Li Feng needed just a little more power to complete his transformation, but the lack of it kept him from breaking through, leaving him uncomfortable all over.
With barely any hesitation, he decided to go out that night and search farther afield for wraiths and Vengeful Ghosts.
Wrapped in fog, Li Feng held the Tracking Compass and quickly left the residential complex, heading south.
After these past few nights of searching, Li Feng had gradually realized that more wraiths and Vengeful Ghosts could only be found near the outskirts of the city.
At least, all the wraiths and Vengeful Ghosts he had devoured before had been found to the south, near the city limits.
He moved swiftly, lowering his head to check the Tracking Compass every so often to see whether its needle had reacted.
At around ten, Li Feng checked again and found that the Compass needle had finally shifted, pointing southeast.
Delight stirred in Li Feng's heart, and he stopped in his tracks.
Scanning his surroundings, Li Feng immediately settled on a patch of woodland beside the road.
Li Feng moved quickly into the depths of the woods.
A moment later, a gray cloud appeared above the trees and flew straight in the direction the Compass needle indicated.
Yes, this was how Li Feng had been operating whenever he went out at night lately.
He first searched with the Tracking Compass. If its needle moved, he concealed himself and sent his mind fog ahead.
Then he controlled the mind fog to devour his target from a distance.
By now, his mind fog covered an area twenty-seven or twenty-eight meters across, and he could control it from more than twenty-seven hundred meters away, far beyond the Tracking Compass's detection range.
As long as the compass gave him a direction, Li Feng could attack from afar with his mind fog.
Before the gray cloud had drifted far, wisps of fog began trailing down from it.
This fog was so thin that it was almost imperceptible unless someone paid close attention.
Then the gray cloud and its trailing fog swept southeast like a great fishing net.
The cloud drifted onward. As it neared the Second Ring Road, almost two kilometers from Li Feng, he finally sensed fluctuations of supernatural power.
"A Paranormal Entity?"
Muttering to himself, Li Feng began lowering the mind fog.
It was a Butcher Wraith, dressed in grease-stained leather clothes and carrying a Butcher's Cleaver. With a vacant expression, he walked toward a residential complex by the Second Ring Road.
But before he had gone much farther, thick fog began filling his surroundings, and the Paranormal Entity power within him was steadily drawn out and devoured.
As the dense fog enveloped him, the Butcher Wraith faltered slightly and stopped in confusion.
The place where he had sensed large numbers of humans now seemed to flicker in and out of existence, making its exact location difficult to pinpoint.
As time passed, the Butcher Wraith's power was gradually siphoned away, and his once-solid body slowly became insubstantial.
Eventually, faint glimmers of awareness began flickering in his blank, bewildered eyes.
"Who?"
An eerie voice, icy and hoarse, suddenly emerged from the Butcher Wraith's mouth.
In an instant, the Butcher Wraith's aura surged. His fading body solidified again, and he slowly raised the Butcher's Cleaver in his hand.
Sensing this, however, Li Feng remained completely unmoved and continued rapidly siphoning and devouring his power.
He knew that devouring so much of the Butcher Wraith's power had drawn the attention of his true body, prompting him to force a sliver of consciousness and more power into this world.
Even so, he still could not descend in full.
Otherwise, his true body would have descended, rather than a Paranormal Entity projection.
Sending down this sliver of consciousness was already the limit of what he could accomplish for now.
That being the case, what did Li Feng have to worry about?
Hadn't the previous Paranormal Entity been worn to death by him in exactly the same way?
Yet things rarely went entirely as expected.
As Li Feng continued devouring the Butcher Wraith's power, he suddenly sensed a figure entering the thin veil of fog he had spread around as a warning perimeter.
Dressed in a black uniform and holding a Tracking Compass—who else could it be but a Night Patrol Officer?
In fact, it was someone Li Feng knew.
It was Tian Yue, the Night Patrol Bureau officer who had previously mistaken his mind fog for a supernatural phenomenon and destroyed more than half of it.
"Ha, it's you again, strange fog. You've gotten a little stronger..."
Tian Yue chuckled and charged toward the mass of dense gray fog ahead, which covered an area a little over ten meters across.
Once she drew close, Tian Yue instantly raised her hand.
"Crane Feathers Soar to Heaven!"
In an instant, countless white crane feathers appeared before her.
With a sweep of her hand, they transformed into arrows of light and shot toward the gray fog ahead.
"Fuck!"
Sensing Tian Yue's rapid series of movements, Li Feng could not help swearing aloud.
By then, however, he had no time to move the mind fog out of the way.
Nor could he have dodged it anyway.
After all, the mind fog drifted through the air, insubstantial and unable to gain purchase. It was slow to begin with—how could it possibly match those flying crane feathers?
Pfft, pfft, pfft...
Almost instantly, the countless crane feathers pierced the gray fog enveloping the Butcher Wraith.
Unexpectedly, though the mind fog had been pierced, very little of it was lost. Only the portions struck directly were partially obliterated.
It was nothing like before, when the crane feathers' power had spread through the mind fog and destroyed large swathes of it.
Through constant cultivation and devouring the power of wraiths and Vengeful Ghosts, the mind fog had grown not only in range, but also in strength.
Unless she struck it directly, Tian Yue's power now struggled to destroy the mind fog.
Seeing this, Tian Yue froze for a moment.
She could not understand how this strange fog had become so difficult to destroy after only a few days.
Meanwhile, Li Feng felt sharp stabs of pain in his mind.
Fortunately, they were mild, roughly like having a single hair plucked out.
Moreover, as he continued devouring the Butcher Wraith's power, the small amount of lost mind fog soon recovered, and the stabbing pain ceased.
At the same time, the Butcher Wraith within the mind fog, who had just raised his cleaver, suddenly turned his head toward Tian Yue.
When Tian Yue's attack pierced the mind fog, it created gaps in its suppression of energy signatures, allowing the Butcher Wraith to sense her power.
As the only supernatural human nearby, she naturally became his immediate suspect for the one devouring his power.
With only a sliver of instinctive consciousness, the Butcher Wraith attacked without hesitation.
Whoosh!
Slash!
The Butcher's Cleaver swept down, and a thin black line instantly extended toward Tian Yue.
All along its path, the mind fog scattered.
As the Butcher Wraith cleaved through and destroyed the mind fog, Li Feng could not help frowning again.
Though only a single line of mind fog had been obliterated, the pain he felt far exceeded that caused by Tian Yue's attack.
Fortunately, just like Tian Yue's attack, it had done no fundamental damage to the mind fog, which soon recovered.
Outside the mind fog, however, alarm bells rang in Tian Yue's heart as a sudden sense of mortal danger gripped her.
Instinctively, Tian Yue brought her palms together in front of her.
"Crane Wings Fill the Sky!"
In an instant, two enormous crane wings radiating a luminous white glow appeared behind her.
The next moment, following her movements, the wings swept forward and wrapped around her.
Whoosh!
Tian Yue shot backward.
Meanwhile, the thin black line unleashed by the Butcher's Cleaver had already reached her, instantly striking the crane wings wrapped around Tian Yue's body.
Slash!
Boom!
Bang, bang, bang...
With a soft slicing sound, feathers flew from the crane wings, and Tian Yue was blasted through the air.
Tian Yue twisted in midair and landed with a backward flip.
Thud, thud, thud...
After landing, Tian Yue stumbled back several more steps before finally stopping.
"A Paranormal Entity?!"
Even after coming to a stop, Tian Yue still felt shaken. Thankfully, she had reacted in time.
Otherwise, that single strike would have left her dead or gravely injured.
At the same time, she stared ahead in disbelief.
She had never expected another Paranormal Entity to be hiding within the Eerie Mist.
Could it be...
Was the Eerie Mist so powerful today because another Paranormal Entity had appeared inside it?
In the woods more than half a kilometer away, Li Feng sensed all this through his mind fog. An idea suddenly struck him, and a sly smile gradually spread across his face.
This girl kept causing him trouble. Perhaps it was time to teach her a lesson...
As Tian Yue watched, the dense fog ahead, which had completely obscured the figure within, began rapidly spreading in every direction.
At the same time, the thick fog began thinning. Though her view remained hazy, she could now make out the figure opposite her.
Tall and powerfully built, dressed in leather clothes and holding a pig-slaughtering cleaver, he stared coldly at her, radiating an intense pressure.
Li Feng, however, could tell that the Butcher Wraith's body, which had regained its solidity, was now becoming somewhat insubstantial again.
Clearly, the Butcher Wraith's earlier attack had come at a cost. It might even have been a final trump card or hidden ace, consuming an enormous amount of power.
Tian Yue stared grimly at the Butcher Wraith opposite her. Now enveloped in the dense fog herself, her expression turned ugly.
She had discovered that the fog surrounding her could not only interfere with her senses, but also siphon away her power.
At that moment, Li Feng naturally noticed this as well.
He had never expected his mind fog to be capable of devouring not only the power of wraiths, monsters, demons, and ghosts, but even that of humans.
In other words, this mind fog could devour practically any kind of energy.
He just did not know whether there were drawbacks he had yet to discover.
Thinking of the Star-Absorbing Great Technique in novels from his previous life, which absorbed the internal energy of too many different people and left it impure and constantly in conflict, Li Feng felt a little apprehensive.
Before you continue