The final monster

It wasn't fear.

Lin Yan knew full well that his mind was as steady as a rock. His opponent's aura alone could never shake him.

This trembling felt more like... an instinctive rejection.

It was like the invisible, intangible, yet very real resistance produced when the matching poles of two magnets were forced together.

The dantian embryo within Lin Yan had been formed from the purest life energy between heaven and earth, refined through the Taoist principles of stillness and nonaction. Its essence was "life" and "order."

The man before him, however, exuded a chaotic, filthy aura filled with the desire for destruction and death. Its essence was "death" and "disorder."

They were two utterly opposing extremes.

When this absolute "evil" appeared before him, the dantian embryo within Lin Yan, which embodied "life" and "order," instinctively reacted with fierce rejection.

"This guy..."

Lin Yan's gaze grew graver than ever before.

He didn't need Qi Observation to "see" it. He could simply "feel" that this man was a monster through and through, one that existed only to slaughter and destroy.

He had probably killed more people than anyone could count. The thick, lingering reek of blood around him had almost taken physical form.

"It's him! Johns, 'The Dissector'!"

Below the platform, Leorio suddenly let out a terrified cry. His face went white, and he involuntarily stumbled two steps backward, as though he had seen the most horrifying thing in the world.

"What? That legendary serial killer?!" Kurapika also paled in shock.

The name of Johns, "The Dissector," was widely known in the outside world.

He was said to be a complete madman who needed no reason for what he did. He simply enjoyed dismembering living people piece by piece and watching them die in excruciating agony.

He had once slaughtered an entire town of over a hundred people single-handedly, using nothing but his bare hands. His cruelty was appalling.

After his capture, he had been sentenced to more than two hundred years in prison. Everyone had assumed he would rot away in the most heavily guarded prison, yet here he was!

"This is trouble..."

Killua's expression grew serious as well.

He wasn't terrified like Leorio, but his assassin's instincts were screaming a warning.

The man before him was on an entirely different level from the scar-faced man he had killed earlier.

That scar-faced man had merely been a vicious underworld thug.

Johns, however, was a genuine, inhuman monster who reveled in killing. His body, every muscle in it, existed for the most efficient destruction possible.

"What a terrifying aura..."

Gon also sensed something was wrong. Every hair on his body stood on end-the primal reaction of an animal confronted by its natural predator.

Johns stepped out of the shadows, seemingly unconcerned by everyone's reactions.

His clouded, crazed eyes roamed over the examinees, as though he were picking out meat for tonight's dinner at a market.

"Heh... hehehe..."

He let out a low, incomprehensible chuckle that sent chills down their spines. Drool trickled from the corner of his mouth and dripped onto his straitjacket.

"The sixth match."

The refined-looking leader of the prisoners, who had gambled on candles with Leorio earlier, suppressed his fear of Johns and stepped forward to announce, "The rules are simple."

He pointed at Johns in the ring, then at the examinees, and said in a strained voice, "One on one. A fight to the death. Whoever survives wins."

A fight to the death.

Those words sent the already tense atmosphere plunging into an icy chill.

Kurapika's earlier match had also been called a fight to the death, but his opponent had ultimately surrendered. Killua's match, meanwhile, had been an instant kill.

This time, however, everyone knew that against Johns, "The Dissector," surrender was not an option.

Either they killed him.

Or he tore them to pieces.

"Who... who's going?" Leorio stammered, his calves trembling.

Kurapika remained silent. His scarlet eyes were powerful, but the earlier match had drained him considerably. His chances of winning a death match against a monster like this were slim.

Gon clenched his fists. He desperately wanted to go, but he could sense the enormous gap in strength between himself and that monster.

Everyone instinctively turned toward Killua.

Of everyone present, only Killua had demonstrated the ability to dispatch an opponent swiftly and cleanly.

Killua licked his slightly dry lips, a dangerous gleam flashing in his catlike eyes.

His instincts told him this battle would be difficult, but not unwinnable.

Johns's strength and madness were his advantages, but also his weaknesses. If Killua used his skill to exploit an opening left by that madness, he had a seventy percent chance of killing him in a single strike, just as he had before.

"I'll do it."

Killua rolled his wrists and was about to step forward.

"No."

A calm voice stopped him.

It was Lin Yan.

Lin Yan slowly emerged from the back of the group.

"I'll take this match."

"What?!"

"Lin Yan, have you lost your mind?!" Leorio and Kurapika cried out together.

"Hey, do you even know what you're saying?"

Killua frowned and turned toward Lin Yan, his tone openly irritated. "This isn't the time to play hero! That guy's a monster! Sending you out there would be no different from sending you to your death!"

In Killua's eyes, Lin Yan might have been clever and known a few strange techniques, but he was still fundamentally a "weakling" with little combat ability.

His strengths lay in observation, analysis, and strategy, not in taking a monster head-on.

"I know."

Lin Yan's expression remained calm. Looking at Killua, he said earnestly, "I know he's dangerous. That's precisely why I have to take this match."

"Huh? What kind of bullshit logic is that?" Killua couldn't understand him at all.

"Lin Yan, don't be rash!" Kurapika also stepped forward to persuade him. "We acknowledge your intelligence, but brains alone aren't enough in a fight! That man's strength is beyond anything a normal person can withstand!"

"That's right, Lin Yan. Let Killua go. He's better suited to this than you!" Leorio urgently agreed.

They were genuinely worried about Lin Yan.

To them, Lin Yan was the team's brain, an indispensable commander. Sending the commander onto the battlefield to duel the enemy's strongest warrior-wasn't that a joke?

A trace of warmth flowed through Lin Yan's heart as he saw the genuine concern on his companions' faces.

He shook his head, but his gaze never wavered.

"You don't understand," he said softly.

Yes, they didn't understand.

They didn't understand what the monster before him meant to him.

Taoist cultivation theory spoke of "external tribulations" and "inner demons."

Inner demons arose from the obsessions and impurities within one's heart.

External tribulations, meanwhile, were the tremendous trials and mortal dangers from the outside world that one would inevitably encounter on the path of cultivation.

Surviving a tribulation brought clarity of thought, progress in cultivation, and boundless possibilities.

Failing meant death, the end of one's path, and the loss of everything.

From the moment he had set foot on the "golden core great way," he had known that his future path could never be smooth sailing.

Secluded cultivation could only accumulate "quantity"; it could not produce a leap in "quality." Every major breakthrough had to be accompanied by the tempering of a "tribulation."

Aboard the airship, Hisoka's killing intent had been his first "tribulation." It had set his yin and yang into interaction, allowing him to achieve foundation establishment.

And now Johns, "The Dissector," this monster who embodied absolute "evil" and "disorder," was the first true "external tribulation" he had encountered since foundation establishment!

The uncontrollable trembling of his dantian embryo was the clearest proof.

His "Way" was issuing a warning-and a challenge.

If he retreated out of fear today and let Killua fight in his place, he might survive safely, but a shadow would fall over his "Dao heart."

That shadow would become the greatest inner demon on his future path of cultivation.

He would remain forever trapped at his current realm, unable to advance another step.

"The unity of knowledge and action": first knowing, then acting. Knowing was easy; acting was hard.

Since he had chosen this path, he had to "act." Shrinking back would be the same as denying his own "Way."

"This isn't about playing hero."

Looking at Killua, Lin Yan said each word distinctly. "This is my path. I have to fight this battle. If I back down here, everything I've done before will lose its meaning."

His voice wasn't loud, but the resolve within it moved everyone.

Killua stared at him blankly.

In Lin Yan's eyes, he saw something he had never seen before.

It wasn't a desire to fight, nor an obsession with victory, but a kind of... resolve akin to that of a pilgrim.

As though this battle wasn't merely a life-or-death struggle to him, but a ritual he had to complete.

"...You're really a strange guy."

Killua pursed his lips and finally stepped aside. "Suit yourself. But I'm warning you-if you die, I'm not collecting your body."

"Thank you." Lin Yan smiled at him.

He turned away, paying no further attention to the complicated looks of his companions behind him, and walked steadily toward the center of the Arena, one step at a time.

With every step, his mind grew calmer.

He withdrew all his attention from the outside world and sank it into his dantian.

He could feel the white-jade-like dantian embryo spinning a little faster. Streams of pure, warm "true qi" began flowing from it, slowly spreading throughout his body along the familiar routes of his meridians.

The burning in his lungs, the weakness in his legs, and all his accumulated fatigue quickly receded under the nourishment of that true qi.

At that moment, his five senses became sharper than ever before.

He could hear the beastlike growls rising from Johns's throat.

He could smell the nauseating stench of blood and sweat emanating from Johns.

He could see his own calm figure reflected in Johns's crazed eyes.

Lin Yan came to a stop ten meters from Johns.

He assumed no fighting stance, simply standing naturally with his hands at his sides. His energy was drawn inward, like a deep ancient well without a ripple.

"Hehehe... a new... toy..."

Johns looked at Lin Yan and mumbled indistinctly, his body trembling violently with excitement.

His straitjacket creaked under the strain.

"ROAR!"

With a roar that sounded nothing like a human voice, Johns abruptly tensed every muscle in his body.

Riiip!

The straitjacket, made of a special material strong enough to restrain a rhinoceros, burst apart under the sheer force of his muscles!

Countless strips of fabric and straps flew in every direction.

A figure like a devil was fully exposed before them all.

He stood over two meters tall, his knotted muscles resembling chunks of solid rock. Crisscrossing scars and bizarre markings covered his skin.

The nails on all ten fingers were long and black, gleaming like metal. Those weren't human hands at all, but a beast's sharp claws!

The instant he broke free, Johns moved without the slightest hesitation.

He drove both legs against the ground, shattering the stone slabs beneath his feet!

Boom!

His enormous body became a black blur, hurtling straight at Lin Yan with a suffocating gust of blood-reeking wind.