“The killing intent must have surfaced during those final shifts in focus.”
Li Ban analyzed the mistake he had just made while casting his spell and continued following Yan Feibai.
He finally understood why Priest Zhu Yao had assigned him this cleanup mission—she wanted him to practice casting spells in actual combat.
These men were mostly low-level grunts of the 1st or 2nd Tier. Even if his spells failed, he could easily fall back on his element abilities or sheer physical strength to handle them.
With that realization, he stopped slipping through the shadows. Instead, he walked openly, his figure flickering as he moved.
Sometimes he managed to teleport after a single stride; other times, he failed even after several paces.
It didn't matter. The whole point was to practice steadying his mind and casting spells under different conditions.
A little embarrassment was fine. Anyone who saw him was already destined to die tonight.
Yan Feibai found the entrance to a hidden cellar at the far end of the warehouse.
Li Ban couldn't yet teleport to a place he hadn't seen.
“I'm not an assassin right now. There's no need to sneak around.”
He raised his hand, summoned the Iron-Eating Sword into his right grip, and drove it violently downward.
With a deafening crash, the blade smashed a massive hole through the already flimsy cellar trapdoor.
That strike consumed less than a tenth of the Iron-Eating Sword's accumulated charge.
“Ah!”
A scream rang out from below. Two guards stationed just behind the hidden door had been caught in the blast.
One died on the spot, his chest pierced clean through. The other was slightly luckier, losing only an arm as he tumbled down the steep stairs, shrieking in agony.
Li Ban stepped forward. A second later, he appeared halfway down the staircase, and with another flicker, he reached the bottom.
The screaming guard had only just rolled to a stop when Li Ban planted a foot firmly on him.
Terror Spell!
The screaming stopped instantly.
Li Ban kept walking.
The commotion had already alerted the people inside.
Several men bearing the swallow mark charged out with weapons drawn. Li Ban didn't hold back, instantly projecting another Terror Spell.
Several men in the front row immediately collapsed.
The ones behind them couldn't stop their momentum and trampled right over them.
The rest stood frozen in shock.
They stared at Li Ban, their eyes full of doubt and panic.
But his mission today was to wipe out absolutely everyone involved with the Mutated Elements, right down to the lowest grunt.
Pausing for only a fraction of a second, he resumed his steady march toward the enemy.
Yan Feibai darted back and forth around him like a silent hymn of praise, though no one else could see it.
The enemies hesitated at first, but when a second wave of their men collapsed for no apparent reason, their hesitation morphed into outright panic.
The terrified men in the front tried to scramble backward, while those in the rear remained frozen in hesitation.
In the end, Li Ban rolled right over them like a bulldozer.
By the time he reached the end of the gloomy tunnel, not a single person behind him was left standing.
An open doorway appeared before him.
Flickering firelight spilled out from within.
Inside, several men were busy packing crates, surrounded by a row of planted torches.
The commotion of the men charging out earlier didn't seem to disrupt their work.
A man stood in the center of the room, gripping a longsword and staring warily at the doorway. When he saw Li Ban, his eyes widened in shock.
It was none other than Manager Ding, the man Li Ban had seen back at the Eternal Trading Association branch.
His first reaction upon seeing Li Ban was to turn and run.
Li Ban raised an eyebrow. He instantly teleported in front of the man and grabbed him by the collar.
“Manager Ding, leaving in such a hurry?”
Manager Ding thrashed against the grip but couldn't break free. His gaze suddenly hardened, revealing the absolute resolve of a man ready to die.
In an instant, his pupils turned completely pitch-black.
Seeing this, Li Ban immediately abandoned any thoughts of interrogation and hit him with a Terror Spell and a Mental Piercing simultaneously.
To the workers packing the crates nearby, it just looked like Li Ban had grabbed Manager Ding by the collar and hoisted him into the air. Then, the manager let out a sudden cry as thick black smoke erupted from his body.
That dense smoke lasted for only a fraction of a second before vanishing without a trace.
Manager Ding's head slumped to the side, clearly dead.
It all happened so fast that some of the workers hadn't even seen Li Ban come in and were still packing crates.
It wasn't until the first person screamed that the crowd dropped their boxes and scattered in every direction.
Li Ban tossed Manager Ding's corpse aside and scanned his surroundings.
Every one of these workers had the character for “slave” branded on their faces. They possessed not a shred of spiritual rhinoceros, nor did they bear Yan Feibai's mark. They were nothing more than ordinary slaves brought in by Manager Ding.
The two or three thugs mixed in among them had lost all will to fight after seeing Manager Ding die so swiftly; their only thought was escape.
What the thugs didn't realize was that a white swallow mark was hovering right above their heads.
It clearly marked their identities.
Though Li Ban could easily tell they were Spirit Practitioners just from the fluctuations in their spiritual rhinoceros.
He didn't spare these thugs trying to slip away in the chaos. Firing off his Terror Spell again, he targeted and killed them one by one.
“Just as I thought—real combat is the best practice. Driven by killing intent, the success rate of my previously spotty Terror Spell has doubled.”
If he cast it two or three times, it was bound to succeed at least once.
Combined with Mental Piercing, outsiders couldn't see a thing.
After confirming that all the Spirit Practitioners were dead, Li Ban walked over to one of the large crates they had been moving and opened it.
[Waste element “Wood Pear Blossom” detected. Do you wish to absorb it?]
With Yan Feibai right beside him, Li Ban didn't immediately absorb it. Instead, he opened the other crates.
Most of these crates were packed with waste elements. A small portion contained normal elements, but they were visibly damaged, and all of them were of inferior grade.
“These are all used plant-type elements. Waste material slated for disposal.”
Yan Feibai flew forward again, and Li Ban followed.
Behind this massive cavern lay a smaller adjoining cave.
The moment Li Ban stepped inside, a scorching wave of heat hit him squarely in the face.
The place was completely deserted. Li Ban could understand why—low-level Spirit Practitioners couldn't survive in these temperatures for long.
He wanted to walk right back out the moment he entered, too.
Fortunately, a faint mist from the Wizard Embryo Fragment materialized around his body, shielding him from most of the heat.
In the center of this smaller cavern sat an enormous furnace.
It was constructed of metal. Though there were no flames beneath it, the entire structure glowed a searing red.
Billowing waves of heat surged continuously above the furnace. Massive plumes of steam slammed into the ceiling before rolling back down the surrounding cave walls.
“What's in there?” Half-shielding his face with one hand, Li Ban pushed through the blistering heat and approached.
Yan Feibai, which had been flying just ahead of him, suddenly accelerated and dove straight into the furnace.
Li Ban frowned and halted his steps.
The moment Yan Feibai vanished inside, the massive furnace unleashed another violent wave of heat.
It baked Li Ban's skin to the point of searing pain, clearly leaving burns.
Yet he didn't retreat. He simply narrowed his eyes and waited for Priest Yao's swallow to return.
That blast of heat seemed to have exhausted the furnace's remaining energy. After a few breaths, the steam rising from within noticeably thinned out.
The red-hot furnace gradually cooled to a dull iron gray.
Li Ban waited until his skin no longer burned. He healed his external injuries with “Flesh on White Bones,” but Yan Feibai still hadn't emerged.
He leapt up onto the adjacent cave wall and peered down into the furnace.
With the steam gone, he could clearly see grayish-white solids inside, resembling cooled magma.
Right then, Yan Feibai darted out from beneath the solids, clutching something in its beak.
But just as it was about to reach Li Ban, a massive black arm suddenly erupted from the furnace and snatched both Yan Feibai and its prize out of the air.
Li Ban reached out to intervene, but his instincts instantly screamed of danger.
He retracted his hand immediately. With a flick of his wrist, Priest Zhu Yao's Self-Seeking Mirror appeared in his palm.
The instant the mirror appeared, the giant black arm seemed to sense it and abruptly vanished.
But Yan Feibai vanished right along with it.
Along with the little object in its beak.
Li Ban gripped Priest Zhu Yao's mirror tightly, using his “Dynamic Vision” to recall what Yan Feibai had been carrying.
It looked like a seed.