The steep, unpaved ravine swallowed Railin's figure the moment he leaped off the granite edge of the landing plateau. The air inside the gorge was drastically different from the open mountain heights. It was suffocatingly thick, heavy with the stench of decaying spirit vegetation, wet earth, and a sharp, metallic copper tang that clung to the back of the throat.
Dense, swirling tendrils of purple and crimson fog blanketed the jagged rocks, cutting visibility down to less than fifteen feet. High above, the tangled canopy of twisted, blood-red pine trees blocked out the midday sun, plunging the valley floor into a perpetual, ominous twilight.
Railin landed softly on a bed of damp, purple moss. His knees bent slightly to absorb the impact, making no more sound than a falling leaf. He did not immediately rush forward. Instead, he pressed his back against the slick surface of a giant granite boulder, remaining in absolute stillness for several seconds.
His lower dantian hummed with quiet power. The Ninth Level Spirit Refining core pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm, automatically driving tiny threads of dark Ashen Devouring Qi through his skin to form an invisible, protective layer. The natural hallucinogenic toxins floating within the red mist attempted to seep into his pores, but the moment they touched his skin, they were instantly neutralized and absorbed into his core as trace amounts of raw energy.
Swish.
Railin expanded his spirit sense outward. Enhanced by the dense obsidian soul sphere floating in his upper dantian, his mental perception cut through the thick fog like an invisible blade, mapping out a two-hundred-yard radius around him.
The terrain was treacherous. Razor-sharp purple briars grew in tangled thickets between the rocks, their thorns glistening with clear, sticky poison drops. Beneath the layer of moss lay hidden fissures and sudden drop-offs leading into pitch-black subterranean caverns.
More importantly, his spirit sense picked up life signatures.
About a hundred and fifty yards to his right, hidden near the mouth of the main valley trail he had just bypassed, three spirit qi signatures were shifting impatiently. They were the scouts Senior Disciple Lu had posted to track his movements.
"He didn't come down the main path," a faint, muffled voice echoed through the damp air, carried by the mountain breeze. "Did the commoner brat drop into the Western Ravine?"
"Impossible," another voice sneered softly. "The Western Ravine is infested with Thorn-Scale Vipers. Even a peak Ninth Level disciple wouldn't foolishly jump down there without a squad. He must have used a light-body talisman to sprint down the eastern ridge. Move out! If we lose his trail, Senior Brother Lu will flay us alive!"
The heavy rustle of leather boots against wet stone signaled their departure as the three scouts began moving toward the eastern slope, completely unaware that their target was standing less than two hundred yards away in the very ravine they had dismissed as impassable.
A razor-sharp, cold smile twitched at the edge of Railin's lips beneath his shadow-hood.
"Predictable," Railin murmured softly.
He didn't pursue the scouts immediately. He understood the fundamental rule of hunting in an unmonitored boundary zone: before taking down human prey, one must first master the environment.
Railin unslung the rolled leather map he had purchased from the hunchbacked clerk in the Ordnance Pavilion. Unbinding the iron clasp, he spread the map flat against the granite rock. His eyes scanned the detailed topographical lines, marking his current position in the Western Ravine.
According to the map, this ravine cut straight through the outer mountain ridge, leading directly toward the lower basin of the Blood-Mist Lake. However, halfway through the ravine lay a red-marked zone labeled: The Thorn-Scale Nest — Third-Rank Beast Territory.
In the cultivation world, spirit beasts were categorized into distinct ranks matching cultivator realms:
* First-Rank Beasts: Equivalent to First to Third Level Spirit Refining.
* Second-Rank Beasts: Equivalent to Fourth to Sixth Level Spirit Refining.
* Third-Rank Beasts: Equivalent to Seventh to Ninth Level Spirit Refining.
* Fourth-Rank Beasts: Equivalent to Foundation Establishment realm experts.
A Third-Rank beast possessed thick hide, dense spirit qi, and primitive instincts far more violent than ordinary animals. For a standard squad of inner disciples, encountering a pack of Third-Rank beasts in low-visibility fog was a nightmare scenario.
For Railin, it was a mobile energy reserve.
Railin rolled up the leather scroll, tucked it back into his sleeve, and moved forward. He did not use light-body spells that generated bright spirit light or loud air bursts. Instead, he utilized the basic shadow-stepping footwork he had refined during his days in the Outer Academy, gliding from shadow to shadow with lethal efficiency.
Ten minutes into the ravine, the air grew noticeably colder. The purple moss on the ground gave way to dry, skeletal white bones scattered among the rocks—the remains of mountain deer, giant eagles, and even a few long-decayed human skeletons wearing shredded disciple robes.
Hiss...
A low, guttural vibration echoed from the thick briar patch directly ahead.
Railin stopped instantly, hovering behind a thick pine trunk.
Twenty feet away, coiled around the base of a rotting spirit tree, was a massive reptile. The creature was over twenty feet long, its thick body covered in dark crimson scales shaped like razor-sharp iron wedges. Its eyes burned with a sickly, yellow glow in the dim purple fog, and its long, black-forked tongue flicked out, tasting the scent of blood in the air.
A Thorn-Scale Viper—a peak Third-Rank Spirit Beast, equivalent to a Ninth Level Spirit Refining cultivator.
The viper's triangular head turned slowly toward the tree where Railin stood. Its terrifying senses had picked up the faint heat signature of a human body, despite Railin's aura suppression.
Screeech!
With a terrifying, high-pitched shriek, the massive serpent uncoiled like a compressed steel spring. Its heavy body shattered the thick wooden trunk of the spirit tree into splinters as it lunged forward, opening its wide jaws to reveal two eight-inch fangs dripping with black, corrosive venom.
The speed of the strike was astonishing, tearing through the dense fog like a crimson spear.
An ordinary Ninth Level disciple would have panicked, drawing a shield talisman or rolling backward to gain distance.
Railin did not move an inch until the viper's dripping fangs were less than three feet from his face.
"Too slow," Railin whispered flatly.
Flick.
From the obsidian soul sphere within his upper dantian, an invisible, razor-thin thread of mental energy launched forward.
The Eclipse Soul Scripture — Soul Needle!
Thwack!
There was no physical clash. The invisible Soul Needle pierced straight through the viper's thick crimson scales, bypassing its iron-like skull armor and plunging directly into its primitive sea of consciousness.
STRIKE!
The massive reptile froze mid-air. Its glowing yellow eyes instantly went dull and lifeless. The terrifying spirit qi radiating from its red scales vanished like a blown-out torch.
The immense momentum of its twenty-foot body carried it forward, but it was no longer a deadly predator—it was merely a massive, brain-dead slab of meat.
THUD!
The giant snake crashed heavily onto the damp moss at Railin's feet, its tail twitching violently in a final, involuntary muscular reflex before falling completely still.
A single soul strike had instantly extinguished the beast's spiritual consciousness without damaging a single scale on its body.
Railin looked down at the dead serpent, a faint glint of dark satisfaction flashing in his eyes. The Eclipse Soul Scripture was proving to be exponentially more terrifying than he had initially anticipated. Against beasts or cultivators without specialized mental defenses, it was a silent, absolute execution tool.
Railin did not waste time admiring his work. He stepped forward and placed his bare palm flat onto the serpent's cold, scaled chest, right over its heart vessel.
"Devour," Railin commanded coldly.
VRRRR!
The black, liquid vortex in his lower dantian roared to life. A intense, dark gravitational force erupted from his palm, sinking deep into the viper's corpse.
The creature's rich, Third-Rank beast blood, its refined vitality, and the dense spirit energy stored within its beast core were violently extracted. Thick, glowing streams of crimson energy rushed out of the carcass, flowing up through Railin's palm and straight into his meridians.
Gurgle...
The twenty-foot serpent shriveled up at a visible rate. Its thick muscle tissue collapsed, its scales turned gray and brittle, and its blood dried into black powder within seconds.
Inside Railin's lower dantian, the liquid pool of Ninth Level spirit qi churned happily, absorbing the pure, unrefined beast essence. The Ashen Devouring Technique automatically burned away the beast's wild, chaotic nature, refining the energy into dense, dark blue liquid qi that settled into his foundation.
Crack.
The dried husk of the Thorn-Scale Viper shattered into gray dust, scattered by the damp mountain wind.
Railin withdrew his hand, taking a deep, long breath. He felt a warm, potent surge of energy circulating through his limbs. The slight fatigue from his morning breakthrough was completely gone, replaced by a surge of raw physical strength.
"One Third-Rank beast core is worth fifty low-grade spirit stones," Railin murmured, wiping his palm with a clean cloth. "And its vitality is purer than standard pills."
He looked deeper into the misty ravine. Now that he had confirmed his ability to instantly kill and devour Third-Rank beasts without attracting attention, this deadly boundary zone had turned into his personal hunting ground.
For the next hour, Railin moved through the Western Ravine like a silent phantom of death.
He did not avoid the spirit beasts inhabiting the valley; he hunted them.
A pack of four Blood-Claw Wolves (Second-Rank Beasts) attempted to flank him from the briar thickets; Railin flicked four invisible Soul Needles simultaneously, dropping all four wolves mid-stride before devouring their vitality into fine ash.
A massive Iron-Hide Bear (Third-Rank Beast) guarding a cluster of rare spirit herbs in a damp cave was pierced through the skull by a concentrated Soul Needle, its massive body shriveling into dust within twenty seconds under Railin's palm.
By the time Railin reached the end of the Western Ravine, where the terrain opened up into a wider, fog-drenched forest valley, he had devoured two Third-Rank beasts and six Second-Rank beasts.
His Ninth Level Spirit Refining base had fully consolidated. The dark liquid pool in his lower dantian was sixty percent full, dense as molten iron and crackling with microscopic specks of black lightning. His physical skin had acquired a faint, polished sheen, hardened by the absorbed vitality of the beast hides.
Just as Railin was about to step out of the ravine shadow into the main forest valley, his spirit sense twitched.
Stop.
Railin melted back into the shadow of a colossal, red-leafed cedar tree, suppressing his spirit qi to absolute zero.
Two hundred yards ahead, standing in a small clearing surrounded by towering stone pillars, were three inner disciples.
They wore the familiar silver and gold robes of the Imperial Dragon Peak. It was the exact trio of scouts who had been waiting near the landing plateau earlier. They had doubled back after failing to find Railin on the eastern slope, and were now resting near a natural stone spring, holding wooden communication talismans in their hands.
"Dammit!" the leader of the scouts, a scar-faced youth with a Ninth Level cultivation base, cursed loudly, slamming his fist against a stone pillar. "Where the hell did that commoner brat go? He couldn't have vanished into thin air!"
"Could he really have taken the Western Ravine?" a second scout, a skinny youth holding a steel spear, asked nervously, looking back toward the dark ravine Railin had just exited. "That ravine is the territory of the Thorn-Scale Vipers. If he went in there alone, he's probably already digested bones by now."
"Don't be a fool!" the scar-faced leader snapped angrily. "Senior Brother Lu explicitly ordered us to bring his corpse or confirm his location near the central lake. If we go back empty-handed, Brother Lu will break our legs and throw us to the enforcement hall! Search the clearing again! He has to pass through this valley if he wants to reach the inner trials!"
Behind the shadow of the giant cedar tree, Railin watched the three scouts with dark, analytical eyes.
He did not show himself immediately. He observed their posture, verified that no other disciples were within a one-mile radius, and checked their communication talismans. The talismans were standard Voice-Transmission Jades—if triggered, they could send a short audio message to Senior Disciple Lu within a five-mile range.
I cannot let them trigger those jade tokens, Railin calculated silently.
He reached into his sleeve and pulled out the three Shadow-Veiling Array Flags he had purchased from the old clerk.
With a gentle flick of his wrist, Railin infused a microscopic thread of spirit qi into the bases of the obsidian flags. He tossed them lightly into the air.
Swoosh.
The three flags flew silently through the dense fog, driving themselves deep into the damp mud surrounding the stone clearing in a perfect triangular pattern, fifty yards away from the scouts.
Buzz...
A faint, translucent barrier of shadowy light rippled outward from the flags, instantly encapsulating the stone clearing. The array suppressed all spirit qi fluctuations and blocked all external sound and transmission signals within its boundary. To anyone standing outside the fifty-yard circle, the clearing appeared entirely empty and silent.
The scar-faced scout leader suddenly stopped talking. He felt a sudden, unnatural drop in the surrounding temperature, as if the air itself had turned into liquid ice.
"What... what is this?" the skinny scout gasped, looking around in sudden panic as he noticed the faint dark barrier flickering around the clearing. "The spirit qi transmission is cut off! My jade token isn't working!"
"Enemy attack! Get into formation!" the scar-faced leader roared, instantly drawing a broad steel saber that flashed with fierce yellow spirit qi.
Step.
A single footstep sounded from the fog.
Railin stepped smoothly into the clearing. His dark navy robes fluttered lightly in the damp breeze, his hood pulled low, revealing only his pale chin and a faint, razor-sharp smile.
"Looking for me?" Railin asked softly, his tone flat and unhurried.
The three scouts froze, their eyes widening in shock as they recognized the lean youth standing before them.
"Railin!" the scar-faced leader yelled, though a surge of relief quickly replaced his initial panic. He sneered, raising his heavy saber. "You actually dared to step out of hiding! You commoner fool, you walked right into our hands!"
"Hand over your storage pouch and break your own cultivation base!" the skinny scout bellowed, trying to bolster his courage. "Senior Brother Lu has ten peak Ninth Level brothers waiting at the Blood-Mist Lake! You have nowhere to run!"
Railin looked at the three scouts as if looking at dead men walking. He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't even take his hands out of his wide sleeves.
"Senior Disciple Lu sent three Ninth Level assassins to my abode last night," Railin murmured softly, taking a calm step forward. "They died in silence. And now, he sent three dogs to track my trail in the mist..."
He raised his eyes, his dark pupils reflecting the cold, starless void.
"...Did he truly believe the results would be any different?"
"Arrogant brat! Kill him!" the scar-faced leader screamed, lunging forward with explosive speed. His broad saber slashed downward, generating a heavy crescent blade of yellow spirit qi designed to cleave Railin in two!
At the same time, the skinny scout thrust his steel spear toward Railin's chest, while the third scout drew two throwing daggers coated in green poison.
They attacked simultaneously from three directions, executing a flawless, lethal joint strike!
Railin didn't dodge. He didn't retreat.
BOOM!
From his upper dantian, the black obsidian soul sphere violently spun.
Railin unleashed three Soul Needles at once!
Flick! Flick! Flick!
Three microscopic, invisible beams of concentrated mental force shot through the air, piercing the foreheads of all three scouts in a fraction of a millisecond!
THWACK!
The yellow saber qi mid-flight instantly collapsed into thin air. The green poison daggers slipped from the third scout's fingers, clattering uselessly against the wet stone.
All three scouts froze mid-attack, their faces contorting into expressions of utter, unimaginable horror.
"My... my sea of consciousness..." the scar-faced leader gasped, his eyes filling with blood as he dropped his saber. His hands clutched his head in agony, his mind feeling as though an iron stake had been driven into his brain, shattering his soul to pieces.
Before any of them could even scream, Railin's figure blurred.
He appeared directly before the scar-faced leader like a dark phantom. His right hand shot out, wrapping around the leader's throat like a steel claw.
"Devour," Railin whispered in his ear.
VRRRRR!
A violent black whirlpool materialized at Railin's fingertips.
"AGHHH!" The scar-faced leader shrieked as his Ninth Level spirit qi, his vital blood essence, and his soul remnants were violently ripped out of his body in thick, dark blue streams of energy.
His skin shriveled into sickly gray leather within seconds. His muscle mass collapsed, his eyes dried into hollow sockets, and his cultivation base was devoured whole into Railin's dantian!
Thud.
The leader's dried husk dropped to the ground, crumbling into black dust.
The remaining two scouts, their minds already paralyzed by the Soul Needles, watched their leader turned to ash with absolute, unadulterated horror. They tried to run, but their legs refused to move, their nervous systems completely shattered by the mental attack.
Railin turned his dark gaze upon them.
He didn't say a single word. He glided forward, resting one hand on the skinny scout's forehead and the other on the third scout's chest.
VRRRR!
Twin black vortexes erupted simultaneously.
The two scouts twitched violently as their life-force and spirit qi were rapidly drained. Within ten seconds, their shriveled bodies collapsed into twin piles of fine black powder, mixing with the wet mud of the clearing.
The silence returned to the clearing.
The entire battle—from the activation of the array flags to the complete eradication of three Ninth Level inner disciples—had taken less than twenty seconds.
Railin stood in the center of the clearing, his eyes closed as he digested the massive influx of fresh human spirit qi.
The spirit essence of three Ninth Level inner disciples was vastly superior to beast vitality. It was refined, pure, and rich in cultivated martial essence. As the dark streams settled into his lower dantian, the liquid pool expanded rapidly, reaching eighty-five percent capacity!
Sparks of dark blue lightning crackled around his fingers, and his meridians thrummed with overwhelming power. He was now just a step away from reaching the absolute peak of the Ninth Level Spirit Refining realm!
Railin opened his eyes. He waved his sleeve, generating a small wind gust that blew the three piles of black powder out of the clearing, leaving no trace behind.
He picked up the three storage pouches dropped by the dead scouts, along with their steel weapons and jade tokens.
Opening the pouches, he found:
* Sixty mid-grade spirit stones.
Three bottles of High-Grade Healing Pills.
A sealed parchment scroll bearing a temporary map of the Blood-Mist Lake with red cross marks indicating planned ambush points.
Railin unrolled the parchment map, a dark, cold smile curving his lips.
"Senior Brother Lu..." Railin murmured softly, his voice echoing quietly inside the shadowy array boundary. "Thank you for the directions."
He retrieved his three Shadow-Veiling Array Flags from the mud, sweeping them back into his sleeve. The dark barrier dissolved, and the dense red fog of the mountain rolled back into the clearing.
Without a second glance at the battle site, Railin stepped forward, heading straight toward the central basin of the Crimson Mist Mountain.
The hunter was coming for the main pack.
See you in next chapter.....