Lanqi's Seven-Digit Kill-to-Death Ratio

On a night cloaked by the blood moon, time seemed nearly frozen. The pitch-black alleys within the Brierda Mafia's turf resembled a winding serpent, bottomless, leading into an unknown abyss. In this dead silence, the only audible sounds were faint, trembling breaths and the soft rustle of fabric. Elsa and the little black cat huddled against a secluded wall, their hearts drumming wildly, terrified that making the slightest sound would disturb the air. "..." Viscount Carmel's eyes widened, his pupils slowly shifting to the left. From the corner of his eye, he could only see a hand clad in a white glove resting on his shoulder. When had this person arrived? Carmel was a member of the Blood Clan blessed with stealth-type authorities. How could someone have pinned down his shoulder without making a sound? As his gaze shifted, he also caught a glimpse of a figure with purple hair and green eyes in the distance. The Griffin heiress of the Marquis Roland family? "Landry..." Ursula hid some distance behind Professor Landry, yet not too far. At this distance, she wouldn't easily be caught in the crossfire and tie Professor Landry's hands, nor was she far enough away that she could be seized as a hostage and hold him back. In her assessment, this entity, likely of the Blood Clan, was among the stronger varieties of Tier 6. Combined with the nocturnal immortality inherent to the Blood Clan and their innate Epic authorities, a human of the same tier had very little hope of defeating him. Still, since Landry dared to get so close to a Blood Clan member, it meant he was prepared to fight head-on. Ursula clenched her fists, swallowing hard. If Landry lost, she would likely die as well. Yet at this moment, her only choice was to trust the professor. He didn't seem the type to act rashly without a plan. In this man, she saw courage, as well as the kind of aura her elder brother once possessed, so she chose to believe in him. At the other end of the dark alley. "Meow, meow, meow! Lanlan, you're finally here to save us, meow!" Boss Cat looked tearfully at the Lanqi who had finally arrived. If Lanqi had been any later, it would have had no choice but to transform into a human. Though it wasn't sure if that would even scare this Blood Clan member. It had always harbored an innate dread of turning into a human form, much like a human being told to turn into a giant dragon—it was an entirely different species. The worst-case fallback was to kick up an enormous ruckus and see if it could lure the Mafia's boss over. Above the little black cat's head, Elsa's cheeks were streaked with tears as she stared blankly into the distance. So Brother really had come to save her. Yet inside her, after that initial surge of overwhelming warmth, an icy dread quickly followed. Across the dark alley where her gaze was fixed, there were only those two figures. First of all, the seven-digit figure couldn't possibly belong to her brother; slaughtering millions directly was a kill count humans could hardly achieve in an entire lifetime, unless one used a Tier 9 forbidden spell to wipe out an entire province. Even if such an inhumane, catastrophic forbidden spell truly existed, it would likely cost one's very life to trigger, and even Tier 9 powerhouses would never willingly cast it. That left only one answer. Her brother's opponent was unimaginably dangerous! "Brother, run! This Blood Clan monster has slaughtered countless people!" Elsa now deeply regretted having the little black loaf call her brother over, terrified of dragging him into this bottomless conspiracy. A Tier 6 brother was already an exceptionally rare powerhouse, easily considered top-tier among the combat department professors at Saint Creti Monastery. But if the enemy was a Blood Clan Count or a Blood Clan Marquis, her brother would be nothing more than a sacrifice butchered in a single exchange. "That many...?" Lanqi paused slightly, a bit bewildered. Which Blood Clan member hadn't killed a lot of people? This Blood Clan noble was likely a Tier 6 viscount, and his current persona, Landry, was also Tier 6. They could easily exchange a few blows—was Elsa really terrified to this extent? "It's a full seven digits!" Elsa added. "Oh my, then I really caught a big fish," Lanqi said in surprise, sizing up the figure in the black tailcoat before him. He had thought it was merely an ordinary Blood Clan viscount, but who knew the fellow carried a seven-digit sin of slaughter? If he captured this guy and turned him into a merit machine, Hubao would only need to press a button to achieve merit freedom for the rest of her life! "I haven't killed that many people," Viscount Carmel said with a gloomy expression. To be honest, this was the first time in his life he had ever felt compelled to clarify such a thing. Nor did he fear karmic retribution, the self-deceiving nonsense preached by followers of the Goddess of Fate. After all, the Blood Clan was born as the most supreme race in the world; having inferior races dedicate everything to them was their privilege. Yet the other party's baffling misconception made him deeply uncomfortable. "Criminals are rarely willing to admit they've killed, and they have no self-awareness about their body counts either. It's quite normal," Lanqi answered calmly. "Heh." Regardless, once Carmel confirmed the person behind him was Professor Landry, he breathed a sigh of relief. Carmel's mind worked rapidly. In an instant, he deduced cause and effect— Elsa had seen her brother arrive and wanted to stall for time and intimidate him, deliberately saying those words to throw off his judgment. Landry wasn't an evil god. How could he possibly have killed seven digits of people? It defied all logic. A Tier 6 magic engineering professor—what did an eerie aura matter? He was an immortal of the Blood Clan, invincible among peers of the same tier! "In that case, you can just—" Carmel whipped around, intending to rip the professor's head clean off. Yet before his raised hand could touch Professor Landry, the professor casually shifted his right foot and kicked Carmel's shin, sending him tumbling to the ground off-balance. "?" World spinning, Carmel opened his eyes only to find himself flat on his back. He felt like he hadn't touched the man at all. "Why are you acting like Ol' Ulysses? Throwing hands the second you disagree..." Meanwhile, the black-haired man conjured a mana shield to his right, took two steps back with slightly parted lips and a hint of dismay in his eyes—as if he had barely survived a sneak attack by the skin of his teeth. "I don't give a damn who Ol' Ulysses is!" Veins throbbed on Carmel's forehead. In the next instant, he sprang up, thrusting his sharp claws toward Professor Landry's throat. The man's feigned weakness, the way he toyed with him, that patronizing posture—a raging fire ignited in Carmel's chest. He could not endure such humiliation. The battle in the dark alley erupted. A deafening explosion suddenly detonated deep in the alley. Shockwaves surged wave after wave, hurling gravel and shipping container shrapnel high into the air like a sudden black typhoon striking without warning. "..." Ursula guarded herself vigilantly, watching the fierce Tier 6 battle between Professor Landry and the Blood Clan noble in the alley. This sort of live combat was of great learning value. Professor Landry was even stronger than she had imagined; he truly had the strength to brave the Mafia harbor district. Yet she couldn't shake a strange sense of dissonance. She didn't know how to describe it. There was nothing wrong with the combat itself. It was thoroughly spectacular. Yet judging by the mental states of the two combatants, it felt as though one side couldn't bring their strength to bear, while the other was staging a fixed match purely to torture their opponent. "Hang in there!" Elsa's heart was in her throat. If she saw Landry get hurt because of her, her heart would bleed. "Meow..." Boss Cat was somewhat speechless in Elsa's arms. It understood now. Lanqi was playing his sparring games again, and he had only one objective: To make sure Elsa and Ursula saw a back-and-forth, evenly matched Tier 6 duel. As if the Goddess of Fate was eternally smiling upon Landry, Viscount Carmel grew more and more frantic with every exchange, yet couldn't gain an inch of ground, steadily sinking into a disadvantage. "Landry, you truly are strong. Consider yourself lucky that you arrived in time today." Viscount Carmel, whose blood had been boiling, forced himself to cool down. The more he thought about it, the more wrong everything felt. Trusting his initial instinct, before he even knew the man gripping his shoulder was Landry, he had instinctively sensed that this man was extraordinarily dangerous. Only when he confirmed the man was Tier 6 Landry did he believe he could win. Yet after actually crossing blades with him, victory seemed perpetually right within reach, yet infinitely far away. What's more, the man's eyes held an inexplicable fondness, like someone gazing upon a rare treasure or the finest gourmet ingredient—it gave Carmel an intense creepiness! As the saying went: the timid fear the tough, the tough fear the stubborn, the stubborn fear the reckless, and the reckless fear the lunatics. Even as an immortal of the Blood Clan, Carmel despised humans who looked like complete lunatics. "Hmph. We'll meet again next time. By then, you will understand true horror." Viscount Carmel snorted coldly, his form fading into translucence, nearly melting into thin air. His mission had failed; continuing the fight served no purpose. "Damn it!" Ursula shouted in anger. As a scout, she understood this kind of unreasonable stealth magic all too well. The enemy actually possessed an escape spell that guaranteed a forced retreat whenever he was outmatched. If he escaped now, the Washington siblings would be living in perpetual dread! "Get back here." Lanqi reached out and yanked Viscount Carmel straight from translucent mist back into solid form. "...?" Carmel's mind went completely blank. Dazed, he stared at the black-haired man beneath the blood moon. He was like a lunar eclipse blotting out the crimson glow, or rather a black sun in himself, thoroughly overpowering the blood moon's luminescence. "I'm going to turn you into a souvenir, a gift for..." Lanqi murmured to himself, a faint, inscrutable smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Professor Landry?!" Viscount Carmel cried out in horror, his face contorting. At this very moment, a realization finally dawned on him. His initial instinct had not been wrong. "You... you can't possibly be..." *You can't possibly be Landry!* Before he could finish his sentence, his throat seized up, unable to make another sound. Viscount Carmel was ten thousand percent certain that this man posing as Tier 6 had undoubtedly stepped into the transcendent realm! Otherwise, it would be utterly impossible to brute-force shatter and interrupt his exquisite escape magic! "Mmph, mmph, mmph!" Viscount Carmel's pupils contracted repeatedly as he struggled with all his might. Now held by the throat by Professor Landry, he could clearly feel that the other party had stopped acting—or perhaps felt it was time for his scene to end. It felt as if control over his bodily nervous system had been completely stripped away; his resistance was rendered utterly futile. Hadn't the Blood Clan seized control over the core of the Creti Empire? Why would such an abnormal creature suddenly appear in Creti's capital? By the time he realized the gravity of the situation, it was already too late. Even though the man still behaved as though he were within the Tier 6 human realm, Viscount Carmel was certain that this monster adjusted himself to match his opponent's strength, showing himself just a tiny bit stronger—always just that tiny bit stronger. He refused to accept being done in by a dirty hustler like this! Viscount Carmel's eyes burned with maddened fury, as if telling Landry: *Just you wait! No matter who you are, once the Marquis comes for you, you and your sister will still face certain doom!* "Lanqi, I used a bit of serious mana just now. The ripple of mana that spread out might be sensed by strong individuals nearby," Talia told Lanqi in his mind. While she took no pleasure in stomping noobs, a Tier 6 expecting to slip away before her was purely delusional. Still, this was Mafia turf after all, and over a dozen Mafia corpses lay scattered in the alley. If other powerful Mafia figures arrived, they might be dragged into fresh trouble. "It's fine, don't worry, Tata. This area has potent barrier shielding, the Imperial Military Command is very far from here, and the Sixth War God Violet isn't around either," Lanqi conversed with her through their telepathic connection. The closer to the Mafia port's inner sectors, the stronger the barrier shielding effect. And the Mafia boss was a Tier 7 physical combatant, less sensitive to mana, so he shouldn't be able to track them down just from this. "Wait, Professor..." Ursula watched from further back, finding the whole thing more than a little bizarre. Under normal circumstances, shouldn't a formidable enemy who just delivered his parting threat immediately make a clean getaway? On what grounds could you just pull a Fear Beyond Death and yank him right back?! "Is it over?" Ursula hopped deftly forward and stopped not far from the professor. Seeing the Blood Clan viscount held firmly by the throat in the professor's right hand yet still glaring with chilling hatred, she couldn't help averting her gaze, stepping over to Landry's other side. "That was truly dangerous. You could say we were neck and neck," Lanqi answered breezily, comforting Ursula. Ursula was the boldest student he had ever encountered; as a Tier 3, she had nearly been swept into a Tier 6 battle, yet she had remained calm throughout. "You don't look tired at all. You haven't even broken a sweat..." To Ursula, this was the fakest part of all: Fine, you came out of the fight without a scratch, not a speck of dust on your clothes—but the most outrageous part was that you hadn't broken a single drop of sweat. Just how ocean-wide was the holding-back here? Never mind. Ursula sighed, abandoning her skeptical up-and-down appraisal of Professor Landry. Regardless, he had rushed over without a second's hesitation and successfully saved Elsa. He was indeed a good brother who kept his word. "Accepting apprentices!" Boss Cat was overjoyed, having gotten carried through another match. Lanqi had taught it that at the end of a match, if the worst player on the winning side typed "Accepting apprentices!" in all-chat, it served as a wonderful consolation to the losers, showcasing the victor's supreme grace and sportsmanship. So from then on, all Boss Cat needed to do each time was shout "Accepting apprentices!" "Brother..." Elsa had not yet fully recovered from her brush with death. She only felt that this man, both familiar and unfamiliar, was astonishingly strong—to actually defeat a Blood Clan noble bearing a seven-digit sin of slaughter. And... Looking down at the kitten in her arms shouting such words with an innocent face, she suspected it had been duped yet again. As everyone knew, when you lost a match, seeing the enemy's most useless freeloader gloat in your face with "Accepting apprentices!" was without question the most tilting thing imaginable. Oh well. The kitten was strong, and learning a taunt skill to draw aggro probably wouldn't get it killed—as long as it didn't taunt a bunch of Tier 8s and 9s, it should be fine.