"Demon Necromancer," Lin Yi said quietly. Not loudly. Just placing the information in the arrangent he was building. "Level 166." He paused. "Higher than the first guardian."
He then looked at the six empty slots on the halo in his inventory. "The jade collection they’ve been running for however long they’ve been here." Another pause. "All of it becos mine at once."
The Greater Qilin’s head tilted slightly, the evolved awareness that had developed since the jade absorption orienting toward the distant formation with the specific quality it brought to targets it was assessing as the next objective.
Lin Yi looked at the hideout for another mont. Then he reached for Boundless Step.
The most advanced movent capability in his skill set. All movent techniques activated simultaneously in a single, perfectly layered execution. Phantom Void Step’s spatial distortion bending distance itself. Heaven Step’s spirit-converted montum converting internal energy into forward propulsion. Chain Void Step’s consecutive activation removing the natural cooldown windows that would normally limit repetition. All three converging into a single, unified output that bypassed any positional constraint currently affecting him, as if space had montarily lost its authority over his movent.
The distance between his current position and the Nine Yin Demon Guild’s hideout was substantial. Not just far, but far enough to matter even at his level. Heaven Step alone would require multiple transitions, each one precise, each one consuming ti no matter how efficient. Boundless Step erased that limitation entirely. It did not shorten the journey in incrents. It collapsed it. What would have taken several movents beca one seamless execution, a single step that treated distance as irrelevant.
He activated it.
Fwoosh!
-----
The hunter called Sun Yong was the first to register sothing.
He had been reaching for a ration pack from the supply arrangent along the island’s interior edge when the air at the center of the formation changed. Not loudly. Not with the explosive pressure displacent of a high-power skill being discharged. Just a change. The specific spatial quality that experienced hunters learned to recognize as the residue of a movent technique that had operated at very high output.
He turned.
A figure was standing at the center of the island. Inside the defensive periter that the formation had established, inside the range of Sun Tian’s still-extended spiritual sense, inside a space that had registered as clear fourteen seconds ago.
"Intruder!"
The warning ca from three directions simultaneously, three hunters who had been in different positions around the island reacting to the sa registered presence at the sa mont. The three who spoke were the three closest to the center. They were also the three who moved.
Three A-Rank hunters. Three simultaneous attacks, coordinated by the instinct of people who had trained the response to unexpected close-range threats until the coordination was reflexive. One from the left, one from the right, one from above, the three angles designed to eliminate the retreat options that any two-directional attack left available.
Then—
The Greater Qilin appeared.
Heaven Step. The optimized version, the lower-cost higher-range spatial transition the qilin had developed through observation and comprehension rather than acquisition, carrying it from wherever it had been positioned outside the spiritual sense range to the center of the island in the sa instant Lin Yi’s Boundless Step had placed him there.
It arrived between the three attacking hunters and the intruder they were targeting.
All three attacks hit the Greater Qilin.
The Greater Qilin did not move from the impact. The evolved vitality that the jade absorption had built into its form, the density of sothing that had undergone the Greater Qilin transformation, absorbed three simultaneous A-Rank attacks with the specific result of producing a sound and producing nothing else.
Then it responded.
Not with a technique. Not with the Heaven Step it had learned or the traversal patterns it had developed. But with the raw capability of what it was at its current tier, the output of a Greater Qilin operating in the high-dao environnt of the Allheaven Expanse after absorbing enough celestial jade energy to undergo fundantal transformation.
Three hunters.
Three results.
The sa result for all three, delivered in under two seconds, the Greater Qilin’s response carrying the absolute quality that things at its tier produced against targets below it.
The three hunters were gone.
The island went completely still.
Every hunter in the Nine Yin Demon Guild who had been present, the eleven survivors of the fifteen who had returned plus whatever additional mbers were stationed at the hideout, was frozen in the specific way that people freeze when sothing happens that their threat assessnt frawork does not have a category for. Movent stopped. Sound stopped. The casual ease of the post-collection wind-down was gone as though it had never been present.
Sun Tian turned from the island’s edge.
His spiritual sense had registered the arrival late, which was the first piece of information, and the information it carried was still being processed. A spatial transition of sufficient speed and spatial output to bypass a level 166 S-Rank’s extended passive perception. Three of his hunters gone in under two seconds by sothing standing at the center of his hideout that his thirty-eight years of operational experience did not have a file for.
He looked at the figure standing at the center of his island.
Then he looked at what was standing beside it.
His expression did not collapse. Thirty-eight years had built a face that could maintain composure in genuinely unexpected situations. But sothing in the set of his features changed, the specific adjustnt of a man who had just revised his estimate of his situation from manageable to sothing he did not yet have a label for.
"Who," he said. His voice was level. The voice of a man asking a question he needed the answer to before deciding what ca next.
*****
A/N: Thanks for everyone who is reading, I have listened to every complaint and anded any inconsistency. I’m planning a mass Chapter release, if you want to support the effort, gifts and golden tickets will be appreciated.
For gifts:
1 Dragon = 5 Chapters
1 Magic Castle = 10 Chapters
Above Castle = 15 Chapters
Also reviews will be appreciated, and I don’t delete reviews, I read them and improve
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