“Someone from the cathedral just brought word that the Bishop wants you to head over.”
Jiang Lin stood up, brushed the dust from his pant legs, and walked along the street toward the cathedral.
In the third-floor room, the Bishop sat in that broad chair, a cup of dark tea resting by his hand as usual. Today, however, the cup was full, with a wisp of steam rising from the rim as though it had just been poured.
Seeing Jiang Lin enter, the Bishop offered no pleasantries and got straight to the point:
“The Envoy from the Eastern Diocese came by again a few days ago. He has a mission on his end that requires manpower. Originally, the plan was for Shadow City to send a senior deacon over, but the deacons have been too busy with recent affairs to get away. I reviewed the roster and thought you would be suitable.”
“What kind of mission?”
“A trip to the Saintas Kingdom.” The Bishop rested his fingers on the armrest. “The Envoy has a contact point over there, and they recently need someone to deliver an item inside. It isn't particularly complicated, but it requires an unfamiliar face. You spent time in Saintas before joining the church, so you are familiar with the environment and rules there, which won't attract too much attention.”
Jiang Lin lowered his gaze and did not reply immediately, as if weighing the significance of this assignment. A moment later, he asked:
“What specifically needs to be done?”
“Someone will meet you when the time comes. The specific route and handover method will be arranged by the Envoy's side. You only need to follow the standard procedure. It will take about half a month to a month, depending on the circumstances. Once the mission is completed, you can return directly to Shadow City without taking any detours.”
Having said all this, the Bishop picked up his teacup, took a sip, and set it down.
Jiang Lin accepted the task.
He did not show excessive eagerness or hesitation, maintaining just the right balance of caution and solemnity expected of someone who had only recently touched the periphery of the church and received a cross-regional mission.
“Wait for word from the Envoy's side regarding the exact departure time, which should be in the next couple of days. Go back and prepare; there is no need to bring too much.”
Jiang Lin nodded, turned, and walked out of the room.
Three days later, a young messenger wearing a dark gray short robe knocked on the courtyard gate, handing Jiang Lin a dark bone token and a folded route map.
Carved into the surface of the token was the Envoy's exclusive contact insignia. The map detailed a path departing from Shadow City's north gate, traversing the eastern edge of the Ash Mountains, and entering a border town of the Saintas Kingdom.
The messenger also delivered a verbal message:
“The Lord Envoy awaits you halfway along the route. Once you leave the Ash Mountains, simply follow the map, and someone will come to rendezvous with you.”
Jiang Lin put away the token and route map, setting out that very afternoon.
Following the direction marked on the route map, Jiang Lin departed from Shadow City's north gate and traveled north-northeast.
The eastern edge of the Ash Mountains was even bleaker than he had anticipated. Continuous stretches of gravel slopes and dried riverbeds crisscrossed into the distance, with only the occasional old tree bent by the wind, its branches draped in dead vines.
After traveling for about two days, the first rendezvous point marked on the map appeared ahead:
An abandoned hunter's cabin, half of its roof already collapsed, its walls overrun with dark green moss.
Jiang Lin halted before the cabin, his gaze sweeping over the surrounding terrain as his Space Perception extended forward along the ground.
There was someone inside.
The aura was faint and restrained with exceptional precision; had he not deliberately scanned the area with Space Perception, he almost certainly would have overlooked it.
The intensity of that aura was at the 7th-rank mid-stage—steady and reserved, like deep water calm on the surface yet surging with undercurrents below.
Jiang Lin did not hesitate for long. Pushing open the half-ajar wooden door, he walked inside.
The cabin's interior was even more dilapidated than it appeared from outside. A thick layer of dust and broken roof tiles coated the floor, and a few rotting timbers were piled in the corner.
Against the inner wall, a figure sat with his back to the door atop an overturned wooden crate, holding a roll of parchment as if perusing something.
The figure wore a dingy, grayish-white robe, the hem embroidered with an extremely fine, dark pattern similar in style—yet slightly different—to the pattern on the Envoy's collar that Jiang Lin had seen in the Bishop's chamber.
Hearing footsteps, he did not turn around, merely speaking in an even, measured tone:
“You are one shichen later than expected.”
“I ran into a landslide along the way and had to detour.”
Jiang Lin halted by the doorway without approaching any closer.
The man rolled up the parchment in his hand and slowly turned around.
It was a face entirely different from that of the old-robed man.
The latter was so plain that he would vanish in a crowd, whereas this face bore striking, unforgettable features.
His features were sharp and chiseled, with a high bridge to his nose, slightly sunken eye sockets, and pale skin, resembling someone who rarely saw sunlight.
He appeared to be in his early forties, though Jiang Lin knew a cultivator's physical appearance rarely reflected their true age.
Most striking were his eyes; in the dim light of the room, his pupils took on an extremely pale grayish-blue hue, as though veiled by a thin layer of mist.
When those eyes fell upon Jiang Lin, he felt an exceedingly subtle sensation, as though something had gently prodded him from within.
A probe via mental magic.
Jiang Lin offered no resistance, nor did he deliberately drop his defenses.
He simply maintained the aura state he had projected since joining the church—that of a Holy Son candidate at the 3rd-rank peak who had only recently broken through to the 4th-rank—letting the probe skim across the surface of his body, sweep around the periphery of his meridians, and withdraw.
“Drake,” the man said. “The Bishop should have informed you. I am Gray Robe. I will be leading you on this trip and teaching you a few things along the way. Just do as I instruct.”
Jiang Lin bowed his head slightly.
“Understood, Lord Gray Robe.”
At the same time, the final quest Jiang Lin had accepted flashed through his mind:
【Quest】: Hunt Secret Cult Missionary · Gray Robe
【Description】: Secret Cult Missionary “Gray Robe,” 7th-rank mid-stage, specialized in mental-attribute spells, skilled in disguise and infiltration, long lurking in the villages and towns surrounding the Saintas Kingdom to spread evil god faith. Mission Objective: Locate his whereabouts and eliminate him.
【Difficulty】: Extremely High
【Required Clearance】: Mid-Rank Apostle or above
【Reward】: Holy light origin (massive), Quest Points, Apostle Experience
Both his strength and location matched. It was indeed him!
Gray Robe rose from the wooden crate, tucked the parchment scroll into a concealed pocket within his robe, and walked toward the door.
As he passed Jiang Lin, he paused for an instant, his gaze lingering briefly on the side of Jiang Lin's face.
“You haven't been with the church long, yet the Bishop thinks highly of you. That ‘Bowel Strengthening Technique’ of yours has already spread within the cult. Word is that even the Envoy of the Eastern Diocese has heard of it.”
Jiang Lin did not reply, merely maintaining a quiet, listening posture.
Gray Robe said nothing more, stepping out of the cabin.
“Keep up. We need to cross the final ridge of the eastern Ash Mountains before dark. Once we pass that, we will be within the border territory of the Saintas Kingdom.”
Jiang Lin followed behind him, the two walking down the slope one after the other.
Gray Robe's pace was neither rushed nor slow, the distance between each stride precisely uniform. His boots made almost no extraneous noise as they stepped across the gravel.
Though he walked ahead without looking back, Jiang Lin's Space Perception detected the faint field of mental force around him slowly expanding, as if scouting the terrain and auras ahead in advance.
Over the next two days, Jiang Lin followed Gray Robe across the final ridges of the eastern Ash Mountains, entering a hilly region where the terrain gradually leveled out.
The roadside vegetation shifted from sparse shrubs and wild weeds to expansive farmlands and scattered hamlets, and the ambient temperature was slightly warmer than in the mountains.
Along the way, Gray Robe taught him a few things.
Most were practical techniques for using mental-attribute spells to aid infiltration: how to make guards subconsciously overlook your face when entering a city, how to glean the general direction of an ordinary person's surface thoughts without alerting them, and how to utilize mental resonance to speed up the matching efficiency of sacrificial rituals...
Jiang Lin listened, nodding occasionally and asking a question or two.
He did not ask often, but each question was pitched just right to show he was “thinking carefully,” appearing neither overly eager nor dull-witted.
Gray Robe's answers were concise and precise, as if he had repeated such instructional lessons many times before.
“The core of mental spells lies in ‘resonance,’ not ‘suppression.’”
Gray Robe sat on a flat rock by the roadside and gestured for Jiang Lin to sit opposite him.
“Suppression leaves traces. The subject will realize something was off afterward, and over time, that invites exposure.
“Resonance makes them feel the thought was theirs all along. You merely happened to be there and happened to give it a slight nudge.”
He raised his right hand, a faint, nearly transparent grayish-white halo coalescing at his fingertips.
“For instance, right now in your mind, you are thinking: ‘I haven't traveled this road before; I wonder how much further it is.’”
Jiang Lin was momentarily taken aback. That indeed had been a stray thought flitting through his mind just now.
Though it was only a brief flash, Gray Robe had caught it and articulated it with exact precision.
“That is resonance.” Gray Robe drew back his hand. “There is no need to read all their thoughts. You only need to grasp the most prominent thread on the surface, then apply a slight directional nudge along that thread. The target will believe the thought was entirely their own. No suspicion, no resistance.”
Jiang Lin nodded, committing the words to memory.
Gray Robe did not demonstrate further. Standing up, he brushed the dust from the hem of his robe.
“Let's go. There is a town ahead; we will settle there for the night.”
The border town was even smaller than Jiang Lin had anticipated—barely a few dozen households, a single main street, and a handful of shops with half-shuttered doors.
There were no guards at the entrance, not even a proper fence, just a crooked wooden sign bearing the town's name.
Gray Robe led Jiang Lin to a small inn draped with faded fabric curtains on the edge of town, booking two adjacent rooms.
That night, Gray Robe knocked on Jiang Lin's door.
Standing outside without entering, he spoke in that same measured tone:
“Tomorrow, we go to the abandoned barn west of town. I want you to set up an altar there according to the matching process I taught you earlier. The materials are already prepared; you only need to follow the steps.”
Standing inside the room, Jiang Lin nodded:
“Understood.”
Gray Robe turned and walked back to his room, the door clicking shut softly behind him.
Standing by the window, Jiang Lin gazed out through the dust-streaked pane into the pitch-black night, mentally reviewing the entire framework of this mission once more.
On the surface, Gray Robe's guidance seemed to be for his benefit, but setting up an altar essentially meant having him sacrifice innocent people with his own hands.
Once he took action, that blood debt would fall upon his head, and the cult would take it as definitive proof that he was no spy.
Gray Robe choosing this border town for him to strike served both to test his loyalty and to establish a viable altar here to facilitate subsequent infiltration and sabotage operations.
However, he had no intention of actually carrying it out.
His gaze fell upon the icy sword token deep within his spatial ring.
The sword intent left to him by his master was still safely preserved, serving as one of his ultimate trump cards.
Yet against Gray Robe at the 7th-rank mid-stage, he did not currently need to expend the sword token.
He had personally dealt with Blood Raven and Withered Bone.
Though Gray Robe was stronger than the two of them, Jiang Lin had not idled away the past half-month either.
His 5th-Rank mid-stage realm was thoroughly solidified, and the newly acquired knowledge of mid-level sacrifices could be used to reverse-disrupt his opponent's energy circulation.
Since the matching process could channel the offering's soul attributes toward the Four Pillar Gods, theoretically, he could alter the energy flow mid-ritual, triggering a backlash in the active spell.
When constructing the altar, he would need to fashion the core node into a bidirectional conduit.
Tomorrow, Gray Robe would watch him complete the entire process, teaching him how to match soul attributes.
At the exact moment Gray Robe lowered his guard, he needed to activate the altar's reverse circuit, seal his retreat with spatial anchoring, and close the distance with Instant Light Flash to breach that mental shield.
The plan was roughly formed.
Early the following morning, the two walked about one li down a weed-choked trail west of the town, arriving before an abandoned barn.
Most of the barn's wooden siding had rotted away, exposing the dark gray brick walls beneath. Much of the thatched roof had been torn away by the wind, allowing sunlight to spill through the gaps in slanted pillars of light across the floor.
Inside, dried straw and clutter were piled about, though the floor in the corner remained relatively level.
Gray Robe surveyed the interior from the center of the barn before retrieving a cloth pouch from his robes. Untying the cord, he set several dark stones and a roll of engraving chisels on the ground:
“Begin.”
Jiang Lin crouched down, placed a stone on the ground before him, and picked up a chisel.
Rather than rushing to carve, he first wiped the surface dust clean, then glanced up at Gray Robe, asking in the cautious tone of a fresh apprentice:
“Lord Gray Robe, will the sacrifice this time be ordinary townsfolk, or from some other source?”
“The town's vagrants.” Gray Robe's tone was impassive, as though stating the most ordinary matter. “Three or four people without permanent shelter live on the west end of town. They beg on the streets by day and sleep in a ruined temple by night. They won't attract much attention.”
Jiang Lin nodded, lowering his head to begin carving the runic patterns.
His movements were slightly slower than usual, appearing as if he needed to pause occasionally to recall those intricate runic variations, yet the depth and angle of every stroke remained steady.
Gray Robe stood watching from the side, offering a pointer here and there, such as “Make the turn in the third ring slightly wider” or “Ease up on the pressure at the end of the stroke.”
...
Rate on N.U.
