Know Cause Upon Thought, Perfect Stealth Under Thirty-Second Precognition

The night was pitch-black.

The mountain wind was bitterly cold.

One moment, Lin Xuan had still been on a dirt road in the wilderness.

The next, his figure flickered through the air, and he had already appeared atop a mountain range hundreds of kilometers away.

Below him lay a vast military base ablaze with lights.

Layer upon layer of electric fencing atop the high walls crackled with currents.

Dozens of watchtowers stood like steel sentinels, their searchlight beams tirelessly sweeping back and forth.

The several-hundred-meter area around the base was lit as bright as day, without a single blind spot.

Squads of heavily armed soldiers patrolled fixed routes with fierce military dogs on leashes.

Their footsteps were perfectly synchronized, carrying a grim, murderous air.

The air was laced with the cold scent of gunpowder, engine oil, and steel.

Lin Xuan calmly swept his gaze over it all and came to a conclusion.

This was no ordinary armed group.

This was a genuine military fortress.

An ordinary martial artist who tried to barge in would likely be riddled with bullets before even getting past the first line of defense.

However, he was no ordinary martial artist.

Lin Xuan did not directly unleash the full power of the Dust-Cleansing Realm he had just broken through to.

Destroying this place would have been effortless.

But he wanted even more to test the new abilities he had gained and build experience for future cultivation and battles.

This time, he intended to rely only on the strength of his body and the special ability bestowed by the Dust-Cleansing Realm.

Know Cause Upon Thought.

"Let's begin."

Lin Xuan murmured inwardly, his mind sinking into that wondrous state.

His consciousness instantly merged with the world around him.

The next moment, he took a step, preparing to infiltrate the base.

The instant his body leaned forward, countless fragmented yet vivid images suddenly exploded in his mind.

[Scene One: His left foot stepped down, and a violent sensation of explosion surged up from beneath it.]

[Scene Two: His figure shot forward like lightning. At the instant he rushed between two intersecting searchlight beams, the beams moved 0.1 seconds faster than expected. He was locked on completely, and piercing alarms rang through the night sky.]

[Scene Three: He darted out from a shadow and ran headlong into a patrol squad that had just rounded the corner. Dark gun barrels instantly aimed at him.]

[Scene Four: While climbing over the wall, his palm touched an almost invisible infrared beam. Dense streams of machine-gun fire erupted from hidden bunkers within the wall.]

Future fragments representing "death" or "exposure" flooded into his mind like a tide, every single one incomparably clear.

Stepping on a landmine.

Being caught in a searchlight.

Running straight into a patrol squad.

Triggering a hidden alarm.

These were all the possible "wrong answers" he might encounter within the next thirty seconds.

Instead, a faint smile curled at the corners of Lin Xuan's lips.

So this was Know Cause Upon Thought. Though it consumed some mental energy, sensing things on this level posed no problem.

Once a thought arose, he could learn of the ensuing changes in cause and effect.

Though it only lasted thirty seconds.

For a true powerhouse, however, thirty seconds was enough to change the outcome of a war.

He closed his eyes, allowing those scenes of failure to flash, combine, and rearrange themselves in his mind.

Soon, amid countless bloodstained paths leading to failure, a single, absolutely safe "green passage" was clearly formed.

It was an infiltration route flawless in both time and space.

Lin Xuan opened his eyes again, and his aura became elusive and unpredictable.

He moved.

His figure flashed as he drifted down from the mountaintop, like a weightless feather silently settling onto the grass outside the base.

At the instant he landed, a searchlight beam happened to sweep across the spot where he had just been, illuminating nothing but empty air.

He did not pause, his feet moving in an unusual pattern.

Three steps forward, then half a foot to the left.

His toes brushed past the edge of an anti-personnel mine disguised as a rock without triggering it in the slightest.

He turned right and came to an abrupt stop.

A gust of wind swept past him as a patrol squad marched by in heavy military boots less than five meters in front of him.

The squad captain sniffed suspiciously.

"Strange. Why does it smell like fresh grass?"

"Captain, are you too tense?" A nearby soldier yawned. "Not even a rabbit could sneak into this hellhole. What smell could there be?"

The captain shook his head and gave it no further thought, leading the squad onward.

None of them noticed that the instant they turned around, a shadow clung ghostlike to the darkness behind them and silently crossed the clearing.

Lin Xuan darted through the shadows of the buildings, so fast that he left behind only a faint afterimage.

A surveillance camera mechanically panned from left to right.

At the moment it reached the far right and paused for half a second before turning back left—

Lin Xuan flashed past the camera's blind spot below it like a wisp of green smoke.

The soldier monitoring the feed only thought he saw a flicker of static on the screen.

He rubbed his eyes, but everything on the screen was normal.

"Damn it, this piece of junk needs replacing again."

The soldier muttered a curse and took a sip of coffee, completely unaware that an uninvited guest had already breached the area under his watch.

Electric grids, infrared beams, pressure-sensitive plates, sonic detectors.

This defensive system, built with the Red Ribbon Army's finest technology, was utterly useless before Lin Xuan's near-omniscient thirty-second foresight.

He always appeared in precisely the right place at precisely the right time.

Every movement he made was a precise performance, like a dance with death.

Elegant, yet lethal.

Just a few minutes later.

Lin Xuan had breached every physical defense on the perimeter without spilling a drop of blood and stood atop a white building in the base's core area.

This was the command center of the entire base.

He could sense several auras inside the building below that were clearly far stronger than those of ordinary soldiers.

But none of them were what he was looking for.

Lin Xuan closed his eyes again and released the perceptive power of the Dust-Cleansing Realm without restraint. An invisible giant net instantly enveloped the entire base.

This time, he no longer paid attention to the ordinary soldiers.

His senses locked directly onto the densest, most viscous aura of sin, brimming with greed and brutality.

Very quickly, he pinpointed a location.

Listening closely, he could hear a woman cursing.

"Useless trash! Every last one of you is useless trash! I'm giving you three more days. If you still can't find it, then get your asses to military court!"

Lin Xuan's gaze pierced through the thick reinforced concrete walls and fixed on the woman.

A colonel, too.

Good.

A cold curve formed at the corner of his mouth.

Like a scythe about to fall in the night.

The decapitation operation would begin with her.