“Kid! If you want to play the hero and save the beauty, you should first see whether you actually have the strength for it!”
The middle-aged leader sneered coldly as he looked at Lin Mao, who was surrounded by all five of them.
“I hope this teaches you a painful lesson about overestimating yourself.”
One of the tall, skinny men beside him burst into laughter.
“Boss, why waste words with him?” he mocked loudly. “He’s alone, and we’re five Level 2 Awakeners. Do you seriously think he’ll even live long enough for a second chance?!”
Before his words even finished, his right arm suddenly mutated.
Muscles bulged violently, while dark gray hardened flesh spread across his skin. In an instant, his entire arm transformed into a massive blade that gleamed with cold light.
With a loud roar, he kicked off the ground and charged directly toward Lin Mao, swinging the giant blade straight at his head.
At the same time, the other three black-clothed men also activated their abilities.
Only the middle-aged leader remained standing in place with his arms folded, coldly observing the battle.
Clearly, he intended to sit back and wait for an opening before delivering a fatal strike.
Facing attacks coming from every direction, Lin Mao’s expression remained completely calm.
His eyes sharpened.
With a single thought, a powerful telekinetic force erupted outward.
The ground before him suddenly exploded upward, forming a massive earth wall nearly three meters high and one meter thick, standing like an indestructible shield.
“BOOM—!”
All the attacks slammed into the wall simultaneously, creating a deafening explosion.
Cracks instantly spread across the earth wall under the tremendous impact, but it still managed to block the barrage.
Dust and smoke filled the battlefield.
Visibility dropped to less than three meters as debris rolled across the ground and the echoes of colliding powers rang through the valley.
Yet inside the cloud of dust, Lin Mao remained completely unaffected.
Slowly, he raised his right hand.
Blue-white lightning surged wildly in his palm, crackling violently as the surrounding air distorted from the sheer power of the electricity.
“My turn now,” he muttered softly.
Then he swung his arm downward.
“CRACK—!”
Several thick bolts of lightning burst through the smoke like furious thunder serpents, racing toward the black-clothed men outside the dust cloud.
Wherever the lightning passed, the air screamed from ionization, while the ground split open into scorched black marks.
The middle-aged leader had just been preparing to sneak closer to Lin Mao when he suddenly heard the terrifying sound of crackling electricity.
Blue arcs flashed through the smoke.
His pupils shrank violently.
An overwhelming sense of death crashed into his mind.
“Not good!”
Without hesitation, he grabbed the nearest subordinate beside him and shoved the man directly in front of himself as a human shield.
Almost instantly, a bolt of lightning struck the unlucky subordinate.
“AAAAHHHH—!”
The scream ended abruptly.
The man’s body convulsed violently under the lightning before being instantly charred into blackened carbon, smoke rising from his corpse.
The middle-aged leader threw the burnt corpse aside, cold sweat dripping down his forehead as his heart pounded wildly.
“Something’s wrong…” he thought in panic. “This kid’s strength is completely abnormal!”
He quickly scanned the battlefield.
One of his men had already been killed instantly.
The remaining three were still attacking, but Lin Mao’s overwhelming power had clearly shaken them. Their movements were becoming hesitant.
“This target is way too dangerous!” he realized. “If we continue fighting him head-on, we’ll all die here!”
Retreat immediately became the only thought in his mind.
Maybe… escaping now was the best option.
Quietly, he backed away several steps before suddenly turning toward the valley entrance.
But after taking only two steps, he stopped again.
A vicious grin spread across his face.
“Kid, let me give you a little present before I leave!”
He rapidly formed hand seals with both hands while muttering strange words under his breath.
A large cloud of gray-black smoke suddenly poured out from his chest.
The smoke looked almost identical to the battlefield dust, but it carried a foul, nauseating stench as it drifted toward Lin Mao.
After releasing the poison smoke, the leader grinned proudly and immediately fled at full speed, clearly intending to escape under the cover of the toxin.
…
Meanwhile, Lin Mao continued bombarding the remaining three enemies with lightning.
Under the crushing force of the thunder attacks, the three men were already incapable of resisting.
Their bodies were covered in burnt wounds, and they looked utterly miserable.
Suddenly, a foul stench entered Lin Mao’s nose.
For a brief moment, his vision blurred slightly and his head felt dizzy.
But only for an instant.
The dizziness disappeared almost immediately.
Looking at the expanding cloud of gray-black gas before him, Lin Mao narrowed his eyes and let out a mocking laugh.
“So someone among them uses poison abilities,” he said calmly. “Unfortunately for him… he probably doesn’t realize this stuff is completely useless against me.”
As he spoke, his attacks became even faster.
Lightning bolts rained down like a storm, giving the remaining three black-clothed men no chance to breathe.
Only a few breaths later, the dust gradually settled.
The battlefield became clear once again.
The three men who had been desperately attacking moments earlier had now all become charred black corpses lying motionless on the ground.
Smoke still rose faintly from their bodies, while the surrounding terrain had been blasted into countless craters by lightning.
In the corner of the valley, Qian Yuxuan and the others—who had already prepared themselves to rush forward and help—stood frozen in shock.
Their eyes were filled with disbelief.
None of them could imagine that five Level 2 Awakeners would be so utterly helpless before Lin Mao.
In just a few minutes, they had all been annihilated.
One of the caravan men swallowed nervously.
“T-This is insane…”
Qian Yuxuan finally snapped out of her shock and hurried toward the battlefield.
She quickly began counting the charred corpses.
“One… two… three… four…”
As she counted, her brows slowly furrowed.
Then her expression suddenly changed.
She spun around and shouted anxiously,
“Mr. Lin Mao! The numbers are wrong!”
“There are only four bodies here!”
Her eyes swept nervously toward the empty valley entrance.
“The leader is missing! Did he escape?! If he really got away, that’d be a huge problem!”
The other caravan members immediately became tense as well, their faces filled with worry.
Naturally, Lin Mao understood exactly what Qian Yuxuan feared.
Calmly, he said,
“Don’t worry. Since I accepted your payment, I’ll finish the job properly.”
As his words fell, Lin Mao slowly raised one hand and looked calmly toward the valley entrance.
With a thought, immense telekinetic force surged outward like a tidal wave.
In midair, it condensed into a giant pale-golden hand that stretched toward the distant forest.
A few moments later, a terrified scream echoed from deep within the woods.
Soon after, the massive telekinetic hand rose back into the sky—gripping a struggling figure tightly within its grasp.
It was the middle-aged leader.
He was trapped helplessly inside the giant hand, unable to move.
His face was filled with terror and despair as he screamed wildly,
“You can’t kill me!”
“You already inhaled my poison!”
“That was my special creation — Heart-Erosion Smoke!”
“It invades the organs once inhaled, and the victim dies bleeding from all seven orifices!”
“And only I can cure it!”
“If you kill me, you’ll die too!”
Hearing this, Qian Yuxuan’s expression tightened with worry.
She quickly looked toward Lin Mao.
“L-Lin Mao… maybe we should—”
Before she could finish, Lin Mao coldly interrupted her.
“You mean that foul smell from earlier?”
The middle-aged man froze instantly.
His eyes widened in complete disbelief.
He never expected his proudest poison to be described as nothing more than “a bad smell.”
Then Lin Mao’s next sentence shattered him completely.
“Other than smelling disgusting, your poison had absolutely no effect on me.”
“No… impossible!”
“That’s impossible!”
“My Heart-Erosion Smoke has no cure! How could you be completely fine?!”
The man screamed hysterically, utterly unable to accept reality.
But his panic changed nothing.
Lin Mao’s gaze turned icy.
With a single thought, the giant telekinetic hand clenched shut violently.
“CRACK—!”
A sickening crunch echoed through the valley.
Along with one final miserable scream, the middle-aged man’s body was crushed into bloody paste by the telekinetic hand before splattering onto the ground below.
After eliminating every enemy, Lin Mao slowly withdrew his telekinetic force.
Then he turned around calmly and looked toward the completely stunned Qian Yuxuan.