Chapter 322: The True Prey

Between the ruined walls of the abandoned commercial street, the ground trembled incessantly under dense claw strikes.

Zhang Wei's monster army surged from all directions, the mutants' howls merging into a piercing wave; dozens of dominated humanoid slaves trod on broken stone and rubble, their eyes rolled up, saliva hanging from the corners of their mouths, tightening the encirclement in neat unison.

That mutant giant dog crouched on the highest concrete slab at the edge of the ruins, its bone-armored head lowered, blowing two puffs of white vapor from its nostrils.

Zhang Wei rode on the giant dog's back.

His hair, turned deathly pale by the backlash of the Divine Gift, floated in the bloody wind, paired with blood-red eyes and a grin stretched to its limit, making him look exactly like a madman crawling out of a grave mound.

His gaze fell on the center of the encirclement.

There stood a person.

Black short hair, a slender build.

The fabric on his left shoulder and chest was torn open, revealing the healed scar underneath—inflicted half an hour earlier by two wild spiritual deceivers.

Lin Fan.

He simply stood in the middle of the ruins, head lowered, his expression unreadable.

Both hands hung at his sides, his right index finger wearing an ancient bronze ring whose pattern flickered faintly in the red moonlight.

From his collar, several strands of black hair slowly crawled out, winding along his neck to his shoulder, lightly looping once, like some living thing being coquettish.

Seeing this, Zhang Wei felt a bit overinflated in his heart, and thus wasn't very alert.

His mind was filled with that lone red dot on the phone radar—another Divine Gift, hanging on the finger of this frail youth.

A prey delivered to his door.

"Yo, what's this?"

Zhang Wei poked half his body out from the giant dog's back, tilted his head to one side, and sized up Lin Fan with the tone one uses to look at a zoo's little white rabbit.

"High schooler? Little bro, did you wander onto the wrong set?"

Lin Fan did not lift his head.

More strands of black hair sprang from his collar, silently winding around his wrist.

Zhang Wei waited two seconds, got no response, and his smile deepened.

"Fine, playing deep, huh."

He straightened his waist, flung his deathly pale hair back, and raised his right hand high, holding the Seal of Domination; its dark red light bathed him, making his yin and yang seem out of place.

"Do you know how much that thing in your hand is worth?"

Zhang Wei's speech sped up, filled with an uncontainable excitement.

"Fourteen Divine Gifts—I've already taken two. Add yours, that makes three. Three! Do you even grasp what that means?"

"In this world, whoever holds the most cards is the banker."

"I might already be the person closest to God."

"And you, you're not worthy to be the banker, little bro."

Looking down from above, he pointed his index finger toward Lin Fan's direction.

"So—hand over your stuff. If you do, I can grant you a quick death."

He paused.

Zhang Wei added:

"Hmm... actually, why should I give you a quick death?"

He lifted his chin, nostrils flared to the sky, and burst into loud laughter:

"Kill him. Tear him apart! I want him to die in the utmost despair and pain!"

The giant dog exploded into action.

Several hundred kilograms of mutated muscle shot out like a compressed spring, its claws gouging four white tracks in the rubble as it led six mutants of varying sizes in the vanguard charge.

Afterward, dozens of slave formations marched forward in lockstep, pressing ahead.

The air was churned into turbulence, dust and debris rising into a gray wall.

The encirclement rapidly shrank.

Fifteen meters.

Ten meters.

Five meters.

Lin Fan finally moved.

He lifted his head.

His movement was slow, as if he had just awakened from a long dream.

His left eye was clear.

His right eye was deep blue.

His heterochromatic pupils stood out starkly under the sky-full red light, yet inside there was no fear, no panic, not even the pupil dilation that basic adrenaline spikes bring.

It was a kind of indifference that seemed to seep out from his bones.

The indifference of watching ants fight.

He raised his right hand, lightly brushing his fingertip over the black hair wound around his arm.

Those strands felt his master's touch and affectionately rubbed against his palm.

Lin Fan rubbed those icy strands of hair, his lips moving slightly.

His voice was so soft that only the 'her' wrapped around him could hear it.

"Xin Yu."

"Please."

Opposite him, the leading mutant had already come within three meters.

The mutated dog enslaved by Zhang Wei opened its Bloody Maw, its canine teeth flared outward, each as thick as an adult man's thumb, and the throat deep in its mouth emitted a thunderous low growl.

It lunged.

The scarlet claws tore through the air, carrying enough momentum to gut a body, and rushed straight at Lin Fan's face.

One meter.

Half a meter.

The claw tips were less than twenty centimeters from Lin Fan's nose.

Lin Fan twisted the copper ring on his index finger.

There was no incantation, no charging, no flashy effects.

It was just a twist.

Red light burst forth.

It wasn't a gradual light— it was a column of light that erupted from the ring's surface in an instant, piercing from the ground to the sky and illuminating the entire abandoned commercial street brilliantly.

Then the ground beneath their feet began to scream.

It wasn't metaphorical.

The concrete slabs emitted a sharp, audible wail, a frequency vibration produced when the molecular structure of a solid was violently broken in an instant.

With Lin Fan as the center, a radius of three hundred meters.

All the ruins—collapsed floor slabs, broken Reinforced Steel Bar, brick and stone reduced to powder—began to liquefy within 0.3 seconds.

Correct.

Liquefaction.

The hard concrete turned like butter dropped into a microwave, its surface first bubbling finely, then whole sections collapsed and melted, becoming a viscous dark fluid.

The Reinforced Steel Bar bent and softened under the heat, emitting a creaking metallic wail, and eventually sank into the ever‑expanding liquid mire.

And when these liquefied ruins mixed together, the temperature plummeted sharply.

It wasn't cooling.

It was a sudden drop.

The thermal radiation reversed within a second into bone‑piercing cold, a chill not of physical low temperature but a ghostly aura that pierced outward from the soul's fissures.

The entire sheet of liquefied ruins, in the blink of an eye, solidified into a deep black pool.

The water surface was pitch black, reflecting no light.

The bottom was invisible.

Fine white cold vapor rose from the surface, and upon touching airborne dust it formed rice‑sized ice crystals that fell down with a rustling sound.

The Mutant giant dog's paws stepped into empty air.

As its scarlet claws brushed Lin Fan's nose tip, the "ground" beneath its feet vanished.

The over‑ton mutated muscles, together with its knife‑and‑gun‑impervious bone armor, plunged with a "splash" into the Black Water.

The splash did not erupt.

The black surface merely rippled slightly, then swallowed the entire beast whole.

It was like a stone dropped into tar.

The six Mutants that followed had no time to brake.

The first one's front paw just touched the water, and the whole leg was yanked at the ankle, and with a "pop" it vanished into the water. It struggled to crawl back, but its body sank deeper; the Black Water climbed up its fur, enveloping its waist and abdomen, then its back, and finally it did not rise above its head.

The entire process took less than four seconds.

It didn't even have time to make a sound.

The second, the third, the fourth.

Plop, plop, plop.

Like dumplings dropping.

The formation of the controlled slave units fared even worse.

Their steps were a mechanical march locked by the seal's Rules, the front line stepped into void and fell, while the rear could not stop, stepping directly onto the heads of those ahead and piling into the water.

More than thirty people fell into the water within ten seconds.

The black surface erupted with countless bubbles.

Some slaves briefly regained a moment of self‑awareness in the water—the choking of drowning pierced the seal's mental lock, and their mouths finally opened, emitting a suppressed wail that had been held for an unknown time.

But quickly, those sounds were drowned out by another movement coming from beneath the surface.

Gurgle.

Gurgle gurgle.

Something was moving underwater.

Zhang Wei fell off the giant dog's back.

His giant dog was gone, the concrete slab beneath his feet had also liquefied, and he survived by desperately clutching a Reinforced Steel Bar that hadn't fully melted in the final fraction of a second.

The Reinforced Steel Bar was scorching hot and yet icy cold.

The two extreme temperatures simultaneously seared his palms, his skin sizzled, and a burnt smell rushed into his nostrils.

He couldn't bother to cry out in pain; he hung in mid‑air, scrambling upward.

When he finally scrambled onto the edge of a remaining floor slab and lay there panting heavily, he glanced down.

Then his pupils snapped shut.

In the black pool below, the monster army he had boasted about was nowhere to be seen.

The Mutants, the slaves, all vanished.

The water surface returned to calm.

As if nothing had happened.

"My... my soldiers..."

Zhang Wei's lips trembled, his pallid hair clung to his forehead, soaked with cold sweat.

He turned his head.

Lin Fan stood about twenty meters away from him.

Standing on the water's surface.

Yes, standing on the water's surface.

The boy's shoe soles pressed against the pitch‑black water, neither sinking nor getting wet, as steady as walking on solid ground.

The black hair spilling from his collar unfurled, half hanging behind him and dragging on the water, half coiling around his arms and waist, drifting lightly in the cold air.

His right eye, that ghostly blue flame, shone more than ten times brighter than before.

The blue light reflected on the Black Water, sending out cold, glittering ripples.

Lin Fan watched Zhang Wei, hanging on the edge of the floor slab, in utter disarray.

There was no anger, no murderous intent in that gaze.

Only one thing that chills a person from the tailbone up to the Heavenly Spirit Cover.

—Bored.

He felt bored.

"What did you just say?"

Lin Fan's tone was flat and casual, as if recalling something unimportant.

"Oh, right."

"You said I'm unfit to be the dealer."

Zhang Wei's fingers clutched the edge of the slab, his Nails flipped outward, all ten fingers bleeding. A few broken syllables forced out of his throat, trying to speak but unable to form a full sentence.

Lin Fan glanced down at the Black Water beneath his feet.

Below the surface, something moved slowly.

The swallowed Mutants and slaves were being gradually broken down by some entity at the bottom; occasionally a severed arm or half a skull would surface, only to be pulled back down by the Black Water.

That is not water.

It is Xin Yu's domain.

The copper ring can alter the environment, while Xin Yu can cause drowning in water.

The copper ring handles altering the environment, Xin Yu handles using the environment.

This Divine Gift lets Xin Yu's ability be maximized.

It became more than ten times stronger.

It can be said that wherever Lin Fan goes, it is within Ling Xinyu's Murder Rule zone.

Lin Fan stopped here, waiting here.

He was waiting for that entire army to step in.

Zhang Wei finally reacted.

He is not a hunter.

From the moment he stepped onto this commercial street, he has been prey.

The black hair coiled around the boy suddenly tightened, then silently from its tips extended a pale, slender woman's hand.

The hand lightly rested on Lin Fan's shoulder.

Like a girlfriend's everyday gesture of wrapping around her boyfriend from behind.

So gentle it gave one goosebumps.

Lin Fan patted the back of the hand and kept moving forward.

Behind him, the temperature of the black pool dropped another three degrees.

The bubbling sounds from beneath the surface grew increasingly dense.