Decaying World Novel Chapter 245

The ocean waves were quickly subdued under Gongsun Xinlian's suppression.

Even so, a rchant fleet had been caught in the rapidly expanding shockwaves before she could act—all twelve ships sent to the bottom.

Gongsun Xinlian dispatched subordinates to handle the aftermath, then joined her eldest brother in inviting Lin Hui to their private residence in the Inner City.

"This is the Jasper Palace. The three of us use it mainly to receive outside guests—it has everything you could want for food, drink, and entertainnt. Whenever you have a free mont, Brother Lin, consider it yours. I've placed a variety of slaves from different races here, all at your disposal." The Great City Lord, Xie Chang'an, sat in the seat of honor in the palace's intimate hall, regarding Lin Hui with an easy smile.

Across from Lin Hui sat the youngest of the three—Gongsun Xinlian.

Now that her eldest brother had driven off that vile Tuyue, her mood had lifted considerably. The stiffness had gone out of her expression.

"Thank you, Big Brother Xie. I'm rarely at leisure—I've never had ti for such luxury. This world is simply too dangerous; I can't afford to ease up," Lin Hui said with a faint sigh.

"That's true. We Mistborn simply had slightly better luck. Honestly, if you asked

to train as relentlessly as you have for years on end, I couldn't do it," Xie Chang'an replied.

"What are you saying, Big Brother Xie? If becoming a Mistborn were that simple, everyone would be one." Lin Hui gave no credit to that talk of luck.

Unless Xie Chang'an was the very first Mistborn in existence, every subsequent opportunity to ascend had been fought over until bodies covered the ground and blood ran like rivers. To claw one's way out of that and succeed ant that the vast majority of Mistborn were anything but ordinary.

Their power—in at least one vital respect—had been utterly unmatched in their era.

"Speaking of which, it really was like that. So many died for that opportunity… my clan, my kin and friends, even passersby who had traded a few extra words with —all of them gone, because of ." A flicker of old mory passed through Xie Chang'an's eyes.

"Enough of the past. Drink!" Gongsun Xinlian raised her cup, cutting him off. A ghost of pain crossed her face.

She knew exactly what her eldest brother had lived through.

"Drink." Lin Hui, realizing he had steered them sowhere tender, raised his cup at once.

The three lifted their cups together and drained them in one motion.

Lin Hui quietly channeled Wind Disaster Force through the wine as it entered his mouth, neutralizing it entirely on contact—no different, in the end, from breathing air.

Sowhat ungracious of him, but he couldn't afford to gamble. This was his first ti in the company of these two from Black Cloud City, and he didn't know them well enough yet. Carelessness in a situation like this could cost him everything.

Delicate music drifted through the small hall. When the cups were empty, Gongsun Xinlian spoke first.

"Little Brother Lin, since you've acknowledged Eldest Brother, we're family now. I looked in on your older sister. She's fine—her mind-spirit had been chard and altered by Tuyue, but I've adjusted and restored it. Rest assured: as long as you remain in Black Cloud City, we will see to it that you, your family, and your friends co to no harm."

"Thank you, City Lord Gongsun!" Lin Hui rose and bowed deeply, his expression earnest.

"Call

Big Sister Gongsun—no need for formality. There will be plenty of tis ahead when Black Cloud City will call on your help," Gongsun Xinlian said with a smile.

"Of course. Then thank you, Big Sister Gongsun." Lin Hui obliged.

"Excellent! Today, Black Cloud City has gained another great general. This calls for a toast!" Xie Chang'an raised his cup with a broad smile.

The maidservants moved forward to pour, and the three drank together once more.

After a while of easy drinking and conversation, Gongsun Xinlian steered the talk toward the matter at hand.

"One other thing—you ntioned it to

before. That legacy of the Clear Wind Temple…"

"I am willing to hand it over, but it carries a significant peculiarity," Lin Hui said, his expression conflicted.

"Oh? Tell us." Xie Chang'an had clearly already heard an outline from his youngest sister, yet his curiosity was evident.

He might not have cared much about the so-called Clear Wind Temple legacy before—but after watching Lin Hui trade blows with Tuyue, his perspective had changed. Neither party had originally been on his level, yet on that battlefield, the legacy had effectively produced sothing close to an additional Mistborn-equivalent combatant for a brief window. An expert of that caliber could not be ignored by enemy Mistborn. If the enemy declined to field a Mistborn in response, the battlefield would inevitably tilt toward Black Cloud. If they did, it represented an enormous strategic drain. Either way, the legacy was a strategic asset—there was no other word for it.

Lin Hui laid out the key conditions of the Clear Wind Temple without reservation.

The requirent that a practitioner must genuinely regard themselves as a mber of the Clear Wind Temple from the bottom of their heart gave neither Xie Chang'an nor Gongsun Xinlian any pause.

But when they heard that Lin Hui, as Dao Master, could never step down—and that only he held the authority of the Bestowal Seal—both Mistborn frowned slightly.

If the law seals truly perford as described, joining the Clear Wind Dao for the strength increase was not inconceivable. Joining was one thing, however; having soone else seated above them as Dao Master was another. The implication was that Lin Hui could, in ti, use the Clear Wind Temple to exert indirect influence over their decisions.

"We need to consider this." Xie Chang'an did not refuse outright; he chose to defer.

"Take all the ti you need. Big Brother Xie, you can observe the Clear Wind Dao's current disciples in the anti—you'll be able to draw your own conclusions," Lin Hui said with a light smile.

He had no intention whatsoever of controlling them. As long as they posed no danger to him and kept his family and friends safe, he genuinely cared about little else.

…

Xie Chang'an then outlined the state of the hostile factions outside Black Cloud City.

Their greatest enemy remained the pantheon of gods led by Minglan—a faction composed almost entirely of Ocean Wave Mist Gods dwelling in the open sea.

"The reality of these Mist Gods may differ from what you've heard. They are powerful lifeforms born of this world itself, endowed at birth with authority over a portion of nature. Their raw might is extraordinary—their destructive capacity surpasses even ours. The sole reason they haven't overco us and currently find themselves at a disadvantage is that their recovery speed is far inferior to ours," Xie Chang'an explained.

"Our Evil Mist bodies are immortal and indestructible. The Mist Gods can erode our true Evil Mist, but the progress is agonizingly slow. We, on the other hand, only need to wound them—and those wounds will rapidly fester and spread until their bodies collapse entirely. It is precisely for this reason that the pantheon typically needs at least two or three Mist Gods to engage a single one of us—attacker, crowd control, and healer all together. In a true one-on-one, they can hold their ground in the opening phase, but if the fight drags on even slightly, they will die without exception."

"So that's the shape of it…" Lin Hui murmured, his understanding of Mist Gods sharpening considerably.

"Furthermore, most Mist Gods are extrely chaotic and barbaric—little more than brutes. The territories and living beings under their rule suffer without end. Many Mist Gods need vast populations to gather resources for them, hold their territory, and patrol their borders. Since they never have enough people of their own, they raid our major urban districts for manpower on a regular basis. That is one of the primary reasons for our endless war with them," Xie Chang'an continued.

Lin Hui nodded. He took the opportunity to ask questions that had long nagged at him—how large the Outer Mist Zone truly was, and what lay beyond the Federation.

"I don't know the full extent of what lies beyond the Boundary Wall either. I explored it once. Past the Federation and the surrounding countries stretches a vast wilderness called the Sinking Wasteland—nothing there but desolate yellow rock. The sky is yellow, the earth is yellow, and the air itself cannot be breathed; no creature can survive it. The temperature holds above one thousand Rings year-round. Aside from those peculiar rocks, ninety-nine percent of anything that enters that place lts rapidly," Xie Chang'an said.

One thousand Rings!?

Lin Hui's composure wavered. By rough conversion, that was over four thousand degrees Celsius. What kind of hellish environnt produced that? He hadn't imagined a Mistborn could endure it for extended periods. What terrifying vitality.

"A senior Mistborn once pressed that exploration to its absolute limits," Gongsun Xinlian added. "The Sinking Wasteland is endless—there is no flying to the edge of it. Crushing heat, unbreathable air, barren land, no water, nothing but rock. No life of any kind can exist there. That senior flew for over a hundred years and still found no way out. Eventually, at the ruins of what appeared to be an enormous, long-dried waterfall, he carved a mark into the stone and turned back. That is the famous Yan Chongwei's Mark."

"The ruins of a waterfall?" Lin Hui repeated softly.

"Yes—unfathomably vast. Roughly tens of thousands of kiloters wide. Its height cannot be asured, because the base plunges directly into a bottomless subterranean abyss," Gongsun Xinlian said.

"…" Lin Hui could not even form a picture of it.

A hundred years without encountering a single living thing—what a solitary, desolate journey that must have been. Had he been that explorer, he suspected he would have gone mad in under ten. Only the Mistborn, whose minds were already a little beyond ordinary to begin with, could hold together through sothing like that.

"In a place like that, there aren't even any Mist Gods. There is nothing at all… only a vast, endless barrenness, shrouded in Mist…"

…

When that subject was exhausted, the three moved to discussing the legacy sword technique of Lin Hui's Clear Wind Dao. He held nothing back—rising then and there to demonstrate. The perfected version of the Clear Wind Sword Technique was still a sight worth seeing, even before two great Mistborn.

The siblings' interest was imdiate. They stood and began to follow his movents.

What followed made Lin Hui's eye twitch.

He watched with barely concealed dismay as the two of them moved through the forms—rigid, chanical, each transition slightly wrong in a different way. There was no shortage of things he wanted to say, but he had no desire to offend them, so he held his tongue.

Perhaps because his usual students were all hand-selected prodigies, his standards had quietly climbed far higher than he'd realized.

The two in front of him couldn't feel so much as a trace of the perfected martial intent behind the Clear Wind Sword Technique. Their chanical replication of the forms was flawless—and entirely hollow. Even a hundred more years of that kind of practice wouldn't bring them within reach of the perfected version. True comprehension could not be imitated into existence.

Seeing Lin Hui remain completely silent, Xie Chang'an and Gongsun Xinlian grasped the truth: they had no talent for it whatsoever. There was nothing else to do but accept it.

Laughing it off, the three returned to their seats. They traded a few more stories about life in Black Cloud City and discussed the future arrangents for the Lin family, and at last the evening drew to a close.

…

Inside the Clear Wind Academy, a large gathering of disciples had already been waiting for Lin Hui for so ti.

The courtyard door swung open. Lin Hui's figure flickered into the yard, and he swept his gaze across the sixty or so disciples assembled there.

"Dao Master!"

"Dao Master, are you alright!?"

"Dao Master, what happened? Just now—"

A chorus of voices ca through their Wind Chis all at once.

"All is well. The three City Lords of Black Cloud City intervened and turned back City Lord Tuyue's aggression. They've also pledged to let the Clear Wind Dao take root here in Black Cloud and live in peace," Lin Hui said, going straight to the point.

The hall went quiet at once.

City Lords.

Everyone knew exactly what that title ant. The absolute pinnacle of this world—the Mistborn.

And their Dao Master had actually persuaded the three City Lords of Black Cloud to stand against Tuyue and extend their shelter to the Clear Wind Temple.

This ant the Temple could now grow and flourish in Black Cloud City—a city even more prosperous than Tuyue City.

For every disciple present, this was the most significant turning point in their lives.

Amid the rising elation, Su Yaping sent a quiet transmission through his Wind Chi.

Lin Hui paused. He steadied the crowd, then turned and flashed away—through the corridor and into the rear courtyard.

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