Lin Feng's POV Honestly I was extremely disappointed with the number that turned up. I needed him to send more men, more! I needed to farm more. But unfortunately, we'll have to make do with ten. I smirked though the smile didn't quite reach my eyes, I could barely contain my anger. When they had all stepped fully into the forbidden forest. The gates did not just close, they groaned with a finality that vibrated in the marrow of my bones. *Thud.* The sound was a guillotine blade hitting the block. It was a bit satisfying, no lies. Around me, the air in the Forbidden Forest felt thick, like exhaled breath. The other "Nullities,” the commoners I had spent days training in the Pits disappointed me. They panicked. They were scurrying like rats in a flooding cellar, their boots splashing through the black mud of the Outer Wastes. I can't say I was surprised by their actions, but come on, I expected at least a few to have the balls to stand and see what happens. To them, this

Lin Feng's POV‘Because I’m not done,’ I said in my mind. The world twisted violently. The forest warped around me, trees stretching into streaks of pale white and violet, the ground dissolving into shifting shadows. The blood on the leaves, the dark sky above, everything collapsed into a swirling storm of red and gold.The Gacha was consuming.I clenched my teeth as my heart gave another painful, irregular beat.Just then, I heard the other assassins scatter around the forests, perhaps taking new positions.Give me something to end this quickly, I thought, desperation threading through the clarity.I don’t need a weapon, I need vision. I need to see through their bullshit.The spinning slowed.The colors blurred together, then stopped. A thunderclap echoed through the void.CONGRATULATIONS!You have pulled a Passive Utility Skill: [Eye of the Weak] (Rank: Unique).Description: "The strong hide behind walls of mana; the weak find the cracks."For a heartbeat, nothing happened.Then,

Lin Feng's POVI looked toward the center of the forest. Toward where it all led.If the nobles were the true target… then everything happening here, every chase, every kill, every drop of blood, was just a setup.A funnel.“They’re herding them,” I said slowly. The mercenary didn’t respond.I could see it now, the structure, the design.“They’ll gather at the Altar,” I continued, my voice quiet. “All of them.”And then…. Fire, consumption and then finally refinement.Everyone here had been given a role.A script.And none of them ended in survival.“I’ve told you…” the assassin croaked, his strength fading now that the pain had passed. “I’ve told you everything.”His eyes darted toward the distant perimeter.“Let me go,” he pleaded. “I can still make it out. I can disappear. You’ll never see me again.”I looked back at him, the fear, the desperation.The broken remnants of arrogance clinging to a man who now understood exactly how close he was to death.“You served your purpose,” I s

Lin Feng's POVThe violet beam was still pressing down on me. It tried to erase me.It collapsed onto me.It was as if an entire sun had been compressed, crushed down into something impossibly dense, then forced through a needle’s eye, and that needle was my spine. The instant it made contact with my chest, my body ceased to feel like my own. Every nerve ending ignited at once, not in waves, not in pulses, but all at the same time, an absolute, total detonation of sensation that had no peak, no limit or escape.Pain wasn’t the right word to describe what was happening to me. This was something beyond pain.My skin didn’t burn, it split. It felt like it was being peeled away layer by layer, shredded into nothing under an invisible pressure that refused to stop. My muscles convulsed violently, tightening and tearing as if they were being wrung dry of existence itself. My bones screamed, actually screamed, as the force bored into them, trying to grind them down into dust from the insi

Lin Feng's POV His command wasn’t just words, it carried force, his will pressing down alongside the gravity field, demanding submission and leaving no room for disobedience.I didn’t kneel as he instructed neither did I flinch when he barked. I had no reason to be scared. He moved.His staff, a twisted, gnarled length of World-Tree root, ancient and dense, capped with a pulsing Sun-Stone, rose slightly before being driven down into the ground with crushing force.The moment it struck, the world ruptured.A shockwave tore outward from the point of impact, ripping through the clearing with violent precision. The air screamed as the force expanded, distorting everything in its path. It wasn’t just meant to knock me back.It was meant to break me, perhaps snap my legs and leave me crawling.I didn’t dodge it, I walked. The wave hit me head-on.The impact rattled through my entire body, teeth clashing together as the force surged upward through my legs, into my spine, into my skull.