The dust cleared, and Uvogin had already fallen silent.
In the distance, Machi had already begun retreating when Round Deer blocked her Nen threads, especially when its positive energy shot toward her.
But Kurapika was no mere bystander.
During their battle, he had already figured out Machi's attack patterns. When she divided her attention to support Uvogin, Kurapika had no need to worry about Qiao Lun.
At some point, his eyes had already turned blood red.
It was a breathtakingly beautiful red. Even a single glance would draw admiration from the depths of one's heart; such beauty should not have existed in the mortal world.
Machi also noticed the change in Kurapika, and her guard rose. When they massacred the Kurta Clan five years earlier, she had faced people with Scarlet Eyes.
Intense emotional fluctuations would awaken the Kurta Clan's eyes. Once their Scarlet Eyes activated, their physical capabilities improved noticeably. If they were Nen users, they might even manifest a second ability.
Machi did not know Kurapika's name, but after fighting him for so long, she had also worked out his Nen Ability.
He was a Conjuration user, and the key to his ability lay in the chain he had conjured.
The chains extended from his five fingers. Since the battle began, he had been using the chain on his ring finger, while the other four had shown nothing particularly noteworthy.
Now that Kurapika had activated his Scarlet Eyes, she did not know whether he would keep using the chains in his hand or had developed some other ability.
Whatever the case, Machi had sensed danger from the moment Uvogin was killed by her opponents.
She knew perfectly well that if she could not quickly disengage and leave, she would very likely follow in Uvogin's footsteps.
Round Deer's positive energy never actually struck Machi, because Qiao Lun dismissed Round Deer.
The Cursed Energy consumed by summoning Round Deer was nothing like that required by Shikigami such as Divine Dogs.
Qiao Lun shifted his gaze to Machi, while Uvogin's corpse on the ground slowly sank into his shadow.
The Ten Shadows Technique could do more than summon Shikigami. The shadows could also store some items for Qiao Lun. However, the space within them was not large. If he stored too much, he would have trouble slipping into the shadows himself.
Dead, Uvogin could no longer resist and counted as an object, so naturally, he could be stored within the shadow space.
During this process, Qiao Lun also noticed Kurapika's subtle movements.
He had already laid the chain on his index finger across the ground during the battle. But without dust to obscure it, even if he used In on that chain, it should still have been difficult to hide it from Machi's scrutiny.
As for why Uvogin had not used Gyo when fighting Kurapika in the manga, it was entirely because Uvogin had been using In on himself at the time.
Machi, however, was skilled at using In herself, and she had no need to conceal her own presence. Naturally, she kept Gyo active at all times to observe the situation.
But had Kurapika really failed to notice this?
Qiao Lun doubted it.
In his impression, Kurapika was extremely intelligent, and his intelligence in battle was even more exceptional.
So he must have had his own purpose in doing this.
Qiao Lun strode toward Machi. Since he had taken care of Uvogin, it would naturally be best to make sure Machi never left either.
That way, no information would leak, and he could earn more money. Most importantly, there was his sense of security.
If Machi escaped, Qiao Lun felt that his safety would have no guarantee at all. After all, he was the one who had killed Uvogin.
As he walked, his hands cast a new shadow on the ground: Toad.
It was a Shikigami shaped like a giant toad. The instant it emerged from Qiao Lun's shadow, a huge tongue became a dark blur and lashed toward Machi's position.
From the looks of it, he intended to have Toad restrain Machi directly with its tongue, creating an opportunity for Kurapika to attack her with his chains.
But Toad's tongue could not get anywhere near Machi. Numerous Nen threads appeared around her, piercing the ground and completely blocking the tongue's angles of attack.
More importantly, using Gyo, Qiao Lun could see that many more Nen threads concealed with In surrounded Machi.
If the tongue dared attack, those threads would very likely slice it apart in an instant.
Qiao Lun even noticed that Machi had threaded Nen threads through several links of Kurapika's chains.
It was as though Machi had treated the links of Kurapika's chains as needle eyes, swiftly threading them!
The result of this remarkable skill was that his control over the chains began to go awry.
Toad's charging tongue snapped several Nen threads, but more threads locked that long, pink tongue in midair like a spiderweb. No matter how Toad struggled, it could not retract its tongue.
Instead, bloody gashes appeared across its trapped tongue.
The next second, as Machi retreated, her fingers made conducting motions in the air. The Nen threads restraining Toad's tongue actually pierced straight through it and burrowed underground.
It looked as though Machi had sewn Toad's tongue to the earth.
But Toad's struggles made Qiao Lun realize that it had not been sewn down, but nailed to the ground.
At the tips of the Nen threads were sewing needles. After burrowing underground, those needles pinned Toad's long tongue to the ground like nails.
This was probably Machi's true strength. The needles at the tips of her Nen threads seemed to have been conjured, and the threads were all coated in Shu, a technique that could enhance both the Nen threads and the sewing needles.
From the looks of it, Machi, a Transmutation user, had fully incorporated Enhancement and Conjuration-the categories closest to Transmutation-into her ability.
With a thought from Qiao Lun, the trapped Toad began sinking into the shadow on the ground.
Meanwhile, as he continued forward, Qiao Lun formed the hand sign to summon Toad again. By the time the second Toad emerged from his shadow, he had already released his hands and begun forming the sign a third time...
Among the Shikigami of the Ten Shadows Technique, Toad, Rabbit Escape, and Divine Dogs all existed in multiples.
Divine Dogs were limited to exactly two, while Toad could only be summoned one at a time with each hand sign. Repeating the sign, however, could summon more and more, depending entirely on the user's needs and total Cursed Energy. As for Rabbit Escape, a single hand sign could summon a large batch. As long as the core Rabbit Escape remained alive, their numbers could even keep increasing without any further hand signs.
Emerged from the shadow's
Toad shot its tongue straight toward Machi.
As more and more Toads appeared, large swaths of the Nen threads Machi used to block them began snapping.
More importantly, as Machi retreated, the ground beneath her feet suddenly split apart. A chain had evaded her observation underground and shot straight toward her to bind her!