Before his body could bounce back and hit the ground, Lin Yuan curled the five fingers of his right hand into a claw, blue flames rising from his palm.
His figure flashed. Like Li Siyuan seizing Li Keyong in Hua Jianghu: Bad Guys, Lin Yuan used the Supreme Sacred Heaven and Earth Technique to clamp one hand around Han Li's neck.
"Urgh, th-this... how is this possible?"
With Lin Yuan gripping his neck, Han Li felt his brain starved of oxygen and could not muster even a shred of strength. He stared incredulously at the man in the Veiled Hat before him and said in a trembling voice:
"You're not from the Star Luo Imperial Family at all. You're a transmi-"
Lin Yuan's gaze was icy. Rather than easing, his grip tightened, preventing Han Li from uttering another word. Then, in a rare move, he transmitted his voice through Soul Power to explain:
"As expected of Evil-Exorcising Divine Thunder. Even against a Soul Master like me, who is neither demonic nor ghostly, much less of the darkness or evil attribute, it can unleash such formidable destructive power."
"Even the golden lightning created by combining my two great techniques falls short of it."
"Unfortunately, you've never cultivated any techniques, and the depth of your Soul Power is nowhere near mine. Add in the enhancement from the Imperial Scale Armor, and that's why you lost today."
"If you want to blame anything, blame your own incompetence. Apart from your Martial Soul, you have nothing going for you. Most likely, you relied on your talent and powerful Martial Soul and never properly honed your actual combat skills."
"From now on, the Douluo Continent will be under my control. You can depart in peace, fellow countryman."
Having said this, Lin Yuan pressed his other hand against Han Li's forehead.
"Sp-spare me... I can off-" Seeing Lin Yuan take the same stance Li Siyuan had used to snap Li Keyong's neck, Han Li was instantly frightened out of his wits and tried to beg for mercy.
Lin Yuan gave him no chance to speak. Both hands abruptly exerted force, and with a crack, Han Li's head twisted in a way that defied the laws of physics.
Then he fell to the ground, face up and back toward the sky. Han Li's eyes bulged wide in agony; he had truly died with his eyes unclosed.
"Offering treasure won't help. Once I kill you, everything on you will still be mine."
As he spoke, Lin Yuan stepped forward to loot the body out of habit.
Just then, something bizarre happened.
Just as he was about to search the corpse, faint black particles of light began emanating from its surface.
This sudden change made Lin Yuan retreat like lightning, putting distance between them.
But the danger he imagined never materialized. Instead, the black particles of light slowly gathered into a black ring as they emerged.
At the same time, azure light flashed across Han Li's body, and it bizarrely transformed into a roughly three-meter-long stalk of bamboo, its entire surface gleaming with a gilded luster.
The bamboo turned a lustrous pale gold, its stalk roughly ten feet long. Fine golden lightning patterns covered it, its leaves shimmered gold, and pale-gold Evil-Exorcising Divine Thunder constantly danced across its surface, surrounded by radiant light.
"This is a Transformed Soul Beast, and one transformed from ten-thousand-year golden thunder bamboo at that."
Lin Yuan's eyes lit up at once. Even with his composure, he could not help growing excited.
He never could have imagined that this Transmigrator's true form was actually a Transformed Soul Beast.
And it was ten-thousand-year golden thunder bamboo, exactly like in the animation.
He did not know how the other man had managed to transform at only ten thousand years. Perhaps Golden Lightning Bamboo could only grow to ten thousand years on the Douluo Continent, or perhaps there was some other reason.
In any case, this ten-thousand-year golden thunder bamboo had arrived at precisely the right time. He had just been worrying over what kind of Soul Ring would suit his fourth ring.
And this stalk of bamboo had delivered itself right to his door.
At the same time, he finally understood why the other man had possessed such a powerful Martial Soul and such a Soul Ring Configuration, yet had barely any real combat ability.
As it turned out, he had spent ten thousand years as bamboo and had never experienced any proper battles.
"So when he said 'off-' earlier... he didn't mean offering treasure, but offering himself in sacrifice. Was he hoping to cling to life that way? What a pity. This was a fight to the death. Even if you sacrificed yourself, I still wouldn't have left you a way to survive."
Lin Yuan murmured inwardly. Just as he was about to step forward and take the Golden Lightning Bamboo somewhere secluded to absorb its Soul Ring, the golden light on the bamboo's surface gathered together, forming a pale-gold Head Soul Bone.
"An unexpected bonus, too. Unfortunately, it's only a ten-thousand-year Head Soul Bone. If only it were a little older."
Shaking his head, Lin Yuan felt that this Soul Bone was something of a chicken rib-hardly worth keeping, yet a pity to discard. Although it came from Golden Lightning Bamboo, its age was simply too low.
He casually put it into the Soul Tool ring hanging around his neck beneath his clothes.
Inside were the Heavenly Vial, a six-hundred-year Lone Bamboo left leg bone, a fifteen-hundred-year Thousand Illusion Bamboo Head Soul Bone, and some stolen goods that could not bear the light of day.
Lin Yuan had originally planned to sell the Lone Bamboo and Thousand Illusion Bamboo Soul Bones, but after receiving poverty relief from Dai Mubai, Meng Baichuan, and the others, he had kept them.
After putting away the Golden Lightning Bamboo Head Soul Bone, Lin Yuan prepared to plunder all the other dead people's Soul Tools, then take the bamboo somewhere secluded where he could absorb the Soul Ring in peace.
But just then, he noticed the injured and unconscious Zhu Zhuqing.
"I nearly forgot about you."
Looking at Zhu Zhuqing's pale face and the blood pouring from her body in a large pool, he knew that if this continued, she would die from excessive blood loss.
He thought of this woman's ranking on the Douluo I must-have list. If she died, it might alert other Transmigrators or even prompt them to send people to investigate.
So he went forward and pressed her acupoints to stop the bleeding, then took her to the earlier cave and stripped off her blood-soaked clothes.
Han Li had already slashed apart the cave entrance, causing it to collapse, which conveniently kept Soul Beasts from attacking.
After briefly admiring the voluptuous figure that had bewitched countless Transmigrators,
he treated her wounds, applied medicine, and bandaged them.
He also used Flamingo meat to simmer a pot of broth for her.
That way, she would not wake up too weak to pull through and die inside the cave.
Once he had finished all this, Lin Yuan took Han Li's now-dead Golden Lightning Bamboo body and eagerly went off to find somewhere to absorb its Soul Ring.
When Zhu Zhuqing awoke from her weakened state, it was already the latter half of the night.
As it happened, the broth had finished cooking and cooled.
Extremely weak, she could not spare a thought for anything else under the instinct to survive. She picked up the large ladle beside her and gulped it down.
After drinking it, she had finally managed to preserve her life.
Only then did she realize that, at some point, she had ended up inside a collapsed cave.
By the faint sunlight streaming through a ventilation opening, she saw her bloodstained clothes, including her underwear.
This instantly gave her a terrible fright. Instinctively covering her chest, she looked down and saw that someone had already treated the wounds on her shoulder and arm.
The person had even thoughtfully fashioned underwear for her out of bandages, completely binding the proud curves of her chest and leaving only a bottomless Somalia Trench.
At this sight, Zhu Zhuqing's already deathly pale face grew several shades paler.
Only after seeing that her trousers were still intact and feeling nothing unusual in her body did she breathe a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness, thank goodness, no one had taken advantage of her vulnerability... like hell they hadn't.
Someone had already seen her entire body.
Before you continue