164: Chapter 164 The Birth of the Demon King! All Contestants Become My Prey!

Lin Qi turned around and walked in the direction where he had previously dropped the "bait."

"Job done."

He muttered these words, his footsteps unhurried, as if he had just tidied up a slightly messy room.

In the bushes, Poison Fang remained lying in the mud in that same rigid posture.

His eyes could move and his ears could hear, so he heard the bloody slaughter at the foot of the mountain, which had lasted for over half an hour, with perfect clarity.

The roars of warriors, the screams of assassins, the crisp clashing of weapons, and the dull sounds of breaking bones.

Every sound made the chill in his heart deepen a little more.

He finally understood what Lin Qi meant by "the game has only just begun."

This guy didn't treat anyone as an opponent at all.

In his eyes, every Prodigy who entered this forest was merely a resource to be utilized and harvested.

Footsteps approached from afar.

Lin Qi's figure appeared in Poison Fang's field of vision.

He crouched down, looking at Poison Fang's bloodshot eyes with an expressionless face.

"Next target, the remaining small fry of the Shadow Blade Alliance. Lead the way, my living radar."

After speaking, Lin Qi grabbed Poison Fang by the collar and, dragging him like a dead dog, disappeared into the deepening fog.

...

About an hour later.

Another team cautiously approached this forest clearing.

They were elites from the Central Plains Academy, led by a captain named Zhao Hu, whose profession was a Templar Knight.

"Captain, the detector shows a large amount of residual life signals ahead, and also... the smell of blood." A scout returned from the front, his face looking somewhat pale.

Zhao Hu frowned and raised his hand to signal the team to stop.

"What's the situation? Did someone get there first and take care of Lin Qi?"

"It doesn't look like it," the scout shook his head. "It's too chaotic; the energy fluctuations are disorderly. At least thirty people must have been engaged in a large-scale melee here."

"Let's go take a look."

Zhao Hu gave the order, and the whole team formed a defensive formation, slowly stepping into the killing field.

The scene before them caused everyone to gasp in shock.

There were corpses everywhere on the ground; a rough count revealed no fewer than twenty.

There were also a few severely wounded individuals leaning against tree trunks, on the verge of death.

The air was filled with a heavy scent of blood and the acrid smell of exhausted magic power.

"It's the people from the Berserker Alliance and the Blade of the Firmament!"

Someone recognized the guild emblems on the corpses.

Zhao Hu quickly walked over to a Berserker Alliance warrior who was still breathing and crouched down to ask.

"Brother, what happened? How did you end up fighting the people from the Blade of the Firmament? And where is the target named Lin Qi?"

The warrior's unfocused eyes regained a glimmer of focus. He looked at Zhao Hu, his face filled with extreme fear.

"A devil... that's a devil..."

"What devil? Pull yourself together!" Zhao Hu grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

"He... he was playing us for fools..." The warrior coughed up a mouthful of blood. "Both we and the Blade of the Firmament were tricked by him... We were fighting for our lives here... while he just watched from above..."

Another survivor from the Blade of the Firmament leaning against a tree added in a hoarse voice.

"After we finished fighting... only after we were all done... did he come down..."

Zhao Hu's heart skipped a beat, and he pressed further: "What did he come down to do? To finish people off?"

"No..." The Blade of the Firmament member's eyes revealed a humiliation deeper than death. "He... he came down to collect the bodies... and strip us of our equipment..."

"Strip your equipment?" Zhao Hu and his team members were all stunned.

"Yes! Stripped clean! Dead or alive... he didn't spare a single one!" the Berserker Alliance warrior roared excitedly. "My heirloom ring! My brother's enchanted armor! He took it all! He said... that was the interest the Tianji Pavilion owed him!"

The entire Central Plains Academy team fell silent.

Using others to kill, reaping the benefits, and finally cleaning up the battlefield completely.

Is this something a human being could actually do?

This was no longer a simple hunt; this was utter, complete humiliation!

Zhao Hu stood up, looking at the chaotic battlefield, and a chill crept up his spine.

For the first time, he felt doubt about that "Blank Slate" with all 5s for stats.

This was no Blank Slate; this was clearly a wolf in human clothing!

Over the next two days.

The Mist Forest completely turned into Lin Qi's private playground.

His infamy spread among all the surviving teams in a twisted and terrifying way.

"Have you heard? The 'Iron Fist Society' and the 'Gale Hall' in the northern valley started fighting. Both sides thought the other was ambushing them, and they suffered heavy casualties! In the end, someone saw a shadow picking up equipment on the mountaintop!"

"The swamp in the south is even weirder! Five people from the 'Giant Rock Society' went to chase a signal source, but they all fell into a trap and were dragged away by a group of bloodthirsty vines! It's said that the trap was just the simplest tripwire and a camouflaged pit!"

"Don't even mention it! One of our brothers went off alone to pee yesterday, and when he came back, he only had his underwear left. His weapons and equipment were all gone, and there was a note stuck to his neck that said 'Thanks for your patronage'!"

Panic was spreading.

At first, some teams refused to believe it and relied on their numbers to try and surround and annihilate Lin Qi.

But they soon discovered that they weren't facing a single person at all.

At times, he was a ghostly assassin who could pierce a scout's throat with precision using just a pebble.

At other times, he was a cunning hunter who used the most primitive traps and psychological tactics to lead team after team into an abyss of mutual slaughter.

The second and third batches of assassins sent by the Shadow Blade Alliance to provide support didn't even manage to touch the hem of Lin Qi's clothes; amidst endless suspicion and fear, they were divided, hunted, and eventually wiped out one by one.

In the end, all the contestants in the Mist Forest reached an eerie consensus.

They would rather solo a Lord-level monster than go anywhere near a region suspected to be Lin Qi's signal source.

The name "Lin Qi" became a taboo more terrifying than death.

Clang!

A long, resonant bell chime echoed through the forest.

It announced the official end of the second round of the hunting points competition.

Beams of white light lit up, teleporting all surviving contestants back to the central arena of the Kyoto Gymnasium.

Inside the arena, there were fewer than fifty people still standing.

Almost everyone was injured, with weary expressions and eyes full of the relief of having survived a disaster.

When they saw the people around them clearly, almost subconsciously, everyone's gaze turned in the same direction.

In a corner of the arena, Lin Qi's figure slowly appeared.

He was still wearing that clean student uniform, without a trace of blood on his body, not even a single wrinkle.

He was looking down, slowly and meticulously wiping his fingers with a handkerchief.

As if he hadn't just experienced a bloody slaughter, but had instead been drinking afternoon tea in a garden.

The entire arena was deathly silent.

The eyes of all the survivors had changed.

There was no mockery, no disdain, not even jealousy.

What remained was only the most primitive awe and fear of an unknown power.

They finally understood what an absurd joke that "all 5" stat data was.

Meanwhile, on the online live streams and the giant light screens at the venue, the final points leaderboard had frozen.

First place: Lin Qi, Longya Academy.

Points: 136,000.

This number, like an insurmountable mountain, pressed heavily down upon the head of the second-place contestant.

And the second-place contestant's points were a mere 8,000.

The gap was truly shocking.

"Monster..."

Inside the VIP room of the Tianji Pavilion, Li Pojun stared intensely at a blurry video clip sent back by his subordinates.

In the footage, Lin Qi had one foot on the chest of a dying contestant, expressionlessly removing the person's ring.

Those calm eyes, through the low-quality lens, seemed to be looking directly at him.

Li Pojun felt his palms were covered in cold sweat.