Decaying World Chapter 284

Formidable as Song Shihan was, she could feel the imnse aura radiating from the man instantly.

An Evil Weapon perpetually radiated its terrifying presence in all directions. A Mistborn had to consciously suppress that aura to keep it hidden—but anyone who had even a sliver of a secret art could still sense the power beneath the surface.

A Mistborn. There's a Mistborn here. Song Yunhui's heart hamred.

He finally understood why the re ntion of her third brother had set Lin Xiaoliu trembling.

This place... this power—it was practically the foundation of an entire small city, concentrated in one compound.

"Little Junior Sister, co drink with when you get the chance." Pang Jiu opened his eyes and gave Lin Xiaoliu an easy smile.

"I'll make sure to tell the Dao Master that you tricked Xiaoliu into drinking again." Li Yuanyuan shot him a cold glance.

Pang Jiu froze mid-smile, scratched his ssy hair, and let out an awkward laugh. "I was joking. Just a joke, haha."

"Please follow . The Dao Master is just inside," Li Yuanyuan said quietly, turning back to the four of them. She didn't spare Pang Jiu another look.

The four followed close behind her. Song Shihan still felt as though she were moving through a dream.

A Mistborn—an actual Mistborn—had just been scolded by soone who wasn't even close to that level. And he had taken it without a flicker of resentnt.

None of this felt real.

They passed through a small connecting hall and arrived before a modest square courtyard.

A thick pear tree grew at its center, branches full and vigorously green. Leaves caught the breeze and spun slowly down. A stream had been diverted from sowhere outside to run alongside the tree, but strangely it made no sound—the water was clearly moving, yet the courtyard was utterly still. White wind chis hung in strings from the eaves behind the tree, tapping and chiming faintly.

"I have brought them," Li Yuanyuan said softly. She bowed, turned, and left.

The four of them stood at the courtyard entrance, uncertain.

"Why aren't you coming in, Xiaoliu?"

A gentle male voice drifted from beneath the tree.

Only then did they realize soone had been sitting there the whole ti. He had been right in front of them, yet none of them had noticed him at all.

He was tall, dressed in white. Black hair fell loose around him, so of it long enough to spread across the ground where he sat.

His features were unremarkable by any conventional asure, yet there was sothing inexplicably strange about him: at a glance, he seed ordinary, but the longer one looked, the more it felt as if sothing profound had sohow slipped past unnoticed.

"Third Brother!" Lin Xiaoliu hurried over, trembling gone in an instant, her face breaking into a wide, coaxing smile.

"It's rare for you to bring people to see . Tell what you need." Lin Hui reached out and pinched her soft, round cheek.

"I—" Lin Xiaoliu didn't hesitate. She recounted everything that had happened in quick, earnest detail.

"The Mingxin Society is not a problem. Don't go anywhere for now—stay here with ," Lin Hui said easily.

Song Yunhui's chest tightened. By this point, he had already let go of any thought of taking Lin Xiaoliu away. The sheer weight of what the Lin family had built here made that plain enough—a man with this kind of power would never let her walk out the door with strangers.

So that idea was dead. But watching Lin Hui dismiss the Mingxin Society so casually was its own source of dread.

Song Yunhui had seen what they were capable of firsthand. The Mingxin Society wasn't a force that one city—or two—could stand against. Behind the organization lay a power that had been entrenched in the Federation for over a millennium, a power ruthless enough to move openly against a prince. If Lin Hui didn't take them seriously, he would pay dearly for it.

"There is no need to worry." Lin Hui seed to read his thoughts and spoke first.

"I have already made arrangents. All of you should stay together in the Temple for now. Xiaoliu will look after you properly."

He rose to his feet. As for Song Yunhui and his mother—if they intended to use Xiaoliu, they had to be willing to pay the price. Better to keep them close and observe: what exactly made them so valuable that the Mingxin Society pursued them this relentlessly, and what exactly had kept them one step ahead every ti?

"But—" Song Yunhui started to speak.

His vision blurred.

In an instant, he, his mother, and Xu Yaya were no longer in the courtyard. When his senses returned, they were standing back at the white arched gate they had passed through earlier. The doors swung gently shut behind them.

A chill settled into him.

The ease with which Lin Hui had moved them—from that distance, without warning—made one thing clear: ending their lives would have been no different.

"Let's go." His mother's voice ca soft and private, carried through a sound transmission. "The Lin family doesn't yet understand what the Mingxin Society truly is. They will learn soon enough. We wait. We stay patient. When the Lin family can no longer hold the line, and things fall apart, we take Lin Xiaoliu, and we run. There is nothing to be gained arguing now—neither side will be convinced of anything until the other has seen the truth for themselves."

Song Yunhui nodded. He understood.

They turned around. Soone was already waiting to lead them to their guest quarters.

…

Black Cloud, Third Mountain.

Gongsun Xinlian stood at the edge of the dark gold palace on the mountainside. The wind whipped at her skirt; she did not move. Still, as carved stone.

"City Lord, the situation with the Hundred Seas rchant Alliance has been clarified. The parties responsible for severing fifteen navigation routes under the pretext of a temporary storm are not a single fleet—it is a coalition of five," reported Gongsun Muyan, Blood Ancestor and head supervisor, bowing low.

"And the storm itself? Where does the investigation stand?" Gongsun Xinlian frowned and turned.

"The storm is genuine. However, based on historical precedent, vessels should still be capable of navigating through conditions of this magnitude. The disruption defies reason," Gongsun Muyan replied.

"What has Extre Desire Heaven done about it?"

"We dispatched forces to suppress the storm. Bizarrely, every intervention only caused it to expand. As we prepared a second deploynt, trouble erged within the Black Army—repairs to the Relic array ca to a halt. Of the five divine artisans the Craftsn Union assigned to the work, two have gone missing, and three fell gravely ill and died. Without the Relic array to anchor their advance, the Black Army's combat strength is severely diminished. They cannot form a suppression array, so..."

"And the Taisu Martial Academy?" Gongsun Xinlian pressed. "If a few Deans act together, suppressing a storm like this shouldn't be beyond them."

"The academy is presently occupied with a series of student disappearances. The missing are dependents of elders from the Taisu Primal Disk, so the fallout has been severe. Of the three Deans with sufficient strength, one is away in the Outer City, one is conducting the investigation, and the third is needed to hold the main academy's array. Therefore..."

"Enough. I'll go myself," Gongsun Xinlian said, impatience cutting through.

A storm of this scale required top-tier Blood Ancestors—but every one of them was tied down. She could call on the Vice City Lords, but they were not free labor; without adequate compensation, none of them would move. She might as well go herself and spare the resources.

Gongsun Xinlian sighed inwardly.

She shed her long skirt, changed into her black combat armor, and blurred into motion—flying straight toward the storm's reported coordinates.

Traveling at Super Divine Speed, it took her no more than four hours to make out the vast gray tempest looming over the Jade Sea ahead.

The storm churned like a colossal mass of carded cotton, enormous and slow-roiling, shot through with sporadic flashes of blue-purple lightning.

"This scale is indeed imnse... an ordinary Blood Ancestor couldn't have handled it alone." She gauged the storm's range.

She raised one hand. A cluster of erald-green halos coiled in her palm. Branches sprouted from the light—intertwining, extending, their tips narrowing to sharp points—rapidly assembling into a spear more than four ters long.

"Mind-Spirit Descent!"

She leveled the spear at the storm from a distance, then —

Bang.

In the next instant, both she and the spear detonated, shattering into a cascade of green motes that stread downward toward the churning sea.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three gray shapes erupted from the depths of the Jade Sea, lunging straight at the falling light. Above, the wind and clouds convulsed. Daylight died. A colossal gray palm descended from the sky, vast enough to blanket the entire sea, its rumbling grip closing around the scattered green specks.

"Courting death!"

Gongsun Xinlian's voice rang out from within the light. The motes snapped together, condensing rapidly into a massive green flower bud—which then blood open, unleashing a torrent of concentrated green light from its core, dense with swirling pollen.

…

Three days later. Black Cloud, Moon Tower.

"What? Third Sister still hasn't returned!?"

In the Heart-Guarding Tower, Zhang Yao sat on his throne with a frown.

Eldest Brother Xie Chang'an had left several days prior to suppress a restless pantheon of gods in the southwest—and had yet to return. Then Third Sister had gone to pacify the storm—and after three full days, she hadn't co back either.

That was unlike her. Even if the storm gathered again each ti it was dispersed, it shouldn't have taken this long.

Zhang Yao looked down at the Blood Ancestor kneeling below, irritation working through him in silence.

He had his own clan's troubles to contend with. Two children from his household had gone missing, and the search had stalled. That the matter had reached his ears directly ant his subordinates were helpless. The situation had slipped beyond their control—and the severity of that fact was not lost on him.

Zhang Yao couldn't shake the feeling that sothing was deeply wrong. Too many crises had erupted at once for coincidence to be the explanation.

After a mont, he looked at the Blood Ancestor below.

"What is the situation at the Clear Wind Dao?"

"The Clear Wind Dao continues to operate without incident. No unusual movents have been detected," the Blood Ancestor replied swiftly.

Zhang Yao nodded. He had never agreed with the decision Eldest Brother and Third Sister had made together—but with both of them aligned, he'd had no grounds to object.

His private view was that taking in Lin Hui and the Clear Wind Dao had drawn far too much unwanted attention, to the detrint of Black Cloud City. Beyond that, he felt an inexplicable distrust of Lin Hui himself. There were simply too many things about the man he couldn't see through.

He had kept his vigilance quiet and his watch on the Clear Wind Dao close.

"And the Mingxin Society?"

"The Mingxin Society has offered to assist in investigating the storm. However, they require a promise from you first," the Blood Ancestor answered.