NIP Chapter 209 The Invisible Enemy, The Killing Intent Reflected in the Mirror of the Heart
Chapter 209 The Invisible Enemy, The Killing Intent Reflected in the Mirror of the Heart
The moment the fairy landed, the Gobi Desert beneath Lu Yan's feet vanished.
Everything was white, covered in clouds and mist.
Visibility was less than ten meters; there was no sky above and no ground below.
Even the treasure vault is no longer visible; the whole world is just white.
"Since we're already here," Lu Yan said, stretching his neck.
The words hadn't even landed.
left.
No, the right side?
Up!
A whooshing sound whistled past my ear, so fast that my soul didn't even have time to warn me.
Then I felt a chill on my chest.
Looking down, I saw a tear in my clothes, the skin was torn open, and beads of blood were seeping out.
I didn't even see a shadow.
The hairs on my back stood on end.
He hadn't experienced this feeling in a long time—you get beaten, but you don't know where the person who beat you is.
Another whooshing sound.
This time from behind.
He instinctively turned to the side.
late.
Another cut appeared on my shoulder, not deep, but blood trickled down my arm.
"Depend on."
Lu Yan cursed and stepped back thirty meters.
Useless.
Just as I regained my footing, three feathers shot out from three directions simultaneously.
It wasn't an arrow, but rather a translucent, crystal-like feather.
Its edges are so thin they can cut through gold and jade.
He barely dodged two, but the third pierced directly into his shield.
The shield shattered.
It was shattered completely, leaving not even a crumb.
Lu Yan rolled his eyes.
This thing's attack doesn't involve energy fluctuations; it's purely physical cutting.
His shield detection mechanism targets energy attacks, making it ineffective against such attacks.
More than a dozen feathers flew out of the mist.
He could only run.
He was getting beaten up while running.
My left leg was slashed, my back was hit, my forehead was scraped, and half of my face was covered in blood.
Since he awakened, he has never been chased and beaten like this before.
If Zhao Leiguang were here, he'd probably laugh so hard he'd roll out from behind his shield.
"Captain, what happened to you? Hahaha—"
My mind automatically conjured up Zhao Leiguang's annoying voice line.
He didn't have time to deal with this illusion.
Because the Crane Fairy's attack frequency is increasing.
From one every three seconds to three every second now.
The fog was filled with the sound of air being cut, surging in from all directions, so dense that it was impenetrable.
There wasn't even a moment to catch my breath.
The worst part is that he couldn't find the fairy at all.
Soul scanning, energy perception, and visual capture were all interfered with by this godforsaken place.
It's like being bitten by a hundred mosquitoes at the same time in a dark room.
You know they're biting you, but you can't photograph any of them.
Lu Yan rolled over, barely avoiding a feather aimed straight at his throat.
My shoulder blade got hit again.
pain.
It's not the kind of pain you feel when you're injured; it's the kind of pain you feel when someone grinds you into the ground and tramples your dignity.
He knelt in the clouds, panting heavily.
Blood gushed from seven or eight wounds at the same time, soaking his clothes.
No.
If we keep fighting like this, we'll be worn down and killed.
Crane Fairy uses more than just speed.
Lu Yan forced his brain to start working.
There is also illusion.
There are also spatial laws.
Perception is disrupted on all three levels simultaneously.
Visually, the fog and afterimages make it difficult to distinguish which is the real thing.
Auditorily, the sound of something cutting through the air is refracted countless times, making it impossible to determine the location of the sound source.
In terms of energy perception, Crane Fairy's aura blends seamlessly with the clouds and mist, providing zero feedback.
With three layers stacked together, it just looks like a pile of scrap metal.
Trying to "chase" it in the conventional way? What a load of rubbish.
It's a hundred times faster than you; you could chase it to death and still not catch it.
Lu Yan wiped the blood from his face.
What else can we do?
The answer has always been there.
He just hasn't been willing to use it.
The boy in the rented room.
That piece of trash who got ambushed and killed a thousand times in a corner of the internet cafe, had all his equipment stolen, and wasn't even left with a single copper coin.
That good-for-nothing who can't even walk properly.
But he has one thing that the current Lu Yan doesn't have.
An intuition gained through a thousand deaths.
It's not about seeing with your eyes, hearing with your ears, or scanning with your soul.
It's the instinct where the body senses danger before the brain does.
During the years he was a professional gamer, he didn't have the money to buy good equipment, so his stats were significantly lower than his opponents.
I survive every PK battle by making predictions.
The moment the opposing mage raised his hand, he had already moved half a step to the left.
As the assassin approached stealthily, his finger was already pressed the Flash button.
It's not because of a fast reaction time.
It's because enough people have died.
So many that my body memorized every single feeling of "I'm going to die."
Lu Yan closed his eyes.
Close it completely.
I'm not watching anymore, I'm not listening anymore, I'm not scanning anymore.
All external senses are turned off.
The world is quiet.
The fog was gone, the wind was gone, and the sound of air being cut was gone.
Only pure darkness remained in his soul.
Then--
The "mirror" appeared.
It's not a real mirror.
It was that "past" that he accepted, that younger version of himself, a thin film spreading deep within his soul.
It does not reflect light.
It reflects murderous intent.
The first line.
Forty-five degrees to the left front, straight towards the temple.
Lu Yan's head tilted two centimeters to the right.
Lingyu brushed her hair as she flew away.
The second line.
Directly behind, at waist height, the target is the left kidney.
He twisted his waist to the right.
A feather brushed against her waist, taking away a corner of her clothing.
The third one, the fourth one, the fifth one...
More and more lines appeared, surging in from all directions, as dense as a spider web.
But in that mirror of the heart, every line is crystal clear.
The starting point, trajectory, and landing point are all marked.
Lu Yan's body began to move on its own.
It's not that he's hiding; it's that "past" that's helping him hide.
Minimal range of motion, least strenuous movement.
Tilting your head, turning your body, raising your hand, twisting your waist.
It's always just right.
Not an inch more, not a fraction less.
Those feathers, so fast they distorted spacetime, wove a dense net around him.
He stood in the very center of the net, strolling leisurely.
A feather passed between her legs.
A streak flew past, barely touching my eyelids.
A figure brushed past her earlobe and walked away, bringing with it a cool breeze.
He didn't even blink.
Because there's no need to "know" that an attack is coming.
The body reacts before the mind.
This is something you learn after dying a thousand times.
That good-for-nothing's only legacy.
The Crane Fairy realized something was wrong.
The attack frequency was pushed to the limit, with more than a dozen feathers shooting out simultaneously every second, filling every inch of space around Lu Yan.
I just can't run into him.
We couldn't even bump into one.
It panicked.
A crane's cry pierced the fog, so sharp it could shatter glass.
All the clouds and mist were blown away in an instant.
Lu Yan "saw" it—not with his eyes, but with the mirror of his heart.
Crane Fairy's true form appeared 500 meters away in the sky.
It folded its wings, and its entire body shrank into a thin white light, as thin as a needle.
Then, it stabbed.
The speed was so fast that a white crack was torn open in the space behind them.
This is not a normal attack.
A fatal blow earned at the cost of one's life.
All the laws are condensed into one point: neither dodge nor evade, one strike determines life or death.
Lu Yan stood still, without moving.
In the mirror of the heart, the trajectory of that white light was clearly marked.
The starting point is 500 meters in the air.
The finish line is between his eyebrows.
A straight line.
There were no changes in tactics, no feints.
Crane Fairy placed all her bets on speed.
It's so fast you don't even have time to react.
But Lu Yan doesn't need to react.
He only needs to do one thing.
Three-tenths of a second before the white light arrived, he raised his right hand, pinching his index finger and thumb together.
On my fingertip, a black lotus flower the size of a grain of rice floats quietly.
White light collided with the black lotus.
There was no explosion.
No sound.
The moment Crane Fairy's body touched the black lotus, it was like a piece of code that had been deleted.
It disappeared inch by inch, starting from the head.
It's not shattered, it's not burned, it's "no longer exists".
The laws of speed, space, and illusion were all completely swallowed up by the laws of the void.
The Crane Fairy didn't have time to utter a second cry.
Its body was severed in two, with the front half continuing forward for another twenty meters before vanishing into nothingness in mid-air.
The latter half of the wings hovered in place, while the wings remained in a flapping posture.
Then they dispersed.
Like dandelions scattered by the wind.
The sky returned to a grayish-blue color.
The clouds and mist dispersed, and the sunlight fell, shining on Lu Yan.
He opened his eyes.
He had seven or eight wounds on his body that were still bleeding, and his clothes were torn like rags.
But his eyes were very bright.
"Thanks," he thought to himself.
It's not for the Crane Fairy.
It was for that boy.
That good-for-nothing who died a thousand times in the corner of the internet cafe.
That "past" that he accepted.
Without those deaths, there would be no mirror of the heart today.
In the distance, the treasury attendant's perpetually unchanging face finally showed an expression.
This is no longer the perfunctory "it's alright" from before.
He was genuinely laughing.
He clapped his hands, the sound was not loud, but it could be heard clearly in the vast Gobi Desert.
"good."
One word.
This is much more valuable than the previous "not bad".
He stood with his hands behind his back, looking up at Lu Yan, his unfathomable eyes holding the look of an elder seeing a junior finally understand.
"Then, the final hurdle."
He turned to look at the third stone platform.
"The commander's magnanimity."
"It will no longer test your personal martial prowess."
The voice just fell.
Boom—
The third stone platform split in the middle.
It didn't crack slowly; it shattered directly into powder, with pebbles falling all over the ground.
From the dust and rubble, the first thing to emerge was a hoof.
It's huge, bigger than Lu Yan's head.
The hoofprints sank into the ground, and black flames emerged from them.
Then came the legs, followed by a heavily armored body, and finally, a bull's head.
He was over two meters tall, and his shoulders were wide enough to block a door.
He was carrying a battle axe, the blade covered in dark red rust.
I don't know if it was rust or dried blood.
Minotaur Knight Commander.
It stood there, motionless and silent.
But Lu Yan could sense that this thing didn't have the same evil or immortal aura as the previous two BOSSes.
It exudes a pure military atmosphere.
The taste of iron and blood.
The ground began to shake.
It wasn't the kind of shaking you feel in an earthquake; it was the sound of perfectly synchronized footsteps.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
From underground, from piles of rubble, from cracks in the air.
One, two, ten, one hundred.
Skeleton soldiers crawled out from underground.
He wore tattered armor, wielded rusted swords and spears, and had eerie blue flames burning in his eye sockets.
They stood in neat rows, without uttering a sound.
One thousand.
Two thousand.
Five thousand.
The densely packed ranks of dead soldiers covered the entire Gobi Desert, stretching as far as the eye could see.
Lu Yan stood alone on the opposite side of the army formation.
He glanced at the five thousand undead soldiers, then at the minotaur knight commander wielding an axe.
Then he looked down at himself—his clothes were tattered, he was covered in blood, and he didn't even have a decent weapon.
"How do we fight this battle?" he muttered.
The treasury attendant stood at a distance, hands behind his back, smiling.
"No rush."
"Think about it slowly."
The Minotaur Knight Commander raised his battle axe.
Five thousand dead soldiers gripped their weapons tightly at the same time.
A deep bugle call rang out from within the military formation.
Lu Yan smiled too.
"Alright."
"Then let's fight."