Chapter 218: Chapter 208: Suspicious Traces in the Mountains
Liu Feiyang was aghast. He had pushed his Catching Wind and Chasing Shadows movement technique to its absolute limit, yet Zhao Lin had still located his real body.
’How did this guy see through it?’
But he had no time to think, because Zhao Lin’s elbow was rapidly growing larger in his vision.
Liu Feiyang dodged backward, simultaneously leaning his upper body back.
Zhao Lin advanced to keep pace. With a flip of his elbow, his forearm snapped open like a beast trap—SNAP—and his fist shot toward the center of Liu Feiyang’s brow.
Liu Feiyang jerked his head aside. The fist grazed the tip of his nose, but before he could feel relieved for having dodged the blow, Zhao Lin splayed his four fingers and swiped viciously at his cheek.
An elbow, a fist, then fingers—a three-strike combo, each move flowing seamlessly into the next. The ingenious application of techniques and precise timing left everyone, disciples and elders alike, deeply impressed.
As the fingers swept toward him, Liu Feiyang desperately tilted his head back, barely dodging them. He could feel a stinging pain on his face from the force of the passing strike.
Just as he breathed a sigh of relief, Zhao Lin reached out and grabbed a handful of his long hair.
"AHH..." Liu Feiyang shrieked in pain.
Zhao Lin showed no mercy, yanking him back by the hair.
It wasn’t a matter of being willing to lose his hair; Liu Feiyang simply couldn’t endure the searing pain.
Zhao Lin dragged Liu Feiyang forward by his long hair and raised a knee, aiming for his handsome face.
"Zhao Lin, stop—"
Seeing that Zhao Lin was about to land a vicious blow, Liu Shengnian immediately tried to stop him.
But Zhao Lin didn’t stop. He just pulled his knee back slightly, striking Liu Feiyang’s forehead instead, then gave him a push, throwing him to the ground.
"Flashy, useless moves!"
Zhao Lin snorted, his voice dripping with disdain.
Liu Feiyang sat on the ground in a pathetic state, so overwhelmed with shame and anger he could die. His face was a bruised purple, and his lips trembled, unable to form a single word.
He wanted to get up and fight Zhao Lin to the death, but he couldn’t muster the courage.
Zhao Lin paid him no mind, glancing up at the stands with a slight nod before striding off the field.
Yang Lin’s mouth twitched. ’Isn’t this a bit much?’ he thought, turning to glance at Zhu Hong.
Zhu Hong gritted his teeth and said in a low voice, "This is for the best. It’s better than dying on the stage of the martial assembly one day. I hope he can learn from this humiliation and become stronger."
Among the Xingyun Sect disciples, Yao Chong couldn’t help but sigh. "The day Junior Brother Zhao breaks through to the First Layer of the Blood Realm, I probably won’t be able to hold onto my title as Senior Brother anymore."
Lv Zhenglong, Miao Tianfeng, and Xiao Jin said nothing, all thinking the same thing: ’It’s not just you. The same probably goes for the rest of us.’
Liu Shengnian sighed quietly, went over to help the crestfallen Liu Feiyang to his feet, and escorted him back to the disciples’ seating area.
The commotion passed, and the internal competition continued.
The disciples who competed afterward had their wins and losses. By the time noon approached, all the matches were over, and the Xingyun Sect’s overall record placed them firmly at the top.
Zhong Yuntian and Zhu Hong didn’t linger. They promptly stood, bid their farewells, and led their sect’s disciples back home.
The few elders who had come to watch had been silent the entire time. Now, they approached Yang Lin to congratulate him.
Achieving such excellent results proved that his teaching methods were effective. The elders were finally and completely convinced.
With the internal competition concluded, Yang Lin had the disciples stay in the inner courtyard for a day. He analyzed their performances one by one and offered advice on their cultivation.
He also required the top twelve disciples to focus on their strength training.
The reason was simple: the martial assembly groups were determined by strength rankings.
The stronger one was, the lower the chance of facing a powerful opponent in their group, and the greater the likelihood of advancing.
Although strength wasn’t entirely equivalent to overall ability, this rule held true most of the time.
Throughout the history of the martial assembly, those with greater strength always had the advantage.
As for Zhao Lin, Yang Lin advised him to focus all his efforts on breaking through to the next realm.
"Your combat skills and Cultivation Technique are more than sufficient; it’s just that your cultivation level is too low. If you can reach the First Layer of the Blood Realm, you might not have to wait several years. You could make a name for yourself at this martial assembly!"
Zhao Lin thought so too and readily agreed.
「Ancient Rock Mountain.」
The winter festival had arrived. The sky was just beginning to lighten as goose-feather snowflakes drifted down.
The snowfall was especially heavy this year. Since the start of winter, it had snowed three times in succession with barely a break, blanketing the entire Ancient Rock Mountain in a vast expanse of white.
The deep snow covered everything, wrapping the land in a tight embrace.
The herb gatherers no longer came up the mountain, leaving Zhao Lin as the only person on it.
At the crack of dawn, Zhao Lin made his way up to the summit to cultivate, as was his routine.
The mountain forest was silent, save for the occasional CRACK of a branch snapping under the weight of the snow.
The snow on the ground was at least a foot deep, and it made a CRUNCH-CRUNCH sound under his feet.
Some time had passed since the end of the internal competition. Zhao Lin had been focused solely on cultivating the Sea Return Skill, trying to break through to the First Layer of the Blood Realm.
However, his progress was not smooth. The realm barrier showed no signs of loosening, which was an unfamiliar feeling for him, as his cultivation had always gone smoothly before.
’Don’t rush, everyone hits a bottleneck... Huh?’
Halfway up the mountain, Zhao Lin suddenly spotted a pheasant on the ground, lying motionless.
He walked up and gave it a kick, discovering it was frozen solid and quite dead.
The kick flipped the pheasant over, revealing a bloody, egg-sized hole in its chest.
Curious, Zhao Lin moved closer to inspect it. He found that the pheasant’s internal organs—heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys—had been scooped out and eaten by some animal, yet the rest of the body was untouched.
"Who did this?"
Zhao Lin raised an eyebrow. He found it strange. As far as he knew, there were indeed some beasts in the forest that liked to eat internal organs.
Leopards, wolves, and hyenas, for example. But after eating the organs, these animals would also eat other parts. They would only be picky when they had more food than they could eat.
But it was winter, a time when food was scarce. What creature would be so wasteful?
Zhao Lin walked on, puzzled, and gradually realized something was wrong.
Along the path, he saw seven or eight more pheasant carcasses, all in the same state of death.
"No, this definitely wasn’t done by an ordinary beast!"
Pheasants, also known as wild chickens, have colorful plumage and long tail feathers.
There’s a saying that a wild chicken only flaps its wings three times, meaning its flying ability is poor.
But in reality, pheasants are strong runners and, by spreading their wings, can fly for over a hundred zhang. Even a leopard would have a hard time catching one without a surprise attack.
What kind of beast was capable of killing so many pheasants at once?
’These pheasants must have died recently. If it had happened yesterday, other animals would have found and eaten them before dawn.’
The more Zhao Lin thought about it, the more peculiar it seemed. He picked up a pheasant and examined the wound closely, seeing that it was a puncture wound. This indicated that the predator had sharp claws.
"Strange... where are the footprints?"
There wasn’t a single footprint around the pheasant’s corpse. It was as if it had simply fallen from the sky.
Zhao Lin’s nose twitched. Following the scent of blood, he arrived at the base of a large tree.
Looking up, he saw several fresh claw marks on the trunk.
Zhao Lin was slightly taken aback as a scene formed in his mind: a flying beast had caught the pheasant, feasted on it in the tree, dropped the carcass, and then flown away.
For some reason, he was suddenly reminded of the "strange bird" he had encountered in the woods one night a month ago.
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