You've Got a Sharp Eye

The three raced through the thick fog, one in front and two behind.

Lin Yan led the way. He dared not run too fast, adjusting his breathing while dividing his attention to maintain Listening to the Breath and keep tracking Leorio's location.

Splitting his focus like this took a heavy toll on his mental energy.

Before long, a fine sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead.

"Hey, you," Killua called from behind. He caught up in a few strides and ran alongside Lin Yan. "What exactly was that move you used back there? Don't tell me it was another secret family technique."

This kid really is still probing me.

Lin Yan saw right through him.

He turned his head, glanced at Killua, and said between slightly labored breaths, "It's not a secret technique. Just a way to quiet your mind."

"When the mind is still, the ears grow keen."

"Quiet your mind?" Killua raised an eyebrow, clearly dissatisfied with the answer. "Easy for you to say. With all this screeching around us, how could anyone stay calm?"

"That's why you have to practice," Lin Yan improvised casually. "There's a saying where I come from: 'Only a mind free of distractions can perceive the finest details.'"

"The more you focus on everything around you, the less clearly you see and hear."

His explanation was half truth, half fiction. It drew on the Taoist philosophy of stillness and nonaction while neatly concealing the existence of qi.

Killua listened in bewilderment. Talented as he was, he had been trained as an assassin since childhood. His head was full of assassination techniques and combat methods. When had he ever encountered such abstruse theories?

He felt that Lin Yan's words made some sense, yet they also sounded like a con.

"Hmph. All smoke and mirrors," Killua muttered, but he stopped pressing the issue.

Listening from behind, Gon found it fascinating instead. "Lin Yan, you know so much! Even more than the elders in my village!"

Lin Yan gave a couple of awkward chuckles without replying.

Just then, Lin Yan abruptly halted at the head of the group.

"Stop!"

He barked the warning in a low voice and thrust an arm across Gon's path.

"What's wrong?" Gon stopped, looking puzzled.

Killua stopped too. His reaction was lightning-fast, his body instantly tensing as his sharp eyes scanned their surroundings.

"Up ahead... something's wrong." Lin Yan stared fixedly at a patch of open ground a few meters ahead.

The patch looked unremarkable, just ordinary dirt strewn with dead branches and leaves. But to Lin Yan's qi perception, the energy field beneath it was completely different from everywhere else.

There wasn't the slightest trace of life there. It was terrifyingly still.

Like a gaping maw hidden beneath a disguise.

"Wrong? What's wrong with it?" Gon craned his neck to look ahead, unable to spot anything unusual.

Killua frowned as well. He examined the ground closely and even sniffed the air, but found nothing either.

"What did you notice this time?" Killua asked quietly. This time, doubt had left his voice, replaced by a hint of gravity.

Lin Yan didn't answer.

He bent down, picked up a thick branch over a meter long, and told Gon and Killua, "Back up a little."

Both boys took a few steps back as instructed.

Lin Yan drew a deep breath, gripped the branch with both hands, and swung it at the center of the open patch with all his strength!

Smack!

The branch struck the ground squarely.

The instant it touched the surface, something shocking happened!

The seemingly flat ground suddenly snapped upward like an enormous mouth! Countless dark green leaves covered in barbs flipped out of the soil, shredding the thick branch in an instant!

Crack!

The sharp snapping sound made both Gon and Killua's expressions change.

That wasn't ground at all. It was an enormous carnivorous plant disguised as the ground! If Gon had stepped on it, the consequences would have been unthinkable.

"What... what the heck is that thing?" Gon instinctively stepped back, his young face paling.

A trace of cold sweat appeared on Killua's forehead too.

He hadn't detected the slightest killing intent or hint of danger. This thing's camouflage was terrifying.

He turned to Lin Yan, his eyes filled with shock and confusion.

"How... did you spot it?"

Lin Yan panted. That swing had taken a fair amount of strength out of him.

Watching the Man-Eating Plant slowly open again after shredding the branch and resume its disguise as the ground, he felt a chill of lingering fear.

Fortunately, he vaguely remembered this part of the original story. Combined with his qi perception, that had allowed him to spot the trap in advance.

He composed himself and answered Killua's question. "I didn't know what it was. I just felt that the 'energy' there was wrong."

"Energy?" Killua was even more confused.

"Yeah." Lin Yan decided to keep explaining things with the same theory. "Everything has its own energy. Flowing wind, burning fire, living trees-all of them. But that patch of ground felt 'dead' to me."

He paused, his gaze deepening. "It didn't belong with its surroundings. Like a drop of oil in a stagnant pool, it was completely out of place."

He had cobbled this explanation together from the Taoist art of reading energy and the Hunter world's Nen, specifically to fool a genius like Killua, who had formal training but lacked a theoretical foundation.

After hearing him out, Killua fell silent.

He walked to the edge of the trap, crouched down, and extended a finger, carefully feeling the movement of the surrounding air. Then he examined the color and moisture of the soil.

He couldn't detect the "energy" Lin Yan had described, but he understood that sense of something being out of place.

As a top-tier assassin, he could identify traces of camouflage and sense concealed killing intent.

But this plant had neither. It simply sat there quietly, blending perfectly into its surroundings.

Yet Lin Yan had "seen" through that disguise in a way Killua couldn't begin to understand.

Killua stood up and gave Lin Yan a long look before saying with genuine admiration, "You've got a sharp eye."

Luck or coincidence could no longer explain it. This was a real, extraordinary power of perception.

"I'm not that good," Lin Yan said modestly, though inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief.

Finally managed to bluff my way through.

"Wow! Lin Yan, you're amazing!" Gon's eyes sparkled, his admiration for Lin Yan rising to a whole new level.

"All right, let's not waste time here." Lin Yan waved a hand. "Leorio's voice is coming from just beyond this trap. We need to go around."

He pointed to a small path on the left.

Having learned their lesson, Gon and Killua were especially vigilant this time. They followed close behind Lin Yan, taking every step with the utmost care.

After they had run another few hundred meters, the chaotic sounds of a fight and Leorio's shouting finally reached them clearly.

"Found him!" Gon cried excitedly.

The three immediately picked up speed and dashed toward the source of the noise.