267: Chapter 267 Murder in the Dark Alley and the Lost Star Ring

At midnight in Emerald King City, the bustling clamor had settled into a blurred tranquility.

Zhou Wannian walked out of the underground black market along the dark stone steps and returned to the surface. A cool night breeze brushed past his green robes, dispersing some of the turbid smell of cheap ale and rust from the underground cellar. Of the buildings carved out of hollowed-out giant ancient trees lining the streets, only a few magical lanterns emitting a faint blue glow remained dutifully lit.

He chose not to return to the Green Leaf Rest. Since the hounds of the Divine Court had already launched a carpet search across the city, that treehouse hostel where his information was registered was clearly no longer safe. Moreover, at this moment, several tails followed behind him, believing they were perfectly hidden.

Zhou Wannian maintained a steady pace, walking along a remote side road paved with white jade bricks toward the older, even somewhat dilapidated Lower District of Emerald King City.

His breathing was even and long, seemingly entirely unaware of the extremely faint shadow-tracking mark on the edge of his hem. But within his mental sea, as vast as an abyss, the three sneaky auras behind him were as glaring as torches in the dark night.

One of the auras was sharp and full of edge—it was the silver-armored swordsman who had been bidding at the edge of the black market mine earlier. The other two auras were hidden in the shadows, carrying the stench of those who lived by the blade, clearly professional assassins skilled in the art of murder.

As for the black-robed stall owner who had produced the void origin stone, he was clever enough; after taking that drop of ten-thousand-year Wood Origin, he vanished completely and did not participate in this foolish hunt of greed.

Zhou Wannian stopped in front of an abandoned magic fountain square.

Most of the surrounding buildings here had collapsed, and giant vines tightly entwined the broken white jade statues. Because it had been neglected for years, the magic Formations here had long since failed, making it an excellent place for robbery and the destruction of corpses and evidence.

He turned around and looked calmly at the dark, deep alley behind him.

"Following me for so long, aren't you tired?" Zhou Wannian spoke in a flat tone, his voice echoing clearly across the empty, abandoned square.

The shadows deep in the alley distorted slightly.

Accompanied by an extremely faint metallic clinking, the Advanced swordsman clad in light silver armor stepped slowly out of the darkness. His hand rested naturally on the hilt of the slender rapier at his waist, his face wearing an undisguised look of greed and mockery.

To Zhou Wannian's left and right, two blurry shadows also emerged silently, sealing off all his possible paths of retreat.

"Your perception is quite good; no wonder you dare to flaunt such a high-level treasure alone in the black market," the silver-armored swordsman said with a cold laugh. "However, that won't change your end tonight. Hand over all the spatial storage devices on your person, and for the sake of being fellow travelers, I can give you a quick death."

Zhou Wannian looked at the self-satisfied swordsman before him, not even finding the interest to sigh.

In the True Immortal Realm, there were always such fools blinded by greed who couldn't even see the gap in strength between the two sides. This silver-armored swordsman had barely reached the level of a Golden Immortal Early Stage, and those two assassins only had the cultivation of the True Immortal Peak. Ants of this level wouldn't even have the qualification to be looked at directly if they were in the Shura Blood Arena.

"Finished?" Zhou Wannian casually dusted his sleeves, his tone carrying a heart-palpitating relaxation and indifference.

The cold smile on the silver-armored swordsman's face froze instantly, and an unprecedented sense of life-and-death crisis bit into his heart like a venomous snake.

Without the slightest hesitation, the rapier at his waist unsheathed instantly.

An extremely brilliant silver sword light tore through the night, carrying the sharp Law of Wind as it aimed straight for Zhou Wannian's throat. The speed of this strike was incredibly fast, even leaving a series of blurry afterimages in the air—clearly a lethal sword technique the swordsman had practiced for many years.

However, in Zhou Wannian's eyes, this stunning strike was as slow as if it were stationary.

Zhou Wannian did not use the true word treasure wheel, nor did he sacrifice the void-splitting ruler. He simply raised his right hand steadily, extended his index and middle fingers, and casually pinched toward the seemingly empty space in front of him.

Ding.

A crisp and pleasant metallic vibration rang out in the square.

The silver sword light, capable of splitting mountains and rocks, came to a dead stop less than three inches from Zhou Wannian's throat. The high-grade magic rapier, which the silver-armored swordsman cherished as a treasure, was now held firmly between Zhou Wannian's two fingers. No matter how frantically the swordsman urged the immortal spiritual power within his body, he could not make the blade advance even a hair's breadth further.

"This... how is this possible?" The silver-armored swordsman's eyes bulged in horror, and a massive fear instantly swallowed his sanity.

Zhou Wannian's expression remained as usual as his two fingers snapped downward with an extremely slight motion.

A crisp crack sounded.

That rapier, forged with high-grade mithril and incredibly tough, was snapped like a fragile dry twig.

Immediately after, Zhou Wannian flicked his finger. The broken tip of the sword turned into a silver stream of light that could not be caught by the naked eye, flying back at a terrifying speed a hundred times faster than it had come.

Puchi.

The silver-armored swordsman didn't even have time to scream before a bloody hole appeared in his forehead, passing straight through. The life in his eyes vanished instantly, and his body fell straight back, crashing heavily onto the cold jade ground.

An instant kill. There was no fancy magical confrontation, only the most pure and extreme Physical Body suppression.

Seeing this, the two assassins lurking in the shadows on either side were scared out of their wits. Having wandered in the darkness for years, they naturally knew that someone who could snap a high-grade rapier with two fingers and instantly counter-kill was an absolutely terrifying monster they could not afford to provoke.

Without any communication, the two of them tacitly turned into two distorted shadows and fled frantically in two completely different directions.

"Since you've come, stay here."

Zhou Wannian's tone remained calm. He didn't even move his feet; he just casually gave the ground a light stomp with his right foot.

Boom.

A terrifying force of Physical Body vibration followed the gaps in the white jade tiles like two invisible mad dragons, instantly catching up to the two fleeing shadows.

The two assassins only felt the space beneath their feet suddenly sink, and then an irresistible destructive force directly penetrated their shadow disguises, slamming heavily into their internal organs.

The two shadows distorted violently in mid-air and then burst like ruptured sandbags, turning into two piles of mangled flesh devoid of life, scattered at the edge of the abandoned square.

Zhou Wannian retracted his right foot, his gaze sweeping casually over the three corpses.

He raised his wrist slightly, and an invisible suction pulled the spatial Storage Pouches from the three men into his hand. Then, a faint golden flame flickered from his fingertip. The Spirit-Devouring True Fire landed on the corpses without a sound, and in just half a breath's time, it completely erased these three greedy Souls along with their physical traces from the world.

Zhou Wannian looked down at the hem of his green robe. With a thought, a wisp of wood-attribute Law power flowed through, and the hidden shadow-tracking mark attached to the hem instantly collapsed and dissipated.

Having dealt with this brief interlude, Zhou Wannian did not linger in the square.

He delved his Divine Sense into the backup memory of the Star Domain sea chart while lightly patting his sleeve.

"Golden Boy, time to work. Help me find the weakest node in this underground space," Zhou Wannian issued the command in his mental sea.

Golden Boy's round body crawled out of the sleeve and perched on Zhou Wannian's shoulder. Its two golden antennae waved rhythmically in the air, capturing the fluctuations of the Space Law in this abandoned area that ordinary people could not perceive.

"Boss, this way. The spatial structure underground here is like a sieve; there are leaky gaps everywhere," Golden Boy excitedly guided him via telepathy.

Following Golden Boy's guidance, Zhou Wannian crossed the abandoned fountain square and arrived at the entrance of a massive but completely dried-up underground aqueduct.

Following the aqueduct all the way down, the surrounding environment became increasingly damp and cold. The walls were covered with unknown fungi emitting a faint blue light, and the air was thick with the smell of old earth.

After traveling through the intricate underground waterways for about half an hour, Zhou Wannian's footsteps finally stopped at the end of an extremely wide underground karst cave.

The space ahead presented an extremely eerie sense of distortion.

There were no physical walls or obvious Formation light screens. There was only a gray, rolling Chaos mist filled with fine spatial cracks. The edges of this mist were extremely unstable, with small black Spatial Storms occasionally leaking out and cutting deep grooves into the hard rock walls.

This was the abandoned route marked on the map, the ancient spatial rift leading to the Lost Star Ring.

Standing before this Chaos mist, even with Zhou Wannian's current cultivation, he could feel the violent spatial tearing force contained within, enough to destroy everything. This natural rift, abandoned by the Laws of Heaven and Earth, was a hundred times more dangerous than any man-made teleportation Formation.

Zhou Wannian's expression remained unchanged. He flipped his palm, and the void origin stone he had exchanged for a drop of ten-thousand-year Wood Origin in the black market appeared in his hand.

The moment this irregular primal stone touched the aura of the Chaos mist ahead, its surface immediately emitted a layer of extremely deep, dark light.

Zhou Wannian continuously poured his massive immortal spiritual power into the void origin stone.

Buzz.

The void origin stone let out a heavy vibration and then slowly left his palm, hovering in mid-air.

The stable Space Law contained within the primal stone was fully activated, turning into a gray pillar of light that shone directly into the rolling Chaos mist ahead.

Under the soothing power of the void origin stone, the extremely unstable spatial cracks within the violent mist began to calm down very slowly. A dark passage, barely wide enough for two people to pass side-by-side and surrounded by a shimmering gray spatial barrier, painstakingly took shape deep within the mist.

The passage was extremely unstable, as if the spatial barriers around it would completely shatter at any moment under the pressure of the violent storm.

Zhou Wannian did not hesitate. He slid the void-splitting ruler into his palm, and a silver-white halo of the Space Law instantly enveloped his entire body.

He took steady and firm steps, walking directly into the gray passage leading to the unknown and Chaos.

Half a stick of incense's time after Zhou Wannian's figure had completely vanished into the spatial passage, the power of the void origin stone was exhausted and it turned to dust, allowing the Chaos mist to return to its violent state.

On the top floor of the Green Leaf Rest, the door to the quiet room that Zhou Wannian had originally rented was violently blown apart by a surge of crude, golden holy magic.

More than a dozen Divine Court Heresy Inquisitors clad in heavy armor rushed into the room. However, only an empty room and the remnants of an absolute isolation barrier that had begun to dissipate awaited them.

The leading High Grand Inquisitor stood by the window, sensing the extremely faint spatial fluctuations remaining in the air, his face hidden beneath the metal visor turning ashen.

The prey had vanished with extreme composure right under their noses.