Chapter 1658 - 852: Tidings of Joy Arrive One After Another

The rainstorm raged on. In front of the brightly lit clubhouse, there was a dead silence.

The subordinate who had gone to scout the situation staggered back, face deathly pale. He looked at the anxious Ling Shuo, opened his mouth, trembling, yet no sound came out.

"Speak! Turn mute, have you?!"

Ling Shuo flew into a rage.

"All… all… every last one…"

The subordinate panted, desperately trying to wake himself from the Corpse Mountain and sea of blood: "All dead, every—everyone… no, I mean not quite everyone. The unrelated people are pretty much fine, but everyone who came to the meeting is…"

Ling Shuo didn't wait for him to finish. He shoved him away and led people in, breaking into the blood‑stained clubhouse.

Very quickly, faint retching sounded from behind.

In the warm air, the stench of death intertwined with cloying perfume, all the more nauseating.

And everything shattered before their eyes had already left everyone speechless.

Including the Chosen One of the Mirror system who had sealed off the entire clubhouse from the start; his expression shifted, and he instinctively turned his head, looking at that unlucky bastard who'd tried to butt in while Xiao An was speaking.

"..." The man who had been harboring opinions twitched at the corners of his mouth, then his face turned chalk‑white. He stumbled back a step, rushed out the door, and started vomiting wildly.

Whether from shock or from fear, nobody knew.

Only now, no one laughed at him anymore. Not just him—every Witness at the scene felt only something like instinctive fear.

Even those hardened men who were used to seeing dead bodies and bones, who could keep a straight face while handling rotting corpses, had their expressions spasming over and over.

What truly inspired fear was not the dead.

It was the razor‑sharp aura lingering in cracks, in pooled blood and in crevices—like a blade pressed against the throat, sending a cold shudder, making it hard to breathe.

They walked in silence, up and up, all the way to the conference room that was now utterly unrecognizable, and to those unsightly corpses…

The corner of Ling Shuo's eye twitched. Behind him, admiring gasps rose.

"So clean."

From a shadow the light could not reach, a hunched figure who kept darting glances side to side slowly walked in. He bent down, reached out, dipped his fingers into the blood spreading across the floor, and put it into his mouth. He sucked at the sharpness lingering within the cloying, metallic sweetness, that blade‑like mouthfeel plunging him into intoxication, unable to extricate himself.

Ling Shuo was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked:

"…Elder Chu, is this something you could do?"

"Ah? Me? Depends. If preparations are sufficient and the toxin is given enough time to do its work, then in a closed space like this, with the Mirror sealing it off, it's not difficult.

And I'd be able to do it easier, simpler than him."

Elder Chu let out a strange laugh: "Only, if you threw me against that fellow head‑on, hehe, forget it. I'd like to live a few more years.

Even among beasts, something like me—a rat that can't bear the light—how could I compare to tigers, wolves, and eagles?"

He closed his eyes and carefully sniffed the stench in the air, beaming as if he had peered into a corner of the massacre, the aftermath of the struggle. He clicked his tongue in wonder.

He could almost picture that brutal, naked scene.

"So fast, and so precise. No trace of hesitation." He reached out, stroking the scars on the wall. "At the start, each move seemed a bit clumsy, but there wasn't a flicker of doubt—straightforward and decisive, as if driven purely by instinct.

So…"

He clicked his tongue, racking his brains for words, and in the end arrived at a conclusion that even left him silent:

"…pure?"

Yes. Pure.

This kind of battle result, he could achieve as well; swap in some other expert and it might be possible too. But none of them would be this clean.

Aside from that strain of Ling Li's aura, there was no trace of anything else left behind.

Killing intent? Malice? Resentment? Rage?

None of it.

That was the truly crucial part.

The whole process had been too clean. So clean that while everyone was still tangled up over whether it had been Blade Teeth or Hunter Finger, they subconsciously ignored this bizarre consequence.

"What do you mean?"

Ling Shuo was slightly puzzled: "Is that really important?"

"Ling Sheng, you command the society and rarely have to fight, so naturally you don't quite grasp this side of things. To you, it's trivial; to someone like me, who spends all day tangled up in you‑die‑I‑live struggles, this is the truly terrifying part."

Elder Chu cackled, suddenly raising his hand; his five fingers instantly turned blood‑red, red shading into purple, purple tinged with green, a sight that sent a chill down the spine.

"This technique is called Blood Vibration—a very common White Deer Skill. Everyone trains it, but it differs from person to person… and the traces it leaves are all different too."

He casually grabbed; the mangled corpse on the ground withered, shattered, and bloomed with layer upon layer of green spots.

Now, anyone could see the difference.

The moldy corpse was emitting a dense floral fragrance that made their vision swim black; instinctively, they wanted to back away.

"See? Many techniques are driven by the soul and will. You have to pour in your consciousness, even invest hatred and rancor for them to take effect… that's why some arts grow stronger the more greedy they are, the more vicious, the more poisonous. And the stronger the expert, the harder it is to conceal the marks their hands leave behind."

Elder Chu slowly turned back and asked, "But Ling Sheng, can you sense what I'm talking about here?"

No.

No matter how carefully one extended Perception and tried to feel it out, there was no residual malice to be found.

Clean as if scrubbed by water.

As if it had been some sudden accident, an unforeseen catastrophe.

Without investing a shred of emotion, calmly and coldly cutting lives into pieces—once every scrap of trivial external feeling was stripped away, slaughter itself became this pure.