Outside the storage room, moonlight streaming through the airship's windows divided the narrow corridor into alternating squares of light and shadow.
Hisoka approached with his distinctive gait, as graceful as a stage actor, taking his time.
His high heels struck the metal floor with faint sounds that followed an uncanny rhythm.
On his face was that signature smile, a blend of pleasure and perversity.
"Mmm-hmm~"
He stopped outside the storage room and flicked out his tongue to lick his lips.
His narrow eyes seemed able to pierce the thick metal door and see everything happening inside.
"What an... irresistible fragrance..." he murmured, his voice filled with greedy anticipation. "Like a fruit on the verge of ripening, desperately absorbing nutrients and releasing its last, sweetest scent..."
He could sense the faint but pure aura behind the door pulsing in a wondrous rhythm unlike anything he had ever encountered.
Instead of expanding outward, it kept contracting inward, condensing, as though compressing all its light and heat into an infinitely small point.
How fascinating.
He raised his hand, a playing card held between his fingertips, seemingly ready to slice through the flimsy lock at any moment.
"What are you trying to do?"
An icy voice sounded behind him.
Hisoka paused.
He slowly turned and saw the silver-haired boy standing in the corridor's shadows, hands in his pockets, his catlike eyes watching him warily.
It was that brat from the Zoldyck Family.
"Oh?" Hisoka's smile widened. "Are you talking to me, little kitty?"
Killua's heart hammered.
The pressure nearly suffocated him. Worse still, a voice seemed to scream deep inside his mind: Run! You'll die! You can't possibly win!
It was the instinctive fear his older brother Illumi had implanted in him, etched into his very bones.
His legs shook violently, his body instinctively terrified of a top-tier powerhouse. His nails dug deep into his palms, and blood dripped between his fingers. The pain preserved his last shred of clarity.
He stared fixedly at Hisoka and growled through clenched teeth, "Stay... away from that door!"
Just this once... I don't want to run this time!
"Hehehe..." Hisoka chuckled. "And if I say no?"
Boom!
An immense, viscous, almost tangible pressure of Nen instantly engulfed the corridor.
Killua felt as if he had been thrown into the depths of the sea, surrounded by freezing water that crushed every inch of his skin.
Run! Run now!
The instinct called "caution" nearly seized control of his body, yet his feet remained rooted to the floor.
It wasn't courage. Two utterly opposing commands-"the instinct to flee" and "a promise to a friend"-collided violently in his nerves, leaving his body frozen as though it had crashed.
Yet he still stood firmly between Hisoka and the storage room, refusing to retreat a single step.
"What a brave little kitty." Hisoka savored the sight of Killua desperately resisting, the pleasure in his eyes deepening. "But you'd better not interrupt me while I watch this fruit ripen~ Otherwise, I might not be able to resist crushing Little Apple, this unripe little apple beside it, first~"
His gaze brimmed with amusement and naked menace.
Meanwhile, inside the storage room...
Lin Yan was enduring an unprecedented trial.
Hisoka's undisguised killing intent pierced the door like icy steel needles, stabbing relentlessly at his mind.
Under that assault, the dantian vortex he had visualized immediately began to unravel.
The wisp of qi he had painstakingly gathered also grew restless and violent, threatening to slip out of control and lash back at him at any moment.
What should I do?
Give up?
If I stop now, all my efforts will go to waste, but at least I'll survive.
But if I give up, who knows how long I'll have to wait for another opportunity like this?
Besides, with a lunatic like Hisoka watching me, I'll die sooner or later if I have no strength.
I'm going all in!
Deep in his bones, Lin Yan possessed a fierce refusal to admit defeat.
Through studying Daoist scriptures in his previous life, he had long understood that cultivation meant defying heaven itself. It could never be smooth sailing.
The Daoist scriptures say: within lies the inner demon; without lies the heavenly demon. A "tribulation" is both danger and opportunity!
Hisoka's killing intent is my "external tribulation"!
Survive it, and boundless horizons await! Fail, and I'll be beyond salvation!
"The human spirit loves purity, yet the mind disturbs it; the human mind loves stillness, yet desires draw it away. Always dispel desire, and the mind will grow still of itself; clarify the mind, and the spirit will grow pure of itself..."
Lin Yan stopped attending to that bone-chilling killing intent and began silently reciting the Qingjing Jing.
He forcibly withdrew all his attention from his fear of the outside world and focused it once more on his dantian.
He no longer visualized a vortex. Instead, he made his will an unyielding stone: Let the wind and rain batter me; I will remain unmoved.
The killing intent seemed to become towering waves, crashing against his mind again and again.
Each impact shook his soul violently, nearly shattering it.
But he clung fiercely to that single point of clarity, letting the savage energy wash over him.
Gradually, he sensed a change.
Hisoka's killing intent was destructive, certainly, but it was also like an invisible hammer.
Each strike forged his once loosely gathered mind into something denser and more resilient.
And under the pressure of that external force, the violent qi within him actually began compressing inward on its own, again and again!
Like a sponge having its water relentlessly squeezed out!
Understanding dawned on Lin Yan.
He stopped passively defending himself and actively fused his entire consciousness with that qi, now compressed to its limit!
Spirit as the bones, qi as the flesh!
Then, using the hammer of Hisoka's killing intent, he struck down with all his might!
"Condense!"
Boom!!!
A thunderclap seemed to explode inside Lin Yan's mind.
He "saw" all the qi and all his mental energy within his chaotic dantian sea of qi forcibly kneaded together by an invisible force, compressed into an infinitely small point.
Then that point suddenly released a faint yet incomparably brilliant gleam.
It was neither blazing like the sun nor cool like moonlight, but a gentle light of chaos that seemed to hold the mysteries of life's beginnings.
A "seed" the size of a mustard seed, its surface dull and lusterless yet exuding an eternal, undying presence, floated quietly at the center of his dantian.
The embryonic golden core had formed!
The instant the embryonic golden core condensed, an utterly pure, incomparably sharp aura erupted from Lin Yan's body, then vanished in a flash.
In the corridor...
Hisoka suddenly froze.
His narrow eyes flew wide, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
That aura had erupted from behind the door just a moment ago.
Although it had appeared for only an instant, its essential "purity" and "sharpness" were utterly unlike the strength he knew.
If Chairman Netero's aura was a vast, unfathomable ocean with no shore in sight, then this aura was...
A needle of absolute purity, capable of piercing dimensions!
This was not an accumulation of sheer power, but a fundamental transformation into something different.
"Oh... hehe... hehehehe..."
An uncontrollable, beastlike growl rose from Hisoka's throat. His body even began trembling slightly with the sheer intensity of his excitement.
"It's... blossomed..."
He stared at the door, his eyes nearly overflowing with the desire to possess and destroy. But then his excitement slowly subsided, giving way to a sense of disappointment.
"It's sprouted, but if I picked it now, there'd probably be only one bite..."
He shook his head regretfully, seemingly losing interest in the prey before him in an instant. The murderous aura that had nearly suffocated Killua vanished just as quickly.
Just then, the airship's announcement rang out.
"Attention, all applicants. This airship will soon arrive at the venue for the Third Phase-the top of Trick Tower. Please prepare yourselves."
The madness on Hisoka's face slowly faded.
He gave the tightly closed door a long look, then glanced at Killua, who was on the verge of collapse beside it. His mouth stretched into an exaggerated grin.
"I'll let you off this time, little kitty. Remember to tell the little fruit inside... I'm really looking forward to whatever surprise he'll have for me the next time we meet~"
With that, he turned and disappeared down the corridor with a jaunty stride.
Killua sagged against the wall, gasping for breath. His back was completely drenched in cold sweat.
He stared at the storage room door, his eyes filled with tangled emotions.
What the hell had Lin Yan created in there?
He'd actually made that pervert back off voluntarily... at the height of his excitement?
Before you continue