Concrete dust rained down as the thing that was Chen Bailong landed where Lin Mo's hideout had been. The Martial Master's arrival cracked pavement blocks like eggshells. His rage was a physical heat haze.
Gone.
Lin Mo watched from a shattered water tower half a kilometer away, the ring's new sensory boost turning night into grainy twilight. Chen Bailong's ki burned like a magnesium flare – vast, unstable, lethal. One hit would atomize him.
[ENERGY: 50 UNITS]
[OPTION: FLESH REINFORCEMENT (MAX: 15 UNITS)]
[OPTION: MERIDIAN OVERDRIVE (TEMPORARY ASCENSION)]
He chose neither. Survival meant vanishing. Blackwind Gorge waited.
The gorge wasn't on maps. Locals called it "Bone-Chewer Canyon." Lin Mo found the entrance hidden behind a landslide – a jagged fissure exhaling air colder than a tomb. The ring pulsed, its hunger sharpening. Energy nearby. Pure. Buried.
Inside, darkness swallowed light. Stalactites dripped mineral-rich water. His enhanced hearing caught skittering – too many legs, too fast. Deeper in, faint blue luminescence clung to vein-like deposits in the walls. Spirit Stone traces.
He pried a chunk loose with his knife. Dull, inert rock. The ring yawned, unimpressed. [ENERGY YIELD: 0.02 UNITS. INEFFICIENT]
A guttural click echoed. Lin Mo froze. Six reflective eyes, each the size of a fist, blinked open twenty meters ahead. Segmented chitin scraped stone. Ironback Cave Spider. Warrior-level predator. Ambusher.
It moved. Not a charge. A silent, skittering flow across ceiling and wall. Lin Mo's knife felt like a toy.
Think. Adapt. Feed.
He let it come. Let its venom-dripping fangs snap inches from his face. He smelled carrion breath. Then he grabbed, not the spider, but the stone ledge it perched on.
[ABSORB: EARTH ASPECT KI (TRACE)]
The ledge crumbled. The spider shrieked, tumbling. Lin Mo was already moving, not away, up. He landed on its broad, armored back.
The ring flared. Not for ki. For the weak point. Glowing crosshairs burned in his vision – a hairline fissure where head met thorax.
He drove the knife down. Not with muscle. With 5 Units of Flesh Reinforcement flooding his arm.
CRUNCH. Chitin split like rotten wood. Green ichor fountained. The spider spasmed, dying.
Lin Mo plunged his hand into the wound. [ABSORB: BIO-ENERGY]
Raw life force, thick and pungent, flooded him. [ENERGY +12 UNITS] [TOXIN RESISTANCE +7%] Alien instincts – patience, vibration-sense, predatory stillness – flickered in his mind before fading.
He wiped gore from the spider's lair. Behind its nest of bones, the wall glowed brighter. A seam of raw, uncut Spirit Stone pulsed like a buried star.