Locating by Sound

"Huff... huff... huff..."

Lin Yan gasped for breath, the burning sensation in his lungs still not entirely gone.

To save them, he had squeezed almost every last drop of potential out of his body. Even now, the muscles in his legs trembled uncontrollably from that burst of power.

"You're pretty good!" Gon ran over and punched him on the shoulder.

His eyes shone with excitement. "You were so fast just now! How did you know those monsters' weak points were inside their mouths?"

"I..." Lin Yan opened his mouth.

I can't exactly tell them I sensed it with Qi, can I?

He could only offer a vague explanation. "I guessed. When they spat things out, I noticed something glowing around their throats, so I thought that might be their weak point."

"You guessed?" Killua walked over.

He looked Lin Yan up and down as though examining some rare animal. "That's one hell of a guess. And when you jumped over just now, you moved a lot faster than you usually run."

This kid's powers of observation are frighteningly sharp.

Lin Yan cursed inwardly, but dared not let it show. All he could do was keep playing dumb. "Maybe I was desperate. People can tap into their potential when they're desperate."

Killua curled his lip, clearly unconvinced.

He walked over to the corpse of a toad he had shot dead with a berry, nudged it with his foot, then crouched to examine the wound. Only then did he stand and look at Lin Yan, his gaze even more probing.

"There was something about those berries you threw me, too, wasn't there?" Killua asked. "They seemed to have some kind of juice inside that could eat away at their organs."

"Oh, those? I just picked them up along the way. They looked all black, so I thought they might be a little poisonous. I didn't expect them to actually work."

Lin Yan rubbed his nose, feeling as though he was running out of lies.

He had, in fact, examined them beforehand. Using his faint sensitivity to Qi, he had detected a highly irritating substance inside the berries, which was why he had deliberately collected a few.

There was simply no way to explain those details to them.

"Tch."

Killua snorted and stopped pressing him.

Suspicious though he was, Lin Yan really had jumped in to save them. Killua acknowledged that he owed him one.

This guy's full of secrets, but he doesn't seem to mean us any harm.

"Forget about all that!" Gon, on the other hand, was utterly unconcerned. Dragging his fishing rod along, he had already begun studying how to deal with the enormous toad corpses. "These things look delicious! Let's roast them!"

"Idiot! We're taking an exam! Who has time for a barbecue?" Killua kicked Gon in the backside.

Watching the two of them fool around did nothing to ease Lin Yan's worries.

Forcing his Qi into action had put far too much strain on his body.

He could feel that the warm current inside him, which he had painstakingly strengthened by the tiniest amount, had become somewhat erratic. His meridians ached faintly, too.

It seemed he couldn't resort to this kind of brute force often. He was doing more damage to himself than to his enemies.

"Oh, right!" Gon suddenly remembered something. He stopped and anxiously looked around at the surrounding fog. "We still don't know where Leorio and Kurapika are!"

Killua stopped fooling around as well. Frowning, he said, "The fog's getting thicker, and the smells are all mixed up. Gon, can you still sniff out which way they went?"

Gon sniffed hard, a confused expression crossing his face. "Not anymore... the smell of blood and dirt is too strong here. And there's the stink from these toads. All the smells are mixed together."

Now we're in trouble.

Lin Yan's heart sank as well.

He knew the giant toads weren't the only creatures in Swindler's Swamp. There were plenty of other, more dangerous magical beasts.

If that hothead Leorio and Kurapika ran into a troublesome opponent, their chances of surviving would be slim.

Besides, the examiner, Satotz, was already far ahead. If they didn't catch up soon, all five of them might be eliminated.

"What should we do? Should we split up and look?" Gon suggested, deeply worried about Leorio.

"Idiot! Splitting up in a place like this is just asking to die!" Killua immediately rejected the idea. "We have to stick together."

"But..." Gon wanted to say more.

Lin Yan watched them argue, then looked at the increasingly dense fog around them. He knew they couldn't afford any more delays.

Taking a deep breath, he forced down his discomfort and said, "I have an idea. It might be worth a try."

Gon and Killua both turned their eyes toward him.

"You?" Killua's voice carried unmistakable doubt. "What idea have you got now? Is your nose better than Gon's?"

"It's not my nose." Lin Yan shook his head.

He decided to reveal just a little. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to explain what he was about to do.

He sat cross-legged and told them, "Keep watch for me. Don't let anything get close. I need quiet."

Gon didn't understand, but he nodded anyway and took up a position on Lin Yan's left, fishing rod in hand.

Killua hesitated, then walked over to Lin Yan's right. With both hands in his pockets, he warily scanned the surrounding grass.

Lin Yan closed his eyes.

He began adjusting his breathing. Instead of the Heel Breathing he had used earlier to conserve his strength, he switched to a deeper, slower, more sustained breathing pattern.

This was a method recorded in Taoist texts called Listening to the Breath.

It emphasized unifying the mind and spirit, focusing every thought on one's breathing. Once the mind grew completely still and became one with the breath, hearing would become extraordinarily acute, even picking up sounds that ordinarily went unnoticed.

In his previous life, this had mostly been a form of mental cultivation. But in this world, the existence of Qi gave the method entirely new possibilities.

With painstaking care, he guided the warm current that had begun to settle inside him toward the meridians around his ears, a strand at a time.

Humm-

In an instant, Lin Yan felt his world fall silent.

No, it wasn't silence. The sounds had been "broken down."

The rustle of wind through leaves, the low growl of an unknown magical beast in the distance, the buzz of insects beating their wings in the grass, the gurgle of bubbles bursting in the mire...

Every sound became incredibly clear and distinct, weaving through his mind like threads of different colors.

Too loud.

He frowned and forced himself to ignore the useless background noise.

He needed to find human sounds. Leorio's sounds. Kurapika's sounds.

He began recalling Leorio's unmistakably booming voice, along with his distinctive, rather heavy footsteps in those leather shoes.

And there was the briefcase he always carried. As he walked, its contents were bound to make faint rattling sounds.

That's it!

Lin Yan's focus abruptly sharpened.

He caught an extremely faint but very rhythmic sound.

"Thud... thud... thud..."

Those were heavy footsteps moving through the depths of the fog. They weren't fast; in fact, they sounded somewhat unsteady.

Then he heard a faint "click... clack..." of objects knocking together.

The briefcase!

It's definitely Leorio!

Lin Yan's eyes snapped open, a sharp gleam flashing through them.

He rose, pointed ahead and to the left, and said without hesitation, "That way! I heard him!"

Gon and Killua both froze.

"You heard him?" Killua looked incredulous. "From that far away, with all this other noise? How could you possibly hear him?"

"I just did." Lin Yan offered no further explanation.

He took a breath. That intense concentration had taken a lot out of him, too.

"His footsteps are heavy, and he's carrying a case. There's no mistake. If we don't get moving, they really might be in danger."

With that, he took the lead and ran in that direction.

Gon looked at Lin Yan's retreating figure, then at Killua, before following without hesitation. "I trust Lin Yan!"

Killua stood where he was, watching their figures disappear into the fog, his expression shifting.

This guy... just who is he?

First, he had pinpointed the monsters' weakness. Now, he could locate people by sound in this hellhole. The abilities he displayed didn't match that frail body of his at all.

"Tch. What a pain."

Killua muttered a curse, but ultimately followed them.

Whatever else happened, finding the others came first. The mysteries surrounding this guy named Lin Yan were making him more and more curious.