The Decaying World-Chapter 114 - 107: Intrusion 3

「The next morning.」

Lin Hui gathered all the disciples of Qingfeng Temple in the training grounds.

He informed them about the Wanhua Sect and ordered everyone to be on the lookout for any suspicious individuals nearby.

As for himself, he was preparing to go out and search for the whereabouts of a Wanhua Sect expert.

It was called a search, but it was really a move from the light into the shadows.

Staying in one place meant too many people knew his location, which was just asking to be assassinated.

It was better to leave alone, hide in the shadows, and wait. Once the Wanhua Sect grew impatient, they would naturally send someone to investigate and expose themselves.

This was Lin Hui’s strategy.

After entrusting the temple’s affairs to Wang Hongshi and Xue Meng, he took his Dual Swords, threw on an outer robe, and left Qingfeng Temple.

Without stopping in the town, Lin Hui left Xinyu Town directly. He circled around the outskirts, discarded his clothes, bought a new set, changed his hairstyle, and put on a small, white good-luck doll mask he had purchased earlier.

The eyeholes of the mask were too small, so he gouged them larger with his hands. From a distance, it looked like a blind, white good-luck doll mask, with fine cracks extending from around the eye sockets, making for a rather frightening appearance.

Once his preparations were complete, Lin Hui quietly returned to the vicinity of the Lin Mansion, found a wonton shop, and sat down.

"Shopkeeper, a bowl of large pork wontons, please."

"You got it. Clear broth or chicken broth?"

"Clear broth." Lin Hui fished out seven silver coins from his money pouch and placed them on the table.

He often ate wontons from this neighborhood in the mornings when he was back. Sometimes his father and mother, Yao Shan, would also patronize the shop, so he was a regular customer.

"Brother Hui, you’re here early today." The Shopkeeper came over with a rag to wipe the table, greeting him warmly.

"..." Lin Hui’s expression froze. ’I’m in disguise... I’m even wearing a mask...’

"Ah, I get it, I get it. Plenty of people like to wear masks these days. My lips are sealed." The Shopkeeper understood instantly. Seeing Lin Hui’s expression, he knew he’d said the wrong thing. He awkwardly took the money and turned to leave.

"Wait, Shopkeeper. Is my disguise really that easy to see through?" Lin Hui called him back.

"Well, your build hasn’t changed. No amount of clothing or disguise can hide that from a distance. And there’s that ramrod-straight posture from years of martial arts and sword practice. It has this... indescribable feeling, like facing a freshly sharpened cleaver. You can’t fake that," the Shopkeeper explained, making gestures.

"...I see." Lin Hui was speechless. He’d thought his disguise was perfect, but it turned out...

He let the Shopkeeper go and sat alone on the long bench, his gaze fixed on the Lin Mansion as he pondered how to solve the problem of his posture.

If he couldn’t solve this problem, his disguise would likely be useless.

Soon, the large wontons arrived—a huge, steaming bowl of thirty.

"Shopkeeper, you didn’t put Wanfu Meat in this, did you?"

A customer at a nearby table called out.

"How could I? This is a mixed filling of chicken and lamb I minced myself last night. I added cinnamon, aged ginger, spring onions..."

The Shopkeeper and the customer chatted off to the side.

Lin Hui, meanwhile, was devouring his wontons. In just a few minutes, less than half the large bowl was left. And just then, a suspicious figure appeared.

Lin Hui subconsciously put down his spoon. But immediately, he realized something was wrong.

Because the seventeen customers at the five tables around him had all silently put down their spoons.

And that wasn’t all.

He glanced to the side and saw that in the four old shops to his right that had just opened, the staff and Shopkeepers were all unfamiliar faces. At this moment, they too were slowly putting down their work, their gazes drifting subtly toward the suspicious person.

Lin Hui turned his head slightly to look the other way.

’Just as I thought...’

To his left, all along the street, everyone had begun to change subtly.

They all slowed their movements, their eyes furtively glancing at the approaching suspicious individual.

"..."

The corner of Lin Hui’s mouth twitched.

’This is so over-the-top. They must be my father’s men. It seems Dad’s secret preparations are quite thorough.’ He felt a little relieved. ’His vigilance is much greater than mine.’

Then, he focused his attention on the suspicious person.

The person was one-armed—or more accurately, one of their arms was a metal prosthesis. Its silver-black, textured "skin" was clearly visible through the gaps in their clothing.

Moreover, this person was clearly very confident. Their androgynous face showed a calm and careless disregard for their surroundings.

Obviously, this guy didn’t think much of the people lying in ambush.

Lin Hui picked up his wonton bowl and took a small sip of the clear broth. The scallion-flecked soup flowed down his throat and into his stomach, warm and comforting.

He prepared to stand up and intercept the person. It would be bad if they actually made it into the Lin Mansion. If his sister Xiaoliu and his mother were harmed, it would be his failure.

He put down the bowl and placed a hand on the tabletop.

CREAK.

Suddenly, the main gate of the Lin Mansion opened a crack.

Lin Hui paused and looked over, only to see an old man with a black beard and a black hat, his face full of wrinkles, slowly walking out.

The old man held a saber in one hand and a staff in the other. A palm-sized bronze plaque with intricate black patterns hung around his neck.

"You..." The androgynous-looking suspicious person froze, staring at the old man with a puzzled and strange expression.

"What are you doing here?!"

He asked this in a tone tinged with suspicion and dread. His words were thick with an unidentifiable regional accent, his pronunciation flat where it should have been rolled.

"Here for a mission. Mmm, it’s been a while since I’ve moved. I’m getting a little rusty..." the old man sighed.

"A mission... What mission?" the suspicious person, the androgynous man, asked.

"Ah... the mission is..." The old man hesitated. "It’s confidential. Let’s talk somewhere else."

He glanced around, his tone mysterious.

The androgynous man hesitated. He had planned to grab his target and leave quickly but hadn’t expected to run into an acquaintance. In that case, a slight delay wouldn’t hurt.

Instantly, the two of them flickered and shot off toward the outskirts of the city.

Their speed was so extreme that to an ordinary person, it was just a blur before they vanished.

Only someone equally fast, like Lin Hui, could judge the level of their speed.

At that moment, Lin Hui’s expression was grim as he squinted in the direction the two had disappeared.

He hadn’t expected them to be so fast. This was going to be troublesome...

’If they’re this fast... then achieving my goal might be troublesome...’

Their Body Technique was about seventy percent of his own normal speed.

This was a terrifying figure. Only an ultra-high-speed expert like him understood what that speed truly meant.

Pushing his bowl aside, Lin Hui stood up, moved to a corner, and in the next moment, he too flickered and followed in the direction the two had gone.

He hadn’t gone more than a few steps when he suddenly heard a loud noise up ahead.

A deafening explosion echoed from the suburbs.

His heart stirred, and he leaped up, jumping like lightning onto the roof of a flat-topped building to his right.

From the rooftop, he looked out.

In a distant farmer’s field hundreds of meters away, a column of thick smoke billowed up into the sky.

Before he could decide whether to get closer, a dark figure emerged from the smoke and sauntered off into the distance.

He could see clearly that it was none other than the black-bearded old man who had just left the mansion.

The old man looked relaxed, chewing on something with an expression of enjoyment.

Lin Hui watched him leave, then his gaze returned to the location of the smoke. By now, the smoke had dissipated, revealing an enormous crater more than ten meters in diameter.

The crater was littered with metal fragments, the material of which looked similar to the androgynous man’s prosthetic limb.

Lin Hui was at a loss for words and continued to approach.

Before he reached the spot, he heard a series of dull thuds from his left, roughly in the ten o’clock direction from his current position, like a heavy object repeatedly smashing into the ground.

THUD!

THUD!

THUD!!

He paused, then turned and hurried in that direction.

But after only a few steps, he stopped again.

’Wait, what if this is a diversion to lure the tiger from the mountain? What if that person was just bait to draw my attention away? No, I have to go back to the Lin Mansion and continue to stand guard.’

A chill ran through Lin Hui’s heart. He immediately suppressed his curiosity, turned, and sped back to the Lin Mansion’s vicinity to wait for the enemy.

*

*

*

「The outskirts. A ruined temple.」

Squads of white-robed Summoners, holding cylindrical weapons inlaid with blue gems, had surrounded the ruined temple, sealing it off completely.

Liu Wu Jun and Liu Xiao sat atop two three-meter-tall, single-horned black horses, their cold gazes fixed on the gaping hole in the temple’s wooden door.

"Zhou Fan, long time no see. You seem to be doing well for yourself these days. Daring to sneak onto my territory to poach... It seems the ’gift’ I gave you back then wasn’t heavy enough." Liu Wu Jun’s voice was calm, yet it carried into the temple as if amplified.

"Liu Wu Jun... I haven’t done anything to provoke you, have I?! You’re going to cause trouble for me just for passing by your territory? And you even mobilized the Divine Strategy Team to surround and kill me? Aren’t you afraid of retaliation from my sect’s upper echelons?!" Zhou Fan hid behind the temple’s wooden Divine Statue, one hand clutching his abdomen. He was drenched in sweat, biting his lower lip so hard it bled from the pain.

He had just fought the black-bearded old man and lost by a single move. He’d had no choice but to agree to leave Xinyu Town, but he hadn’t gotten far before he was ambushed and surrounded by a Divine Strategy Team from afar.

In his peak condition, he naturally wouldn’t fear a Divine Strategy Team composed of Summoners.

But after the great battle with the old man, he was exhausted and his Heart and Spirit were not sufficiently alert, so he was immediately and severely wounded in the abdomen.

Just as he was about to flee, the Liu Wu Jun siblings had tracked him down.

That bastard Liu Wu Jun was notoriously difficult to deal with in the surrounding cities. Ever since he broke through to become a High Priest three years ago, the guy had been stirring up trouble and fighting everywhere, killing and injuring many experts. He only calmed down after a full year of fighting, during which he seemed to have familiarized himself with and perfected his High Priest abilities through combat.

His own clash with Liu Wu Jun had happened during that time.

Back then, he had merely been passing by Liu Wu Jun, who was eating noodles, when the latter was struck by the urge for a fight and attacked him.

After being beaten and severely injured, he was saved only by the timely arrival of his father, who was also a High Priest in the Wanhua Sect.

But when his father fought Liu Wu Jun, he only managed to gain a slight upper hand. This made Zhou Fan realize that this man was a monster he could never afford to provoke.

This time, he had assumed the relationship between the Lin Family and the Liu Family wasn’t anything special. He thought Liu Wu Jun was always busy with Inner City affairs and wouldn’t be constantly watching this area.

But he never expected...

Of course, deep down, Zhou Fan harbored some hatred for Liu Wu Jun for crippling one of his arms back then. So, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have the idea of causing some havoc and running, getting a little revenge.

He just hadn’t expected Liu Wu Jun to act so quickly.