Deep within the miasma forest, the dark red mist hung like clotted blood—thick and impossible to dissolve.
The terrain here grew ever narrower. Steep, slick rock walls rose on either side, and overhead only a sliver of dim light filtered through.
Lin Mu moved hunched over, picking his way through the jumbled stones and rotting leaves, one unsteady step at a time.
Inside his aperture, the newly refined Blood Scent Gu trembled faintly, feeding back a clear picture of the presence trailing behind him.
That blood-tinged aura, carrying the smell of cheap hemostatic medicine, had been hanging two hundred meters back the entire time—patient as a ghost.
His pursuer was cautious, maintaining distance. But that very caution betrayed his greed.
He was waiting for Lin Mu's wounds to flare up, hoping to reap the spoils without lifting a finger.
"Since you want to wait me out, I'll give you something sweet."
As Lin Mu passed an old tree, he deliberately let his form sway. His shoulder scraped hard against the rough bark, leaving a fresh gouge.
At the same time, his fingertip nicked the inside of his sleeve, squeezing out a drop of blood to smear across the mark.
Diluted by the miasma, the blood scent came across as faint yet genuine—exactly like a fleeing man whose wounds had torn open in his panic.
After that, he "accidentally" dropped two fragments of Primeval Stones and a small handful of Iron Essence Flakes from his chest, scattering them in the mud where they glinted with tempting light.
With blood scent as the lure and valuables as the bait, even the most cautious wolf couldn't resist speeding up.
Lin Mu didn't look back. A cold, cruel arc tugged at the corner of his mouth.
His footsteps seemed chaotic, but each one followed a precise pattern—retreating toward the narrow gorge entrance ahead, where the terrain was most treacherous.
There, he had chosen his prey's grave.
The moment he entered the gorge, the weakness vanished from Lin Mu's body.
His movements became swift. He pulled out the bag of Crimson Iron Sand he'd just purchased, mixed it with the viscous mud secreted by the Red Mud Gu, and rapidly smeared it across the waist-high rock walls on both sides.
He also laid a thin, nearly imperceptible layer of red mud across the ground.
Next, he broke apart the remaining Iron Essence Flakes, mixed them with sharp stone fragments, bound them loosely with red mud, and used the fine vines common to the miasma forest to suspend the bundle from a low-hanging branch above the gorge entrance.
The entire process flowed like water—barely more than a dozen breaths.
When it was done, Lin Mu retreated behind a massive boulder just inside the gorge and held his breath.
He activated the Blood Scent Gu, locking onto the blood-aura source now rapidly approaching. At the same time, he fed the Iron Leaf Gu its last sliver of iron essence, keeping it at peak sharpness.
Inside his aperture, his remaining thirty percent of dark green Primeval Essence began to gather. The Earth Ring Body entered a half-activated state, ready to respond to any sudden development.
Closer now.
Two hundred meters... one hundred meters... fifty meters.
When the pursuer spotted the Primeval Stone fragments on the ground and the bloodstain on the tree trunk, his aura clearly wavered. Then—his speed surged.
Greed overwhelmed caution. The tracker clearly believed Lin Mu had reached the end of his rope, "hiding to tend his wounds" somewhere in that gorge. The perfect moment to strike.
A gray figure used the miasma as cover, shooting toward the gorge entrance like a specter.
But the instant he stepped onto that seemingly ordinary patch of mud and his pace instinctively slowed at the slickness underfoot—
"Drop!"
From behind the boulder, Lin Mu released the vine in his hand.
Crash—
The bundle of stone and iron fragments suspended above came hurtling down with gravity's full force.
The pursuer's reflexes were sharp. The moment he heard the rush of wind, he dodged to one side.
But he hadn't expected the ground to be so slippery. That thin layer of red mud created a fatal half-second of delay in his normally agile footwork.
THUD!
The stone bundle missed his head—but smashed squarely into his left shoulder.
According to the Blood Scent Gu's feedback, that was exactly where the blood-aura was thickest: the site of an old wound.
"Ungh!"
The pursuer let out a muffled grunt. The old shoulder wound tore open, blood instantly soaking his clothes.
But this was only the beginning.
In that moment of stumbling, when his protective Primeval Essence fluctuated from the searing pain, Lin Mu moved.
"Strike!"
No words. No hesitation. The dark-green iron leaf shot out like a viper's tongue, piercing straight toward the tracker's wounded arm.
Blood sprayed.
Wound upon wound—the thick scent of blood exploded through the miasma, making the Blood Scent Gu's lock sharper than ever.
Shock and rage flooded the pursuer. He was a ruthless man himself; rather than retreat after being hit, he roared and tried to force his way through the gorge, closing in for close combat.
But he forgot—this environment had already been rewritten by Lin Mu.
The moment he accelerated, his arm brushed against the rock wall.
The Crimson Iron Sand mixed into the red mud activated instantly. A burning agony bored through his wound and into his bones, causing his Primeval Essence flow to stutter once more.
Lin Mu seized that split-second of rigidity. He triggered the Red Mud Gu that had been primed and waiting.
His aperture, already poised, burst open.
The Red Mud Gu let out a piercing screech—but didn't aim for a vital point. Instead, it spewed a massive glob of thick, heavy red mud straight at the pursuer's feet, which were riding currents of green wind.
The tracker was in full-speed charge; there was no time to change direction.
His feet were instantly clogged by the viscous mud. That heavy, dragging sensation cut off the Wind-Treading Gu's airflow. His feet slipped, and his forward momentum became an uncontrolled tumble.
But this was only the first step.
Lin Mu flicked his wrist. The last three Iron Leaf Gu hidden in his sleeve screamed through the air.
Their target wasn't the throat or the heart—but the enemy's lower left abdomen. In the Blood Scent Gu's perception, a dense, stale pocket of blood-aura sat there: the site of another old wound.
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!
Three iron leaves sliced precisely into that old injury.
Agony.
The rupturing pain instantly froze the enemy's attempt to regain balance. His Primeval Essence went chaotic from the shock. The poisonous glow he'd been gathering on his dagger dissipated.
Off-balance. Wracked with pain. Primeval Essence in disarray.
This was the killing moment Lin Mu had been waiting for.
"Die!"
Lin Mu exploited the opening. His entire body shot forward like a cannonball compressed to its limit, using the Earth Ring Body's rebound off the ground to launch himself upward.
He turned sideways. Red mud rapidly hardened over his left shoulder, forming a makeshift ram. He slammed full-force into the enemy's wide-open guard.
CRACK—!!
A dull sound of shattering bone.
The massive impact sent the off-balance tracker flying backward. He slammed into the rock wall behind him like a torn painting.
And the broken half-blade in Lin Mu's hand—the one that had survived his desperate battle with the Boar King—rode that momentum straight into the man's chest.
"Urk..."
The pursuer's eyes went wide, locked onto the youth pressed against him. Even in death, he couldn't understand how this seemingly tottering wreck had unleashed such a terrifying chain of attacks in an instant.
Blood poured along the blade's groove, dyeing Lin Mu's hand red.
The man convulsed twice. The light in his eyes scattered. His head lolled, and he went still.
Lin Mu didn't let go immediately.
Expressionless, he withdrew the broken blade and drove it into the man's throat for good measure. Only after confirming the artery was severed—that all life had fled—did he slowly rise to his feet.
"Hah..."
He let out a long, turbid breath and wiped the blood from his face. Dead silence surrounded him; only the miasma drifted slowly past.
Lin Mu crouched beside the body, face blank, and began collecting his spoils.
His hand reached into the fading remnants of the corpse's aperture and pulled out a Gu worm—entirely pale green, shaped like a flying locust.
A Rank 1 Wind-Treading Gu.
A core movement Gu of the Wind Path, capable of drastically boosting straight-line sprinting speed.
"So he was the agility type."
Lin Mu pocketed the Wind-Treading Gu. It would be perfect for feeding to the Swift Ant Gu to trigger an evolution—or kept as a backup option.
Besides the Gu worm, he found over a dozen Primeval Stone fragments and a bottle of cheap hemostatic powder.
"Pauper."
Lin Mu clicked his tongue and stowed the items.
"Good thing I had the Blood Scent Gu."
His fingertip brushed against the red-ant-like Gu worm inside his aperture, silently grateful.
If it hadn't locked onto the enemy's aura intensity in advance—precisely identifying him as merely Rank 1 Upper Stage rather than something more troublesome—Lin Mu might have changed his plans on the spot, holing up in Old Ma's shop for a couple more days, using the rules of Grey Street to lie low.
After a moment's thought, Lin Mu didn't linger.
He bent down, grabbed handfuls of rotting leaves and broken branches, and layered them over the corpse.
He splashed mud mixed with Crimson Iron Sand over the blood to mask the scent—no need to attract other rogue cultivators. His movements were swift and efficient.
Then, guided by the Blood Scent Gu's early warnings, he slipped away like a wary fox, avoiding his original route and vanishing into the endless miasma forest.