deliberate concealment of the trial's true challenge. Instead, he began focusing on how to turn the tide and carefully planning his strategy.
The boy understood why Lyle had done this: he wanted to see whether Ye Chen could adapt and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in such an unexpectedly difficult situation.
After all, Lyle's expectations of Ye Chen had always been absurdly high, and each of the three trials being harder than the last was only natural.
Ye Chen had just blown Xiaowalus's head apart with a shot, but he couldn't let the man's younger brother Xiaowaluwen, who had also become entangled with the Abyss, get away.
Besides, Ye Chen hadn't yet checked whether Xiaowalus had an Abyss Core inside him or whether he would undergo some kind of transformation. He still had to strike the corpse again to make sure he was dead.
There was still so much to do, and the trial was still so difficult to complete.
And that was precisely why Ye Chen had only one thought now: he would rack his brains and risk his life to overcome every obstacle, complete the Third Trial perfectly, and make Lyle fully acknowledge his abilities and witness how much he had grown.
"Whew. Let's begin."
Having made up his mind, the boy strode swiftly along the route he had already memorized. He ran straight to the circuit-breaker room in the Xiaowalu mansion, raised his revolver, and fired five shots at the massive switch.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The five bronze-colored bullets immediately wrecked the switch, sending sparks flying and cutting off all the lights inside the mansion at once.
The enormous Xiaowalu mansion plunged into darkness in an instant.
"Why did all the lights suddenly go out?"
"That bastard must have destroyed the switch!"
"That means he's in the circuit-breaker room right now. Come on, kill him! Avenge Lord Xiaowalus!"
The commotion Ye Chen had caused revealed his location to every enemy in the mansion. They all rushed toward the circuit-breaker room from different parts of the building.
Ye Chen knew the risk of what he had done. As soon as the gunshots faded, he ran, quickly changing his position.
Xiaowaluwen moved stealthily along a corridor in the mansion.
Like the Elite Guard, he had heard the shots from the circuit-breaker room. But instead of hurrying toward the sound, he furrowed his brow.
"To find the mansion's circuit-breaker so quickly means that bastard has already memorized the entire layout of this building. That's a bit of a problem."
Muttering to himself, Xiaowaluwen now understood why Ye Chen had asked the butler to show him every corner of Xiaowalu Manor earlier. He had done it to prepare for a situation like this. The boy had planned far ahead indeed.
"But this house still belongs to the Xiaowalu Family. Go ahead and struggle all you want, outsider. Heh!"
He gave a cold laugh, then disappeared around the corner of the corridor.
The first Elite Guard squad to arrive at the circuit-breaker room found no sign of Ye Chen, so they quickly split up to check the traces left behind.
Less than half a minute later, one of the guards spotted drops of blood on the floor. He immediately lowered his voice and alerted his companions.
"Hey, I found blood here. Come over."
The ten guards quickly gathered around and saw that the faint trail of blood led straight to the dining room ahead.
"Follow it."
Without hesitation, they tracked the blood into the dining room, where they found the place in complete disarray. Broken plates, teacups, and other porcelain lay scattered across the tiled floor, reduced to shards and powder.
The guards silently signaled to one another, then entered the dark, silent dining room one after another, single-shot rifles in hand, searching for Ye Chen.
Hidden in a dim corner of the dining room, Ye Chen listened to the faint sounds of multiple pairs of shoes stepping on porcelain shards and frowned.
He cautiously peeked out, using the moonlight to get a clear look at the newcomers.
They weren't Xiaowaluwen, as he had expected. They were the men from Xiaowalus's Elite Guard, whom he had seen at the mansion entrance that afternoon.
Had Xiaowalus not sent the Elite Guard outside the city? Had he lied to me?
Watching the vigilant group ahead, Ye Chen couldn't help feeling puzzled.
He had thought his act of pretending to be a fool had been pretty convincing. He hadn't expected Xiaowalus to remain so wary despite that.
Ye Chen didn't know that the guards had actually been hidden in the mansion's basement by Xiaowalus's younger brother, Xiaowaluwen. But none of that mattered now. His first priority was to figure out whether these men posed a threat.
Ye Chen quickly came up with two possibilities.
First: these men were merely decoys Xiaowaluwen had sent to distract him, while the truly dangerous Xiaowaluwen lurked nearby, waiting to attack the moment Ye Chen let his guard down.
Second: all these guards had bullets infused with Abyss Matter, like Xiaowaluwen, and could wound Ye Chen. That would be the worst-case scenario, because he would then have to fend off the deadly attacks of dozens of men at once.
Let's assume it's the worst-case scenario.
With that thought, Ye Chen placed every guard present on his kill list.
He understood that these guards might have no idea that the lord they served, Xiaowalus, had spent years trying to carry out an evil ritual that could destroy every living being in the Eternal Winter Hidden Domain. But by now, Ye Chen no longer had the heart to hold back.
He wasn't a god. He was a Hunter.
Whether or not they knew the truth, anyone who wanted him dead was his enemy, his prey.
He wouldn't spare them. He wouldn't spare a single one.
He absolutely couldn't let mercy become his downfall!
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