The cold edge pressed against his carotid artery.
The chill of death — the certainty that his throat could be opened at any moment — seemed to freeze the blood in Wild Dog's veins.
On the verge of collapse, Wild Dog froze for an instant. His mind began churning frantically through the haze of extreme fear.
"Great... great benefactor?!"
The moment he made out the cold jawline beneath the bamboo hat's shadow, the terror that had gripped him dissolved like snow in spring — replaced instantly by overwhelming relief and fawning gratitude.
Wild Dog let out a long, nearly boneless exhale. He didn't even register the blade still resting against his neck.
His entire body went limp as wet clay, and then he was pressing his forehead to the dusty floor in rapid succession, wiping cold sweat from his brow, voice trembling.
"Oh! My lord! It's you!"
"What a misunderstanding — the Dragon King's own temple flooded by his own river! I'm blind, I am — blind as a bat! I didn't even recognize your voice just now. You're a magnanimous man, please don't lower yourself to my level!"
Seeing that Wild Dog had recognized him, Lin Mu made no further show of it.
He turned his wrist, and the Metal Rend Leaf Gu that had been resting against Wild Dog's throat withdrew silently into his sleeve.
"Get up."
Lin Mu stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his voice flat and entirely without inflection.
Wild Dog scrambled to his feet as though granted a pardon, but kept his back bent and didn't dare draw a full breath.
"I saved your life once, and I took your goods. That makes us acquainted."
Lin Mu looked at him and went straight to the point. "But I need you to do something for me now. Something that must be kept in absolute secrecy — not a word to any third party."
What followed was a brief and covert exchange conducted in the shelter of that derelict shrine, beneath the cover of the cold night.
Lin Mu entrusted Wild Dog with a critical assignment, along with a generous advance payment — a task perfectly suited to a man who had spent his life surviving in the gutters.
The discussion concluded shortly after.
"Rest assured, my lord! I'll get it done right away — even if I have to carry my head in my hands, I won't let your business suffer!"
Wild Dog clutched the heavy pouch of Primeval Stones to his chest like a devotee who had just received a sacred mandate.
He bowed and retreated several steps with great deference, then turned and slipped swiftly and silently into the boundless dark.
Lin Mu stood alone in the shadow of the shrine, watching Wild Dog's retreating figure, and drew a slow breath of cold night air.
He surveyed the web he had been casting over these past weeks, his gaze deep and still.
Facing an inheritance left by a Rank 5 peak-stage figure like the Black Bone King, even with the advantage of his memories from the original, Lin Mu was clear-eyed about one thing.
Relying solely on his current Rank 2 initial-stage cultivation to snatch food from the mouths of those monsters was the thinking of a fool.
Li Mang. Lin Cang. Even Jia Fu.
Each faction was a mountain he could not simply climb over — all of them pressing down on the narrow crevices of this Ten Thousand Mountains region with crushing weight.
I have to calculate every angle to its limit. Squeeze every last drop of utility from every resource available to me.
Lin Mu tightened his fists, feeling the Red Iron Primeval Essence slowly filling his Aperture.
Only then will I have any chance of carving out the one thread of survival in this suffocating gap. I can only hope that when the critical moment arrives, these pieces on the board will each deliver something unexpected.
He steadied himself, settled his hat, and his silhouette flickered — vanishing from the shrine like a ghost dissolving into the dark.
The night was deep. The world was silent.
Moving like a drop of ink absorbed into a black sea, Lin Mu navigated the clan's overlapping network of visible sentries and hidden watchmen with practiced ease, arriving without a sound at the desolate corner behind the clan school's rear mountain.
This was the edge of the clan's restricted zone — a place no one had visited in years.
He parted the waist-high weeds.
Beneath a thick layer of dead leaves and scattered stones, an abandoned dry well crouched in the pale moonlight — silent and still, like the gaping maw of an abyss waiting to swallow everything whole.
Lin Mu stopped at the moss-covered rim and looked down.
Returning to this place, his state of mind became unexpectedly complex.
His thoughts seemed to pierce through time itself, pulling him back to a night several months ago.
He had been a naive and ignorant boy then.
For the sake of that one Liquor Worm — the one that could change his fate — he had descended into this well like a gambler with nothing left to lose, taking a desperate risk with everything on the line.
It was at the bottom of this ice-cold shaft that he had, against all odds, turned the tables and killed squad leader Gao Xiong.
He was back now. Everything was different.
A night wind passed through, lifting a few dead leaves from the well's edge.
The scene here was unchanged — as though time itself had stilled beside this dry well.
But the Lin Mu standing here now was a fundamentally different person.
In both character and cultivation, he was worlds apart from the boy who had once trembled in the dark.
"The last time I went down, it was for the Liquor Worm — for the means to survive in this world."
Lin Mu gazed into the dim depths below, and a composed, deeply confident cold smile touched the corner of his mouth.
"This time, I go down for the legacy of a Rank 5 overlord. To contend for a path that reaches the heavens."
The same desperate gamble. The same solitary descent.
But this time, he was no longer the prey laid out for slaughter. He was the hunter moving the pieces on this great board.
He confirmed that the surrounding area was absolutely secure — no eyes, no perception, no trace of observation from any direction.
Lin Mu hesitated no further. The Earth Ring Body's halo ignited around him in an instant.
He leapt — like a weightless falling leaf — and dropped without a sound into the ink-black depths of the dry well.
Whoosh.
Only the rush of wind past his ears.
With the Earth Ring Body's excellent aerial control and impact-dampening effect, Lin Mu touched off the well walls several times in quick succession, and landed at the cold, damp, silent bottom with perfect steadiness.
He looked around.
This place — where Gao Xiong's remains had once been buried — bore not a single trace of the life-and-death struggle that had once taken place here. Every mark had been erased.
One human life, quietly and completely written out of existence by the world.
Lin Mu did not dwell on it.
He reached into his robe and called forth from his Aperture the Rank 2 Blood Attraction Gu — that miniature blood-red compass.
Hum.
Red Iron Primeval Essence flowed in. The surface of the Blood Attraction Gu lit with an eerie crimson glow.
In the darkness, the blood-red needle was seized as though by some invisible magnetic force.
After a brief spin, it locked on with absolute certainty — pointing directly at the solid rock and earth of the well wall to one side.
The position it indicated, translated to the surface above, corresponded to the most heavily fortified, most senior-populated location in all of Black Blood Stockade.
Directly beneath the Grand Hall.
"Direction confirmed. Distance is considerable."
Lin Mu looked at the thick rock face before him. Rather than discouragement, a fierce light kindled in his eyes.
"If there is no path, then I will dig one myself."
He drew a deep breath. The Primeval Essence within his Aperture began to circulate in a precise and intricate pattern.
Red Mud — out.
Dark-red mud surged from Lin Mu's palm, saturating the hard earth ahead and reducing it to thick, yielding sludge.
Then —
A sharp gleam flashed in Lin Mu's eyes. The Rank 2 Earth Spike Gu erupted.
Razor-edged stone spikes spiraled outward from his hands, driving into the earth ahead and forcing the soil apart — punching through, hollowing it out.
Soften. Pierce. Then use the Red Mud Gu to harden and reinforce the tunnel walls, preventing collapse.
The precise interplay of Gu abilities allowed Lin Mu to advance through the earth.
The raw, mineral smell of disturbed soil filled the narrow tunnel. Red Iron Primeval Essence drained steadily with every passing moment.
In this lightless, sealed-off depth beneath the earth — cut off from the world above — Lin Mu began what would be an extraordinarily long, solitary, and utterly resolute excavation.