Decaying World Chapter 289

Crack.

Lin Hui bit off the last of the Gold Jade Coral and swallowed it. He watched the Blood Seal's evolution tir tick down at the edge of his vision; the tightness in his chest eased slightly.

The reappearance of Perfected Lord Seven Extinctions ant the Nine Skies Gate was drawing nearer through the rift. There was no other explanation for why he had been absent for five years, only to resurface so soon after it opened.

By everything Lin Hui knew of the Nine Skies Gate, Perfected Lord Seven Extinctions should have rged into the Wind Disaster and perished long ago. Within the sect, he was nothing but a legend. Why cross realms to seek him out now?

No matter how he looked at it, sothing was wrong.

Sizzle.

As his thoughts wandered, text flashed across the Blood Seal and snapped him back. He focused on the new display.

['The Eye of Life has finished evolving. One eye may be selected for modification. Please choose within ten seconds.]

The prompt blinked steadily at the edge of his vision.

Lin Hui didn't hesitate—he chose his left eye. As a right-handed person, he instinctively treated his left side as the non-dominant.

The ntal command was issued. A tingling itch blood in his left eye and lingered for more than ten seconds before fading.

Nothing seed to have changed. But in the next instant, his figure flickered, and he was standing before the full-length mirror in his room. He opened his eyes. His left eye was a shade redder than his right.

He studied it for a mont, then waved a hand. The curtains drew themselves shut, dropping the room into dimness. In the mirror, he could now see it clearly: an extraordinarily fine thread of glowing red, swimming deep within his left pupil.

He summoned the Blood Seal and checked its information.

[Eye of Life: Gathers natural radiation. At the current rate, a second Life Regeneration charge will be obtained in three years. Current Life Regeneration charges: 1.]

[Life Regeneration: Upon active trigger, completely restores the physical body and mind-spirit within one second. No side effects. Consus one charge from the Eye of Life. Can be bestowed upon mbers of the Clear Wind Dao. Automatically invalidates if recognition from the Clear Wind Dao is lost.]

One charge by default. Lin Hui gave a slow nod of satisfaction.

The greatest gap between him and the Mistborn was exactly this—their regeneration. Mistborn simply could not be beaten to death. Even he had been forced to resort to sealing them. Because of that, he could not afford to lose even once. The Mistborn could absorb any number of deaths and casualties, but a single lapse on his part would tip everything into an absolute disadvantage. Closing that gap through the Eye of Life was critical—for him and for the entire Clear Wind Dao.

Going forward, I need to find the right mont to bestow this on our core mbers. It's also ti to persuade my family to join the sect.

He reined in his mind-spirit and composed himself. What ca next was the most crucial evolution of all.

If concepts can be evolved out of nothing, what happens if I use myself as the carrier?

He raised his hand, then stopped. His hand served too many purposes; if it were injured, he pinched a strand of hair instead. Narrowing his focus onto the hair as a carrier, he issued the ntal command and set the Blood Seal's evolution in motion.

A second later, the Blood Seal returned the results.

[1—Iron Hair: Tough, long hair comparable to tal.]

[2—Soft Hair: Beautiful, long hair that is extrely supple and frizz-free.]

[3—Gel Hair: Gelatinous, long hair that will not deform and always holds a single shape.]

"…" Lin Hui was speechless. He should have known—the Blood Seal's evolutions were never arbitrary. They extended and reinforced an object's existing attributes. And hair's attributes were…

He gave up on that line and tried a different approach: crafting a secret art from scratch, as he had done with the Eye of Life, and using that as the carrier instead. After tinkering for a good while, however, he couldn't construct a secret art capable of sealing a Wind Disaster rift. He could, of course, directly evolve the Relic he had previously used to seal the rift—but he was unwilling. A Relic was a single-use item. A secret art could be used indefinitely.

After so thought, he found a way to spare himself enormous effort.

I can't build it alone—I should draw on collective intelligence. The Federation has thousands of years of accumulated experience sealing various fortresses. If I search for secret arts used to seal Purgatory and Extre Cold Heaven, I should find sothing usable.

Without further deliberation, he left brief ssages for Li Yuanyuan, then headed straight for the Moon Tower. There lay Black Cloud's rare book repository—a vast ocean of texts amassed by the three City Lords and countless Blood Ancestors.

Martial arts and secret arts were naturally the highest priority among its holdings. In the past, Lin Hui had no right of entry and hadn't even known where it was. But now, as Vice City Lord, such privileges were freely his. The title of honorary Vice City Lord carried no real authority, but its benefits were impeccable.

The repository even contained historical Divine thods from Tuyue, all free for Lin Hui's use. Only a handful of unique Divine thods and secret arts passed down directly by the Rain Palace and the Federation remained sealed.

…

The fierce wind scread across Kurong Island, battering the buildings until they swayed and groaned. Even so of the stone houses emitted the low, grinding complaint of cracking rock.

At the center of town—

Xia Si stood encircled by Su Yaping and Yun Xiazi. The mind-spirit pressure radiating from the three of them was ferocious enough to scatter the surrounding crowd in a blind panic. Those caught too close or too off-guard could not escape in ti; they were pressed flat against the ground, pinned, and struggling.

It was the pure, crushing weight of mind-spirit. The imnse gap in cultivation made it impossible for ordinary martial artists so much as to look at the three of them directly. Even the sound of their voices struck like a hamr blow to the mind—a few words were enough to drive bystanders into unconsciousness.

As a result, the pressure the trio exuded—only a fraction of their full cultivation—suppressed every living thing within a radius of several hundred ters, leaving them utterly motionless. In monts, the town went from bustling to dead silent, with only the sea wind still moving, howling through the empty streets.

"You did that on purpose?" Su Yaping frowned.

Indiscriminate mind-spirit suppression was aningless against experts of their level. When facing opponents of equal or greater strength, releasing such diluted mind-spirit amounted to little more than a breeze. Only mind-spirit compressed to a fine point and directed at a specific target had any real effect. Yet faced with their encirclent, Xia Si had deliberately triggered her own mind-spirit, baiting the two of them into releasing an area suppression alongside her. She had a reason for it.

"Senior Sister Xia is an unprecedented genius of our sect. Naturally, she has her own calculations," Yun Xiazi said lightly from the opposite side. "Dao Master has asked you to return. You've refused. There's nothing left to deliberate—let's move."

Xia Si's expression was cold. Sensing their auras pressing outward without restraint, she wondered what gave them such confidence.

"Two opponents I've already defeated think they can suppress by teaming up? Did the Dao Master give you a trump card?"

"There's no point in more words," Su Yaping said, asking one final ti. "Senior Sister Xia—are you truly unwilling to co with us to see the Dao Master?"

"The Dao Master?" Xia Si let out a short, contemptuous laugh. "That position will be mine sooner or later."

In truth, her heart was deeply conflicted. Since recovering her mories, she had been openly hostile toward Lin Hui and had wanted revenge. But if that hostility extended to the Clear Wind Dao itself, she would instantly forfeit the law seal's amplification—her strength would collapse across several realms, and she would lose the terrifying comprehension bonus it granted. That was a price she could not pay.

After long and bitter deliberation, she had arrived at a roundabout answer. As long as she remained loyal to the Clear Wind Dao and claid her place as its disciple, seizing Lin Hui's position as sect master would let her conquer her own fear and avenge her forr clan. She had accepted the logic: martial arts were martial arts; people were people. There was no reason to resent the arts he had taught simply because she loathed the man who created them. She had made this her guiding principle early on—fighting, slaughtering, comprehending, and pushing herself harder with each passing day.

She was terrified that the Clear Wind Dao's law seal might one day be taken from her. That fear drove her to seize every mont the seal still blessed her, to climb as fast and as far as she could.

Yet as ti passed and her understanding of the Wild Wind Sword Technique deepened, her fear of Dao Master Lin Hui only grew. The more she practiced, the more she felt the terrifying foundations buried within his martial arts, secret arts, and law seals.

"Senior Sister Xia, the past is long past," Yun Xiazi said, voice soft. "There's no need to cling to old hatreds. With your looks, you may well be exactly the Dao Master's type. Why not form a partnership with , return to serve at his side together, and bear a few dozen descendants for him? With your constitution, who knows—a few decades from now, a new clan might erge in the world. When your clan reappears with a bloodline stronger than the last, backed by the Dao Master's favor, it might even found a city of its own."

"…" Even Su Yaping, long accustod to Yun Xiazi's lunacy, was shaken to his core.

Xia Si was so thoroughly blindsided by the proposition that for a mont she had no answer at all.

"Is there sothing wrong with you?!" she finally managed, after holding her tongue for several seconds.

"You don't understand. Since my great revenge was achieved, the longer I follow the Dao Master, the more I feel the absolute force radiating from him. The natural world is exactly this: survival of the fittest. If one could secure such a bloodline—" Yun Xiazi pressed on with the bloodline theory.

Xia Si could stand no more. A roar tore from her throat.

"Enough!"

She didn't wait. She pulled back, launched herself skyward, and shot straight toward the sea in a blink.

Su Yaping and Yun Xiazi had never taken their eyes off her. They rose simultaneously and gave chase.

There was no hesitation among any of them. They knew each other thoroughly—years of sparring and fighting had seen to that. Three law seals manifested behind them as golden talismans, condensing and hovering in the air. Their bodies swelled and expanded, every motion dense with compressed Void Force and True Force.

In an instant, the three collided at speed, converging on a single point.

Boom!

"Wind!" The word left all three mouths at once.

Three towering tornadoes erupted from the sea, each stretching a thousand ters into the sky, sweeping up curtains of water and driving them straight into the heavens. The center column blazed pale gold; the two flanking it were pale blue shot through with gray.

The three tornadoes ground and clashed against one another at furious speed. Close enough to observe, one would have seen massive cascades of electrical arcs and sparks detonating at the churning boundaries where they t—the terrifying discharge produced by their sword blades colliding at blinding speed.