Time rewound to ten minutes earlier.
With a crash, Gu Jianlin knocked over a table and rolled across the floor until he slammed into the wall.
He felt as if every bone in his body had come apart and his organs had shifted out of place. He spat out a mouthful of blood.
This was only from being hit by the clown's mutated body.
At seventeen, he had endured pain far beyond what anyone his age should have had to bear.
It was a lesson written in blood: in the end, you could only rely on yourself.
From now on, he would never place his hopes in his teammates again.
He had assumed the Ether Association's elite action team would be formidable. But after their grand entrance, they had been wiped out without putting up the slightest resistance.
Still, he couldn't blame them.
There seemed to be someone else behind the clown.
Fortunately, the Divine Priest's abilities were well-rounded. He didn't have much offensive power at this stage, but he could keep going.
Gu Jianlin braced one hand against a flowerpot beside him. Pale ghostfire flared across his fingers once more!
"Sacrifice!"
The snake plant in the pot withered at a visible rate, its abundant vitality sacrificed to nature.
In return, Gu Jianlin received nature's blessing. His cuts and bruises healed completely, and even his internal injuries began to mend. A warm current, like sunlight bathing him, flowed through his entire body.
A shrill whistle cut through the air. His expression shifted, and he kicked a table toward it.
In an instant, a tough, resilient web stuck to the table and covered it in a sticky mass.
Then came a barrage of spiderweb bombs, bursting with sharp, shrill cracks.
Gu Jianlin quickly got to his feet with the flowerpot in his arms, dodging behind the few obstacles left in the cafeteria.
There was hardly any room left to maneuver. Spiderwebs clung to everything.
After completing his spider transformation, the clown's physical abilities had improved dramatically. He could even crawl along walls.
Without Life Perception, Gu Jianlin would have been ambushed and killed instantly in the dim surroundings.
"Run. How far do you think you can get?"
The clown's hoarse, icy voice came from the ceiling. "Guess what an Ascender feels when he's at death's door. You'll find out. I'll make sure you experience that fear nice and slowly."
Gu Jianlin looked up at a pair of scarlet compound eyes and said coldly, "You talk too much."
His profiling ability had stopped working. The creature was now a giant spider. It had retained its human mind, but it also had an arthropod's hunting instincts, making its movements impossible to predict.
This really was a desperate situation.
And he was in it because his teammates were useless.
But this wasn't the time to blame them. Gu Jianlin had to seize the last sliver of hope.
The mysterious old man at the general store had once told him:
The Southern Gate of Life. The Gate of Life lies in fire.
Fire!
Gu Jianlin decided to make one last attempt. He turned and rushed toward the cafeteria kitchen on the second floor!
For a split second, the spider that was the clown unleashed incredible jumping power and pounced at him.
Its sharp limbs glinted coldly.
"Die!"
Gu Jianlin raised his left hand. A smear of blood stained his fingertips, and pale ghostfire suddenly flared!
Ghost Curse!
At that moment, he was glad he'd chosen the Divine Priest Path.
The clown's entire body had mutated and hardened. Even bullets couldn't pierce it.
Ghost Curse, on the other hand, could ignore all dodging and defenses to inflict true damage.
With a wet smack, blood burst from the clown's body. He dropped from midair, but the fatal blow had been deflected.
It grazed the boy's back and struck his thigh instead!
Gu Jianlin faltered from the damage caused by Ghost Curse, then staggered up to the second floor and crashed to the ground, sliding toward the kitchen.
Blood poured from his left leg. The blade-sharp limb had torn through an artery in his thigh, and the pain was so intense that his vision went black. If the surge of adrenaline hadn't kept his body going, that blow would have taken him out of the fight.
"Sacrifice!"
His right hand reached for the snake plant in his arms again. He sacrificed its vitality and received nature's blessing.
The torn artery in his thigh quietly healed.
The snake plant in his hand had withered, too, and was close to dying.
He couldn't use it anymore.
A high-ranking Divine Priest could draw vitality from life within a certain range, sacrifice it to nature, and receive its blessing in return.
But he couldn't do that yet.
And he had little spiritual energy left. He couldn't afford to spend it healing himself. He might as well use Ghost Curse a few more times.
A rustling sound came from behind him. Something insect-like was crawling.
The clown rose again with a sneer. "You've walked right into a dead end. How stupid."
The humanoid monster moved on eight spider legs, holding a pitch-black bell as it approached at a leisurely pace.
The cafeteria kitchen was spacious, but most of it was used to store ingredients. It really was a dead end.
Gu Jianlin ignored him. He backed away in silence, then glanced toward the corner.
A small liquefied petroleum gas tank sat there.
He drew his gun, chambered a round, and aimed his last alchemical bullet!
He didn't know how much gas was left in the tank.
But it hadn't been replaced in a while. The blast probably wouldn't be powerful enough to blow him up along with it.
He squeezed the trigger. The specially made alchemical bullet streaked from the muzzle in a line of fire and struck its target!
At that moment, the clown turned toward the corner. A massive blaze suddenly swallowed him!
Boom!
The explosion devoured the clown. Flames and a shock wave rolled toward Gu Jianlin, smashing through the wall with devastating force.
At the last moment, Gu Jianlin forced himself upright and rolled into a storage cabinet. The cabinet shuddered violently, then toppled onto its side and spun across the floor, turning his world upside down.
A moment later, he kicked open the cabinet door and slowly got to his feet.
Thick smoke billowed. Flames blazed among the ruins, painfully bright.
Yet amid the dazzling fire stood a burning figure, letting out a cold sneer.
The clown!
Gu Jianlin's heart sank. How the hell had even a gas explosion done nothing?
It seemed the old man's fortune-telling had been wrong after all.
The clown unleashed a terrifying leap, hurtling toward him like a monster ready to devour its prey!
A blade of cold light sliced toward him. This time, Gu Jianlin couldn't dodge. The limb pierced straight through his abdomen!
Blood gushed out. The agony seemed to pierce his very soul.
The clown's grotesque, severely deformed face was inches away. His scarlet compound eyes were like a demon's.
"I'm pleased with how desperately you struggled."
He grinned, baring his teeth in an exaggerated smile. His breath reeked of blood. "Come on. Taste fear."
Gu Jianlin stared coldly at him, his pupils seemingly rimed with ice.
At some point, the pitch-black bell had begun floating above his head.
The Mythic Armament, the Soul-Pacifying Bell.
—Liberate!
Boom!
At that moment, Gu Jianlin heard a boom like that of an ancient bell, almost shattering his soul!
He seemed to be caught in an endless whirlpool as waves of sound crashed over him. His soul, already on the verge of breaking, was nearly swallowed whole. His remaining consciousness sank into darkness, and the world fell utterly silent.
The black bell released a dark halo, as if trying to drag the boy's soul from his body.
And at that very moment, the Black Kirin deep in his consciousness opened its golden, vertical pupils once more, furious and imposing.
Roar!
The roar rang through his soul, and Gu Jianlin regained consciousness.
So the final Mythic Armament also targeted the mind.
The Black Kirin could help him resist that, too!
Wait!
That sudden clarity of mind made him realize something.
That wasn't what the old man had meant when he warned him.
In a supernatural world, of course, the fire wouldn't be ordinary.
Gu Jianlin remembered the stone slab he had seen in the general store. Back then, his profiling had shown him a strange scene: a boy in pale priestly robes, ghostfire blazing in both hands as he held down a monster's head.
Both of them had burned!
As if clouds had parted to reveal the light, Gu Jianlin suddenly understood. There was only one kind of fire he had!
The Divine Sacrifice Fire!
In an instant, pale ghostfire flared in both of Gu Jianlin's hands, and he pressed them directly against the clown's head!
"Sacrifice!"
Boom!
The clown let out a shrill scream. His life force evaporated like oil in a hot pan, sacrificed to nature.
The chaotic vitality flowed back into the boy.
The world seemed to fall silent. As that life force, which did not belong to him, surged into his body—
The Black Kirin seemed to be jolted by something.
Deep in his consciousness, the sinister boy in white sacrificial robes fell asleep.
In his place, the Black Kirin awakened from its slumber.
It was as if the two had traded places.
And traded control.
With a crack, Gu Jianlin heard bones shatter inside his body.
Blood streamed from his head as black horns burst through his skin, noble and terrifying.
Tiny beads of blood seeped from his entire body. His fair skin split, and black scales spread across him.
His fangs gleamed as they pierced his lips.
His dim eyes suddenly lit up, replaced by golden, vertical pupils—ancient and awe-inspiring.
Power surged into his withered body.
Fury ignited his exhausted mind.
At that moment, Gu Jianlin wanted nothing more than to raise his head and roar, releasing the power that surged within him.
He seemed to hear a rumble from the primordial wilderness, like the world collapsing, recounting a lost epic.
Dark, primeval, immense, and majestic.
Like the boundless universe, it echoed with the sound of annihilation.
The clown caught the scent of fear—the supreme, overwhelming pressure of a higher being, an Ancient God.
He was terrified. For a moment, it felt as though he had gone from hunter to prey.
His former prey had become an ultimate predator.
In the darkness, Gu Jianlin's Golden Eyes blazed.
His imposing, indifferent gaze seemed to look down on a mere ant.
Terror erupted in the clown's mind. With a scream, he swung his massive steel limbs down like scythes!
A shrill whistle rushed toward Gu Jianlin, but he merely raised his eyes and lifted a hand to block it with ease!
Clang!
The sharp limb struck the back of his scaled hand, throwing off a spray of blazing sparks.
The gap in their physical strength had completely reversed.
"Is that all?"
Feeling the power inside him, Gu Jianlin seized the limb and gave it a casual yank!
The clown suddenly let out a piercing wail. Agony tore through his soul as his steel limb was ripped clean off, as easily as someone snapping a pair of chopsticks.
In the darkness, only a pair of Golden Eyes blazed like the sun.
Gu Jianlin reached out and seized the clown's other limb. His rock-solid palm clenched, and it cracked apart with a sharp crunch.
"Thank you."
Before the clown could scream, Gu Jianlin brutally ripped off his other limb. Blood sprayed everywhere.
With a boom, a burst of brute force slammed him to the ground again.
"For helping me awaken this power."
Gu Jianlin seized him by the neck and hurled him into the wall as casually as tossing out trash. The impact shook the room.
Chunks of rubble fell. The clown's mutated head caved in, blood pouring from every orifice. It was as if even his soul had been shattered!
Gu Jianlin planted a foot on his head and looked down at him, his golden, vertical pupils burning.
"Now it's your turn to taste fear."
At last, he had returned to the state he'd been in when he first crossed into the Kirin Immortal Palace.
Horns, scales, fangs, Golden Eyes.
This was the form of a Qilin.
·
·
At night, the general store opened for business again, and sandalwood incense curled upward.
The old man was still sitting in his wheelchair, fiddling with the six copper coins in his hand. The cold moonlight fell across his profile, making him look like a faded ancient painting.
"Teacher."
Still dressed in a suit, Jing Ci gazed into the distance and said with a smile, "You lost another bet."
The old man fell silent for a moment, then a smile touched his lips. He took ten red bills from his pocket and placed them on the table.
Jing Ci said with a grin, "Most people in this world believe that becoming a Fallen is a sign of a mind corrupted."
"In the dark Middle Ages, who knows how many Fallen were branded as dark sorcerers and burned at the stake?"
He paused. "But they don't know that so-called corruption can also conceal the chance to evolve. If someone can use a powerful will to control their corrupted mind, they can reach the level of a Divine Servant with their very first evolution. So many young people have come these past few days, but only he saw through the writing on the clay tablet. He proved that he could evolve."
"He seems talented enough, so give him a chance at the Path to Heaven. We'll see whether he can seize it."
The old man smiled faintly and tilted his head to gaze at the bright moon in the night sky.
"But I'm not satisfied with merely becoming a Divine Servant..."
Before you continue