After reading, Lin Jin's lips curled slightly.
The three missions were scattered across the country, giving him a perfect chance to travel around.
He selected the three missions and clicked accept.
The system displayed a prompt: You have accepted S-Rank missions ×3. Please confirm.
Lin Jin clicked confirm.
The next second, in the Demon Suppression Bureau's back-end monitoring room, a technician stared at his screen, his eyes nearly popping out.
"Holy shit!"
The colleague beside him jumped.
"What happened?"
The technician pointed at the screen and stammered, "S-someone accepted three S-Rank missions at once!"
His colleague leaned over to look and froze too.
"Three S-Rank missions? Who is it? Has some big shot at the Transcendent Stage come out of seclusion?"
The technician pulled up the applicant's information.
"ID HN-027, special consultant Lin Jin? Never heard of him!"
His colleague frowned in thought.
"Lin Jin... I think I've heard that name somewhere. Right! The guy in Jiangcheng a few days ago who single-handedly killed an S-Rank Weird and destroyed its Weird Domain!"
The technician sucked in a sharp breath.
"It's him? No wonder..."
His colleague stared at the screen and murmured, "But taking three S-Rank missions at once? Isn't that insane? These missions are scattered all over the country. Traveling alone would take days. How does he plan to finish them?"
The technician shook his head.
"No idea... but someone like him is beyond our control. Log it and report it."
Unaware of the commotion in the mission back end, Lin Jin put away his token and stood up.
Each of the three S-Rank missions offered tens of thousands of points. Together with the world power he would gain from killing the Weirds, this trip should yield quite a haul.
He glanced at the room behind him, then vanished from the balcony in a flash.
Lin Jin appeared on a deserted path outside the villa complex.
He had not used Kamui or Flying Thunder God directly, because he could not travel directly to a location without a Flying Thunder God Mark or previously marked space.
He would travel the most basic way, then.
Lin Jin sensed the direction and used the Body Flicker Technique, darting toward the city's outskirts like lightning.
He left the urban area and reached a stretch of wilderness.
Lin Jin stopped. Mangekyō Sharingan, activate!
"Perfect Susanoo."
Purple chakra surged from his body, instantly forming a gigantic skeleton around him.
Flesh grew over the skeleton, armor covered it, and wings spread.
A hundred-meter-tall purple giant appeared in the wilderness, clad in crow tengu armor, wielding a longsword, with wings on its back.
Standing inside Susanoo's forehead, Lin Jin willed its enormous wings to beat.
Boom!
A gale roared as Perfect Susanoo shot into the sky at astonishing speed, vanishing into the clouds in an instant.
High in the sky, Lin Jin guided Susanoo southwest.
Mountains and rivers raced backward below him, and white clouds swept past.
This flying speed was far faster than any means of transportation.
Southwest Province, deep within a primeval forest.
People rarely ventured here throughout the year. Dense treetops blotted out the sun, leaving the forest as dark as night even at noon.
The air was thick with the smell of decay, occasionally broken by the roars of unknown creatures.
Lin Jin dismissed Susanoo and landed atop a large tree.
He fully activated Mind's Eye of the Kagura, his perception spreading outward like invisible ripples.
Soon, he pinpointed his target's direction.
About fifteen kilometers to the southeast, there was a massive, malevolent energy fluctuation.
Unlike that of an ordinary Weird, this fluctuation was deeper and stranger, with a quality that seemed capable of corroding souls.
The S-Rank Weird, the Soul-Devouring Tree Demon.
That should be it.
Lin Jin darted in that direction.
The closer he got, the stranger the surrounding trees became. Once-normal trees began to twist, distorted human faces emerged on their trunks, and branches moved without wind like the tentacles of living creatures.
Lin Jin knew he had entered the range of the tree demon's roots.
He did not stop and continued deeper.
At last, a clearing appeared ahead.
At its center stood an enormous ancient tree.
The tree was over a hundred meters tall, with an extremely thick trunk and bark covered in strange patterns. Those patterns glowed faintly, as though blood flowed through them.
Strangest of all were its branches. Countless vine-like branches hung down, each with a human-sized cocoon dangling from its tip.
The cocoons squirmed slightly, with vaguely human outlines visible inside.
The victims swallowed by the tree demon were being slowly digested.
Lin Jin landed on the ground, his gaze fixed on the enormous tree.
The tree demon seemed to sense his arrival. Its branches began trembling, and an aged, distorted human face emerged on its trunk.
"Human..." A hoarse voice echoed through the forest. "Die!"
Before its voice faded, the ground suddenly shook violently.
Countless thick roots burst from the earth like giant pythons, surging toward Lin Jin from every direction.
Their tips were as sharp as spears, wreathed in strange black mist.
Lin Jin shifted his feet and instantly vanished.
The root tips stabbed into the spot where he had just stood, blasting deep craters into the ground.
Lin Jin flashed into view in midair, his hands forming seals.
"Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"
An enormous sea of fire erupted from his mouth, instantly engulfing an area a hundred meters around.
The roots burned and writhed in the flames, giving off sizzling sounds and a charred stench.
But the tree demon's main body was too large. This amount of fire barely tickled it.
New roots quickly replaced the burned ones and continued surging toward Lin Jin.
At the same time, an invisible psychic fluctuation spread from the tree demon.
Lin Jin felt a slight jolt in his mind, and the scene before him began to distort.
He saw the battlefields of the Hokage World, his fallen comrades, and the twisted smile of the God of Ōtsutsuki.
Genjutsu.
Lin Jin's lips curved slightly.
Trying genjutsu on me?
His Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan activated again. Scarlet light flashed, and the psychic fluctuation was reflected straight back.
The tree demon let out a piercing scream, the face on its trunk twisting violently.
"You... your eyes!"
Lin Jin gave it no chance to catch its breath. He glanced at the sky, thick with dark clouds.
His hands rapidly formed seals, his chakra drawing on the natural lightning in the sky.
"Lightning Release: Kirin!"
Dark clouds abruptly gathered overhead amid thunder and lightning.
An enormous lightning kirin descended from the sky, striking straight at the tree demon's main body.
Boom!!!
The lightning struck its trunk, blasting away countless charred fragments. The tree demon let out an earthshaking scream, its branches flailing wildly and lashing everything around it.
But it was an S-Rank Weird, after all, with extraordinarily tenacious vitality.
Countless wisps of black mist poured from the wound in its trunk and began repairing the damage.
Lin Jin's gaze sharpened.
This thing has quite the regenerative ability.
He pressed his palms together, circulating the chakra within his body.
Sage Mode, activate!
Dark red markings appeared beneath his eyelids, and a faint circular mark emerged on his forehead. His aura surged abruptly, merging with the surrounding natural energy.
Sensing that aura, the tree demon felt fear for the first time.
"You... you're no ordinary human!"
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