Terrifying black magic!
It had to be!
Run... She had to get away...!
Startled, Lillia grabbed the branch and hurried to flee. But in her panic, she tripped over nothing again—she was just so clumsy. Normally she did all right, but when she got flustered, all four of her legs went in different directions.
Still, she had no time to worry about that little bit of pain.
She ran away from the scene in tears.
"Don't catch Lillia...!"
"Boss, boss... Boss~~!"
Ahri's voice called in his ear, accompanied by a series of coquettish shakes.
Chen Ce slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Ahri's flawless, lovely face.
The second was the sun beating down on his backside.
After a moment of confusion, he shot upright.
"I fell asleep? It's morning?"
"Looks like it..." Ahri nodded. "I overslept too... I didn't wake up during the second half of the night..."
After she finished speaking, the two fell silent.
And felt a lingering sense of dread.
"You're all right, aren't you?" Chen Ce looked her over again, making sure her beautiful body was unharmed. "What about our luggage? Did we lose anything?"
"I don't think so..." Ahri said. "It seems like nothing happened last night."
"That's good..." Chen Ce breathed a sigh of relief. This really was the best possible outcome in a bad situation.
But Ahri still seemed uneasy.
She felt...
That sensation of someone secretly watching them was still there.
Chapter 66: So It's You, Xiao Yan of the Jungle!
"Ionia has fallen."
A weathered voice rang out, lacking both force and volume. It sounded like the voice of an old man who had long since sheathed his claws, unable to stir even the slightest ripple across this vast land.
"Noxian invaders destroyed this place and occupied many provinces... The monks have all fled. Perhaps we should go to Hirana. They're probably taking refuge there."
A lean monk scooped up a handful of dirt. Its familiar scent made him feel the presence of the Spirit Realm... the thing he had failed most of all.
He was Ionian, but he had exiled himself several years ago. Over the years, he had traveled to many places and met some like-minded friends. Now, he had returned to this familiar land.
He had come back from the far north, from Freljord, filled with hope. He believed that the training and changes he had undergone over the years had been enough. He thought this beautiful land would accept him again.
But the truth was... he had changed, and so had Ionia.
The merciless Noxian invaders had invaded, and the flames of war had ruthlessly devoured everything. The Noxian invaders had ravaged the provinces, leaving the people destitute and the land littered with corpses.
Things could never go back to how they were.
He had visited many temples, but every one of them was deserted. Some said the monks had refused to submit to the Noxian invaders' tyranny and had all been killed. Others said some of them had fled to Hirana, where the monastery would protect them—or perhaps they intended to defend the sacred Hirana Monastery.
The truth was unknown.
The only way to learn what had really happened was to go to Hirana Monastery himself.
Hirana... Shojin... Would the Spirit of the Dragon blame this wayward monk?
The lean monk gazed into the distance, his bare upper body rippling with muscle. He wore a pair of loose, old trousers, stained with many marks that did not belong to this land, like souvenirs bearing witness to a traveler's journey. His movements were gentle and fluid, yet radiated a unique strength.
The ancient martial arts of the First Lands had given him extraordinary power.
Unfortunately, to gain the state of mind needed to control that power, he had to atone through bloodshed and years of training.
He—Lee Sin—had returned.
In Freljord, he had met the wild man Udyr, a man who could channel the power of primal spirits. At the time, the Spirit Walker had been struggling to control the many conflicting forces within him, which had made Lee Sin wonder whether he could truly control the power of the dragon.
Their shared need for spiritual guidance had brought them together.
When he heard that Ionia was struggling more and more to resist Noxus, he had invited Udyr to return to his homeland with him without hesitation, hoping they could drive out the enemy together.
But when he finally reached Ionia, he found that many places had already been destroyed... He couldn't even find the old friends he'd once known, let alone the Noxian invaders who had slaughtered so many before fleeing.
He felt utterly despondent.
"Udyr, perhaps I should have met you sooner and invited you back with me to this... beautiful land sooner." Lee Sin shook his head and sighed. "It wasn't always like this... The First Lands used to be so, so beautiful..."
"I can see that." The brawny man beside him—the Spirit Walker, nearly two meters tall and more than twice Lee Sin's size, all muscle—scratched his head with a rather simple-minded air.
"Even after a war, this place is far prettier than Freljord—you've seen it yourself. I know you all call it a 'savage land.'" He spoke with a thick northern accent.
"That's what fools and the arrogant say." Lee Sin shook his head again, unconvinced. "Though I used to be one of them."
"Has living in Freljord all this time changed your mind about it?" Udyr gave a simple, honest laugh.
Lee Sin smiled too.
"No. You did, my friend."
The moment the words left his mouth, the mood suddenly grew tense.
Udyr turned his head away, looking a little embarrassed. "I still miss her..."
"..." Lee Sin realized he'd put his foot in his mouth.
"Ahem... We should keep going... Let's visit Hirana Monastery first and see what we find..."
The two fell silent and resumed their journey.
Udyr quietly kept his distance.
Lee Sin was in a complicated state of mind too.
But of course, it wasn't because of that little misunderstanding. It was because of the Noxian invaders.
He was going to Hirana Monastery, and of course he would have to protect it. That meant he would inevitably have to fight the Noxian legions...
As an Ionian master of ancient martial arts, he certainly wasn't afraid of fighting, but...
He was still worried that he wouldn't be able to control the power of the Spirit of the Dragon.
In the past, unable to control his emotions and desires, he had unleashed the Dragon's Rage without restraint. One kick had left his learned mentor gravely injured and paralyzed. Driven out of the temple for his arrogance, he had ultimately chosen self-exile to atone for his sins...
Years later, he still wasn't confident he could control the Spirit of the Dragon.
He wasn't afraid of fighting. He was afraid of unleashing the Dragon Spirit Power in battle.
He feared repeating his past mistakes and destroying everything...
Ahri was growing more and more paranoid.
She kept thinking someone was following them. She said that feeling of being watched never went away, like a lingering gloom or a restless spirit she couldn't drive off.
At first, Chen Ce had been a little nervous too. No one liked the feeling of being followed, especially when they had no idea who was behind it.
But after a while, he had grown somewhat indifferent.
This so-called "watcher" hadn't done anything or left behind a single clue. They hadn't suffered any losses, even when they'd accidentally fallen asleep together.
Never mind whether the person was hostile—there was no way to know if they even existed.
After all, Chen Ce hadn't noticed anything at all.
The only evidence that someone was following them was Ahri's word.
Maybe... she was hallucinating because she was exhausted? Or perhaps the "possessed Imero Stone" incident had left her with some kind of mental trauma, causing her perceptions to go awry?
It was hard to say. It really was.
In any case, as long as they didn't lose anything or run into trouble, it was fine.
Even if this so-called "watcher" really did exist, perhaps they simply wanted to observe them. After all, even Ahri had admitted that the "emotion" she sensed was "curiosity."
Being cautious made sense, but there was no need to scare himself over nothing.
With that mindset, Chen Ce soon crossed the strait east of the Placidium Plains and officially entered Lalin.
But the road ahead would not be easy.
The situation before them was far from optimistic.
For one thing, Lalin's winding mountain roads were exhausting and time-consuming. And for another...
The Noxians were eyeing this sacred land, known as "Ionia's treasure trove of knowledge."
They had hardly seen any sign of the Noxian Legion while coming from the Placidium Plains, but as soon as they landed, they spotted several village ruins that had been burned to the ground.
"The Noxians have attacked this place after all... Lalin is an island of its own, and most of its residents are monks. It's incredibly difficult to build up a Resistance Army here."
As Chen Ce made his way toward Hirana Monastery beyond the mountains, he surveyed the island, which the Noxians had ravaged on a massive scale.
The farther they went into Lalin, the more burned-out villages they saw. Many looked as if they had been destroyed only recently—some fires had just gone out, and wisps of smoke still rose from the charred walls and blackened wood.
It was hard to build a local Resistance Army here. Resistance forces from elsewhere were difficult to bring in because of the island's remote location. In the eyes of the Noxian invaders, it was undoubtedly an easy target.
The only reason it had taken this long for the entire island to come under attack was that the Placidium Plains and Navori Province had held the main battlefield until now.
Now, after Navori and the Placidium Plains had just survived a fierce battle and barely repelled a massive Noxian offensive, the Noxians had only two choices: lie low or shift their target.
Lying low was actually the wiser choice for them. Strategists like Swain, who genuinely had the country's best interests at heart, thought the same. Unfortunately, they couldn't rein in the madness of Grand General Braum Darkwill.
Or rather, they couldn't resist the Black Rose's control over the Noxian Empire.
Through some despicable means, the mastermind behind the Black Rose had driven the Grand General mad, convincing him that conquering all of Ionia would earn him the elixir of immortality. For that, he was willing to pay any price to invade Ionia.
So even though the Noxian front had just suffered a setback in Navori Province and the Placidium Plains, he would never order his forces to lie low, much less withdraw.
He would only order his men to shift their target and continue the attack.
And their target this time was clearly Lalin.
This independent island had almost no Resistance Army forces, only a few monks to defend it.
As for the point of conquering it... It might have little strategic value—in fact, almost none at all—but they could obtain many books on Ionian traditions. If the war turned into a stalemate later, those books could prove very useful.
As far as Braum Darkwill was concerned, the sacrifices needed to attack Lalin would be minimal. He might as well take it while he was at it.
This madman of a Grand General loved showing the outside world his brutality and power.
This meaningless war had to end as soon as possible...
Chen Ce and Ahri spent nearly two full days traversing Lalin's winding mountain roads.
It was only late on the second night that they spotted a bright blaze on a distant mountainside.
As they drew closer, they saw more and more fires, accompanied by faint shouts. The voices themselves weren't quiet; they just couldn't make them out clearly from so far away.
There was no doubt about it. That was the Noxian Legion attacking Lalin.
Ever since landing on the island, Chen Ce had seen the wreckage they'd left behind along the way, but he hadn't managed to catch up with them.
Now he'd finally found them.
If nothing unexpected had happened, the battlefield ahead was where Hirana Monastery stood.
"Time to get to work, Ahri."
Chen Ce took out his weapon. After confirming their exact direction once more, he sprinted toward the sounds of fighting at full speed.
He had learned quite a few skills over time, and they weren't "mere techniques." Each one had also enhanced his physical abilities in a way suited to the skill.
His physical abilities now far surpassed those of an ordinary person. He might not have been the strongest on the planet, but his physique was at least T1 level.
Beyond that were the human pinnacles of martial arts, like Shen, Kennen, Master Yi, and Jax.
That level of physical prowess was practically beyond reach.
Before you continue