Painted Face was the first target that Lin Huang focused his attention on.
He had never seen this monster in the monster guide before. However, at first glance, the creature reminded him of ancient Chinese opera characters on Earth.
Apart from resembling a Chinese opera character with a painted face, the second impression Lin Huang had of this monster was that of a paper doll.
Although this monster appeared human, it looked more like the paper dolls on Earth which Chinese people customarily burned as offerings at the graves of their ancestors.
It had a pair of legs, just like a human. However, its feet never touched the ground; it perpetually hovered in the air.
Based on the information Lin Huang managed to dig up, Painted Face was one of three underlings who had followed the four-faced individual the longest. If one were to go by qualifications, It was definitely considered very senior in terms of experience.
However, due to its combat strength staying stagnant at beginner-level, it had slowly been removed from the four-faced individual’s core power circle and become an unimportant character.
It had previously wanted to work hard to strengthen its cultivation. However, due to its limited talent, it was unable to break through to fourth-rank heavenly god-level at all. As time went by, it gradually abandoned the struggle.
Lin Huang had chosen Painted Face as his target because, for one, it knew more about the four-faced individual’s past. It had witnessed the entire process of the four-faced individual’s emergence. For another, compared to the others in the core power circle, it was the easiest to target.
On that day, as per its usual custom, Painted Face arrived on the rooftop of a building.
All along, it had had a unique way of passing time, which was to hum songs while walking on the edge of all sorts of buildings, its arms thrown wide, and imagining it was walking on a tightrope.
From up close, however, one could see its feet were actually one to two centimeters off the ground, never actually touching the ground at all.
However, on this day, right when it had climbed to the rooftop and taken a few steps on the edge, it suddenly noticed a black silhouette blocking its path.
It was a man in a black robe, and the face under his black hood was covered by a black mask.
Painted Face had only just caught sight of the figure; before it could even take a good look at this person, two black gleams of light lit up under the hood.
Painted Face’s body froze on the spot immediately.
The man in the black robe was, of course, Lin Huang. He had waited a night and a day just to get the chance to make his move; at least he had managed to wait until Painted Face was completely alone.
Painted Face’s combat strength was merely that of a low-level Heavenly God. Among Heavenly Gods of the same combat strength, it was even considered one of the weaker ones. In the face of Lin Huang’s sequence power, it had absolutely no ability to resist at all.
The memory retrieval Lin Huang carried out went extraordinarily smoothly with no interference at all.
Within a short two minutes, Lin Huang had completely copied Painted Face’s memory.
“That went more smoothly than I anticipated…” Lin Huang shot a glance at Painted Face, who still had not entirely detached itself from the memory retrieval process. He extended a finger and tapped it between Painted Face’s brows.
Painted Face’s body immediately went limp, and Lin Huang’s telekinetic threads tossed it into the God Territory within Lin Huang’s body.
After scanning his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis and making sure he had left no traces behind, Lin Huang did not linger. Instead, he departed in a flash.
“The second target is… the Gilded Fiend…”
The Gilded Fiend was an Abyssal creature found in the monster guide.
Monsters of this kind were usually powerful combat cultivators who had been contaminated with Abyssal energy. After they had become Abyssal creatures and been baptized in the Abyssal blood spring, they would transform into such monsters.
They possessed a powerful physical body, with strength that could be compared to Star Titan in the ancient era.
This target that Lin Huang chose had the combat strength of an eighth-rank Heavenly God, but the strength of its physical body might even be at least that of a half-step Lord. Very few individuals below lord-level would be able to break through its defenses.
It was not that Lin Huang wanted to challenge himself by choosing a target like this. Instead, he had done so because although the Gilded Fiend had a near-invincible physical body, its spirit strength was generally low.
Legend said that the Abyssal blood spring was a tributary of the death spring, which also had the effect of eroding one’s God’s soul.
Practically anyone who transformed into a Gilded Fiend would have a damaged God’s soul.
Most Gilded Fiends were either unintelligent and stupid, or insane… Regardless, none of them were normal in their heads. Some would even lose their minds completely during the process of transformation and become perfect material for puppet refinement.
From Lin Huang’s point of view, it was no big issue if these monsters were mentally abnormal. As long as they stored information about what they had seen or heard in their minds, that was sufficient.
Furthermore, because of its low intelligence, the Gilded Fiend had always been the four-faced individual’s most trusted subordinate—the only one, in fact.
It had even been the four-faced individual’s bodyguard at a much earlier point in time. Of course, calling it a bodyguard was just sugar-coating things; in reality, it was merely a shield in human form.
It was only almost one thousand years ago when the four-faced individual’s overlord status had been fully secured and stabilized, that the Gilded Fiend’s status had been upgraded. The Gilded Fiend was always being given tasks that required violence.
One of the reasons why Lin Huang chose the Gilded Fiend as his target was that it had been in close proximity with the four-faced individual for a long time, and had heard and seen many of this individual’s secrets. Another reason was that it was always being given missions that required it to go into the outside world. This made it easier to catch it on its own.
In the black market, the Gilded Fiend’s whereabouts were also never a secret.
In reality, the fairly famous warlords under the command of the six overlords had always been the ones that all the major and minor organizations in the inner world paid attention to.
This was because their activities might lead to a change of circumstances in the entire inner world.
By closely observing these people, the organizations would be alerted ahead of time regarding even the slightest stir.
Lin Huang managed to purchase a log of the Gilded Fiend’s recent whereabouts without needing to put in much effort at all.
“It seems I’m pretty lucky…” Lin Huang raised his brows slightly after glancing through the information in the log.
According to the black market’s records, the Gilded Fiend just happened to leave the headquarters guarded by the four-faced person a day ago. It appeared to be out on some mission.
He glanced at the information provided by the black market, and realized that someone had discovered the Gilded Fiend’s coordinates over an hour ago, even taking a photo secretly…
Within less than an hour, Lin Huang arrived at the coordinates mentioned in the black market’s log.
This place was a crowded market with people of various sizes and forms coming and going.
On both sides of the streets were all sorts of stalls.
Lin Huang glanced around and noticed they were selling items that were above the level of god relics.
However, he did not have much of a heart look for bargains. Instead, he glanced around and began to search for traces of the Gilded Fiend.
There were cultivators above virtual god-level everywhere in this market. It was a bad idea for him to use his Divine Telekinesis, so he could only release Leech Pods along the way to help with the search.
Under Lin Huang’s control, the Leech Pods were not drifting around at random. Instead, they were attaching themselves to various items along the way.
After releasing thousands of Leech Pods, Lin Huang was wondering whether or not the Gilded Fiend might have already left when a Leech Pod suddenly sent an image through.
The image showed a dark-gold monster of tall stature. It stood within the crowd, head and shoulders above everyone else, and was looking around…
“Found you!” Lin Huang’s eyes lit up.
