Sure enough.
The very second after Lin Feng made his sound.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
From the dark dense forest, two Gu worm attacks glinting with venomous light lanced out in an instant! Carrying exceedingly fierce killing intent, like venomous serpents flicking their tongues, they shot straight at the vital points of Lin Feng, who stood in the open!
But Lin Feng was, after all, the son of the Grand Elder, the number-one seed of Black Blood Stockade.
Facing this terrifying onslaught, enough to instantly slay an ordinary Rank 2 Gu Master, he let out a cold snort, and the defensive Gu worm on his body erupted with a roar!
An exceedingly thick shield, radiating a dazzling light, instantly enveloped him.
His foundation ran deep — he actually managed, by sheer force of his defensive Gu, to barely hold off these two fatal ambushes!
Not only that, but in the instant he weathered the attack, a cold glint flashed in the depths of Lin Feng's eyes, and the longsword in his hand suddenly swept out.
"Go!"
Several strands of matchlessly fierce Metal Rend Leaf Gu sword qi hacked back in reverse, most cunningly, along the direction from which the attack had just come!
They forced the two assassins in the dark to break off their follow-up attacks and, in wretched fashion, shift their concealed positions.
Watching this scene, Lin Mu, hidden in the shadows, narrowed his eyes slightly.
It seems this stretch of high-intensity, meat-grinder combat on the front lines has let Lin Feng truly grow and transform quite a bit.
After several rounds of probing and clashing.
The enemy had clearly perceived how tricky Lin Feng was, and was unwilling to expose their true identities and trump cards too soon through a forceful assault.
The atmosphere within the dense forest fell, for a time, into an exceedingly bizarre dead silence.
Only Lin Feng's isolated, helpless panting remained.
He propped up the dying Lin Wan'er with one hand, gazing at the all-devouring darkness around him, panic beginning to gradually spread through his heart.
Under extreme pressure, Lin Feng suddenly began to bellow hysterically at the dark dense forest at the top of his lungs:
"Lin Mu! Are you fucking dead or not?! Say something!"
"There are fucking assassins! If you're not dead, go get help now! Just as we arranged beforehand — our Black Blood Stockade's main force is stationed ten li away to receive us!"
He roared himself hoarse, trying to repeat his old trick — using the "empty fort ploy" that had once scared off Li Huang in the Blood Forest — to force back this pair of desperadoes hidden in the dark once again.
However, this time, his scheme came up utterly empty.
At a dead corner on the other end of the dense forest.
The masked man and the gauntlet woman, concealed behind tree trunks, heard Lin Feng's shout and exchanged an exceedingly tacit glance.
In that momentary meeting of eyes, the two silently made an exceedingly cold-blooded decision.
The mortal order they had received this time — its ultimate objective — was to decapitate this Lin Feng, whom Black Blood Stockade had lifted onto an altar!
As for that so-called Lin Mu and Lin Wuxie, they had only ever been incidental extras, dealt with in passing; whether they lived or died was of no consequence.
If Lin Feng truly had reinforcements ten li away, then all the more reason they could not withdraw!
If they could seize the chance while their opponent was isolated and forcefully take Lin Feng's head here, then this trip would be an absolute success, more than enough to utterly shatter Black Blood Stockade's morale!
At this thought, the two Rank 2 peak stage assassins no longer harbored any hesitation or probing.
They resolved to end it swiftly and decisively, at any cost, before Lin Mu could call over these so-called "helpers"!
Rustle, rustle, rustle—!
In an instant, the sound of leaves being torn apart by an exceedingly violent airflow rang out once more through the dense forest.
That sound made no attempt at concealment, carrying a tragic, all-or-nothing, fight-to-the-death aura, and at an exceedingly terrifying speed, from two directions, it bore straight down to strangle the isolated and helpless Lin Feng!
And in the shrubbery on the other side.
Lin Mu's lurking figure, at last, in this moment, slowly rose from the shadows.
Gazing at the two assassins who had now fully exposed their positions and charging trajectories, a trace of brightness flashed through his pitch-black eyes.
In the darkness, exceedingly soundlessly, he murmured two words to himself:
"Two."
Before the words had even faded, his figure, blending into the night, vanished once more into the dense forest, like a drop of ink dripping into the sea.
As for Lin Feng, gazing at those two frantically closing afterimages of death.
Lin Feng, who had still been trying to intimidate his opponents with words, felt his inner panic utterly swallowed by despair in this moment.
He was now alone, and had to protect the dying Lin Wan'er as well — a single beam could hardly support the structure to begin with.
Facing the reckless, life-disregarding pincer of two peak assassins of the same rank, he knew that he was likely truly going to lose his life here.
But at this desperate, certain-death juncture!
Lin Feng, on the contrary, put away the flustered expression he had worn moments before.
He bit through the tip of his tongue, forcing himself to calm down, held his longsword horizontally before his chest, and made his final preparations.
Life and death hung on but a hair's breadth!
Just as the masked man's bone blade and the gauntlet woman's heavy fist were about to close in and complete this unsolvable strangling—
"Roar—!"
A wild bellow, utterly unlike anything human, brimming with extreme savagery and ferocity, abruptly exploded from an angle at the gauntlet woman's side!
The gauntlet woman, on the verge of success, felt only a blackness sweep across her vision!
A body radiating a terrifying blood-and-qi aura, carrying a mad, mutually-destructive momentum, slammed fiercely into her flank!
It was none other than Lin Wuxie, who had long lain in wait in the shadows!
With a great bang, the caught-off-guard gauntlet woman was slammed clean off her original attack trajectory by this brutal, unreasonable freakish strength!
And on the other side.
The masked man, wielding the bone blade with fierce killing intent, was just about to cleave Lin Feng in two.
In the very instant his feet touched the ground—
Squelch!
An exceedingly bizarre, sticky, powerfully suctioning sensation of sinking suddenly came from the soles of his feet!
The masked man looked down, his pupils contracting in horror.
To his terror, he discovered that the solid muddy ground where he had planted his feet had, without his noticing, transformed into an exceedingly deep patch of dark-red quagmire!
The Red Mud Gu!
In that very second when the masked man's figure fell into a fatal rigidity from being mired in the quagmire—
within the dim mist directly before him, Lin Mu's figure, like the god of death, surfaced slowly and most clearly, bit by bit.
The faint moonlight fell upon Lin Mu's face, untouched by any ripple of emotion.
Wearing a smile, he slowly raised his right hand and gently held one slender index finger upright at the center of his lips.
"Shhh—"
Gazing at this Rank 2 peak stage assassin, his voice was calm and profound, as though stating an outcome already destined:
"Your opponent — is me."