Night slowly settled over all of Zevil Island like an enormous black shroud.
The daytime chirping of insects and birds gradually faded, replaced by the eerie cries of nocturnal animals and the rustling of creatures crawling through the undergrowth.
The air grew cold and damp. The jungle transformed from a place brimming with life into a slaughterhouse where danger lurked at every turn.
Every so often, screams rang out from the distant darkness, brief and desperate, before quickly falling silent.
Lin Yan sat on a thick tree branch, blending into the darkness.
He had not lit a fire. He simply chewed slowly on a plant root he had found during the day, bitter-tasting but capable of replenishing his strength.
The gunshot wound in his leg had stopped bleeding. Nourished by the true qi within his body, the damaged muscle tissue was healing at an astonishing speed.
Although he still could not run hard, he could walk normally now.
He had dismantled the sniper rifle he had scavenged that day, wrapped its parts and gunpowder in cloth, and set them beside him. He did not need a gun to kill, but these things made excellent materials for traps.
Number 80, Shibao...
The image of that female assassin surfaced in Lin Yan's mind.
He had not spared her out of mercy. First, killing would do him no good and might instead disturb his Dao heart, since he had never killed anyone before;
second, an enemy frightened out of her wits could sometimes be more useful than a corpse.
She would spread information about him-information amplified, or even distorted, by fear.
That fear of the unknown would be enough to make other potential hunters wary, saving him a great deal of unnecessary trouble.
Now, he could finally focus all his energy on his real target.
Hisoka.
Just thinking of that name made Lin Yan feel the dantian embryo in his lower dantian tremble faintly. It was a wariness of a natural predator that arose from the very core of his being.
He took a deep breath, slowly closed his eyes, and sank his entire awareness into the perception of the Qi Observation Technique.
Qi Observation Technique, fully activated.
In an instant, the world shed its outward appearance before his eyes, becoming a moving canvas composed of countless points of energy.
The ordinary examinees were clusters of candle flames, some bright and some dim, moving across the dark canvas. Some huddled together for warmth, while others chased one another, collided, and then went out.
But the target he sought was entirely different.
Lin Yan slowly swept his perception across the island's central region like radar. Before long, he "saw" it.
At the edge of his perceptual field, roughly two kilometers away, there was a mass of light.
No, that was no candle flame. It was an eerie purple forest fire blazing toward the sky!
That purple aura was immense, viscous, and full of shifting menace.
Unlike the stable auras of the other examinees, it churned and boiled like magma, occasionally spewing twisted, spike-covered tendrils.
Every tendril brimmed with madness, pleasure, and undisguised malice.
Merely "looking" at it from afar sent a cold, slippery sensation of revulsion creeping along Lin Yan's divine sense, as though a clammy venomous snake were flicking its tongue against the back of his neck.
Even the dantian embryo within his dantian contracted in discomfort.
"Found him."
Lin Yan opened his eyes, his gaze grave.
This was Hisoka's Nen. This was the terrifying aura that the deranged magician released without restraint.
In this primeval jungle, concealing his presence was meaningless for someone as powerful as Hisoka.
He was like a male lion patrolling his territory, proclaiming his dominion with his powerful presence, drawing in prey too foolish to fear death-or frightening away timid insects.
Taking his number badge right under a monster like this's nose...
Lin Yan slipped silently down from the tree and began creeping toward that "purple nightmare."
He did not take a straight path. Like the most seasoned of hunters, he used the terrain and vegetation, constantly changing his route and circling cautiously as he drew closer little by little.
He drew all his qi into his dantian embryo, leaving only a thin layer of "earth qi" over his skin to mimic the presence of vegetation.
In this state, he was like a drop of water merging into the ocean, vanishing completely into the jungle's background noise.
The closer he came, the more oppressive the purple aura became.
Even the surrounding air seemed to grow viscous, and the night breeze slowed as it passed through that area of the forest.
When he was only about five hundred meters away, Lin Yan stopped.
Concealing himself behind a dense thicket, he carefully pushed a leaf aside and looked ahead.
A relatively open clearing lay before him.
Hisoka sat cross-legged in its center.
He was neither watching his surroundings nor searching for prey as Lin Yan had imagined.
He simply sat there quietly, building a house of cards with his bloodstained playing cards.
Tap.
Tap.
His movements were elegant and focused as he built a delicate, fragile tower, one card after another.
His fingers were long and pale, every card placed with absolute precision, like an artist performing a sacred ritual.
Yet the backdrop to this scene was hell.
Three examinees' corpses lay sprawled around him.
They had died in different ways, but their faces were all frozen in utter terror, as though they had witnessed some incomprehensible horror before their deaths.
Blood stained the grass red, and its heavy scent had drawn small scavenging insects. Yet they only dared circle the edges of the corpses, never venturing within three meters of Hisoka-that was a forbidden zone for life.
Lin Yan held his breath and deliberately slowed even his heartbeat.
He could sense something strange about Hisoka's current state.
Although that immense purple aura still churned, its core held a kind of... deathly emptiness.
It was profound boredom, like a child who had just broken all his toys and now sat amid the wreckage, listlessly waiting for a more interesting toy to appear.
The people he had just killed had brought him no satisfaction. Instead, like drinking salt water, it had only made him "thirstier."
I absolutely cannot act now. Lin Yan reached that conclusion immediately.
Hisoka was like a fully drawn bow right now. The slightest disturbance would bring a thunderous strike.
Snatch it head-on? That would be suicide.
A sneak attack? Against a Nen user of this caliber, even the slightest killing intent directed at him would stand out like a searchlight in the night.
I need an opportunity.
Lin Yan's thoughts raced as he ran through countless possibilities.
Something that excites him, something that makes him pour all his attention into the thrill of fighting to the death, lowering his guard against a "small fry" like me as much as possible.
He needed a target, one formidable enough to draw all of Hisoka's fire.
Ideally, he would act at the instant after Hisoka had enjoyed a thoroughly satisfying slaughter, when his excitement peaked and then began to ebb.
Taoism spoke of "yin and yang transforming into one another; what reaches its height must decline."
The instant anything reached its peak was also, inevitably, the point at which its decline began.
In this world, perhaps it could be called-post-nut clarity.
That was his only opening, and his only path to survival.
But where am I supposed to find him an opponent like that?
Lin Yan's brow furrowed. Most of the examinees on this island were porcelain dolls before Hisoka, shattering at a touch. They could never satisfy him.
Just as he was puzzling over a solution, his divine sense suddenly detected something.
On the other side of the thicket where he was hiding, a little over ten meters away, an extremely faint yet unmistakably familiar presence was clumsily trying to conceal itself.
That presence was pure and clean, like a mountain spring.
Gon?
Lin Yan's thoughts stirred. Why is he here? Who is his target?
He made no sound. Keeping his presence under control, he moved silently toward that aura like a falling leaf.
Before you continue