Chapter 9 : Chapter 9
Chapter 9: Torrential Rain
The house was dim and dark.
Jiang Lin moved silently through it, making his way without a sound toward the stairs leading to the second floor.
As he advanced, a faint rustling gradually came from upstairs.
The door to the mayor’s daughter’s room stood open. Inside, the figure of that mage was murmuring something under his breath, moving with extreme caution.
Jiang Lin tightened his grip on the woodcutter’s knife, his figure hidden in the darkness...
After finishing his chant, the mage could not help baring his teeth in a low, ugly laugh.
“I was about to die from holding it in.”
“She’s not as pretty as the girls in Gerson City, but she’ll do...”
Thrust—
“Ghk... ghk...” Mage Orr felt an unbearable pain in his throat, and his whole body turned cold. A massive wave of terror instantly crushed all the lust in him.
Jiang Lin withdrew the blade without a word and simply waited for the mage to collapse bit by bit.
In the end, Orr fell limp onto the floorboards.
“This is a little troublesome...” Jiang Lin looked at the blood slowly seeping across the floor.
Killing him was one thing, but it would be better not to leave bloodstains behind. Otherwise, when the mayor’s family woke up the next morning, it would bring them enormous trouble.
Although Jiang Lin had not had much interaction with the mayor’s family, he did not want to implicate innocents.
So he simply cleaned away every trace of the blood.
After he finished, thunder suddenly rolled outside, and then torrential rain began to pour down.
Inside the house, the mayor’s family had been put under a spell by Mage Orr and still lay asleep.
In complete silence, Jiang Lin left the mayor’s house with a mage’s corpse on his back.
Some of the stories really were true.
For example, mages themselves were fragile and needed protection.
In this unfamiliar world, after more than a year of silence, Jiang Lin had finally found hope for cultivation.
In the rainstorm, Jiang Lin strapped the staff to his back, dragged Mage Orr’s corpse behind him, and began hauling it toward the outskirts of town.
It seemed that even the heavens of this world were favoring him.
A curtain of rain this wild would wash all the blood away perfectly.
Jiang Lin still had to dispose of the mage’s body.
He could not leave behind the slightest trace.
The most suitable place was Dusk Forest in the distance.
He had once gone to the edge of Dusk Forest before, so he still remembered the way.
He dragged the corpse the whole way, and every trace of blood along the road was violently washed clean by the storm.
Like that, he finally hauled the mage all the way to the edge of Dusk Forest.
“I hope the stories about magical beasts in Dusk Forest are true,” Jiang Lin murmured softly, raising a hand to wipe the rain from his face.
He did not leave immediately. Instead, he crouched down and began searching the mage’s body.
A mage ought to have quite a few useful things on him.
If he could find another crystal containing spiritual energy, that would be even better.
With that thought in mind, Jiang Lin searched carefully with both hands.
In the end, all he found on the corpse was an old, plain book and half of a torn parchment scroll.
That was everything Mage Orr had on him.
Jiang Lin was a little disappointed. He had not found another crystal.
The torrential rain kept pouring down.
Jiang Lin gripped the staff on his back and tucked the book and the half-scroll into his clothes.
And just then, from within Dusk Forest, a pair of faint blue eyes slowly appeared.
Without lingering any longer, Jiang Lin quickly headed back toward the town.
There really were magical beasts in Dusk Forest.
That put his mind at ease.
Between the rainstorm and the magical beasts, the corpse would be destroyed and all traces erased.
Whoosh—
“Where on earth did he go...”
Inside the dimly lit tavern, Martie had already packed all their belongings.
She held a large chest in her arms. Inside was the money she had saved over the years, her most important possession.
But at that moment, worry showed clearly on Martie’s face. The rainstorm outside the tavern had not weakened in the slightest.
“He didn’t just leave me behind and go off on his own, did he...?”
She set the chest down and walked to the tavern’s front door. The moment she pushed it open, rainwater came pouring inside, mixed with fierce wind that lashed painfully against her face.
Bang.
Martie shut the door again, the worry on her face deepening.
Just then, a disturbance came from the back courtyard. Although the sound of the rain was deafening, Martie still heard the old horse neigh.
She hurried to the back door. The moment she pushed it open, she suddenly saw Jiang Lin standing in the curtain of rain.
A bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating the blood on his face and the coldness in his eyes.
Martie let out a startled cry and rushed over at once.
Only then did she see the staff strapped to Jiang Lin’s back.
“You’re hurt! What did you do? Did you kill that mage? Am I really not dreaming...?”
Martie immediately panicked. Looking at the coldness in Jiang Lin’s eyes, she forced herself to stay calm.
“I’ll go get the doctor.”
She thought Jiang Lin had been wounded while killing the mage.
She did not know that the blood on him was only the other man’s.
As she spoke, she turned to head back through the rear door, but Jiang Lin caught hold of her.
Martie turned back blankly and saw Jiang Lin shake his head slightly.
“I’m fine. Don’t make a fuss. Let’s go inside first.”