A simple hourglass was casually placed on the ground by Caleb, and the fine sand began to slip away silently.
This was a special tool he had made to train the assassins under his command.
The passage of every grain of sand was incredibly precise.
“Begin.”
Caleb closed his eyes, his tone indifferent.
“Before the hourglass runs out, bring the Saintess alive before me.”
“Or, watch as I pierce her chest.”
“Let me see what you’re made of.”
Suddenly, as if remembering something, a playful smile curled his lips.
He brought up a title he had heard by chance while investigating Lin Gui.
“Don’t let me down... Black-Feathered Raven.”
Having said that, he stood there with his eyes closed, seemingly giving Lin Gui plenty of time to “prepare.”
Lin Gui didn't hesitate. With a thought, he acted.
He cast the Shroud of the Gloomy Night with full force, completely enveloping himself and Saintess Eve.
Their figures and auras instantly vanished from Caleb's physical perception.
Despite having his eyes closed, Caleb's immense physical perception, befitting a High-tier Legendary, had already covered the entire mine.
In his conventional perception field, Lin Gui and the Saintess seemed to have been erased from this world.
This concealment wasn't just a simple visual trick.
It almost perfectly masked fluctuations of battle qi, magic ripples, sound, temperature, and even light refraction and airflow.
He had only heard from Warren before that Lin Gui possessed an exceptionally good concealment magic.
Now that he was perceiving it personally, calling it “good” was an understatement.
This level of concealment was no less than the secret techniques mastered by many Legendary assassins specializing in this path.
In fact, it was even a notch stronger than his own concealment techniques.
And most importantly, the one casting it, Lin Gui, was merely a Mid-tier High Rank mage.
This only proved that the rank of the spell itself wasn't high.
Its mana consumption was something a Mid-tier High Rank mage could sustain.
The existence of such a spell was nothing short of a miracle!
“Truly... a remarkable spell,” Caleb couldn't help but admire in his heart.
But immediately after, the focus of his perception shifted slightly, capturing traces on another level.
In his “vision,” a relatively clear, pale blue soul stood out as conspicuously as a lighthouse in the dark night.
And around her, hundreds of extremely faint tiny points of light, also part of the soul fluctuations, were scattered.
“Hair?” Caleb immediately understood why Caesar had failed to kill the Saintess.
“It’s indeed a good way to interfere with the Soul-Slaying Blade’s soul-locking, unfortunately...”
He slowly opened his eyes, a flash of regret in them.
“Unfortunately, for someone like me who can perceive souls, interference of this level is meaningless.”
He let Lin Gui hide and move for a full five seconds.
He didn't go to pull the Soul-Slaying Blade out of the ground.
Instead, he casually drew a perfectly ordinary thin-bladed throwing knife from the leather holster at his waist.
Then, with a casual flick of his wrist...
Whish!
The moment the throwing knife disappeared, the air was torn apart, letting out a sharp, booming sound.
A flash of cold light, almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, instantly traversed the entire mine.
With pinpoint accuracy, it shot toward the core soul silhouette of the Saintess in his soul perception.
Boom!!
The distant rock wall of the mine tunnel suddenly exploded, leaving a huge hole.
Shattered rocks poured down like rain.
Immediately after, a shrill scream belonging to a young girl drifted over from the midst of the smoke and dust.
The smile on Caleb's face faded, replaced by a sense of dull disappointment.
“It seems... I overestimated you.”
He took a step forward that seemed casual.
In the next instant, he appeared directly nearly a hundred meters away, at the spot where the scream had originated.
The dust slowly cleared.
Caleb looked at the scene before him, and the expression of one who controlled everything instantly froze on his face.
In its place was a rare look of dazed confusion.
There was no corpse of the Saintess, not even a trace of blood.
There was only a torn clay doll mixed with hair, lying lonely in the pile of rubble.
“A hair doll... it’s impossible for it to confuse my soul tracking.”
Caleb frowned.
Different parts of the human body contain different weights of the soul.
He wasn't an expert in the soul domain, but he could still distinguish the difference between the soul weight of hair and the person themselves.
“Unless...”
He knelt down and reached out to tear open the clay doll.
His fingertips touched some viscous liquid that was still warm.
He brought his finger to his nose and sniffed.
It was blood.
The blank look on Caleb's face instantly transformed into a more fervent, more excited smile; he almost burst out laughing.
“Good lad!!!”
He was now completely certain that Lin Gui could see souls!
In the domain of the soul, he was more than just a little bit better than himself.
At the very least, he couldn't make a temporary doll using blood that could rival the soul weight of the original body.
A monster who could see souls, use soul magic, and had such top-tier personal concealment spells!
“I... want you more and more!”
The light in Caleb's eyes was almost greedy.
He decided to stop “playing” and go all out.
He would bring Lin Gui completely under his wing.
Caleb stepped lightly, his figure vanishing into the shadows.
In his soul tracking, five soul fluctuation targets of the Saintess, all of nearly equal intensity, simultaneously appeared throughout the mine tunnel.
They were moving weirdly in different directions!
“Heh, a final struggle.” Caleb sneered.
In the next moment, his figure flickered continuously like a ghost in various parts of the mine.
Thud! Shlick! Bam!
At almost the exact same time, five clay dolls distributed in different corners of the mine were torn to pieces by invisible attacks.
They hadn't lasted even a single second.
They were far apart and placed in tricky locations, but under the absolute speed and perception of a High-tier Legendary, they were as good as non-existent.
Elsewhere, in a more remote corner of the mine tunnel, Lin Gui stopped his movements.
He had just used Soil Loosening to gather the loose surface soil and Growth Acceleration to grow several tough grass stems.
He used them like ropes to roughly bind the soil into a crooked, palm-sized humanoid clay doll.
Saintess Eve leaned weakly against the rock wall.
Due to excessive blood loss, her face was as pale as paper, and her breathing was so faint it was almost unnoticeable.
She barely lifted her heavy eyelids to look at the suddenly stopped Lin Gui, a trace of confusion in her purple eyes.
Lin Gui turned his head and met her bewildered gaze, the corners of his mouth curling into a faint arc.
“Good news. Those decoys in No. 2 Mine used for luring have all been taken care of.”
Eve tilted her head slightly, her voice as light as a whisper.
“Does that... count as good news?”
The bait being cleared meant the enemy was closing in step by step; wasn't that bad news?
Lin Gui smiled and didn't explain.
The Saintess didn't have a deep understanding of soul magic, so naturally, she couldn't see the key information revealed behind this.
That was: Caleb's soul tracking and perception abilities weren't strong.
He could only judge the weight of the soul.
He was far from the level of the Eyes of the Netherworld he had just obtained, which could clearly discern the specific shape, size, and every trace of detail of a soul.
If Caleb could truly do that, he wouldn't have destroyed those clay dolls. Instead, he would have directly followed the disrupted soul tracking path and lunged accurately toward their true hiding place.
Within the human body, there are three primary carriers of soul force: hair, bone, and blood.
Among them, blood carries the greatest soul weight.
Caleb thought that using a large amount of blood had created a clay doll with a soul weight equal to the Saintess herself. In reality, that wasn't the case.
For those clay dolls, Lin Gui had only mixed in five drops of blood.
The soul of the Saintess Caleb saw was actually already reduced to an incredible degree by Lin Gui using bloodletting before he arrived.
Of the approximately 4,000 milliliters of blood in the Saintess's body, less than 100 milliliters remained.
Lin Gui's gaze fell back onto the Saintess.
Under the vision of the Eyes of the Netherworld, Eve's soul shimmer was already dim to the extreme.
In fact, the current Saintess could practically be considered a dead person. If not for her own high-level Light Healing spells forcibly keeping her alive, she would have long since perished.
Precisely because of this life-threatening state, her soul was uniquely weak.
After leaving Caleb's line of sight, Lin Gui had further drained the little blood left in the Saintess's body.
At this point, the size of her soul was even smaller than that of a clay doll.
It was also much smaller than the soul weight Caleb had perceived when he first saw her.
In the next moment, Lin Gui's mind moved, and the mana in his body spread out like silk threads.
In an instant, hundreds of clay dolls throughout the mine seemed to be pulled by invisible lines, beginning to vibrate slightly as they floated and gathered around him.
“Are you... leaving?” Eve asked, her voice like a thread, nearly swallowed by the dust.
Lin Gui nodded, his movements without the slightest hesitation.
“I have to lead him out.”
Time was tight, and he didn't have time for more explanations.
He quickly activated the temporary magic array he had set up to hide the Saintess, the Wall of the Gloomy Night.
As his understanding of the Shroud of the Gloomy Night had reached perfection, even without his personal maintenance, this simplified version of the concealment array could operate independently for a period of time.
Just as Lin Gui turned to leave, a cold and weak body suddenly hugged him gently from behind.
Eve barely managed to lift her arms, wrapping them around his waist.
She pressed her paper-white cheek against his back for a moment before letting go.
She opened her purple eyes, which appeared exceptionally dazed at this moment, swirling with an emotion Lin Gui couldn't read.
She tilted her face up and gave him an extremely faint smile that seemed to hold a thousand words, saying softly, “Stay safe.”
Lin Gui was stunned.
Before he could react, Eve's figure had already completely merged into the shadows constructed by the Wall of the Gloomy Night, vanishing from sight.
At almost the same time, a bone-chilling sense of crisis arose.
Without a second thought, the mana in Lin Gui's body erupted. Levitation activated, carrying a pile of clay dolls with him as he drifted toward the direction opposite to the Saintess's hiding spot.
Just one second after he left the spot, a figure appeared soundlessly at the position where he had just been standing.
Caleb had arrived.
The Legendary assassin didn't pursue immediately. He only stood there, his dim old eyes narrowing slightly.
His sharp gaze seemed to pierce through the rock layers.
In his unique soul perception, countless slender lines belonging to the Saintess's soul fluctuations were extending from every corner of the mine, passing through numerous extremely faint soul light points.
Finally, they pointed toward that boy who had just flown away.
Most of these light points were as small as dust; they were the hairs buried in various corners.
Only in one direction did the soul fluctuations come across as slightly stronger, but they were still very weak, failing to match the soul weight Caleb had perceived from the Saintess's body earlier.
“A decoy tactic?”
Perceiving Lin Gui's movement, which was not hidden at all, Caleb hesitated for a moment.
The other party hadn't used that astounding concealment magic. Instead, he was moving toward the exit of the mine, exposed naked within his perception.
Such an obvious move was clearly intended to lead him away. But... Caleb indeed did not perceive a matching soul presence here.
The Saintess... wasn't here.
A cold, disdainful sneer flickered across the corners of Caleb's mouth.
Whatever. As long as he caught that boy, the Saintess would naturally come out later. Without the protection of that magic, he didn't even need soul tracking. As long as he covered the entire mine with his perception, she would have nowhere to hide.
Without any hesitation, his figure flickered as he rapidly chased after Lin Gui's path of withdrawal.
On the other side, bolstered by his max proficiency Levitation, Lin Gui's flight speed was extremely fast, and he soon reached the entrance.
His purpose was very clear: lead Caleb out of the mine and into the more open wilderness, then use those clay dolls to stall for time.
He was certain the other party would “cooperate” by falling for this blatant decoy tactic. The reasons were simple:
First, there was no soul weight matching the Saintess in the mine.
Second, Lin Gui could use Levitation.
If he were truly allowed to enter the wilderness unhindered and continue to ascend with Levitation until he reached a certain height, even a Legendary assassin's attacks would struggle to reach above the clouds.
He only needed to hold out for three minutes, and the game would be over.
And Caleb was clearly aware of this as well.
Before this, it wasn't that Lin Gui hadn't considered simply flying away with the Saintess. With her supplementing his mana from behind, he might have been able to sustain high-altitude flight for a long time and perhaps gradually shake off the soul tracking that used her hair as a medium.
But he couldn't. Doing so would completely enrage Caleb. In the moment he was building up momentum for takeoff, he would likely be met with an unmerciful finishing strike from the other man.
Moreover, above those clouds... was a forbidden zone in itself.
Since an unknown point in time, the high altitude had become a forbidden zone for living beings. Mages who attempted to use Levitation to cross above the clouds had, without exception, all vanished mysteriously.
Lin Gui didn't know the reason, and he didn't want to use his own life to verify that terrifying rumor.
At this moment, he manipulated his staff, carrying that pile of clay dolls acting as bait. He charged out of the mine like an arrow from a bow, pushing his speed to the limit.
Behind him, continuous booming sounds echoed from deep within the mine. That was Caleb clearing the path—or rather, clearing the traps the rebels had previously laid to try and stop Lin Gui.
Lin Gui was naturally well aware of the traps the rebels had set. In a mere second, he activated the trap at the entrance specifically meant to block people, attempting to impede Caleb's astounding speed.
However, this obstruction was negligible.
Lin Gui had been out of the mine for barely five seconds when a cold killing intent pursued him from behind. He could even feel the sharp fluctuations created by the air being torn apart at high speed.
Caleb had caught up, his speed faster than imagined!
At the critical moment, Lin Gui's thoughts raced. He manipulated a clay doll mixed with the Saintess's blood and slammed it toward an unremarkable rock crevice on the side.
That was precisely where the rebel trap team had previously laid an untriggered Binding Array and explosive rune zone.
Boom!
The moment the clay doll hit the rock wall, a blinding magical glow erupted. Countless energy tentacles appeared out of thin air, coiling toward the blurred black shadow following closely behind. Immediately following that, the laid explosive runes were triggered in a chain reaction. Fire and shockwaves temporarily swallowed that area.
Did it work?
No.
Lin Gui didn't even have time to feel relieved before he saw the rampaging energy turbulence being torn open by an invisible hand. A torrent sufficient to swallow a Transcendent warrior was not worth mentioning to Caleb.
His figure stepped out from within, completely unharmed. It was only that a first flash of urgency appeared within those dim old eyes.
Only 2 minutes remained.
With that slight delay, Lin Gui finally completely burst out of the mine area and plunged into the true wilderness.
The pale moonlight shone on the desolate, rolling hills. The night wind howled, whipping up dust and dry grass from the ground with a moaning sound.
In the distance, the black shadows of twisted, dead trees looked like monsters baring their fangs and claws. Further away, the low growls of unknown magic beasts could be vaguely heard.
Here, there was no longer the cover of complex terrain as there was inside the mine; the space was open. For Lin Gui, it also meant... there was nowhere to hide.
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