The young man was no longer able to save face, so he sneered. "You really can take a beating. Let me see just how much you can endure."
As he spoke, he waved his hand again. The air warped to produce a visible palm print. Clearly, he had just used a battle technique.
The blow struck the madman’s back and sent him crashing into the wall yet again. This time, the wall shattered, which attracted the attention of the city guards, but when they saw that a cultivator was involved, they did not dare to step forward.
The young man stared at the madman. He stood up yet again and ran across the broken wall to flee into the distance, all while laughing endlessly, as though mocking his attacker.
The nearby people were all stunned. How could someone be so resistant to beatings?
The young man’s expression turned cold. With a flick of a finger, a long blade appeared in his hand. He released a single slash, and a blade of light ripped through the sky to land a vicious blow on the madman.
The expected scene of him being cut in two did not play out. This slash appeared to be even weaker than the earlier palm strike, as it merely caused the madman to stagger slightly, having absolutely no other effect.
"Impossible..." The young cultivator stepped forward, rising into the air. His aura grew sharp, but just as he was about to strike again, he suddenly froze. His blade sank into the ground as he turned his head and saw an old man. Beyond that old man were many pairs of eyes, all looking at the young man, and each gaze carried great authority. These people were all far stronger than him.
His face grew pale and he hurriedly bowed. "This junior greets his seniors."
The old man said, "No need to introduce yourself. A disciple of the Blade Sect, right? Go back. This matter has nothing to do with you."
The young man said nothing and left immediately. He recognized one of the people who had appeared, and he knew that they were someone whom not even his sect master dared to provoke. Why was such a person in this place? Not only that, but they had also been standing at the back. It was only at this moment that the young cultivator realized that the chill he had felt when drawing his blade had come from those gazes.
Why are these old monsters here? The young man left.
The group who had been beating the madman immediately left. The city guards understood the seriousness of the matter and dispersed the crowd as well. Soon, everything returned to normal.
The old man stroked his beard while watching the madman run. "This person has an extraordinary background. Not even we can harm him, let alone that junior from the Blade Sect."
"We discovered this madman by chance several years ago. No matter what methods we have tried, we have not been able to harm him. There is speculation that he may have once been an Ortuser."
"I think that he may have surpassed even that realm."
"A Dukkhan? That seems unlikely. Such experts are all famous. I heard that the Heavens Sect compiled a list of top powerhouses in the entire Trio. Such a person should not have been missed."
"Strange. Very strange."
"Hmm? Someone else is approaching."
"Do not interfere. We will just watch. This madman must have a past, and it might eventually lead us to someone."
"True."
Everyone concealed their auras and observed from a distance, believing themselves to be hidden. However, Lu Yin sensed their movements even better than them.
He slightly blurred his appearance. This allowed him to still be seen clearly, but it also made him seem unimportant, which caused the observers to fail to recognize him.
Lu Yin watched the distant madman. More than 400 years had passed since Bing Xu and the others had been tossed into the Champions' Stage Purgatory to increase Lu Yin’s karma. During the last 400 years, Bing Xu had remained in this state, running across various parts of the Nine Odysseys Megaverse.
While he no longer had the cultivation of an Immortal, he had once been in that realm, and he had cultivated with the method of extreme suffering, which had given him an extremely powerful body. Even when utterly insane and lacking any sort of combat ability, not even ordinary Dukkhans could harm him.
Lu Yin slowly said, "It’s been a long time."
Bing Xu remained muddled, shouting indistinct things, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying. Most of his words cast blame upon others.
He was a selfish person to his core. Even in madness, that remained the same, and he was unworthy of sympathy. He still believed that he had done nothing wrong and that his family should have sacrificed themselves for him.
Karma spiraled around Lu Yin’s fingertip before piercing Bing Xu. The karma revealed scenes of the man’s past before Lu Yin, and he focused on searching for Bing Xu’s connections to Hong Xia.
Previously, when Lu Yin had used karma to probe Astral Anura, his actions had been sensed by Ancestor Shan, which had made Lu Yin far more cautious about using karma to probe others. However, Hong Xia was not as powerful as Ancestor Shan, and Crimson Starshade was much farther away from the Trio than the Seven Treasure Anuras’ land had been. Hong Xia could not possibly detect what Lu Yin was doing.
Bing Xu ran off again. Lu Yin stared at the man’s back as karma continued to expose his past, searching for clues.
Days passed, one after another. In the blink of an eye, more than a month had gone by. During that entire time, Lu Yin studied Bing Xu’s karma, but he found no leads.
Before examining Bing Xu, he had already visited Meiran Dan, the only one of the three who had emerged from the Champions' Stage Purgatory without going mad. Lu Yin had hoped to find something from her first and then trace things with karma, but like Xi Shangfeng, Meiran Dan was unable to recall anything for the time being.
Lu Yin could only continue.
Several more days passed. Lu Yin was sitting in a tavern when an old man approached him. "You have been watching that madman for quite some time. Have you discovered anything?"
Lu Yin took a sip of tea. "No."
The old man examined Lu Yin carefully and found his appearance increasingly odd. The man’s appearance seemed perfectly clear, but the old man somehow felt that it was completely ordinary—ordinary in an unusual way.
The man had clearly followed the madman for more than a month, and normally, the madman’s observers would have questioned a new observer long ago, but they seemed to have all been influenced by some strange thought, which told them not to care about the newcomer.
It was only on this day that the old man had suddenly realized that something was very wrong, and he had gone to speak with Lu Yin, though he remained very polite. "May I ask your name to understand if we are acquaintances?"
Lu Yin calmly replied, "We are not."
The old man did not become angry. "May I sit?"
Lu Yin still watched the madman running in the distance. "Do as you like."
"Thank you." The old man sat down, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, Lu Yin vanished from before him. The old man suddenly looked into the distance, only to see that the madman had also disappeared. Where did they go?
A moment later, several other figures rushed into the tavern, instantly filling the place with noise.
In the Tianyuan, Meiran Dan looked at the muddled Bing Xu with some sympathy. She had also fallen from the Immortal realm and suffered greatly. Still, she had at least not gone insane, and with her former cultivation strength, no one dared to provoke her.
Lu Yin simply said, "Watch him."
With that, he went to find Ba Yue. She was still in the main hall of the Heavens Sect, having not yet left.
Lu Yin’s sudden appearance startled them, and Elder Qiu hurriedly bowed. Lu Yin looked at Ba Yue. "Where is He Xiao? He isn’t dead, is he?"
Ba Yue frowned. "Why are you asking about him?"
"He is useful."