The only thing one could say was that the Phantom Cat Emperor had the worst luck.
If it had been hiding on another continent, it might have been able to roam free for a while. But of all things, it had run into Lin Yuan just after he had mastered his new technique—and was in desperate need of a sturdy enough "punching bag" to test his strength.
But worse still, Lin Yuan was in Europe.
West Sea Base City, Europe.
Cold rain pattered beneath the overcast sky, and an oppressive mood hung over the entire Base City.
Just hours earlier, news that an Elite Squad of three High-level War Gods had been wiped out had weighed on everyone like a boulder.
At the military airport, a pitch-black King-Level Intelligent Fighter tore through the rain curtain with a deafening sonic boom and landed steadily on the runway.
Military representatives and Martial Arts Hall officials who had been waiting rushed forward at once. But their faces showed little anticipation. Instead, they were grave—almost... despairing.
"He's here."
General Ivanov, the highest-ranking military officer in charge of receiving him, was a burly Russian man. At that moment, his brow was furrowed.
He glanced at the information that had just been verified by satellite, then at the burly man beside him with a great axe strapped to his back. His eyes were full of incredulous suspicion.
His expression clearly asked:
This is the reinforcement the Extreme Martial Arts Hall sent? A kid barely out of his teens?
The man standing beside him was Frost Axe, a High-level War God stationed here by the Extreme Martial Arts Hall.
Frost Axe wore a bitter expression. Of course he had heard of Lin Yuan—the youngest Honorary Inspector in history, a peerless genius favored by both the Hall Master and Thunder God.
But a genius was one thing; potential was another!
"What on earth is headquarters thinking?!"
Frost Axe lowered his voice, his words tinged with barely restrained complaint. "We're up against a High-level Beast King! And not just any Beast King, but the Phantom Cat Emperor, an incredibly cunning creature skilled in mental illusions!
"Even a veteran War God squad was killed without anyone knowing how. What good is sending a newly promoted War God? Is he here to die?"
"They should've sent someone at the Councilor Level! They could've even asked a Councilor from the Thunderbolt Martial Arts Hall to step in. Why send a War God?!"
As they muttered their complaints, the fighter's hatch opened.
Lin Yuan stepped out in a black combat suit, his expression impassive.
He carried no umbrella, yet the raindrops slid away as soon as they came within three inches of him, as if an invisible barrier separated him from the world.
"Inspector Lin."
Though dissatisfied, Frost Axe went forward to greet him out of obligation. His tone was stiff and utterly lacking in respect.
General Ivanov was even more blunt. He strode forward and said gravely, "Mr. Lin, while I'm grateful to the Extreme Martial Arts Hall for sending help, I must speak frankly: that beast is far more dangerous than you can imagine.
"If you don't have Councilor-level strength, I suggest you return immediately. I don't want to see another human genius die here."
The atmosphere instantly froze.
Lin Yuan stopped and calmly looked from one man to the other.
He glanced at the anxious Ivanov, then at the indignant Frost Axe.
"Heh."
A soft, scornful laugh escaped his lips.
There was no anger in it, only a condescending indifference, as though a dragon had heard an ant question it.
Lin Yuan ignored Frost Axe and looked directly at Ivanov. "General, where was the Phantom Cat Emperor last spotted?"
"You..." Ivanov hesitated, his expression uncertain. "Inspector Lin, did you actually understand what I just said? This isn't a game. That thing is—"
"That's enough."
Lin Yuan suddenly cut him off.
His voice wasn't loud, yet it seemed to carry some strange power. Even the noisy rain around them appeared to pause for an instant.
Lin Yuan stared straight into Ivanov's eyes, his gaze deep as an abyss. His voice was cold and commanding. "My mission is to hunt it down, not stand here listening to you complain.
"You don't need to question me, and you don't need to help."
As he spoke, he turned his head slightly. His gaze swept across Frost Axe's face like a blade, then returned to Ivanov.
"The only thing you need to do is find someone to collect the bodies."
Ivanov and Frost Axe's expressions changed drastically. They caught their breath and instinctively took half a step back!
It felt as if an ancient ferocious beast had fixed its gaze on them. Their very souls trembled.
"Th-this pressure!"
Ivanov's pupils contracted violently. The warning on the tip of his tongue died before he could utter it.
He stared blankly at the young man before him. For some reason, those arrogant words—"collect the bodies"—had filled him with an inexplicable sense of oppression!
"The coordinates... are here."
With trembling hands, Ivanov sent an electronic map to Lin Yuan's Communication Watch.
"Good."
Without even glancing at the two men, Lin Yuan turned and boarded the fighter.
The hatch closed. The aircraft shot into the sky and vanished into the vast curtain of rain.
West Sea Base City, combat command center.
Lin Yuan's fighter was shown in real time on a huge electronic screen. The entire hall was silent. Everyone held their breath, staring fixedly at the display.
"He's arrived."
A technician spoke in a low voice.
On the screen, the red dot marking Lin Yuan had stopped above a stretch of primeval forest three hundred kilometers from the Base City.
What puzzled everyone was that the fighter neither descended to search nor deployed any reconnaissance drones. It simply hovered motionless at an altitude of ten thousand meters.
"What's he doing?"
Frost Axe stared at the screen, frowning. "At that altitude, with the clouds so thick, he can't see the ground with the naked eye. He's not going down to search. Is he sightseeing up there?"
Ivanov looked just as bewildered, his unease growing stronger.
They had no idea what was happening.
At that moment, inside the fighter, ten thousand meters above the ground.
Lin Yuan sat cross-legged, eyes closed and expression as calm as still water.
Deep within his sea of consciousness, the newly condensed sphere of liquid Spiritual Force rotated slowly, radiating a disquieting power.
"Planetary Level Spiritual Force. Let's use you to christen my first real battle."
Lin Yuan's lips lifted slightly. He suddenly opened his eyes.
HUM—!!!
An invisible, intangible Spiritual Force, vast as the sea, erupted from the fighter in an instant!
It ignored the distance and the clouds, spreading like an unseen storm until it blanketed an area a hundred kilometers in every direction below.
At that moment, Lin Yuan seemed to become a god.
A crystal-clear, three-dimensional map formed in his mind.
Every swaying tree, every falling raindrop, every crawling ant—
Every living thing in the area appeared in his perception in the finest detail. Nothing could escape him!
"Not this one... too weak."
"Not this one either."
Lin Yuan's awareness swept over tens of thousands of monsters like a precision radar, rapidly sorting through them.
Just three seconds later,
his gaze abruptly locked onto an apparently ordinary valley deep in the forest.
There, a vast but exceedingly faint aura of life was being carefully concealed. All around it lay layer upon layer of mental illusion fields capable of deceiving both the eye and electronic instruments.
An ordinary War God could have walked right up to it and still thought it was just a rock.
But beneath the "divine eye" of a Planetary Level Spirit Reader, the disguise was laughably crude.
"Found you, kitty."
A cold glint flashed in Lin Yuan's eyes.
BOOM!
The Spiritual Force he had been using only to search instantly became a tangible hammer, crashing down on the valley with the force of a mountain.
CRACK!
A sound like shattering glass rang through the air.
Under Lin Yuan's terrifying mental assault, the illusion field covering the valley shattered in an instant!
"Meow—!!!"
A shrill, terrified shriek pierced the rain and echoed through the sky.
The Phantom Cat Emperor, which had been dozing in its lair, felt terror erupt from the depths of its soul. It lifted its head in fright and looked up at the sky.
To its senses, the heavens above had collapsed!
An unseen "god" was staring coldly at it from ten thousand meters up!
Combat command center.
"What's going on? Was that the Cat Emperor's cry?!" Frost Axe's expression changed.
Before anyone could react, the image on the screen suddenly changed.
The red dot that had been hovering motionlessly suddenly moved.
It didn't circle or glide. Instead, it swung its nose around at an utterly reckless and unbelievable angle—
straight down!
BOOM!
The fighter's engines roared at full power. It became a burning meteor, a sword plunging from the heavens straight toward the ground!
It moved so fast that the radar display showed a string of afterimages.
"My God!"
Ivanov leaped out of his chair. Bracing both hands on the table, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets, he shouted, "A vertical dive?! Has he gone mad?!"
"That's a High-level Beast King! He's not laying down fire first or testing the waters—he's going straight at it in the body of a War God?!"
"That's suicide!!"
Before you continue