Liu Xing willed the invisibility to swallow the blood that had splattered on him, and it obeyed, rendering him invisible once more. However, Wuji Sanren now knew his location because of the blood that had splattered. Liu Xing moved randomly around the room, circling left and right so that Wuji Sanren could not pinpoint his exact position. Tide Walker remained silent throughout the ordeal, but it seemed to sense his mood and wriggled its body as if to comfort him. As he walked around, he began to think clearly about his situation. He realized that he still had the upper hand. Not only was he still invisible, but he also knew that Wuji Sanren was not dead, whereas that demonic cultivator did not know that Liu Xing knew he was still alive.

  Liu Xing was certain that Wuji Sanren had only two options. Either he could ambush him, or he could wait for him to leave. To be cautious, Liu Xing prepared himself in case Wuji Sanren tried to ambush him.

  Liu Xing’s eyes swept over the corpses lining the floor. He knew that demonic cultivators had a tendency to learn tricks to prolong their lives. Ji Dongyang, the man who had possessed Mo Yan in the Dragon Skull Forest, prolonged his life by switching hosts. He knew tales of demonic cultivators who split their souls into multiple bodies so that when one died, they could remain alive in another. It seemed Wuji Sanren had this trick up his sleeve as well. He did not know the mechanism of the technique, but since Wuji Sanren’s true body was dead and his gun could not absorb his qi, it was logical to assume that Wuji Sanren was also switching bodies. That was where these corpses came into play. He must be hiding within one of these corpses.

  Liu Xing stopped pacing and stood in the corner of the room. He tried to diminish his presence, hoping to make Wuji Sanren think he had already left the room and that it was safe to emerge. As he waited, he tried to sense the qi around him to determine which corpse Wuji Sanren currently inhabited. He closed his eyes, sharpened his senses, and felt the qi around him.

  The qi within the room was quite dense compared to other places within the sect. He focused his senses on the corpses of the people he had killed. The heat had already left their bodies, making them pale and cold. There was no inhalation from their lungs, no pulse in their veins. However, as he sensed more closely, he realized that qi clung to them. It was thin but noticeable, and he knew this qi belonged to Wuji Sanren. Hell, the entire room was filled with his qi, mingled with the ambient qi, which was quite natural. If Liu Xing hadn't known Wuji Sanren was still alive, he would have chalked this small thing up to something ordinary.

  He tried to sense which corpses had more qi clinging to them. As he examined them one by one, he considered the chance that Wuji Sanren hadn't taken over a corpse but something more hidden, like a treasure or something even more ordinary, like a stack of documents. Then he realized one of the corpses was different. Wuji Sanren's qi, while spread thin around this specific corpse, gathered more densely around its gut. It was as if the qi was subtly attracted to that point. Not only that, all the other corpses were suffused with ambient qi, which could move freely through the flesh, bones, and blood of a dead person. However, that specific corpse, a man with long dark hair and fair skin, was not like the others. The ambient qi did not suffuse it thoroughly.

  Liu Xing licked his lips. His first thought was to aim his gun and blow up the corpse. He instantly dismissed it as a bad idea, as he wanted a more sophisticated solution, like dropping his invisibility while showing his back to lure Wuji Sanren into attacking him, only to surprise him with a counterattack. However, as he thought about it further, he concluded that the simple plan was actually… good. Why concoct an elaborate plan when simple violence was the answer? Moreover, he was sure that whatever technique his opponent had used must have come at a great cost; after all, switching bodies must not be easy. Even if it devolved into a fight, he could win this, though he needed to be cautious.

  Nodding, Liu Xing went with this plan. He took steps, moving toward where Wuji Sanren was pretending to be dead, and prepared his gun.

  ***

  Wuji Sanren was furious. He was a man who was confident in his intellect and careful nature. He liked to dissect problems and solve them little by little. That was why, when he finally realized that his mind had been tampered with by none other than Ye Xuanming, he felt as if his dignity had been ripped from his body, his pride scarred, and his reputation tarnished. Ye Xuanming had truly betrayed him, and the moment he knew this fact, he vowed to mess with his plan and began to think about how he would ruin his life. He did not intend to do it directly, of course. Cultivation-wise, he was weaker, yet not all problems needed to be solved by power alone. Sometimes, the mind was sharper than a blade, and he could think of several ways to enact his revenge.

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  As he settled inside the body of a disciple whose name he didn't care to memorize, nestled deep inside the stomach and coated by a shell made of a dark substance with the curious property of thinning one's presence, he patiently waited for Liu Xing to go. The man, from the scattered reports he had received, was dangerous. His invisibility was so thorough that even he could not sense him, and his power was beyond his own realm.

  In a straightforward fight, Wuji Sanren knew he was at a disadvantage.

  In truth, playing along with him was not his initial plan. After learning that Ye Xuanming had descended upon Water Tower City and wreaked havoc there, he had already planned to investigate the whole incident. He knew something was amiss, but he did not know what.

  The fact that an invisible opponent had arrived on this island and was killing his disciples one by one was a surprise, and yet, he suspected it was likely Liu Xing, the disciple of the Purple Moon Sect reported to have died at the hands of Hua Beifeng. Though it was more of a guess than a conclusion full of evidence, he had been correct. The price for playing along was knowledge that his mind had been tampered with and the revelation of Ye Xuanming's plan.

  Even if his cultivation regressed a bit, and he needed to say goodbye to the body he was born with, it was worth it. Not that he had many choices about it.

  "Just go, Liu Xing," Wuji Sanren thought. He did not need to kill Liu Xing. In fact, he could be used as an instrument to enact his revenge.

  Within this form, Wuji Sanren did not see with his eyes, but with a crude form of qi sense, a far lesser substitute for his five senses. He felt blind, yet he could still see where Liu Xing had been standing, where his own blood had successfully revealed his location. After a moment, that blood, too, began to vanish, and his room was silent once again, the only sound the humming of his screens.

  Wuji Sanren waited, and waited, and waited. He needed to be sure that Liu Xing was already gone. But he could not wait too long. This technique of his was still imperfect. The longer he stayed in his current form—as a consciousness connected to a mark he had placed on his disciples—the more power he would lose. He was lucky that this corpse was still fresh and compatible with his own soul. In theory, when he perfected this technique, he could switch between vessels instantly. Currently, however, he could only move from corpse to corpse with great effort.

  Wuji Sanren waited more, but then he became impatient. The door had not opened, indicating that Liu Xing was still within the room. Yet, doubt crept in as he considered the possibility that Liu Xing was already gone. He could become thoroughly invisible, so it was not a stretch to think that he had a way to move in and out of a locked room. However, just to be cautious, he decided to wait a bit longer. He had a little more time before he needed to activate the second phase of this technique. The second phase was messy. He needed to sustain his new body with his own qi, and then he needed to consume his old body in less than a minute to truly fuse his consciousness with his new body. Wuji Sanren was planning his next course of action when his senses suddenly picked up something. At that moment, he knew it was an attack.

  Panicked and letting his instinct guide him, he pushed his formless self to the side, dragging the corpse with him. With his senses, he could perceive the floor exploding as clouds of dust billowed, and he realized that Liu Xing knew he was still alive.

  "How?" he asked himself, dragging the corpse to the side. It was baffling. After all, he had examined and practiced this technique numerous times, and he knew for a fact that discerning that he was still alive, even though his body was destroyed, was almost impossible. Show Ye Xuanming the corpse, and even he would conclude that he had died. It was the ultimate technique for faking his own death.

  Wuji Sanren was about to activate his second phase when the head of his supposed new body suddenly exploded. It was not from a bolt but from an invisible foot that had crushed it. He could see the form of Liu Xing’s bloody foot. Wuji Sanren felt rage at the destruction, but then fear enveloped his heart, which turned into desperation. As he tried to switch to another body, he also tried to use a technique to control his own corpse. At that moment, his headless body suddenly lunged toward Liu Xing. But at that moment, a shark suddenly appeared out of thin air, opened its jaw wide, and chomped into his headless body, stopping its advance.

  Wuji Sanren shouted in his mind, desperately trying to switch bodies, when a voice suddenly echoed in the room.

  "You cannot escape."

  At the same time, another bolt suddenly appeared. It instantly dug into the gut of his destroyed vessel, touched the outer shell of his formless self, and then exploded. At that moment, Wuji Sanren let out a soundless cry, one that did no justice to the pain he felt. It was as if his consciousness was slashed, burned, crushed, then burned and slashed again. It was so painful that his whole being screamed in agony, but then, a moment later, all of it suddenly stopped.

  The short fight had ended, and Wuji Sanren was no more.

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