Chapter 318: The Sword Comes! The God-Level Curse Talisman Shows Its Power!
Ye Linyuan lay motionless beneath the scorching yellow sand, regulating his breathing to the point of suspended animation.
He was originally hiding here, waiting for the mastermind behind the shelling to arrive.
Based on his experience in the Jianghu, such a meticulously designed ambush—a trap meant to bury him alive under tons of rock—meant the opponent wanted him dead. And if they wanted him dead, they would surely come to check the situation, wanting to see him alive or confirm his corpse if he died.
A hunter always checks his traps.
But Ye Linyuan waited patiently for two and a half hours under the suffocating sand, and still, he didn't sense a single soul approaching.
Everything was so quiet. Even the wind seemed to have stopped.
It seemed the mastermind had already left, or perhaps they were patient enough to wait for days.
Ye Linyuan had no choice but to emerge; he couldn't possibly stay under the sand forever without water or food.
Whoosh!
Sand exploded outward as a figure burst from the ground like a dragon leaving the abyss. Ye Linyuan landed lightly on a nearby rock, dusting off his clothes with a frown.
"Who exactly is trying to harm me?"
Ye Linyuan was full of confusion. He had just left the secluded valley where he trained with his master and hadn't made any enemies in the outside world yet. Furthermore, his whereabouts should have been unknown to anyone except his Senior Sisters.
"Sister An?"
The image of An Zhiyue, the beautiful but cold woman he met earlier, flashed in his mind.
"Impossible. Sister An isn't that kind of person. Besides, Sister An left long ago, and she wouldn't know I was coming in this direction. She couldn't have set up such an accurate ambush with heavy artillery."
"It definitely isn't her!"
Ye Linyuan shook his head, dismissing the thought. He could tell that although An Zhiyue was cold to him, it was only because he was too frivolous and flirtatious. Moreover, anyone who could befriend his First Senior Sister, Pei Changli, definitely wasn't a bad person.
He knew that Senior Sister Pei Changli possessed a [Clear Mind Sword Heart], capable of discerning good from evil with a single glance. If An Zhiyue were evil, his Senior Sister would have cut her down long ago.
Furthermore, in Ye Linyuan's heart, there was a simple, naive belief characteristic of harem protagonists: Great beauties are never bad people; they must be beautiful and kind-hearted.
An Zhiyue was undoubtedly a top-tier beauty, so she must be good.
"Or... is it that organization?"
Ye Linyuan's expression immediately turned grim, his eyes narrowing with killing intent.
If there was anyone in this world he had a blood feud with, it was the [Martial God Hall].
The Martial God Hall was a mysterious, loose organization formed by top-tier experts from both within and outside the country. It was a behemoth that operated in the shadows. Ye Linyuan and Pei Changli's Master was once a member of its inner circle.
The Martial God Hall's aim was ostensibly to pursue the [Land Immortal Realm] and even higher Martial Dao Realms by gathering resources and ancient manuals.
Originally, it was a group of top Martial Artists befriending each other through martial arts, mutually researching and discussing the Dao, with no conflicts of interest. But such a powerful force inevitably attracted ambitious individuals who wanted to control it for worldly power.
If one could control the Martial God Hall, it would hold significant weight even worldwide. Even major nations wouldn't dare to underestimate an army of Grandmasters and Heavenly Humans!
Ye Linyuan's Master disagreed with this politicization. He not only withdrew from the Martial God Hall but also retreated into a deep valley to live in seclusion.
Yet, he was still targeted. Those ambitious individuals feared his strength and coveted his secrets. They ambushed him, severely injuring him, which led to his death a few years ago.
Later, those people came again, wanting Pei Changli and Ye Linyuan to join or hand over the Master's legacy.
Fortunately, Pei Changli broke through to the [Heavenly Human Realm] in time. Her sword struck like an immortal descending from the heavens, forcefully repelling three Heavenly Human Enforcers and severely injuring one of them.
The Martial God Hall was wary of Pei Changli's monstrous potential and strength. Being within the Yanxia Martial Arts World, they dared not be too presumptuous openly, thus they seemingly ceased their activities.
Pei Changli also became famous in the Yanxia Martial Arts World due to this battle, earning the title of [Female Sword Immortal].
"Those who follow prosper, those who resist perish. Do these Martial God Hall bastards still refuse to let us go?"
"Once I become stronger... once I awaken fully... I'll definitely make them pay in blood!"
Ye Linyuan clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white, his teeth grinding audibly.
He was already displeased with the Martial God Hall and had sworn to destroy it years ago to avenge his Master; now, with this assassination attempt, another layer of hatred was added.
"For now, I should leave and find my Senior Sisters in Modu (Magic City). The Martial God Hall might also be targeting them."
Ye Linyuan made up his mind and prepared to activate his movement technique to leave the desert.
But just as he circulated his Qi...
His body swayed violently.
His vision blurred, spinning as if the world had turned upside down. A wave of nausea hit him, and his limbs felt like they were filled with lead.
"The sand... is poisoned..."
Ye Linyuan's face turned ashen. He realized too late. The ambush wasn't the explosion; the explosion was just to force him to hide in the sand.
Thud.
He collapsed into the sand, unable to muster even a shred of internal energy.
...
Tens of miles away, on a high dune.
Shen Anyu put down his high-magnification military binoculars and smiled faintly.
"Hook, line, and sinker."
He had soaked the surrounding sand within a five-mile radius with a colorless, odorless, slow-acting potent poison derived from the [Divine Poison Skill].
Ye Linyuan wanted to 'wait for the rabbit' (ambush the attacker), unaware that he was the rabbit being stewed in a pot. During those two and a half hours of hiding, the chronic poison had already deeply permeated his pores and meridians.
The artillery shelling was merely a distraction to lull Ye Linyuan into a defensive state. It could kill a Martial Dao Grandmaster, but not a Heavenly Human or a Protagonist with trump cards.
Shen Anyu, who already knew Ye Linyuan's true strength and identity, would never be careless enough to think mere explosives would work.
"As expected of the poison formula recorded in the [Divine Poison Skill]."
"Unfortunately, without spiritual herbs that are hundreds or thousands of years old as a base, it can't achieve its best effect. It likely won't kill Ye Linyuan permanently."
"A clever housewife cannot cook without rice."
Shen Anyu shook his head, swirling the red wine in his glass. He could sense via the System that Ye Linyuan was still alive, his life force flickering but stubborn.
If he had top-tier spiritual herbs combined with the Divine Poison Skill, poisoning a mere Reincarnator to death would have been easy. But currently, the medicinal efficacy of modern herbs was insufficient to overcome the 'Protagonist Halo'.
Shen Anyu did not step forward to finish the job manually. That was risky.
Instead, he observed with interest how Ye Linyuan would escape such a desperate situation.
"Show me, Sword Saint. Show me the power of the remnant soul imprint of the [Sword Palace Master Lin Xuanyan]."
The next moment, an astonishing scene erupted in the desert below.
BOOM!
Gusts of wind howled, and dust filled the sky!
It was as if a thunderclap had suddenly struck on flat ground. A terrifying pressure, ancient and sharp, exploded from Ye Linyuan's paralyzed body.
Ye Linyuan suddenly opened his eyes.
Gone was the frivolous confusion. His dark pupils now radiated a majestic, chilling light that seemed to cut through the very fabric of reality. He slowly stood up, the poison seemingly suppressed by sheer will.
Although it was only for an instant, his demeanor underwent an earth-shattering transformation.
Before, he was merely a frivolous and lustful young man.
Now, he was an unparalleled expert, a Sword God who viewed the world as ants.
Ye Linyuan—or rather, the awakened soul of Lin Xuanyan—looked coldly with his pitch-black eyes in the exact direction where Shen Anyu was hiding miles away.
He opened his mouth and uttered two words that resonated with the laws of the world:
"Sword, come!"
Clang!
With a single thought, the air itself solidified. Thousands of sharp [Sword Qi] materialized from the void, formed from the wind and sand. They coalesced into a torrent of steel, shooting towards Shen Anyu's direction with lightning speed.
It was a strike that could sever mountains.
Shen Anyu didn't hesitate for a split second.
As soon as Ye Linyuan's Aura shifted, his instincts screamed. He activated his escape card immediately.
"[System Teleportation]!"
Flash!
He vanished instantly, reappearing in the master bedroom of a Riverside Luxury Mansion in the Demon Capital (Modu), a thousand miles away.
Beside him on the bed was the little maid, Ruan Lingshan, who had already fallen asleep from exhaustion after cleaning the house.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Back in the desert, the next moment, an attack comparable to hundreds of rounds of heavy artillery bombardment annihilated Shen Anyu's previous location.
The dune was erased. The ground trembled. Smoke and dust mushroomed into the sky.
In just over ten seconds, the possessed Ye Linyuan (Lin Xuanyan) traversed more than ten miles, using a technique that shrank the ground into inches, arriving at Shen Anyu's original spot.
The ground had already been torn apart by thousands of sharp Sword Qi, revealing deep trenches that looked like scars on the earth.
But looking around, there was no trace of a corpse. No blood. Nothing.
Lin Xuanyan frowned. He rarely showed such a look of bewildered uncertainty.
He escaped? Under my Sword Intent lock? How?
[Ding! Child of Destiny Ye Linyuan (Lin Xuanyan)'s attack was in vain. Target is greatly astonished!]
[Ding! Plundered +29,999 Destiny Value!]
...
Shen Anyu, safe in the air-conditioned luxury of his Modu apartment, smiled faintly.
He pulled up a holographic screen. Through the high-precision surveillance equipment of a high-altitude stealth drone extracted by the System, he could still clearly see the situation on site in real-time.
Ye Linyuan (Lin Xuanyan) did not find any trace of Shen Anyu and was not anxious. His gaze remained indifferent and majestic, scanning the horizon.
The next moment, violent True Essence swept through his entire body like a cleansing fire.
Ye Linyuan's body glowed with brilliant white light, and the dark green color on his skin—the sign of the poison—quickly faded, expelled through his pores as black mist.
In less than a quarter of an hour, the potent poison, enough to kill hundreds of blue whales, was completely purged.
Immediately afterward, the light faded. Ye Linyuan's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious. The possession had ended.
Shen Anyu, monitoring this scene, narrowed his eyes.
"It seems that ordinary methods are difficult to use against Ye Linyuan. The 'Old Grandpa' inside him is troublesome."
"Fortunately... I have other methods. Science and Poison failed, so let's try Metaphysics."
Shen Anyu flipped his hand.
An ominous, dark red talisman paper appeared in his palm. It pulsated with a sinister, blood-colored light and emitted an inauspicious Aura that made the air in the room drop by a few degrees.
It was the [Divine Curse Talisman].
A one-time consumable God-Tier item extracted from the Destiny Plunder System. Its power was more than ten times that of a permanent divine treasure. It ignored distance, ignored defense, and attacked the origin of the target's fate. Even a Land Immortal could not resist its curse!
Shen Anyu focused his mind. According to his will, Ye Linyuan's name and birth characters (Ba Zi) were invisibly inscribed onto the talisman.
Shen Anyu's eyes were deep and cold as he uttered a single word:
"Go!"
Whoosh!
The dark red talisman paper ignited spontaneously without fire and quickly vanished into the void, tracking its target across space and destiny...
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