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Chapter 56: Neon's Brief Divination
Time flies like a white horse passing a crevice.
A few months passed in a flash. By late August, Yorknew City was buzzing with activity.
People flocked to the bustling metropolis for the upcoming auction.
Crime rates in the city were skyrocketing, but the GDP was growing steadily, much to the Mayor's delight.
As for the crime rate? The Mafia controlled it. If it got out of hand, they would be the first to panic.
After all, the Yorknew Auction was secretly run by the Ten Dons. If people were too scared to attend because of crime, the Mafia, desperate to offload their illicit goods, would be the ones suffering.
The Phantom Troupe entered Yorknew in batches.
Roughly in groups of three.
They had two goals for this trip: find and kill Ronin, who had been a thorn in their side recently, and acquire the game Greed Island.
The slaughter in Mordin City hadn't deterred Bounty Hunters and Blacklist Hunters from pursuing the Troupe.
In fact, the massacre had only caused the bounties on the already infamous A-Class criminal organization to spike.
Of course, those who dared to hunt the Troupe now were the truly strong.
And that was exactly why the Troupe was annoyed.
Normally, after a group mission, the members would split up.
This time, the main group had only separated recently, and it was a short break. They would regroup shortly after arriving in Yorknew.
Uvogin had been having a rough time.
His burns had healed, but they left massive scars. Combined with his hair, which hadn't fully grown back, he looked both ugly and comical.
Sensitive about his appearance, he had become prone to sudden outbursts of rage.
Even Nobunaga, his most frequent partner, was getting fed up with the volatile brute. Fortunately, Chrollo had assigned Machi to their group. Her presence forced Uvogin to restrain himself.
Because Machi would genuinely tie him up.
Uvogin still hadn't managed to break free from her threads. To make matters worse, she often ambushed him while he slept, fueling his frustration even more.
As time passed, his hatred for Ronin grew daily.
If they met again, he swore he wouldn't lose like last time. He wouldn't give Ronin the chance to use his special abilities.
After multiple encounters, Uvogin was certain of one thing: Hand seals were the condition for Ronin's abilities.
If he could stop Ronin's hand movements, he could stop the special attacks.
In a pure contest of Taijutsu, he would win!
He refused to believe that Ronin's improvement over three months could exceed his own. He had been training desperately, putting in effort 200 times that of an ordinary person.
With such training, his growth was unrivaled.
Even Ronin couldn't match it.
"Don't think about 1v1. You'll die," Machi ruthlessly dismantled his fantasy.
Even without seeing Ronin, just looking at Uvogin's confident face told her exactly what the simpleton was thinking.
After nearly being roasted alive, he still hadn't learned his lesson.
Machi genuinely worried that with a little bait from Ronin, this idiot would hook himself and walk right into a trap.
Are all Enhancers single-minded fools? Machi couldn't help but complain internally.
"I know," Uvogin muttered unhappily, shaking his reattached arm.
It was the handiwork of Machi and Franklin, but to him, it felt somewhat superfluous.
The arm bore a numbered tattoo left by Franklin, and even contained some of Franklin's Nen.
A car passed by the three of them. The driver was a tough-looking young man.
In the passenger seat was a girl with pink hair, and in the back sat a blonde girl wearing a hat.
Uvogin instinctively looked at the car but didn't see any familiar faces, scratching his head in confusion.
Honk!
A truck horn interrupted his urge to chase the car.
It was a heavy truck. As it passed, Uvogin and his group vanished from the roadside. The driver checked his rearview mirror, stunned.
Did I hit them?
The driver had no intention of braking. If he hit them, that was their fate.
Maybe they got lucky and got isekai'd, he thought, continuing to listen to an isekai novel on the radio. Can getting hit by a truck really send you to another world? He wondered, but decided he wasn't done living yet.
Unbeknownst to him, Uvogin's group was sitting on top of his cargo, hitching a ride into the city.
"That was Uvogin's group. Just three of them?" In the driver's seat of the car that had passed earlier, Ronin dispelled his Transformation Technique.
Neon held a mechanical pencil. She waved it in the air, leaving a line of text made of Nen.
"The Frost Moon shall sink together with the Scarlet."
"Can't understand it," Neon shrugged, canceling her ability.
In that instant, she had performed a short-term divination on Uvogin. It was valid for one day, but she couldn't interpret the meaning.
"Frost Moon corresponds to Uvogin's number in the Troupe, #11, or November," Ronin interpreted. He turned to look at Neon, revealing his scarlet Sharingan. "Scarlet is obviously me."
"Sink together... does that mean dying together? Mutually assured destruction?" Kurapika interpreted the second half.
"It likely means there's an ambush. Either the three of them are bait, or Uvogin is prepared to trade his life for mine," Ronin added.
"Probably the latter," Kurapika nodded in agreement. "Will Post-Mortem Nen trigger? I'm curious."
"I don't know. But after the burns he suffered, his hatred for me might become an obsession at the moment of his death if he can't kill or torture me," Ronin analyzed.
Enhancers were prone to fixation—look at Gon.
Ronin feared the unexpected. To crush Uvogin, he needed absolute certainty. He would only deliver the killing blow after considering all possibilities.
He wouldn't leave a single chance for a comeback.
"Best not to touch him today. No rush, plenty of opportunities," Kurapika said.
Neon's short-term prophecy only lasted a day.
Come September 1st, she could divine Uvogin again. But without his exact birth date and blood type, she could only do these short-term, one-day readings.
Once September arrived, even if they got his info, she couldn't read him again for the month.
This was the limit of the active, short-term divination Neon could perform after mastering "Lovely Ghostwriter."
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