Necro-Gu

When Gu Jianlin heard that laughter, he knew something was wrong.

Without warning, Nie Xiangsi suddenly coughed, and a trickle of blood escaped her lips.

"Are you okay?"

Gu Jianlin's heart sank. He hurried to support her.

"I... feel awful..."

Nie Xiangsi's delicate face paled. Her brows knitted in pain as she broke into violent coughs.

She coughed up a pool of blood!

She collapsed, dazed, and fell unconscious.

All the Action Group agents began coughing violently. They doubled over in agony, dropping to their knees as their pale faces twisted in pain. Blood sprayed from their mouths in pools!

"Damn it!"

Even Cheng Youyu, a hardy practitioner of the Ancient Martial Arts Path, wasn't spared. He was sprawled on the ground, vomiting uncontrollably.

Blood splattered everywhere!

Gu Jianlin's first thought was that Joker had poisoned them.

But he soon realized that this wasn't poison.

Or rather, it wasn't poison he'd administered just now.

He didn't feel the slightest discomfort in his own body.

Rubble tumbled in the ruins as a black shadow suddenly shot out, moving at an unbelievable speed. It was unmistakably a vicious predator!

The nearest investigator let out a shrill scream.

"Hehehehe."

After a long while, Joker tossed aside the Hunter, whose body no longer held a trace of life. His face was smeared with blood and dirt, and he wore a chilling smile. "I told you. The Ether Association? The Tribunal? Bunch of fools."

After drinking his fill of blood, his waning aura quickly recovered. Hard bristles sprouted all over his body, and a thick cloud of bloody mist gushed from his back as eight iron-hard limbs burst through his flesh.

Even his broken hands let out a series of bone-cracking pops before quickly healing.

The thirteen survivors struggled to get back up, only to spew even more blood.

Cheng Youyu forced himself upright and raised his face, twisted with pain. His voice came out hoarse. "Brother Lin... run!"

He lifted a hand and pointed toward the door. Then his whole body convulsed, and he passed out.

The rescue team had been wiped out.

Gu Jianlin stood alone, lost in thought.

Well, the Ether Association's rescue team certainly lived up to expectations.

They were really dependable.

Really great.

Just like that, he was the orphanage's director.

"I see."

He spoke softly. "It was the animals' hearts!"

Joker had completed his final transformation. His enormous compound eyes were blood-red and terrifying, and sharp fangs had grown in his mouth.

"Smart!"

Gu Jianlin had never understood why this guy had risked exposing himself to cruelly torture animals.

He'd thought Joker was simply a psychopath, but that wasn't the case.

"You knew all along that Ether Association agents were hiding at the school. You'd even confirmed their identities. But you didn't run, and you didn't tip them off. Instead, you prepared a grand gift for them."

Gu Jianlin spoke coldly. "You weren't torturing animals. You were harvesting their organs and using your Mythic Armament, which can conceal its aura, to secretly inflict something like a curse on the agents."

"You really aren't one of those fools from the Tribunal."

Joker stood across from him, spreading his eight spider legs. He clapped lightly and praised him. "I almost can't bring myself to kill you. You guessed right. It's an ability from the Gu Master Path. My people took advantage of the Mythic Armament's concealment and secretly put the Gu in their food. You have the Ether Association backing you. I have allies, too."

He paused. "I wanted to slip a little something into your food and your sister's, too. But I was afraid your ranks were too low. If the Gu activated, you'd die on the spot, and then I'd have gone to all that trouble for nothing..."

Gu Jianlin silently got to his feet, picked up the Desert Eagle, and reloaded it.

As he'd expected, Joker was extremely dangerous.

He'd thought the Mythic Armament was his final trump card.

He hadn't expected the organization behind Joker to have been laying the groundwork in secret. They'd taken care of the Ether Association's Action Group with ease.

What a pain.

"A handgun? That won't work on me anymore."

Joker sneered and raised his right hand. A silver-white chain suddenly glimmered. "Everything's under my control. The only thing I didn't expect was that you'd find me ahead of time and suppress me in my normal state."

"But this is where it ends."

The silver-white chains floated into the air, clinking as they crisscrossed and swept through the space.

Mythic Armament, Non-Existent Lock!

—Release!

Crimson threads of blood seeped from Joker's body, and he began to convulse slightly, as if he'd paid a considerable price.

Gu Jianlin was surrounded by countless silver-white chains. He narrowed his eyes.

The chains crisscrossed through the entire ruin, forming an intangible barrier.

At the same time, he lost his perception of the outside world.

Or rather, he gradually stopped sensing that the outside world existed.

"From here on, it's just you and me."

Joker raised his left hand again. A black bell had appeared in his palm at some point.

Mythic Armament, Soul-Pacifying Bell!

"I know that even if you die, you might not tell me what your father left you."

He raised the bell in his hand. "I'll enslave your soul... and then you'll tell me yourself."

On the rooftop of Fengcheng No. 2 High School's teaching building, Lu Zicheng leaned against the railing, looking out over the night.

A green-feathered parrot perched on his shoulder.

He fiddled with his phone. There was only one message on WeChat.

"I'll handle Joker myself. Keep my sister safe for me."

—Gu Jianlin.

Lu Zicheng adjusted his earpiece. Using his sister's special access, he'd also tuned in to the Action Group's communications channel.

He knew by now that the Action Group had been wiped out.

By rights, he should have gone to rescue that kid at once.

But he hadn't.

A worn copper coin spun between his fingers.

A strand of hair was wound through the hole in its center.

It belonged to Gu Jianlin.

The coin had a storied past. It was one of the Lu Family's heirlooms.

According to legend, if you wound a single strand of your target's hair around it, you could use the coin to divine good or ill fortune, and it had never been wrong.

As long as the coin didn't stop spinning and land on its unlucky side, nothing would happen to the target.

The next moment, the coin stopped spinning and clattered to the ground.

Lu Zicheng couldn't believe it. The coin had landed heads up.

The green-feathered parrot on his shoulder squawked, "Good luck, good fortune! Chicken for dinner!"

The coin was a Mythic Armament. If it landed heads up, then nothing could happen to Gu Jianlin.

How incredible.

"Huh? An extremely auspicious sign?"

Lu Zicheng hesitated, looking surprised. "Does that mean I don't have to go? He can win? What variables am I not aware of? If I go now, won't he lose the credit?"

He pulled out his tablet. The footage monitored by the Eye of Horus satellite showed what was happening in the cafeteria.

Fourteen blue dots were motionless, clearly incapacitated.

As for the most prominent red dot, it had disappeared.

Just then, a helicopter roared overhead, and lights flashed in the night sky.

Lu Zicheng looked up.

Whenever the Tribunal sent an Action Group on a mission, it prepared an emergency plan to ensure nothing went wrong. If the situation got out of control, someone would come in and forcibly take charge.

That person's strength would be overwhelming—enough to handle anything.

Someone stood inside the helicopter. Her slender, graceful profile was lit by the cabin lights, and her white hair streamed in the wind. A massive sword case, almost like a coffin, was strapped to her back, and the faint hum of a sword's edge seemed to linger around her.

Her identity was unmistakable: the Sword Sect Path.

As a member of the Ancient Martial Arts Path, Lu Zicheng had always thought his profession was the best in a fight.

But he had to admit that the Sword Sect, one of the oldest Paths, was in no way inferior to the Ancient Martial Arts Path.

And it was even flashier.

Across the street from Fengcheng No. 2 High School, a black Mercedes-Benz was parked.

Deacon Nie sat in the passenger seat, holding a tablet. The screen showed a map monitored by the Eye of Horus satellite, dotted with blue markers representing the Action Group agents he'd assigned.

They were all rookies, but well trained, and every one of them was at the second tier.

The Magician's Danger Premonition worked by sensing hostility from enemies stronger than oneself.

So, by piling on enough numbers, they could completely circumvent this ability.

Lu Zijin said coolly, "Using a rookie as bait is pretty disgraceful."

Deacon Nie's smile froze, and his eyes turned cold. "Gu Jianlin has talent and is capable of taking on great responsibility. That means he has to face tests. This is a way of nurturing him, too. If he can kill Joker himself, he'll be a once-in-a-generation genius. So what if we give him those two Mythic Armaments?"

"Why is Joker's organization targeting him? We still don't know."

He paused. "We're helping him eliminate a future threat!"

Lu Zijin sneered inwardly. "My guess is that you want to find out whether this kid's hiding something, don't you? And you'll take credit for resolving this incident, too, paving the way for Yan Wu to rise without a hitch?"

It sounded noble enough. The only thing they didn't care about was the kid's safety.

But it didn't matter. As long as Lu Zicheng was there, the kid wouldn't be in any danger.

Deacon Nie's expression suddenly changed. The mass of blue dots had vanished from the tablet!

"This is bad! Something's happened!"

His expression shifted.

Sitting on the roof of the car, Lu Zijin said calmly, "I think I just caught a whiff of Gu poison. It seems to be an extremely high-grade Necro-Gu. Before its poison takes effect, it shows no supernatural properties, so it's almost impossible to detect with the naked eye."

She paused. "The rescue team is about to be wiped out. This is a dimensional mismatch. You can't blame them for being weak."

Deacon Nie's face darkened. He gritted his teeth and said, "Thunder! Initiate the rescue plan! Please step in!"

There was a brief silence over the radio before a pleasant voice, like ice striking ice, rang out.

"Understood."

The connection was cut off.

"Your niece is in danger, and now you're worried?"

Lu Zijin lightly leaped down from the roof of the car. Her black lily-patterned dress fluttered in the wind, and her heel struck the ground with a sharp click.

"Weren't you so confident just now? And yet you still need Thunder to clean up your mess."

She said airily, "I'm a little bored. I'll go for a look around. Maybe the person behind Joker is nearby. If I'm lucky, I'll find him and spar with him."

The youthful-looking department head gave a mischievous smile. "You won't be scared all alone here, will you?"

Deacon Nie sat in the car, the corner of his eye twitching. He said in a low voice, "Find him. Then kill him."

"I'll do my best."

Lu Zijin yawned lazily. In an instant, a vast Mind Blast engulfed her, and she vanished with a deafening boom.

Deacon Nie snorted, his expression dark as could be.