It was already afternoon when he returned to Shadow City.
When he pushed open the courtyard gate, Big Guy was squatting in the open area.
“Go smoothly?”
“Smoothly,” Jiang Lin replied, sitting on the stone steps opposite him. “The goods were delivered without any surprises.”
The days that followed were as peaceful as a stagnant pond without a single ripple.
Jiang Lin took on several small tasks in succession—escorts, patrols, and inventory counts. They were all minor, inconsequential chores.
Each time, he performed his duties in a perfectly ordinary manner, neither standing out nor making mistakes, maintaining the exact behavior expected of a newly promoted Holy Son candidate.
After those tasks ended, he made his customary appearances at the Candidate Hall's regular classes.
He would trade a few blows with others on the stone ground, losing a match or two and winning a match or two. His record looked decent but didn't draw unwanted attention.
The Bishop at the cathedral didn't summon him privately again, and the old-robed man seemed to have completely vanished from Shadow City, never appearing in his sight again.
But Jiang Lin knew they hadn't let their guard down.
That extremely faint sensation of being watched would still occasionally brush against his back from behind a window or around a corridor corner.
It was just that the intervals grew longer and the duration shorter, as if they were slowly confirming that this line didn't need to be watched constantly.
Seven days passed.
On the night of the eighth day, Jiang Lin locked his door and sat cross-legged in the darkness for fifteen minutes.
He checked the quest he had accepted once more.
【Quest】: Hunt Secret Cult High Priest · Blood Raven
【Description】: Secret cult High Priest “Blood Raven,” real name unknown, 6th-Rank late stage. He specializes in blood-attribute spells and curses, and operates year-round in the secret cult's controlled territory west of the Ash Mountains. Recent intelligence indicates he has broken through to the 7th-Rank and is moving toward the Ash Mountains. Quest Objective: Confirm his exact location and eliminate him.
【Difficulty】: High
【Required Authority to Accept】: Mid-Rank Apostle and above
【Rewards】: Holy Light Origin (Large Amount), Quest Points, Apostle Experience
After confirming there were no unusual aura fluctuations outside the courtyard walls, he stood up, took a pre-prepared dark cloth from his spatial ring to cover his nose and mouth, pushed open the window, and leaped into the night.
He didn't take the streets of Shadow City. Instead, he slipped along the base of the city wall to an abandoned drainage outlet in the west of the city, crawled into the moss-covered tunnel, and stopped in a depression filled with gravel and dead branches.
He took out the pre-prepared array base from his ring, embedded three dark magic crystals into the slots, and activated the short-range teleportation array paired with the abandoned watchtower in Bramble Town.
A silver-white light flashed and vanished.
In the next instant, he was already standing on the ground floor of the dilapidated watchtower.
The array patterns covered by loose soil beneath his feet were still intact. He squatted down to check them, confirming they hadn't been tampered with.
Then he walked out of the watchtower and darted through the pitch-black wilderness in the night, heading further west of Bramble Town.
Most of the moonlight was obscured by thin clouds, and the contours of the ground blurred into a mass of shadows of varying depths.
He maintained his Space Perception at its maximum range, bringing the auras of all living creatures within a radius of several miles under his monitoring.
There were no patrol teams, no night travelers, and not even wild rabbits or foxes approached this area.
He already had a general direction of Blood Raven's range of activity from the two mercenaries.
He walked along the outskirts of the abandoned village north of Bramble Town—the one described as having its entire population drained dry—and discovered a few extremely faint, dried-up black bloodstains on the parched dirt road.
The trail extended toward the northwest, disappearing intermittently among the piles of jagged rocks.
He followed the trail for about an hour and found a concealed cave entrance beneath a weathered rock ledge.
The cave entrance was small, barely large enough for a person to pass through while bending over. The rock surfaces around the edges were covered in dark brown, dried bloodstains.
The air was thick with the smell of rust and a sickly-sweet, decayed mixture.
Jiang Lin stopped outside the entrance and extended his Space Perception into the cave.
The cave passage was not deep. After about sixty yards, it suddenly opened up into what looked like a naturally formed underground cavern.
Deep within the cavern, a cold, viscous aura pulsated slowly, like a large, sleeping beast breathing evenly.
That was him.
Jiang Lin did not go any deeper.
Once he confirmed the target's location, he backed out silently, retraced his steps to the watchtower, and began to set up the altar.
This time, he was more meticulous than ever before.
He had plenty of time, the location was remote, and there was no need to worry about being interrupted.
On the open ground near the inner wall of the watchtower's ground floor, he carved three consecutive circles of rune lines, nested layer upon layer and interconnected with one another.
The outer layer was a binding array, the middle layer was a spatial anchoring array, and the inner layer held the core nodes of the sacrificial array.
Each layer was connected by hidden guiding circuits to ensure that they would all activate simultaneously in an instant.
He embedded three high-purity dark magic crystals into the array cores.
He also added a spatial blast rune beneath the base of the altar as an emergency backup.
If the sacrifice spiraled out of control, he could at least use the explosion to destroy both the altar and the target.
With everything properly set up, he squatted beside the altar to check the integrity of all the lines one last time. Then he stood up and walked back toward the cave.
The night grew even darker.
The moon was now completely swallowed by the clouds, leaving only the sound of the wind in the wilderness and the occasional cry of a night bird from the distance.
He lingered outside the cave entrance for a moment, adjusting the circulation of his magic essence to its optimal state, before bending over to slip into the narrow opening.
The cave passage felt deeper than it had appeared during the day.
He moved silently between the rock walls, his feet stepping on soft sand without making any unnecessary noise.
As he rounded the final bend, the space ahead suddenly opened up.
The cavern's ceiling was about thirty to forty feet high. A few dark crystals embedded in the rock crevices emitted a dim, almost stagnant red light.
The rock on the ground was worn smooth and shiny, as if someone had walked back and forth in this area for years.
Toward the inner center of the cavern, a figure sat cross-legged on a half-man-high rock.
It was a slender figure wrapped in a worn, dark red robe. The hem of the robe draped over the edge of the rock, stained with dark brown spots.
Most of his face was concealed by a hood, revealing only a pale chin and a few stray locks of grayish-brown hair.
His breathing was steady and long, and he was surrounded by an extremely faint, dark red halo that flowed slowly over his body like a thin mist.
The moment Jiang Lin stepped into the cavern, the figure moved.
A face lifted from beneath the hood.
It was a face so thin it was practically skeletal, with high cheekbones and deeply sunken eyes. His skin had an unhealthy, grayish-white hue.
Most striking of all were his eyes. Deep within his dark red pupils, tiny specks of light seemed to spin slowly, like two flames compressed to their absolute limits.
The figure spoke slowly, his voice dry and grating, like sandpaper scraping across sheet metal.
“You stepped on my blood.”
Jiang Lin looked down at the sole of his boot.
Indeed, on that rock ledge outside the cave entrance, he had stepped on those dried brown stains.
He hadn't paid attention to it at the time, as those marks were scattered all over the area.
“Perfect,” Jiang Lin said, looking up. In his right hand, he already gripped the materialized Eight Extremities Holy Sword, its white-gold blade wrapped in the deep blue power of the ice soul. “Saves me the trouble of looking for you.”
Blood Raven stood up from the rock.
When he stood, he was much taller than he appeared while sitting. He was tall and slender, and his movements carried an unnatural stiffness in his joints, as if he hadn't engaged in any large-scale physical activity in a very long time.
The dark red light around him suddenly brightened, and the sickly-sweet, decayed scent in the air grew heavier.
“Someone here to hunt me?” The dark red pupils locked onto Jiang Lin's figure like a falcon that had finally spotted its prey in the night. “The secret cult dares to make a move on me? Or were you sent by the Temple?”
“You don't need to know.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Jiang Lin moved.
Instead of using Instant Light Flash, he swept forward close to the ground with Starlight Flash.
His body pulled into an almost imperceptible afterimage through the dark red halo, the tip of his Eight Extremities Holy Sword thrusting straight for Blood Raven's throat.
Blood Raven's reaction was incredibly fast.
As if he had sensed the trajectory of the sword qi in advance, his body leaned back slightly while his right hand lifted, fingers splaying open.
A claw shadow condensed from dark red blood mist formed at his fingertips, carrying a rotten, sickeningly sweet stench as it clawed toward Jiang Lin's face.
Jiang Lin tilted his head to dodge the claw shadow. Changing his sword's trajectory mid-air, he slashed horizontally at Blood Raven's ribs.
Blood Raven didn't dodge or block, letting the dark red blood mist condense into a layer of viscous armor over his body.
The edge of the sword lost most of its force as it sliced into the armor, leaving only a shallow scratch.
But that scratch wasn't what Jiang Lin was looking at.
The instant the tip of his sword made contact, he caught the fluctuations on the surface of the armor.
It became unstable in a split second, as if the density of the blood mist was uneven—thick in some areas and thin in others.
This was a classic sign of someone who had just broken through to the 7th-Rank and whose power was not yet fully stabilized.
He quickly made a judgment in his mind.
“It's not stable yet,” Jiang Lin said quietly. He casually parried another incoming blood claw as he retracted his sword. “You haven't even finished digesting the power you absorbed, and yet you came here to hide and process it.”
Blood Raven's movements paused for a fraction of a second.
A light flashed deep within his dark red pupils, as if a truth he wished to keep hidden had been laid bare.
“5th-Rank,” he said, his voice turning a fraction colder. “A mere 5th-Rank dares to come hunt me. Have the Temple's apostles grown tired of living?”
Jiang Lin didn't answer.
His sword forms had already unfolded.
Holy Light Armor condensed on his body, blocking out the blood mist that attempted to seep in from the sides.
Blood Raven curled his fingers into a claw and thrust toward Jiang Lin's chest, his fingertips wrapped in blood mist so thick it was almost liquid.
Wherever the mist passed, even the rock on the ground was corroded, leaving tiny pits.
Jiang Lin didn't take the attack head-on. Sidestepping to dodge, he swung the Eight Extremities Holy Sword downward, slicing through the remaining blood energy of the claw.
But Blood Raven's goal wasn't this single strike.
The moment Jiang Lin sidestepped to dodge, Blood Raven's other hand silently reached into the shadows on the ground.
An extremely thin thread of blood seeped out from a crevice in the rock, gliding along the ground to silently wrap around Jiang Lin's ankle.
Jiang Lin's Space Perception caught the anomaly when the thread of blood was only half a foot away from his ankle.
He didn't look down. He simply slid half a step to the side while pressing his sword down, sweeping the blade along the ground to cut the blood thread in half.
Blood mist exploded from the severed ends, turning into a cloud of sickeningly sweet, dark red vapor in the air.
“Nice reaction,” Blood Raven sneered, his lips curling. “But how many more times can you dodge?”
Within Jiang Lin's perception, Blood Raven was consuming his magic essence much faster than he was.
Every time he condensed a blood claw, released blood mist, or laid out blood threads, it required a massive expenditure of dark-attribute magic essence and life force.
His recovery speed couldn't keep up with his consumption, and that slow decline felt as if the unstable realm inside his body was being repeatedly torn apart.
He needed to amplify this decline.
He couldn't afford to waste time with Blood Raven in the cavern any longer; he had to lure him to the watchtower.
“Now!”
Aided by Starlight Flash, his body swept across several yards, passing right by Blood Raven's side as he dashed toward the cave entrance.
As he passed the edge of the cave entrance, he swept the Eight Extremities Holy Sword, slicing down several loose rocks and blocking half of the passage.
This wasn't meant to actually stop Blood Raven, but to force him to speed up his pursuit.
Sure enough, Blood Raven didn't stop.
His body turned into a blurry, bloody shadow in the dark red light as he pursued him toward the entrance.
He shattered the rocks blocking the passage with a single claw swipe, navigating the narrow tunnel in an almost contorted posture, like a snake slithering through rock crevices.
Jiang Lin burst out of the cave.
Without pausing, he ran at full speed toward the watchtower along the route he had come.
The night wind howled in his ears, and something viscous and heavy was rapidly closing in through the darkness behind him.
When he was less than a hundred paces from the watchtower, he slowed down.
It was a "exhausted" kind of slow, making his footsteps heavy, his breathing ragged, and his figure appear as if he were about to collapse in the night.
He stumbled into the entrance of the watchtower's ground floor, staggering near the base of the altar. He propped his left hand against the wall, lowering his head as he gasped for breath.
Behind him, the dark red figure followed closely.
Blood Raven paused at the entrance of the watchtower, his gaze sweeping across the dilapidated interior.
His eyes lingered on Jiang Lin for a moment, then swept over the rune patterns on the ground, which were mostly covered by loose soil.
“An altar?” His voice carried a hint of surprise, which quickly dissolved into a low chuckle. “You certainly know how to pick your own burial ground.”
He stepped into the watchtower.
The very instant both of his feet crossed the threshold, Jiang Lin raised his left hand, splaying his fingers, and pressed down toward the ground.
The outer binding array activated instantly. Dark red light welled up from the rune patterns on the ground, forming a ring about twenty feet in diameter that enveloped Blood Raven.
Blood Raven's body suddenly stiffened.
His feet felt as though they were glued to something, and the step he had begun was suspended mid-air, only half-completed.
He looked down at the ring beneath his feet, then looked up at Jiang Lin, true wariness appearing in his dark red pupils for the first time.
“You did this on purpose.”
“Yes.”
Jiang Lin stood up straight.
His exhausted posture vanished completely, and his breathing became perfectly calm.
...
Rate on N.U.
