The Thing It Protected

"Th-this... one... two... three... six in all...?" Zhang Wei stared blankly at the burning corpses, struggling to count them.

"If I remember correctly, there were six enemies just now, too!" Zhang Mo racked his brain for a while, then confirmed that his memory was sound.

Though the six corpses had been burned beyond recognition, they were still visibly human-shaped. The crackling flames carried a strange, charred stench, like roast meat, but it was utterly revolting.

Lin Chuan wrinkled his nose in disgust and quietly used chakra to form a thin membrane inside it, blocking out the smell.

As for Zhang Leyang and the other two, they were completely stunned by the sight before them. They had no room to spare a thought for the smell; their hearts were filled with nothing but shock and terror!

"Lin Chuan, did you... kill all those people just now?" It took Zhang Leyang a good while to come back to his senses. He turned to look at Lin Chuan, who stood beside him with an expressionless face.

How could he believe that this seemingly frail, white-haired youth standing right beside him had killed six people whose cultivation surpassed his own in less than ten minutes? One of them had even been three full levels above him.

This completely upended their understanding of the entire cultivation world, as if someone had played an enormous joke on them.

They had assumed all along that Lin Chuan had some hidden trick that could take his enemies down with him, and that he planned to use it to scare off the six men. But now, it was clear that this had not been the case at all.

Lin Chuan truly had the strength to kill all six. And it hadn't merely been a matter of killing them—he had crushed them. There wasn't a single scratch on him, and he wasn't even breathing hard.

Killing six people while gravely wounded was entirely different from dispatching them with such ease. It meant that Lin Chuan's strength was far beyond what he had shown; his cultivation had to exceed that of the strongest among the six for him to achieve this.

"At least the ninth level of Qi Refining Stage, perhaps even the tenth level, the Great Perfection stage!"

Gulp! The three of them swallowed hard. Their own guess had truly frightened them. No matter how they sensed him, Lin Chuan's spiritual energy cultivation was only at the fifth level of Qi Refining Stage. They simply couldn't imagine how he could have instantly killed all six in such a short time. Even a legendary protective treasure couldn't have accomplished something like that!

"Lin Chuan, have you already broken through the Qi Refining Stage and reached Foundation Establishment Stage? You only came here to have some fun, right?" Zhang Leyang asked. He had thought of one possibility—the one that now seemed most likely.

And Zhang Leyang wasn't the only one who had thought of it. Zhang Wei and Zhang Mo had reached the same conclusion.

Lin Chuan's surname was Lin!

That question they had kept overlooking had now become the best explanation for everything.

"My cultivation really is only at the fifth level of Qi Refining Stage. I was able to kill them because I have a special method," Lin Chuan explained. He didn't go into detail, but neither did he want to lie to the three of them.

Zhang Leyang and the others nodded, their expressions odd, and didn't press him further. Some things were better left unknown. Still, all three had tacitly decided that Lin Chuan was a core disciple of the Lin Clan.

In their eyes, someone of Lin Chuan's standing had come to Hunting Ground No. 44 purely for amusement. Those six men had brought their deaths upon themselves by provoking him. No wonder Lin Chuan hadn't shown the slightest fear from beginning to end. What a joke—whether or not his own cultivation was enough, was there anything a core disciple of the Lin Clan couldn't do on the Lin Clan's turf?

"Let's go! We need to get out of here." Lin Chuan urged the three of them onward and handed Zhang Leyang the three Crimson Flame Lotuses he had taken from the six men.

Zhang Leyang didn't refuse this time. After all, a core disciple like Lin Chuan had only come here for fun. Collecting Crimson Flame Lotuses and passing the test meant nothing to him.

With that thought, Zhang Leyang and the others felt everything fall into place. Even the things they hadn't been able to understand earlier now seemed clear.

Take Lin Chuan's hidden method, for example. If all he had wanted was to scare the six men away, using it would have exposed it. Why, then, had he told them to get out of the way? Now it was obvious: Lin Chuan had meant to kill all six. What he really wanted to conceal was his identity as a core disciple of the Lin Clan.

The more they thought about it, the more convinced they became. Their gazes grew increasingly fervent as they looked at Lin Chuan. With a core disciple like him to lean on, how could they possibly fail the test?

Lin Chuan walked ahead, but his keen instincts made him particularly sensitive to other people's gazes. The instant he activated his Byakugan, he shivered all over. The fervent looks from the three behind him gave him a deep chill.

"What kind of three oddballs have I met...?" Lin Chuan's mouth twitched.

After accompanying Zhang Leyang and the others to a fork in the passage near the surface, Lin Chuan parted ways with them and headed for the cave where Qin Lang and Bu Lianshi were resting.

"I wonder whether the sleeping Ant Queen was affected by the cultivators moving around in the cave. If it wakes up suddenly, no one here will make it out alive!" Lin Chuan thought. Then, after turning a corner, he stopped.

A moment later, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his white eyes had turned sky blue, silver light shimmering around his deep-blue pupils.

"Tenseigan!"

As soon as he activated the Tenseigan, Lin Chuan drew in his vision. Instead of surveying the full 360-degree area as he had before, he focused his visual power in one direction and looked underground.

Last time, with Zhang Leyang and the others there—and with the sight he had seen being so terrifying—he had only taken a very cursory look. The more he thought about it, the stranger some details seemed, so Lin Chuan decided to examine them carefully again.

As the surrounding rocks turned transparent and faded away, Lin Chuan's vision crossed a distance of seven or eight kilometers and once again found the giant Ant Queen sleeping underground. Even though he had prepared himself, seeing this colossal creature again still left him shaken. Its immense body and astonishing presence were unlike anything Lin Chuan had ever seen. It weighed on his chest like a mountain, making even breathing feel oppressive.

As Lin Chuan shifted his gaze, he focused on the enormous lake of magma beside the Ant Queen. This time, he noticed something unusual.

The Ant Queen's curled body formed a crescent, enclosing half the magma lake. Part of its body was even submerged in the molten rock. Seeing this, Lin Chuan instinctively thought of one possibility—it was guarding something!