Venomous Bee the Assassin, a Probe from the Night

The night was black as ink, and Linhai City's neon lights gradually faded at the edge of the old district.

All manner of people gathered here, and it was also the outer entrance to the underground black market known as the Night Owl Market.

In a dark dead-end alley reeking of urine and rotting garbage, a man in a black raincoat and face mask stood silently in the shadows.

He seemed to have become one with the darkness around him, his breathing barely audible.

Venomous Bee.

A peak second-tier assassin registered with the Shadow Guild.

At least eighty, if not a hundred, targets had died at his hands. He excelled at stealth, poisoning, and using the "shadow venom-blade assassins" raised in his divine kingdom to kill with a single strike.

At that moment, Venomous Bee was playing with a dagger coated in eerie blue venom, his eyes fixed on a main street outside the alley.

"A bounty of three million just to kill a high schooler. Earning this money almost makes me feel bad."

Venomous Bee's voice was hoarse and grating, like fingernails scraping against glass.

He had been lying in wait at this intersection for a full three hours.

According to the information supplied by his employer, his target, Su Bai, often came to the black market in this area after school to buy low-grade herbs.

Although the intelligence said the kid had wiped out ten thousand berserkers in an instant during a mock battle, Venomous Bee believed it was simply because the Gu Family's idiot young master had underestimated his enemy and rushed in, only to be tricked by some kind of single-use high-tier artifact or trap.

What real ability could a piece of trash with an F-rank wasteland divine kingdom have, when he had not even broken through to the first tier himself?

As long as Venomous Bee did not give him a chance to open a divine kingdom passage, or slit his throat before he could open it, the three million would be as good as free money.

"He's here."

Venomous Bee's gaze sharpened.

At the far end of his line of sight, a teenager in a Linhai No. 3 Middle School uniform was strolling down the main street, hands in his pockets and an unfamiliar tune on his lips.

It was Su Bai.

Venomous Bee did not rush to make his move. As a veteran assassin, he had immense patience.

Like a venomous snake, he used the darkness as cover to trail Su Bai from a distance.

Su Bai seemed completely unaware that he was being followed. He walked straight into the Night Owl Market, stopping and starting before stalls that gave off strange odors.

"Boss, how much for this broken half of a sword? You haven't even washed off the black bloodstains. Isn't that bad luck?"

"Bad luck? This was pulled from a second-tier exotic beast's belly. It's stained with the beast's vengeful blood, prime material for forging sinister weapons! Five thousand, and not a cent less!"

"Five thousand? Are you robbing me? Fifty, or I'm walking."

"Get lost, get lost! Go buy yourself an iron rod for fifty!"

Venomous Bee watched Su Bai haggle at stall after stall, buying nothing but bits of scrap metal stained with blood and carrying a faint aura of contamination.

There were rusty chains, a tattered red wedding dress riddled with holes, and even a shattered tombstone dug up from some mass grave.

Venomous Bee was completely baffled.

Is there something wrong with this kid's head? He comes to the black market and buys neither cultivation techniques nor potions, picking out all this junk tainted with contamination and resentment instead?

Isn't he afraid the dark matter radiation will turn him into an idiot?

"Who cares what he buys? A dead man's belongings will soon belong to someone else."

Venomous Bee gave a cold laugh.

An hour later, Su Bai emerged from the black market with a bulging backpack on his shoulders, thoroughly satisfied.

Instead of heading for the busy main road, he turned into a secluded alley leading to the old district's shantytown.

"Heaven is helping me."

Murderous intent flashed in Venomous Bee's eyes. His figure instantly blurred into a shadow as he sped along the alley wall, closing in.

The alley did not even have a streetlight, and high walls rose on both sides. It was an ideal place to dump a body.

Ten meters from the target.

Five meters.

Three meters.

Venomous Bee could already smell the scent of living flesh on Su Bai.

"It's over, kid."

Venomous Bee leaped out of the shadows, the poisoned blade in his hand tracing a deadly blue arc through the night as it shot toward the back of Su Bai's neck!

The strike was swift, precise, and ruthless, without the slightest wasted motion.

However.

Just as the dagger came within five centimeters of Su Bai's neck.

Su Bai, who had been walking leisurely ahead, suddenly stopped.

He neither turned around nor dodged.

He merely tilted his head slightly and spoke in an exceedingly innocent tone, with even a hint of excitement.

"Following a high schooler this late at night? Mister, you're a pervert, aren't you?"

What?!

Venomous Bee's pupils contracted sharply.

How could he have noticed me?!

Before Venomous Bee could react, a pitch-black spatial rift suddenly tore open behind Su Bai without warning!

The rift appeared so quickly and abruptly that it was as though the void had suddenly opened the gaping maw of an abyss.

An overwhelmingly nauseating aura of extreme dark matter contamination, with a purity of 99.5 percent, erupted like a volcano and blasted Venomous Bee in the face while he was still in midair!

"Fuck! Cough, cough, cough!"

Caught off guard, Venomous Bee inhaled a huge lungful of highly concentrated black mist.

He felt as though his lungs had been filled with boiling sulfuric acid. A powerful wave of dizziness struck his brain, and his vision blurred.

"What the fuck kind of divine kingdom passage is this?! How can the contamination be this severe?!"

Venomous Bee was horrified.

When an ordinary false god opened a divine kingdom passage, what poured out should have been pure spiritual energy and pressure.

What came pouring out of this kid's divine kingdom was practically concentrated nuclear waste!

Just as Venomous Bee panicked and prepared to pull back.

A deathly pale, slender hand, utterly devoid of color, suddenly reached out of the pitch-black rift and seized the wrist of his dagger hand!

The hand was icily cold, like ice that had endured for ten thousand years, and it froze Venomous Bee's meridians stiff.

"Get off!"

Venomous Bee was a peak second-tier assassin, after all, with a wealth of combat experience.

He roared, divine power bursting from within him, and swung his other hand, summoning two "shadow assassin" followers shrouded in black mist straight out of the void!

Each assassin wielded twin blades. One on the left and one on the right, they slashed mercilessly at the pale arm.

"Quick reflexes. You really are a professional."

Su Bai turned around and looked at Venomous Bee, who was caught at his divine kingdom passage, grinning like a bandit who had spotted a fat sheep.

"But calling for backup in front of me? Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about my divine kingdom?"

With a thought from Su Bai, the divine kingdom rift instantly widened to a full two meters.

"Hongdou, let him go."

The pale hand obediently released Venomous Bee's wrist and withdrew into the rift.

Free again, Venomous Bee used the momentum to flip backward through the air, landing steadily on the ground five meters away.

He gasped for breath, eyeing the enormous black vortex behind Su Bai with suspicion and uncertainty.

"You little brat... there really is something strange about you." Venomous Bee wiped the black blood from the corner of his mouth. That brief exposure to the contamination had already lightly injured his internal organs.

But he did not back down.

In an assassin's dictionary, as long as the target was not dead, the mission was not over.

"I was careless just now and fell for your trick. But that's as far as your tricks go."

Venomous Bee rapidly formed hand seals, the divine kingdom core within him spinning furiously.

"Shadow Bewilderment Formation, activate!"

Hummm-!

With Venomous Bee's low shout, a dense shadow barrier instantly enveloped the alley in a thirty-meter radius around him.

The already dim alley became a pitch-black prison where one could not see a hand in front of one's face.

And in the darkness, a full fifty shadow assassins wielding poisoned blades emerged without a sound, surrounding Su Bai.

This was Venomous Bee's trump card.

Inside the shadow barrier, his assassin followers could turn invisible at any time and launch a lethal strike from any treacherous angle.

Even a third-tier demigod trapped here would be worn down to death if they were not skilled in area attacks.

"Kid, forcing me to use my barrier makes you a worthy kill."

Venomous Bee's voice drifted through the darkness, seeming to come from every direction.

"Now, I won't give you another chance to use your sorcery. My assassins will carve you into a thousand pieces!"

In the darkness, the fifty shadow assassins became fifty bolts of black lightning, attacking Su Bai at the center from every direction, above and below, leaving no angle uncovered!

The flashing blades formed a net, leaving nowhere to dodge.

Yet Su Bai, surrounded at the center of the net, showed no sign of panic.

He even leisurely pulled the tattered, hole-riddled red wedding dress he had just bought from his backpack and shook it out.

"A barrier? Assassins? Carve me into pieces?"

Su Bai sighed, his voice full of sympathy.

"Mister, do you never read a guide before you go out to kill someone?"

Su Bai thrust both hands outward.

"System! Divine Kingdom Domain, descend!"

Rumble-!!!

The shadow barrier enveloping the alley suddenly let out a violent cracking sound, as though it could no longer bear the strain.

A power purer and darker than shadow, filled with endless deathly silence and despair, burst through Venomous Bee's barrier in an instant, sweeping all before it!

Venomous Bee's vision blurred, and the scenery around him changed in an instant.

The narrow alley was gone.

The hard asphalt road was gone.

In their place were a gray-black sky and a barren wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see.

The contamination permeating the air was so thick that even he, a peak second-tier false god, felt suffocated.

"W-where is this?!" Venomous Bee's voice finally betrayed a trace of panic he could not conceal.

He discovered that he and his fifty shadow assassins had been forcibly dragged into an unfamiliar divine kingdom!

"Welcome to my world."

Su Bai's voice came from above.

Venomous Bee snapped his head up and saw Su Bai standing on the roof of an abandoned school building nearby, looking down at him.

And between Su Bai and Venomous Bee.

A ruined staircase stretched across the space, overgrown with moss and covered in dried bloodstains.

Su Bai sat on the edge of the rooftop, swinging his legs, a lollipop in his hand.

"Mister, our meeting was fate. I'm a very hospitable person."

Su Bai pointed at the staircase below, a devilish smile curling his lips.

"You want to kill me? Sure."

"First, climb some stairs to warm up."