The Supreme Path IV

Su Xia had not actually come for anything in particular. He had merely heard news of Lin Xin's group and felt they were very likely the ones who had taken Qing Xiuzhen. Out of curiosity, he had come to see for himself what sort of people would dare strike directly at the Lion Fist Gate in broad daylight. This was no longer something that could be described as mere boldness.

Anyone who dared act this way must have something to rely on.

"Nothing much, really. I merely heard that Mr. Lin had done something earth-shaking and came to see whether it was true. But Mr. Lin need not worry. No matter what conflict exists between you and the Lion Fist Gate, my Su Family will not interfere."

Su Xia smiled radiantly.

"Come to think of it, we are in a practical sense competitors of the Lion Fist Gate as well."

"Patriarch Su must have arrived quite early, then?"

Lin Xin asked blandly.

"That is correct." Su Xia nodded. "I was already here when the Qing siblings arrived. Mr. Lin's strength is indeed formidable. To defeat Gold Level Qing Shishan head-on—I had been worried earlier that you might not be able to handle him." Her words were an undisguised gesture of goodwill.

"Thank you for your concern, Patriarch Su. But there may yet be further conflict ahead. If you have no business here, it would be best for you to leave early." Since the other party had extended an olive branch, and there had been some prior goodwill between them, Lin Xin did not stint on returning the favor and offered her this warning.

A sharp glint flickered in Su Xia's eyes, but she did not leave immediately.

"Having seen how effortlessly you dealt with Qing Shishan earlier, I am rather curious. How much of your strength did you use just now? If you require assistance from my Su Family, please speak freely. Of course, if it is inconvenient for you to say, that is fine as well."

After all, probing into another person's true strength was a great taboo in the martial world. She was merely testing the waters.

Lin Xin grinned.

"That man was called Qing Shishan? His strength was decent. I used about ninety percent of my strength too. There is nothing I cannot say about that."

He truly had used ninety percent of his strength—ninety percent of his physical strength. As for the Qilin Red Flower Sword Dao, that did not count. It was not exactly a lie.

"Then Mr. Lin must be careful." Su Xia's expression turned grave. "Qing Shishan ranks only fifth within the Lion Fist Gate. There are four stronger experts above him. The strongest among them is Flying Overlord Duan Ci, who was already at the Dao Inquiry Level thirty years ago. They also possess the Lion King Scarf, their sect-defending artifact. No one knows how far his strength has reached now."

"Thank you for the warning, Patriarch Su." Lin Xin thanked her for her kindness. A Dao Inquiry Level expert was indeed someone worth watching out for.

So long as one had not entered Yuan Jing, one could not afford to disregard Dao Inquiry experts. The killing moves of the Dao Inquiry Level were tremendously powerful. One careless misstep, and one might capsize in a gutter.

"Then I wish Mr. Lin smooth travels." Su Xia said nothing further. She knew how arrogant and overbearing he had been when he entered the Lion Fist Gate branch that day. People like him had always done as they pleased, willing to abandon everything for martial arts. Extreme Path experts had always been madmen.

"Thank you."

Lin Xin returned the courtesy.

The two passed one another. Without looking back, Lin Xin carried Sha Sha and sprinted into the distance.

Su Xia watched his retreating back from afar, looking faintly thoughtful.

"This man's aura is obscure, and he remains unruffled in the face of danger. Most importantly... that trace of blood aura on him..."

She vaguely recalled her conversation with Lin Xin just now.

Faint wisps of blood aura had drifted from his body, so dense that they were several times stronger than those of ordinary demonic cultivators and monsters.

"My instincts tell me... this person must never be provoked!"

A chill rose in her heart. Long ago, she had discovered that she seemed to possess a peculiar sense beyond that of ordinary people, allowing her to vaguely perceive details others could not.

From that man just now, she had faintly sensed threads of a deep, terrifying aura, vast as an abyss. That aura stood even above his blood aura.

Yet her cultivation secret art had clearly shown that he was not a Yuan Jing cultivator. Below Yuan Jing, the Lion Fist Gate had absolutely nothing to fear. Each of their top three ranked members possessed Dao Inquiry cultivation, their strength reaching the very peak.

"How strange." The discrepancy between her senses and her secret art was obvious, and Su Xia frowned inwardly.

After one last glance in the direction Lin Xin had gone, her figure suddenly burst into a cloud of smoke and vanished.

Within a vast forest.

Lin Xin carried Sha Sha as he sped through the woods.

His Evasion attribute had already surpassed one hundred points, and it was now constantly warning him of hostility approaching from every direction.

The rushing wind whistled past his ears. He did not choose to fly away with an escape art or surge into the air on demonic aura.

Because the intuition brought by Evasion gave him a bad feeling. It seemed that taking to the air with an escape art would bring an even worse outcome.

Faintly, as he moved onward, this unease grew heavier and heavier.

He landed swiftly atop the trunk of a great tree, planted his feet, and turned to look around.

"Mmph, mmph..." Little Sha Sha was dangling from his hand, a towel stuffed in her mouth as she struggled and made muffled noises.

With a slap to the back of Sha Sha's head, the girl immediately fainted. Lin Xin hung her from a branch, then lightly jumped down and came to a stop.

"Come out. You have followed me long enough."

He spoke softly.

His voice echoed through the surrounding mountain forest. Great swathes of fallen leaves drifted slowly down like raindrops.

One bare-chested, muscular man after another emerged from the surrounding woods, as though they had appeared out of thin air.

Several slender, shapely women in black skintight clothing appeared soundlessly atop the nearby tree trunks, like black panthers.

Qing Shishan emerged alongside two white-skinned giants more than four meters tall. Wisps of white smoke dissipated behind them; clearly, they had arrived by escape art.

Lin Xin had seen giants before, but this was his first time seeing white-skinned ones.

In the Central Prefecture, this race had originally been a strange people who had migrated in from foreign lands. But after a long period of assimilation and intermarriage, the Giant Clan had become fewer and fewer in number.

There were only more and more humans with giant bloodlines. These two were clearly cases of ancestral reversion born among humans with Giant Clan blood.

The two giants wore only simple leather trousers, with two crisscrossing leather straps bound over their chests. Their heads were bald, two smooth round domes. Their auras were even a notch stronger than Qing Shishan's.

Lin Xin noticed that everyone here bore a white imprint of a lion's head on the upper part of their right arms.

"The Lion Fist Gate?"

"You provoked my Lion Fist Gate, then made a great show of running wild around the outskirts of the city." One of the giants said coldly, "Speak. What faction sent you?"

"What faction?" Lin Xin was about to speak when another howl suddenly reached his ears.

Two long-bearded elders draped in yellow robes descended from the sky and slowly landed before the giants.

The imposing auras of the two giants immediately drew in, and they looked at the two men with faint respect.

"Masters," one giant said in a low voice. "It is him. This man took Elder Brother Qing Shishan's sister—Qing Xiuzhen, the branch chief."

The elder nodded. One of them, holding a Jade Scepter in his arms, turned his gaze upon Lin Xin as though appraising an item of merchandise.

"Enough nonsense. Take him away and deal with him according to the precepts of the Enforcement Hall."

The two giants cupped their hands. One stepped forward, and a golden funnel appeared directly in his hand. He aimed its wider end at Lin Xin.

At the same time, he began chanting a lengthy, complicated incantation in a rapid murmur.

Lin Xin looked around. The positions in which these people stood, together with the giants, vaguely formed a massive and somewhat sinister formation.

Threads of chilling aura, like tentacles, continuously wound upward from the ground around his feet.

"Go!" At that moment, a blaze of golden light suddenly burst from the funnel. The light transformed into a flock of birds wreathed in golden flames, swarming out and flying toward Lin Xin.

Every bird was only palm-sized. Midway through their flight, they suddenly merged into one, becoming a golden fire phoenix longer than a person's height, which cried out as it flew toward Lin Xin.

The phoenix was incredibly swift, nearly like a streak of lightning. Even a Golden Core cultivator would have no time to react. In the blink of an eye, everyone saw the phoenix swoop down and turn into a golden line.

Lin Xin tilted his head slightly.

Screech!!

The line of fire actually grazed past the left side of his neck, missing by merely a finger's width. Then it slammed viciously into a tree trunk dozens of meters behind him.

Boom!

In an instant, the golden flames blasted a head-sized hole through a tree thick enough for one person to embrace. The entire tree burst into flames and, in the blink of an eye, became black ash, vanishing without a trace.

"H-how is that possible?!"

The Golden Phoenix Dipper had actually missed...?!

That was a golden phoenix formed from the incomparably swift Sun Heavenly Fire. Once it locked onto its target at the final instant, its burst speed was enough to rival the speed of light.

Yet it had actually... actually been evaded by that man!

The giant holding the artifact froze.

The people around him were also stunned. The two elders' brows faintly furrowed. Having lived through so many years, what they feared most was precisely this sort of sudden accident.

When a normally foolproof artifact met with an accident, it often meant an exceptionally troublesome problem. They had encountered this sort of situation more than once or twice in the past.

"Interesting."

Lin Xin stood where he was and grinned, revealing gleaming white teeth.

"Again."

He pointed at the center of his brow.

"Hit here."

"Kill him!"

One of the elders sensed that something was wrong and immediately gave the order.

The giant began chanting again. Even the Yuan Jing Old Monster had to avoid the edge of the Golden Phoenix Dipper. A mere fourth-rank cultivator at the Golden Core level—the previous strike had most likely been an accident, and this man was merely putting on a bold front.

The lengthy incantation was quickly completed. The giant raised the Golden Phoenix Dipper, aimed it at Lin Xin, and gathered an immense amount of golden light.

"Go!!"

He shouted lowly.

At once, a great flock of golden firebirds surged out, filling the sky as they shot toward Lin Xin.

Upon reaching midair, all the firebirds fused into one, becoming a fire phoenix that pounced viciously toward Lin Xin.

Almost the instant it formed, the fire phoenix vanished from where it was, appearing before Lin Xin like a teleportation.

Screech!

The golden line grazed over his left shoulder.

At that very instant, Lin Xin stepped left, flawlessly evading the second charge of the golden phoenix by the narrowest margin.

Boom!!

Golden flames exploded directly behind him and shot into the sky, burning a huge pit more than ten meters across into the ground.

Lin Xin narrowed his eyes and stared intently at the four people before him, strange killing intent flickering within them.

He had spared them once before and even given them spirit jade. That already counted as compensation for his earlier actions. Yet these people still dared bring others to surround and kill him.

Then they could not blame him for being ruthless...