Cat Girl stared at Li Ban, not bothering to look away.
Li Ban clutched his injured arm.
The damage to the Iron Fish Scale had thrown the spiritual rhinoceros in his body into chaos, but the recent sublimation of the Blazing Flame Art seemed to have smoothed out the turbulence.
Aside from the pain of his wound, Li Ban felt no other discomfort.
He bandaged the wound simply. Not bothering to hide his actions, he looked down to examine the corpse.
He decided to reveal a fraction of his unique circumstances to Cat Girl.
Right in front of her, he extracted an element from the charred assassin's corpse: the Iron-Eating Sword.
Thanks to the system, Li Ban's success rate for extracting elements was higher than ordinary people's, though it still couldn't compare to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
However, he didn't require the pagoda's complicated procedures. His movements were swift and completely natural.
"He's burned too badly. The more mangled a corpse is, the lower the chance of extracting an element. But your technique—managing to successfully extract one like this, is it your own ability, or just pure luck?"
Li Ban smiled. "You'll find out eventually."
Cat Girl blinked. She didn't need to wait; she already knew it had nothing to do with luck.
The two headed back at a leisurely pace. On the way, they came across the assassin Cat Girl had killed.
The corpse was slumped inside the trunk of a massive tree, a gaping hole ripped through its stomach.
Not far from the body stood a treant that looked remarkably human.
The treant also had a small hole in its stomach.
Unlike the treant prison guards Li Ban had seen before, this one lacked almost any tree-like traits. It wore a human skin mask over its face.
Cat Girl's scratch marks marred the mask, revealing the wooden skin underneath.
Li Ban searched the treant first but found nothing.
He then patted down the assassin slumped inside the tree trunk.
This corpse was relatively intact. Li Ban managed to fish out two waste elements.
Li Ban pocketed the waste elements. When he turned around, he saw Cat Girl coughing up blood again.
"We'll reach Langzhou Hundred Flower City tomorrow. Let's find a doctor for you once we arrive."
No one could keep vomiting blood like this and be fine.
Cat Girl wiped her mouth casually. "I exerted myself a bit just now, so I coughed up a little more than usual."
Li Ban fell silent for a moment before asking, "The Assassin Hall is hunting me down?"
"Us, to be more precise."
"Du An told me that Yan Jiu is being hunted by a Priest and doesn't have time to bother with us."
"True. So the ones who issued the kill order are the two vice hall masters. They're fighting over the new hall master position. Whoever's subordinates can bring back our heads gets the seat."
Li Ban's mouth twitched.
Hunted by the entire Assassin Hall... maybe he was better off going back to the Death Prison.
"Did you come specifically to protect me?" "Of course not. I came to seek the protection of the Wizard Lord."
Li Ban stopped walking and said earnestly, "I'm not a Wizard yet."
Cat Girl smiled, completely unfazed. "I didn't know at first, but I figured it out later."
Her tone carried a hint of longing. "Wizards... they seem to be incredibly powerful beings. Following Yan Jiu this time, I learned a bit more about the deeper secrets of this world. It's a pity she refused to say much more."
Cat Girl's face showed no sign of disappointment at being deceived.
Thinking back, it had all been her own speculation. She had taken the initiative to make this bet.
But she was also absolutely certain that even if Li Ban wasn't a Wizard, he was definitely tied to them.
"Back in the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, during those incidents with Li Yuan and Yan Jiu—you were the one who cast spells to save me, right?" Cat Girl asked, though she already knew the answer.
"You know so many spells. So, are you a subordinate to the Wizards Yan Jiu mentioned—a Priest?"
"My current situation is unique; I don't even count as a Priest. But I..." Li Ban paused before continuing, "I will work hard to obtain a Priest identity."
"I promised you. If I can climb to the top one day, I'll definitely bring you along. But you need to be prepared; the path upward won't be an easy one. Even right now, I don't have any guarantees."
Cat Girl waved her fists in the air. "I'm not afraid!"
She tilted her chin up, a touch of her usual arrogance returning to her face.
Anyone meeting Cat Girl for the first time might mistake her for being aloof and proud.
But to Li Ban, she was a stray cat, far more tenacious than wild weeds.
The two returned to the mule cart to find the mule obediently standing exactly where they left it, while Shi Ming sat on the driver's bench, trembling as he clutched the reins.
Shi Ming looked utterly terrified, likely afraid that the mule would spook and bolt.
He didn't know the first thing about driving a cart, so gripping the reins was purely for show.
However, Li Ban quickly noticed a body lying beneath the cart, right between the two wheels.
Shi Ming stiffly cranked his neck toward them and blurted out with practiced ease, "It had nothing to do with me."
Li Ban stepped forward and dragged the man out from under the cart. "Another one who took the Lu Family's bounty to assassinate you?"
The assassin was lucky. He hadn't died, but two of his ribs were broken, and he had completely passed out.
Cat Girl stepped forward and tore off the assassin's mask. She studied his face for a moment. "Oh, you've met him before."
Li Ban suddenly remembered. "One of the assassins from the Iron Token selection trial last time... Ninety-One, was it?"
"That's him, that's him."
Clearly, even though Cat Girl hadn't shown herself until the trial ended, she had been observing from the shadows the whole time.
Li Ban pulled out some hemp rope and trussed up the unconscious Ninety-One.
Cat Girl, meanwhile, efficiently popped Ninety-One's shoulder joints out of their sockets.
"Argh!" Ninety-One shrieked in agony, jolting wide awake.
The first thing he saw upon opening his eyes was Shi Ming sitting on the driver's bench. A look of sheer terror filled his eyes.
"Y-you, what did you do to me?"
Shi Ming rolled his eyes. He knew not everyone was like Li Ban—willing to believe he was blessed by a god of fortune. So, he just gave Ninety-One his usual excuse.
"I cursed you. As long as you try to hurt me, you'll die a miserable, graveless death."
Ninety-One frowned at these words. He obviously didn't believe it, yet he couldn't figure out what had actually happened.
Turning his head, he realized he was lying inside the cramped cabin of the cart.
Earlier, his foot had inexplicably slipped, slamming his head right into the cart's side and knocking himself out.
Now he was tied up tight, tossed in the back of the cabin, and the cart was already rocking as it trundled forward.
Shi Ming was sitting on the cart; the ones driving had to be Li Ban and Cat Girl.
"I waited until I saw both of them leave before making my move. Do you have a fourth person secretly protecting you?"
Ninety-One was the type who completely refused to believe that someone could survive out of pure luck.
"Swish!"
Cat Girl lifted the curtain and slipped into the cabin.
"Oho, a mere Iron Token assassin actually dared to hijack my cargo?"
Although she was smiling, she twirled a wicked skinning knife in her hand.
The blade glinted with a cold light as it danced across her fingers like a silver butterfly.
Seeing Cat Girl, a stiff smile instantly froze on Ninety-One's face. "Cat Girl, I'm not here to kill you or your friend. I just followed those two Gold Badge assassins, hoping to find an opening to take Shi Ming's head."
"How impressive," Cat Girl praised. With a flick of her wrist, the knife flew forward with a sharp thwack, sinking into the wooden boards right next to Ninety-One's ear.
"Since you managed to track us by following them, you must know quite a bit about the Assassin Hall's internal affairs, right?"
Ninety-One's face twitched as the horrifying realization set in. He was doomed.
Muffled screams echoed from inside the cabin.
The agonizing cries started and stopped intermittently.
It didn't take long before an ashen-faced Shi Ming scrambled out of the cabin, trembling violently as he sat down next to Li Ban on the bench.
Meanwhile, Li Ban was busy studying the element he had looted from the Iron Token assassin. He was perfectly content to leave the interrogation to Cat Girl.
Fine-grade creation-class element, Iron-Eating Sword.
His Iron Fish Scale element had just been damaged in battle by this very sword.
It was a bit of a pity.
But it also proved that the Iron Fish Scale was gradually failing to keep up with the intensity of his current battles.
Earlier, Cat Girl had told him that when an element was damaged, the only options were to pay a specialist to repair it, or simply replace it with a new element.
However, the replaced element would likely become a waste element. Furthermore, there was always a chance of failure when fusing a new element.
Because of this, Spirit Practitioners rarely chose to swap out their elements unless they had a specific replacement they desperately wanted.
This limitation, however, meant nothing to Li Ban, who had yet to discover any upper limit to the number of elements he could fuse.
Whether he was replacing an element or simply fusing a new one, the process was exactly the same for him.
He debated whether to remove the Iron Fish Scale entirely.
"If the cost of repairing the Iron Fish Scale is too steep, I might as well replace it."
He had bartered ten taels of silver and a mimic rat's tail for this element. If it hadn't undergone one sublimation, it would be all but useless by now.
Conveniently, Li Ban had also looted a soft armor vest off the cautious Mountain Eagle, which could somewhat serve as a substitute for the Iron Fish Scale's defenses.
Li Ban didn't have an upper limit for fusing elements, but adding too many would slow down his advancement.
In the past, he had only fused so many elements out of absolute necessity to ensure his survival.
Now—
"Hunted by the Assassin Hall... Ah, it seems a peaceful life won't come so easily after all. If I'm still facing danger, my best bet is to maximize my immediate combat power."
Li Ban had anticipated that the Assassin Hall would become his second major obstacle upon returning to the Wizard World.
When Du An had told him that Yan Jiu was currently wanted, he had briefly hoped he could escape the crossfire.
Thinking back on it now, he had been far too naive.
Problems required him to solve them himself.
If he tried to rely on others, unless he could execute a flawless proxy kill to end the threat completely, the trouble would always find a way to bounce back.
A short while later, Cat Girl slipped out of the cabin and squeezed herself onto the bench, right between Li Ban and Shi Ming.
Shi Ming instantly lost his balance and was squeezed right off the bench onto the ground. Furious but too terrified to speak, and lacking the courage to go back into the cabin, he simply resigned himself to sitting on the ground, leaning against the cart's axle.
"I got everything out of him," Cat Girl said. "Some of their people asked around about your whereabouts in the Black Market and White Market, then tracked us by our wagon ruts."
"Sigh. Escorting Shi Ming was supposed to be a straightforward, aboveboard mission, but now it's turned into a desperate flight."
Li Ban sighed. After smoothing things over with Shi Ming, he had assumed they would be able to enjoy a relatively peaceful journey to Yanzhou.
Cat Girl asked, "So, what's your plan? The Assassin Hall sent two Gold Badge assassins and failed. They'll definitely send more people next time."
Li Ban stroked the hilt of his rapier and glanced back toward the cabin.
Ninety-One lay miserably inside, his mask torn completely off.
Li Ban had previously noticed his slightly effeminate movements, but he hadn't expected the assassin's facial features to be just as soft, nor his skin to be so pale.
After being thoroughly tortured by Cat Girl, his face was drenched in sweat, his lips deathly pale, and he looked on the verge of death.
Cat Girl jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Do you want me to silence him right now?"
Li Ban shook his head. After a moment of thought, he said, "We're out in the open, while the enemy is hiding in the dark. We can't keep playing defense forever. We need to disguise ourselves before we get back on the road."
For this journey, Li Ban had made sure to bring along the human skin mask he had purchased from the Human-Faced Sheep.
The beauty of this mask was that it molded itself to the wearer.
Even the person who sold the mask wouldn't be able to predict what the wearer's new face would look like.
If it wasn't taken off, a single use could last up to three full months.
Any longer than that, and the face would begin to look distinctly unnatural.
Anyone looking at him would instantly know he was wearing a skin mask.
"A disguise?" Cat Girl reached up and scratched one of her ears.
Her cat ears and tail were incredibly glaring traits.
"Should I just cut them off for now?"
In her past life, Cat Girl had been captured, her meridians slashed, and her bones shattered.
Her captor had so despised beast blood that he had hacked off her ears, her fingers, and her tail.
Of course, after Cat Girl managed to escape, she had taken her revenge.
She had peeled that man's skin clean off his body.