The dull, heavy knocking rang out with peculiar harshness through the silence of midnight.
The courtyard was deathly still. Not a single footstep came in answer.
Yet Lin Mu, standing outside the gate, wore an utterly placid expression.
He did not turn and leave as an ordinary visitor might. Instead, he reached out with perfect ease and laid his hand against the heavy door.
A slight push. A tooth-grating creak of friction sounded — the gate had not been barred at all, and it swung open under Lin Mu's hand.
Without the slightest hesitation, he stepped over the threshold in long strides and walked straight into the pitch-black main hall of Lin Feng's residence.
"You're courting death!"
In the very instant Lin Mu's foot crossed into the room, a low shout erupted from the deepest reaches of the darkness.
And then—
Whsh! Whsh! Whsh!
Three keening whistles of splitting air tore out in sequence!
Metal Rend Leaf Gu, each imbued with Rank 2 Primeval Essence!
They flew in a vicious, cunning triangular formation, sealing off every avenue of retreat ahead and boring straight for Lin Mu's fatal points!
Faced with such a venomous assault—
In the darkness, his frame shifted to the side — a movement minute, yet flawless to the last hair's breadth.
Swish—
The three all-conquering blades of Metal Rend edges brushed past the hem of his robe and the hair at his temples, so close they could not shear away even a single corner of his clothing.
At last they buried themselves deep into the wooden door behind him with three sharp thuds.
Having strolled past the lethal ambush as though taking a leisurely walk through his own garden, Lin Mu casually brushed at nonexistent dust on his sleeve.
His voice, carrying a trace of mockery and composure, broke the death-stillness of the room.
"Young Master Feng, have you forgotten even me? It's Lin Mu."
At the sound of that all-too-familiar voice, the killing intent coiled and ready to strike in the darkness abruptly seized up.
"Lin Mu?"
Lin Feng's voice carried startled suspicion and bewilderment.
"What are you doing here?!"
With that demand, a lighting Gu worm in the corner of the room was activated, and a dim, glaring yellow glow instantly flooded every inch of the space.
By that sudden light, Lin Mu finally saw clearly this once-lofty foremost prodigy of Black Blood Stockade.
Lin Feng's face, in this moment, looked haggard, twisted — brimming with gloom and manic agitation.
Ever since Lin Xingyuan had emerged, every one of the fair-weather sycophants who had followed him had fled clean and empty.
He had assumed that the ever-shrewd, ever-pragmatic Lin Mu had long since run off to fawn over the new favorite.
What alarmed him even more was that the ambush he had just launched had been dodged so effortlessly, so dismissively, by this mere retainer.
"You..."
Lin Feng stared hard at Lin Mu, his chest heaving violently, extreme wariness flickering in the depths of his eyes.
Looking at Lin Feng — skittish as a bird startled by the twang of a bow — Lin Mu smiled faintly, took two slow steps forward, and spoke with utter nonchalance.
"I've come here, naturally, to be a fellow traveler of the same path as the Young Master."
"What fellow traveler of the same path?! Don't stand there spouting your mystic nonsense at me!"
Lin Feng's fury turned to a laugh. He felt himself grievously insulted.
However, the moment his words fell, the smile at the corner of Lin Mu's mouth abruptly vanished.
The next second, Lin Mu no longer concealed or restrained anything.
He took a single step forward, and the Primeval Essence and cultivation he had deliberately suppressed within his aperture erupted like a volcano!
BOOM!
That aura climbed higher and higher, shattering the barriers of the Rank 2 initial stage and the Rank 2 middle stage in an instant — until it came to rest, utterly stable, at a level that left Lin Feng unable to breathe—
Rank 2 peak stage!
"H-how... how is this possible?!"
Pressed back hard against the chair by that aura, Lin Feng went wide-eyed, his bloodshot eyes bulging, and let out a scream of utter terror.
Yet before he could even swallow that cry of shock fully back down—
Cling—!
A dark-gold blade edge — countless times fiercer and more overbearing than the one he had just unleashed — burst from Lin Mu's fingertip without the slightest warning!
This Metal Rend Leaf Gu moved at the very apex of speed. Lin Feng did not even have time for the thought of raising his hand to block to form before the edge shrieked past, grazing his right cheek with brutal force!
Sss.
A thin line of blood slowly welled up on Lin Feng's pale cheek. A drop of crimson trailed down his chin and fell.
The terrifying pressure it carried was the genuine article — the aura of the Rank 2 peak stage!
Feeling the searing sting on his cheek, Lin Feng — his soul not yet returned to him — fell into utter mental chaos.
But an instant later, a thought flashed through his mind like lightning. He jerked his head up, his crimson eyes fixed hard on Lin Mu, his voice gone hoarse with rage and fear.
"You've been tailing me?! You knew I went to the Grey Street tonight?!"
Only the Grey Street — only those hidden, unorthodox methods — could explain how Lin Mu had rocketed to the Rank 2 peak stage in so short a span of time.
Faced with Lin Feng's accusation, Lin Mu neither confirmed nor denied.
He merely took another placid step closer, looking down at Lin Feng slumped in the chair, his tone deep and low.
"Young Master, I told you. We are of the same path."
"Bullshit!"
Lin Feng was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. Forcing out the last shred of his nerve, he threatened through gritted teeth:
"Cultivation gained at a speed like this — clearly it was no righteous path that granted it! You've steeped yourself in the Demonic Path, no doubt about it! Aren't you afraid I'll tell my father and the Patriarch, and see you left without a grave to be buried in?!"
Faced with such a threat, Lin Mu let out a single sound of utter contempt — a soft laugh, as though he had heard the most amusing joke in all the world.
He bent down, his eyes stabbing straight into Lin Feng's pupils, driving straight into the deepest vulnerability of his soul.
"Go report me?"
"Young Master, this kind of power..."
A demon-like curve rose at the corner of Lin Mu's mouth, his voice sinking very low.
"Would you truly be willing to give it up?"
Those words plunged the entire room into a long, suffocating death-stillness.
Lin Feng's chest heaved violently. The expressions crossing his face shifted and churned, the veins standing out at his temples.
In the end, he limply released the fists he had clenched until they bled, and his whole body seemed drained of every ounce of strength — collapsing like a heap of mud into the grand armchair.
"What... what is it you actually want?"
Lin Feng's voice was hoarse, forced through gritted teeth.
"If you're scheming after the foundations of my Black Blood Stockade, then let me tell you — even if I die, I will never breathe a single word of it to you!"
Watching Lin Feng's defenses collapse entirely, Lin Mu straightened, adjusted his sleeves, and answered with calm detachment:
"Young Master Feng, you think far too much of yourself — and far too little of me."
Lin Mu drew over a chair and sat down with the utmost composure, beginning to enumerate the past dealings between the two of them.
"Think back carefully. Since you and I began working together, when have you ever come out the loser?"
"Whether facing the life-or-death slaughter against Green Snake, or turning the tide in the battle of the Blood Forest, or helping you secure that Red Iron Relic Gu — when has Lin Mu ever failed to place the greatest profit, steadily and surely, into your very hands?"
Lin Mu watched Lin Feng's eyes grow gradually distant, and spoke without evasion.
"As for this cultivation of mine, the Young Master need not trouble himself either. I'll be honest — this fortune of mine was precisely the opportunity I obtained from the hand of the shopkeeper at that Grey Street Market shop you visited tonight."
Lin Mu rose, walked to the window, pushed it open by a sliver, and gazed out at the fathomless black night beyond. His tone turned exceedingly deep.
"White Bone Stockade stirs again and again now, and the surrounding situation churns with hidden currents. Great chaos draws near. That A-grade genius may be dazzling, but in the end he has yet to grow into his strength. A wise bird chooses its tree to roost in..."
Lin Mu turned his head, his profound gaze settling on Lin Feng.
"I've turned it over in my mind again and again. Rather than gamble on an unknown future, naturally I'd sooner stand at your side and wager on what I can see with my own eyes."
The room fell silent once more.
But the atmosphere between the two of them had, through this exchange, undergone a change of the most fundamental kind.
The lighting Gu worm overhead, casting its bright glow, shone down glaringly upon Lin Mu.
He stood at ease in the light at the center of the room, his bearing tall and upright, calm and unhurried — as though he were the true master of this dwelling.
While Lin Feng — once so lofty, so insufferably proud — sat slumped and defeated in the shadowed corner of the room, half his face swallowed by the pitch-black shadow, like a prisoner who had gambled away every last chip.
The interweaving of light and shadow drew absurd outlines across the wall, mirroring the reversal of the two men's fates in this very moment.