Amid this suffocating stillness of ambush, faint, fragmentary rustling finally came from the far end of the trail.
Roughly six black silhouettes were darting swiftly through the trees under the cover of night — precisely the elite raiding squad dispatched by the White Bone Stockade alliance.
More than a full month had passed since the war began. None who had survived until now in this high-intensity meat grinder could possibly be a fledgling.
Though the faces of these six were covered in the weariness of days of continuous battle, their eyes were exceedingly sharp and cautious.
They coordinated with practiced skill as they advanced, alternating scouting and cover, their footwork remarkably swift — clearly an elite force forged specifically for raiding resource points.
Walking at the very front of the formation was a Gu Master named Tie Xiong.
He radiated the genuine aura of the Rank 2 peak stage. He was not a native of White Bone Stockade, but rather a mainstay of some small stockade attached to the punitive alliance.
This man cultivated the Strength Path. His frame was as solid and stocky as half a black iron tower, and across his bared chest ran several ferocious new scars added on the battlefield, exuding a thick, bloody aura of slaughter.
And in the shadows along their unavoidable path, Lin Mu had long since activated the Red Mud Gu, blanketing the surroundings in dark-red earth.
This suppressed the breathing, heartbeats, and even the surface body heat of all four squad members to the very lowest point, blending them utterly with the scent of the rotting mud around them.
When Tie Xiong and his party, in a state of high alert, reached the vicinity of the ambush circle, Tie Xiong — walking at the front — abruptly and quite unexpectedly signaled with a gesture.
In an instant, the entire squad slowed like startled leopards.
Tie Xiong twitched his nose warily.
He had caught an exceedingly abnormal scent — a mellow, refreshing aroma of wine, boring straight into his nostrils along the mountain wind.
In this remote wilderness, deep within a dense forest raked by the flames of war, how could there possibly be such a strong scent of liquor? It was far too bizarre!
Tie Xiong immediately looked in the direction the scent was drifting from.
Not far ahead, within a cluster of bushes, he could faintly make out an overturned, abandoned cargo cart, with a pile of shattered wine jars scattered around it, the liquor seemingly spilled all over the ground.
But as a Rank 2 peak stage cultivator who had fought a hundred battles, Tie Xiong did not let down his guard.
He did not rashly approach. Instead, he immediately gave a gesture, ordering one of his subordinates — a Gu Master skilled in the Fire Path — to probe it.
That Gu Master did not hesitate. He raised his hand and activated a Gu worm, and a blazing fireball shrieked out, striking the pile of wine jars with pinpoint precision.
BOOM!
The fireball burst, flaring up into roaring flames.
Yet under the searing of the blaze, the scent of wine was not dispersed at all. On the contrary, riding the rising heat waves and the smoke of violent combustion, it grew even thicker, lingering at the tip of everyone's nose and refusing to fade.
"Not good! It's a trap!"
Tie Xiong's expression changed drastically. In an instant he realized this was no ordinary liquor, and he cried out sharply.
But in that very instant, as his attention was divided by the probing, a cloud of smoke rose amid the already pitch-black night, and their field of vision was instantly reduced to the utter extreme!
Lin Mu and Lin Feng, like two ghosts, burst out from the shadows to strike at the same moment.
Two cold, lethal Metal Rend Leaf Gu carved a stripe of frigid light through the night, gone in a single flash.
Pfft!
There was no suspense. In the enemy ranks, a Rank 1 Gu Master who was still glancing about, trying to make out his bearings, was instantly beheaded before he could so much as scream, warm blood spraying out like a fountain.
At the same moment, from the depths of the smoke came an even more spine-chilling scream, accompanied by the tooth-grating crunch of shattering bone — as though someone were locked in a desperate struggle against a monstrous beast.
That was none other than Lin Wuxie, who had already broken through to Rank 2!
At this moment he weaved through the chaotic crowd like a phantom, transformed utterly into the most terrifying nightmare of this raiding squad.
In a mere few breaths of clashing, this six-man elite squad, with all its practiced coordination, had already fallen into utter disarray!
Only a few Rank 2 Gu Masters, Tie Xiong among them, remained — backs to one another, bitterly holding on.
It was only at this moment that Tie Xiong and the others awoke as if from a dream.
That abrupt scent of wine had not been any lowly bait to lure them closer at all. It was a lethal open scheme that Lin Mu had deliberately laid out — using the Liquor Aura Gu to create the liquor scent, for the sole purpose of diverting their attention while perfectly masking the killing intent of the ambushers!
In that very instant when they grew suspicious, split their attention to probe, and triggered the smoke that obscured their vision — that was the perfect moment to strike like a thunderbolt!
"Wretched things! Get out here!"
Seeing himself caught between enemies front and back, his subordinates dying one after another in the smoke, Tie Xiong's eyes nearly split at the corners, his anxiety and fury woven together to the very extreme.
He let out a violent roar, and the Rank 2 peak stage Primeval Essence throughout his body surged like boiling water. Holding nothing back, he activated his core Gu worm — the Iron Mantis Arm Gu!
Crk crk crk...
Accompanied by a chilling, abnormal grinding of bone, Tie Xiong's originally thick, brawny arms were instantly covered by a layer of blue-black cartilage, transforming into two enormous mantis blade-arms glinting with a frigid, cold light!
Like a maddened savage beast, he wildly swung his blade-arms, slashing and cutting everywhere through the fog.
The keen blade edges shaved the surrounding trees and rocks into fragments as easily as slicing tofu, in an attempt to forcibly drive Lin Mu and the others out of the shadows.
Yet this seemingly ferocious but in truth utterly chaotic indiscriminate assault had long since fallen within Lin Mu's calculations.
Amid the sky-covering flashes of blade light, Tie Xiong seemed, in a daze, to catch a fleeting afterimage flickering through the smoke. He was instantly overjoyed, a trace of bloodthirsty madness flashing in his eyes.
He clenched his teeth hard and once again activated the matching Gu worm within him — and that pair of sharp mantis blade-arms abruptly extended several feet in an instant!
Swish!
The cold blade light flashed past Lin Mu's cheek by the narrowest of margins, shearing off a few strands of hair at the ends of his locks with perilous closeness. They drifted down lightly onto the blood-soaked mud.
"You brat, you won't escape!"
Relying on his Rank 2 peak stage cultivation, Tie Xiong let out a deafening roar and broke away outright from the defensive formation formed by his few surviving subordinates, swinging his blade-arms in frenzied pursuit.
As the captain of the raiding squad, Tie Xiong's instantaneous burst of speed was indeed exceedingly terrifying — faster, in fact, than Lin Mu's by a hair. The distance between the two was rapidly closing.
Seeing he could not dodge in time, Lin Mu ahead was forced to turn and face him.
In Tie Xiong's field of vision, the moonlight illuminated Lin Mu's somewhat slight face — and upon it was written, plain as day, panic-stricken alarm and despairing dread.
Seeing his prey wear such an expression, an exceedingly cruel, savage grin surfaced on Tie Xiong's face.
He had already imagined in his mind, ahead of time, the beautiful, shrill scream this sinister little brat who had dared to scheme against him would let out the next second — when he was sundered clean in two beneath his own iron-shearing blade-arms!
However, at the hair's-breadth instant when Tie Xiong's lethal blade-arm was about to hack down onto Lin Mu's face — no more than an inch away!
Tie Xiong suddenly discovered — that expression of utter terror on his opponent's face had transformed, most bizarrely, into a cold sneer brimming with contempt and mockery!
"What?!"
Tie Xiong's pupils abruptly contracted to the size of pinpricks, and an extreme chill shot from his tailbone straight to the crown of his skull!
It was only at this moment that he awoke to the truth: though he had transformed into a savage, matchless mantis, he had charged headlong into the death cage the oriole had long since carefully woven!
Yet the awakening came too late.
The heaven-and-earth net had already drawn shut!
Lin Mu's fingertips moved slightly. Those pitch-black eyes held not a single trace of human emotion, and the Primeval Essence within his aperture poured out madly like a tsunami breaching a dam.
"Jade Tendon Gu. Metal Rend Leaf Gu. Earth Spike Gu. Stick Insect Gu... Go!"
BOOM—
In an instant, the killer moves of four Gu worms erupted simultaneously!
The unbreakable Jade Tendon Gu worm withstood the residual force of the blade-arms.
Stone spikes bursting up violently from underground clamped down hard, pinning Tie Xiong's lower body.
The Stick Insect Gu, which had been sheared off like strands of hair and hidden in the shadows, had long since trailed behind him — transforming into the sharpest of blades, it stabbed viciously into the blind spot at his back.
And that all-conquering Metal Rend Leaf edge, at an exceedingly cunning angle, swept across his throat!
Every space Tie Xiong had to dodge was sealed off in an instant!
It was but a single, exceedingly brief exchange.
Accompanied by several dull, tooth-grating sounds of flesh and blood being cut through, Tie Xiong's burly, iron-tower frame froze in place.
The next second, blood gushed forth like a waterfall.
On the ground, all that remained was a broken corpse, hacked into eight pieces, its eyes refusing to close in death.
A dignified Rank 2 peak stage Strength Path expert, the absolute core of a raiding squad — under this Meticulous scheme, was annihilated by Lin Mu in an instant!