Li Zitong's trio cut off Lu Lin's escape and, like three hungry wolves, fixed a cold stare on Lu Lin.
"Qi-Blood Pills?" Lu Lin's face was calm like water as he said lightly, "Li Zitong, you must remember the wrong date, don't you? The thirty-day deadline is still eight days away."
"Nonsense!" Li Zitong's face darkened as he snarled, "You have almost fooled me. Just count the days. You already received your third Qi-Blood Pill the other day. Of the three, two are ours. Now hand them over!"
Watching as Lu Lin kept silent, Li Zitong's gaze grew ever more frosty. He took a step forward, his Qi and Blood boiling all over. "You...are gutsy enough to eat them?"
His two helpers behind him were also calling on their Qi and Blood, as the air in the cave instantly turned stagnant and oppressive.
"Why would I do that?" A sudden blooming smile creased Lu Lin's face; while saying this, he pretentiously reached a hand into his bosom. "Big brothers, how could I dare go against you? The Qi-Blood Pills have been well-kept all along. Even if you didn't come to me, I would offer them up to you a couple of days later..."
"Humph, if only you had the guts to play games...." Li Zitong's group, faced with a respectful, docile Lu Lin, calmed their surging Qi and Blood and let down their guard.
In this split second...
Lu Lin whipped his hand out from his bosom. In his grip was not a pill but a jagged, weighty piece of Xuan-iron ore, at least two jins heavy. Before anyone could react, the ore, kicking up an evil gust of breeze, went crashing toward Li Zitong's temple!
Li Zitong had never been imaginative enough to believe that a mere Body Tempering First Level warrior would dare lash out at him. In his frame of reference, there was a huge power gap between them. Lu Lin was seeking his death by doing this.
"You?!" No sooner had this cry left his lips than the hefty ore came smashing down.
Pong!
A dull sound! The thousand-jin strength of a Body Tempering Third Level warrior erupted all out, before Li Zitong could parry it. A visible dent was put in the side of his head. He staggered back, with his head dizzy and his ears buzzing, then instantly fell into a stupor.
With this successful blow, Lu Lin did not stop but grabbed the pickaxe that leaned against the rock wall. As his arm muscles bulged out of skin and his Qi and Blood raced, the point of the pickaxe came tearing through the air, aimed at Li Zitong's already injured head!
Pfft!
A bone crack that would set one's teeth on edge sounded.
The sharp pickaxe point thrust into Li Zitong's left temple and out from another, dripping with a red and white mass.
The other two Blood Wolves Gang disciples froze still, their eyeballs almost popping from the sockets as they watched in disbelief the bloody scene before them.
Gripped by extreme horror, the two of them let out a scream, then turned tail and ran in different directions!
His gaze icy-cold, Lu Lin pulled the pickaxe free, spilling out more filth, stared after one of the escaping figures, then channeled all his strength into his right arm, hurling the pickaxe.
The pickaxe howled along in rotation and caught up to its target. With a dull 'pfft', it speared his back, its huge momentum sending him lurching over, and nailed him to the ground. He twitched a few times, then went still.
At the same time, Lu Lin bolted off like a cheetah and ran after the last man!
"No! I don't want Qi-Blood Pills anymore! Spare my life! Please...." The air-splitting sound from behind scared this fellow out of his wits as he wailed and yelled, pleading for his life.
Lu Lin wore a stony expression, emotionless. When he came near the man, Lu Lin had already produced another piece of Xuan-iron ore in his hand, launching a merciless blow at the back of his head!
Pong!
Blood blossomed in all directions.
This man made no sound and fell flat on the ground, his body racked by an unconscious spasm.
Lu Lin did not hesitate at all and took a step forward, smacking the ore on the man's head several more times. Not until he had gone completely motionless and his skull had been shattered did Lu Lin stop, panting heavily.
"Huff...Puff..."
Lu Lin leaned on his knees and gasped for breath, with a strong, sickly odor of blood filling his nose.
After all, this was his first time killing anyone. Despite his iron-clad will, his body responded with waves of discomfort.
"I can't rest for now! I have to clean up all this!" His strong insecurity had dispelled the discomfort.
He immediately got to his feet, put away the bloodstained ore in the Inner Space, and pulled the pickaxe free, before starting to dig on the spot.
The strength of a Body Tempering Third Level warrior was on full display at the time. As the pickaxe streaked down time after time, the ground was soon scooped open. In no time, a one-and-a-half-meter-deep pit was gouged out of the ground.
"See if they have anything on them..."He patted the three of them down quickly and, sure enough, felt a rough wood box in Li Zitong's bosom. He opened it, within which three crimson-red Qi-Blood Pills lay.
"Humph, ill-gotten gains." Lu Lin snorted coldly and, without any hesitation, put the box into the Inner Space. Shortly after, he dragged the three bodies into the pit, buried them, then packed down the soil.
This was not enough yet.
He carried on swinging the pickaxe, breaking off the blood-splashed rocks and soil around him, and burying them deep along with the bloodstains on the pickaxe. Finally, he covered the surface with some dirt and gravel, trying his best to make the place look as it had before.
"This way, they should be unlikely to be discovered." Lu Lin stared around him and felt more secure.
This Xuan-iron mine was a spacious maze of crisscrossed tunnels, with thousands of miners working inside every day. To uncover a few men buried in it without clues was no less difficult than fishing out a needle from the depths of the sea.
No matter how powerful the Blood Wolves Gang was, they could not command everyone to comb the mine.
But this might not be a surefire approach.
He knitted his brows. "How did Li Zitong's group locate me so exactly?"
His assumption was that someone must have revealed to them his location.
If the Gang followed the trail all the way to Lu Lin as Li Zitong's last target...though he seemed to be at no more than the Body Tempering First Level, thereby the least suspicious, this was a Demonic Sect where people might be killed on a mere suspicion...
His original plan was to break through the Body Tempering Third Level before tailing Li Zitong's group, then killing them at a deserted place and burying them there and then. But he had never expected the other party to come over to him, which forced him to do away with them straight away.
Had he not taken action earlier, he would have already died for failing to turn over Qi-Blood Pills.
Putting on the bamboo backpack, he left the crime scene in a hurry.
...
The next day was peaceful.
But the morning of the third day, when Lu Lin reached the mine, the atmosphere had changed.
A dozen Blood Wolves gangsters, looking rather savage and ruthless, were haunting the entry of the mine and taking miners aside to ask questions.
Two of them blocked Lu Lin's way and sized him up. "You there! Have you ever seen Li Zitong, Xv Tong, and Wang Cheng?"
"No." Lu Lin shook his head with a confused look.
"If you have any clue, report to us, Blood Wolves Gang, right away! If you dare to hide it... " The gangster flashed a fierce look in his eyes and said in a hushed tone, "I don't have to remind you of the result."
"I see, I see. I wouldn't dare." Lu Lin nodded rapidly, lying low.
"Now scram!"
Head lowered, Lu Lin walked into a cave, in earshot of hushed conversations among miners.
"Have you heard that Li Zitong has been missing for two days?"
"Really? Could it be that he has been done away with and buried somewhere out of the way?"
"He deserves it! This son of bitch should have died a long time ago!"
"Sshh! Keep it down! I have heard that his younger brother is to be feared, a martial arts prodigy who has reached the Body Tempering Sixth Level at a young age, and is now one of the Vice Gang Leaders. If he knows that his elder brother has gone missing, he will definitely go mad!"
"I have also heard that the two brothers have always been very close. A while before, Li Zitian was picked for a task by an immortal. When he comes back...I'm afraid someone will be in for a world of hurt!"
...
The discussions faded away.
Lu Lin's face darkened a little.
This word indeed boded ill.
In the following days, the Gang went on investigating, but strangely, Lu Lin did not get involved in it. Was it possible that the source hadn't told the Gang about him?
Boom!
Another boulder was broken open, before a milky-white shoddy spiritual stone came rolling into Lu Lin's hand.
The twelfth piece.
These past few days, he had dug up twelve more spiritual stones.
Just as he was about to convert it into Training Time, his ears perked up, sharply capturing the approaching footsteps. In a fleeting moment, he willed the stone into the Inner Space.
The next moment, a towering figure, shouldering a pickaxe, appeared around the corner, blocking the light.
"Qin Hu?" Lu Lin's gaze shrank. He knew this man, who lived in the next bunkhouse and was at the Body Tempering Second Level.
"Lu Lin, finally, I have found you." Qin Hu split his face into a meaningful grin.
"You're looking for me?" Lu Lin's eyes slightly narrowed.
"Of course." Qin Hu replied with poise. "Though I know you are mining around this area, it has still cost me a lot of effort to find you in this maze of a cave."
"Do you have business with me?" Lu Lin's voice was flat.
"Surely." Qin Hu retracted his smile and took a step closer, saying in a low voice, "Before Li Zitong's group went missing, the last person they met... was you, right?"
Lu Lin thought of something, but looked unchanged. "So, you're the one who told Li Zaitong my location."
"Yes." Qin Hu admitted frankly and also somewhat triumphantly.
"So, you believe it's me who has killed the three of them?" Lu Lin asked further.
Qin Hu smirked and said with a shake of the head, "Of course it's not you. Li Zitong is at the Body Tempering Third Level, yet you're at only the First Level. How could you manage to kill the three of them? But ...."
His tone shifted, now clearly a threatening one. "If the Gang knows that Li Zitong disappeared after he had just sought you out... Do you believe they would just ignore it? Whether you've killed the three of them, to calm Li Zitian's anger, they would not spare you."
"So what?" Lu Lin's voice sounded emotionless.
"So," Qin Hu's face was full of greed, "You should thank me properly, for I have hidden this for you. Or else... You must be dead by now!"
"As you put it, I really should thank you 'properly '." Lu Lin's lip corner lifted, creating an indiscernible curve. "Tell me, how do you think I should 'thank you'?"
"Two Qi-Blood Pills every month." Qin Hu thrust out two fingers, then added, "Besides, mine sixty jins of Xuan-iron ore for me each month."
He had an appetite twice as large as Blood Wolves Gang's!
With this, he subconsciously tightened his grip on his pickaxe and gazed alertly at Lu Lin as his Qi and Blood raced. Though sure that Lu Lin was at the Body Tempering First Level, he had to be on guard against Lu Lin's desperate act.
"Your cleverness is undeniable," Lu Lin's voice abruptly turned cold, "but, too bad you only have... a smattering of it!"
"What do you mean?" Qin Hu's face fell, sensing something bad coming.
Before his words landed, Lu Lin erupted like an escaping arrow and came bolting over!
"At the mere Body Tempering First Level, how dare you..." Both shocked and angered, Qi Hu subconsciously swung his pickaxe to defend himself, yet the astonished fury was soon replaced by boundless terror in his eyes.
Lu Lin was too swift!
He was left with little time to do anything substantial.
A dark shadow flashed by, and the next he knew, the cold point of a pickaxe loomed infinitely large in his pupils.
Pfft!
The pickaxe precisely and savagely bit between his eyes.
Qi Hu's head exploded like an overly ripe watermelon, splattering a red and white mass. His eyes stared wide, filled with shock and disbelief, up to his death.
Before his consciousness sank into the eternal darkness, he finally realized a macabre thing...
Li Zitong's trio had indeed died at Lu Lin's hands!