Chapter Eighty-Eight: I, Lin Qiye, Love to Conceal My Hidden Tricks!

As the saying goes, enemies meeting again only sharpen their hatred.

It was the sort of moment that made the eyes burn bright.

The figure before him was beyond doubt the leader of the Li City Jianghu Faction—
the local tyrant who ruled over countless townsfolk with insolent arrogance;
the very man who had orchestrated the assassination campaign, led five Golden Walkers in pursuit of Lin Qiye, and nearly sent him to the Ninth Heaven of the dead.

Lin Qiye narrowed his eyes, amused.

Interesting. Last night, when they broke through, he had intended to find a chance to settle Li You.
But yesterday’s thought had ripened by this morning. He had chanced to meet this man.

“All right, then, even Heaven refused to let this feud last a single night!”

Lin Qiye smiled, drew his Great-Blaze Ring Greatsword, held it aloft in midair, and waited for Li You’s force to approach.

At that moment Li You had not even noticed him. In truth, in Li You’s mind Lin Qiye was already a corpse.

Yesterday he had tried to cross the Black-Mist Marsh too.
He had lost thousands—five thousand Silver Walkers and more than forty Golden Walkers to the Twisted-Neck Sculpture—and could only slink back to Li City in disgrace. Not long after, Song Shu returned in the same state.

His losses were smaller than Li You’s, which made Li You even happier. In all the survivors there was no sign of Lin Qiye. No doubt, Lin Qiye had died in the Black-Mist Marsh.

Li You believed it absolutely.

Why else hadn’t he returned with Song Shu?

He laughed.

“Finally, that son of a curse is dead. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

That very night, Li You hosted a feast to celebrate.
By dawn, when scouts from Li City confirmed the evil spirit sculpture in the Black-Mist Marsh had been utterly annihilated, Li You laughed again.

“Fine, fine—Heaven itself has favored me!”

“Removed a dangerous thorn from my side!”

“Talent means nothing if bad luck follows it. Useless, all of it!”

With a cruel grin, Li You fled with his men toward Xing City.
A wild sprint for an hour and a half, and then they finally reached the outskirts.

The first time he saw Lin Qiye, Li You did not register who it was.

It was merely a boy who resembled Lin Qiye, a Xing City youth among many others. So alike could be found in this world.

And besides, the aura around this youth was utterly different from the old Lin Qiye he knew.

The youth stood proud. A straight long blade angled toward the ground; a wild wind rose, flinging his sleeves into snapping, fluttering strips.

His presence was feral and unruly, wildly self-assured.
Nothing like Lin Qiye as Li You remembered him.

Yet as Li You drew nearer, confusion tightened his eyes, then astonishment, then wariness.

“You... you’re Lin Qiye?”

“How are you alive? Were you possessed by a demon spirit?”

Li You was thunderstruck.

Lin Qiye suddenly gave a sharp laugh.

“Possessed?”

“Li You, has your skull been kicked by a mule? Don’t you even recognize your own elder, Lin Qiye?”
“Have you forgotten how your three thousand five hundred Silver Walkers and seventeen Golden Walkers died?”

He said it as if each name were a nail in a coffin.

Li You first stared, then his expression shifted violently, then hardened into ferocity.

“So it’s you,” he said.
“Of course it’s me.”

Seeing Lin Qiye’s defiant swagger, Li You’s killing intent surged. He snapped out his long sword, his murderous gaze locking onto Lin Qiye.

But for just one instant, he sensed something wrong.

“This one managed to silence seventeen of my Golden Walkers without a whisper. Could he already have crossed into a true Platinum Walker?”
“He must have concealed his full strength. If he had no chance of killing me, why would he show himself so brazenly?”

At that thought, a cold sweat broke out on Li You’s scalp. His vigilance rose.

In the next instant he twisted and backed away in a fierce retreat. He had felt, plainly, the confidence in Lin Qiye’s posture—an instinctive refusal to wrestle here.

Lin Qiye’s brows rose slightly. He smiled.

“As expected, you chose flight. I was waiting for this moment.”

Had he truly wrestled Li You straight on, it would have cost him half an hour of heavy effort and still be uncertain.
Li You had already begun surging into the second stage of the Convergence Path; he was no easy kill.

For a cleaner, safer end, Lin Qiye had thought in a flash—a single move: to go wildly reckless in Li You’s very presence.

Li You was meticulous and highly cautious, the kind of fighter who, once he sensed Lin Qiye’s talent, would immediately plan an ambush. Such men are always suspicious by nature.

So Lin Qiye chose the loudest, most arrogant pose, provoking Li You.
Li You, furious at first, would inevitably abandon caution in the end—and then choose to run. At that moment, Lin Qiye would have his chance.

As expected, Li You’s reaction matched Lin Qiye’s expectation to the breath.

Lin Qiye’s lips curled with contempt, his eyes treating Li You like a corpse.

As he let out a bitter laugh, a near-solid phantom of an Ancient Saint rose slowly behind him—
chill-eyed and looming above Li You’s back.

Then Lin Qiye vanished from the spot.

The next breath, he was already there behind Li You.

The Ancient Saint’s shadow descended like a storm cloud crushing downward.

In a heartbeat—

The wild slashes came.
A savage, dazzling river of blade-light, each stroke fiercer than the last, heavier, surer, more crushing than the one before.
Thirty-six slashes overlapped; each impact cracked like thunder.

The air split. Sky and earth seemed to rend.
For a span of ten thousand meters, light itself twisted and was swallowed.

Wherever one looked, darkness thickened.

Within that blackness, a river of blades brimming with murderous intent surged forward, vast and relentless—
a comet striking the moon, a galaxy falling from heaven—smashing into Li You’s back.

Li You’s body numbed; his heart hammered so hard he felt it rise and fall inside his chest.
His face drained of color at the sight of that blade-current.

He flailed, trying to raise his sword in defense.

But no one can both flee and defend against equal-level forces at the same time.

Li You had planned to run. In his panic, how could he withstand Lin Qiye’s Thirty-Six Ancient Saint Slashes?

He was cut and hurled dozens of meters, feet gouging trenches in the ground before crashing into a great boulder far away, smashing it to碎.

Though he had blocked the fatal blow, knife-light cut through him in strips.
He was reeling with wounds, bleeding wildly, his garments torn half to ribbons.

Rage, disbelief, and raw terror flashed in his eyes.

“You... you truly crossed into the Convergence Path and became a true Platinum Walker?”

“How is that possible? It has only been four days since your first successful Traverse. How could you become a Platinum Walker in four days?”

Li You’s pupils convulsed with shock. He gasped in a sudden rush of cold air.

“You’re mad! You dare to break to Platinum in so short a time? Aren’t you afraid that weak foundation would have you killed in Platinum space? Foundation is worth a hundred times a realm level!”

Li You stared at Lin Qiye as if staring at a lunatic.

Even prodigious heirs of great clans do not leap to Platinum in four days. Foundation must be accumulated.
Battle experience must be accumulated.
Some prodigies fight a few hundred bouts in each plane, until every crisis becomes effortless, only then do they break through.

Only then can they gather devastatingly deep foundation.

Lin Qiye’s path had been abandoned millennia ago. Too reckless. Too shallow. No true base at all!

Then it clicked for Li You, and he spat out blood.

The Ancient Saint Thirty-Six Slashes had struck his vital grip like a hammer; his organs had nearly shifted out of place.
Yet his fighting power still held—hardly diminished.

“To kill a rootless Lin Qiye? Child’s play,” he sneered, poison in his eyes. “You can do that.”

“This was my mistake. I was tricked by your theatrics and fled like a fool.”

“Still, I must admit, you little bastard are cunning. You actually frightened me.”

“But I’ve seen through your ploy. From here on, you die for certain. I am a well-rooted Platinum Walker on the verge of the second stage of the Convergence Path. Before me, you’re nothing but chaff and mud!”

His confidence was absolute.

Lin Qiye’s features stayed cold as stone. Li You’s Golden and Silver Walkers around him stood open-mouthed, frozen dumbstruck, as if they had witnessed something that could tear the world in two.

“Mas-ter Li... Master Li...” one of his confidants whispered, trembling.

“Why are you interrupting? Move aside if you want to watch a death!”

He turned to Li You’s voice, and Li You’s expression never softened.
“Can you really kill me? Why don’t you check your own chest?”

Li You dismissed him with contempt.

“What’s the point? You’re dead already. And yet you’re still changing the subject.”

He sneered again—but before he finished, his throat turned bitter.

Again he coughed blood hard and dark.

“Why did I spit blood out of nowhere?” he asked, bewildered.

Then another thought came—he looked at his chest.

What he saw turned him white with panic.

His chest had been emptied somehow, at some point.
All five vital organs were gone, cleanly wiped away. A cavity gaped where his ribs should have held him; beyond it, through his own chest, lay a blue sky with no cloud in miles of distance.

“Agh—”

Li You drew in a sharp breath.
The pain ripped from his chest up into his skull.

It was agony. Unbearable.

He clutched his chest and vomited blood uncontrollably.

“Impossible—impossible!
“When did it happen?
“How could this be?
“How did you do this so fast? How did you hide a hidden strike from me without my noticing even a breath?”

He shouted his questions with force. But he was already dying.

His body began to convulse; his eyes dimmed, yet his fear and curiosity only deepened.

Lin Qiye smiled, cold at the corners of his mouth.

“Just a moment ago—while you were running away. I knew your nature was suspicious, so I baited you into flight, then hid a covert strike inside the loudest display of force. I let it pass beneath your perception.”

Li You’s eyes widened with horror. He gritted his teeth, bitter all over.

“I hate it. Why I didn’t kill you three days ago!”

“I hate it!”

At the edge of death, he thought back to that night’s attempted ambush.
If those fools beneath him had caught Lin Qiye and pinned him down, all these twists would not have happened.
He would still be alive now.

“Loathsome! I had every move planned, yet you still slipped through!” He hissed. “Loathsome!”

Now there was nothing left in Li You but regret.
If he had one more chance, he swore he would hunt Lin Qiye himself and hack him into pieces.

Listening to those final words, Lin Qiye smiled with contempt. In one smooth motion, he severed Li You’s head cleanly from his neck.

The head flew high, slammed heavily to the ground with a crisp, shattering sound.
Blood spread across the earth in a dark pool.

Li You’s skull rolled and came to rest at Lin Qiye’s feet, face up, still staring at him, as if in death he still refused to let go of hatred.

Lin Qiye lifted his right foot and crushed it with one deliberate step.

“It’s over.”

“Cross my path another life and you’ll do well to turn aside. I remember grudges very well.”

A hard, derisive laugh.

Around them, all the walkers stared in stunned silence like stunned beasts.

“He... he is Lin Qiye?”
“He can’t really be a demon spirit, can he?”
“He must be possessed by one!”

“Run! Run and alert everyone!”

The walkers scattered like birds flushed from brush.

Lin Qiye shook his head slightly and, with a cold glance, counted the remaining Jianghu Faction forces: a little over three thousand Silver Walkers and forty-three Golden Walkers.
Then he was gone.

Not long after, more than three thousand three hundred Silver Walkers and forty-three Golden Walkers lay with severed bodies, heads tumbling and rolling nearby like pebbles in a basin.

“The Jianghu Faction of Li City, not one of you was innocent. I kill you in the name of Heaven’s law.”

He let out a low snort, staring at the field of bodies without a flicker of feeling.

A soft humming rose again, vibrating with purpose.

The Great-Blaze Ring Greatsword in his hand shivered faintly, threads of red light flowing along the edge like a blade being quenched.

Lin Qiye lifted a brow.

“After so many kills, have you absorbed enough killing intent and karma to birth a weapon soul?”

“No, that doesn’t make sense,” he mused. “A silver-grade long sword shouldn’t have a flaw in the edge and still form even a seed of a weapon soul. Could it be that any blade I touch can become an absolute masterpiece? What will the future hold for me?”

He raised the blade and studied it closely.

Its quality alone was not enough to awaken one.
Then it had to be the master.
The master was too powerful.
With him, even a dog and chicken might reach heaven.

“Fine then. Since you’ve kept me company so long, when I reach Xing City I’ll take you to a master-grade smith and forge you into a golden-quality weapon. My stock of forging materials is no shortage, anyway.”

He sheathed the greatsword and looked over the dead without emotion.

“Such a shame. If this were in the main world, I could have claimed a hundred million Walk Points from this massacre.”

“Such a shame... truly a shame.”

In the main world, killing yields no spoils. Not even one treasure can be taken, not even entry into an enemy’s Life-Lamp Gem space.
To seize another’s wealth, one must fight and plunder only when walking the Great Thousand World, using demon-artifact shards.
That mechanism made it plain: the main world simply does not allow killing.

And here, Lin Qiye winced inwardly.

“Exactly one hundred million Walk Points. I lost one hundred million to the Painted-Skin Demon not long ago. Now another hundred million gone.”

It was only a complaint, though.
If it meant sacrificing his lifespan to use demon-artifact shards for the sake of looting, Lin Qiye would refuse a thousand times over.

His instinct screamed not to touch those things at all.
The risk was enormous.

On one hand, the main world does not support mutual killing.
On the other, the more he learned of demons, the more he felt the artifact shards were deliberately released by the demon race to lure walkers into using them, and some hidden scheme ran through them.

There might be punishment in using them.

“Who can even know what the demon-artifact shards truly are? I will never use them casually,” he decided.

“Enough of this. Let’s go to Xing City. Chen Fan and the others are waiting. The outskirts are never truly safe.”

He glanced once toward the distant Diamond-level demon nest. A cold shiver passed through him.
He quickened his pace and left the crime scene at once.

Xing City.

A prosperous second-tier city in the heart of the region. Compared with Li City, Xing City was hundreds of times safer.
At a distance of two thousand meters one could see a dark-red city wall.

The wall was cast from colossal Sunfire Stone blocks.

Sunfire Stone is a rare stone, rich in solar essence. At night it can glow with a sunlight-like radiance that demons find hateful and uncomfortable.
Demons below the Platinum rank, like snakes recoiling from arsenic, shun Sunfire Stone.

Even Diamond-level demons and special-class demons become strangely pronounced under its light.

Because of this unique effect, Sunfire Stone is an extremely precious resource. Only wealthy cities can afford to raise their walls from it.

Lin Qiye, gazing at it, nodded in admiration.

“No wonder a prosperous city can afford such extravagance. The common folk here are far safer, and the defenses are far stronger. Even a Diamond-level demon assault would not easily tear down this stronghold.”

As he spoke, a procession of roughly one hundred thousand displaced people passed by his side.

The crowd was long and mixed—commoners, walkers, and ragged slaves whose chains were already broken.
They had clearly been rescued.

Lin Qiye made way for them.

His eyes scanned the line and finally settled on one cluster: a young Diamond Walker and three Platinum Walkers among the migrants.

The Diamond Walker drew his gaze. A handsome youth of seventeen or eighteen, wounds and scabs across his clothes and arms, but his spirit bright and unbroken, the vigor of youth clear in his brows and eyes.

“Captain Wen, with this rescue alone we brought in more than ten thousand people,” one of them said. “How are we to settle them? Will the families of Xing City even make space?”

“Yes... the numbers keep growing. There is no room left.”

Captain Wen frowned.

“I don’t know. Only someone else will have to fret over that. In any case, there will be a way to place the civilians.”

As they debated, Captain Wen suddenly furrowed his brow and locked on to Lin Qiye with faint displeasure.

“Hey, youngster. Why do you smell so blood-soaked? You just killed a few thousand walkers.”

Before Lin Qiye could react, Wen closed the distance in a flash and laid a hand on his shoulder.

At that instant Lin Qiye’s heart seemed to stop.
The blood in his veins turned cold, almost to ice. A terror unlike any he had known pinned him to the ground; even his wings would not unfurl.

Cold sweat streamed down his forehead.

“Why did you kill so many people?”

The young man’s voice was smooth as warm silk, yet as cold as frost—like a criminal being interrogated.