Chapter 367
Incense smoke drifted upward in a slow, steady thread before slowly dispersing through the room, dulling the metallic stench of blood.
Lin Hui stood in the center with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at Old Daoist Tianlong, who had been stuffed into a cylindrical metal barrel. Reduced to nothing but a torso, the old Daoist had been tossed inside with casual disregard. His face was rigid, his eyes fixed on Lin Hui, his thoughts impossible to read. Outside, the sky was already beginning to brighten; dawn was near.
In the course of one night, the culprit behind the Blood Letter Case—a murderer who had ravaged the city for years—had been captured and brought here without a sound.
"You can't kill me," Old Daoist Tianlong rasped.
"How do you know?" Lin Hui asked.
"Because your weapon doesn't contain magic power. Without it, you can't kill an immortal like me." Even with his limbs severed, Tianlong showed no trace of panic. He spoke as though he were merely stating a fact.
"So immortals can only be killed with magic power?" Lin Hui asked, intrigued. "Then what exactly is magic power? And what makes an immortal?"
"You..." Tianlong frowned and studied Lin Hui closely. "You don't have magic power, so how did you sever my limbs?" He sounded genuinely puzzled. "I endured immense hardship to cultivate into a Human Immortal just before the end of my natural lifespan. My immortal body is imperishable and inextinguishable, and my physical constitution far surpasses that of an ordinary person. By all rights, I shouldn't have lost to a mortal like you."
His speech had become much smoother. The awkward stiffness from before had simply come from long isolation and language decay, and his faculties were now recovering rapidly.