Chapter 2: That Bastard Gege Akutami
Lin Xuan stood at the edge of the pool of blood, the cursed markings on his face slowly fading away, and those blood-red eyes quietly closed and vanished as if they had never appeared.
He returned to being that seemingly ordinary youth once more.
Lin Xuan didn't even glance at the three piles of mangled flesh and blood, turning his gaze elsewhere.
The Silver Moon Wolf King's beastly eyes were staring fixedly at him, its throat letting out a faint, hate-filled whimper.
Lin Xuan walked over and gave a light flick of his right hand. An invisible slash severed its neck.
A rich purple light began to rise from the Wolf King's corpse, condensing into a deep purple, nearly black, nine-thousand-year Soul Ring.
Lin Xuan sat cross-legged. After adjusting his breathing, he officially began to absorb the Soul Ring, with the two Divine Dogs standing guard nearby.
Along with the absorption of the Soul Ring, majestic Soul Power began to pour into his body in a steady stream, and a faint, eerie light flickered on his skin.
At the same time, a change occurred within Lin Xuan's Mental Sea.
When a cultivation level breaks through ten thousand years, the resentment of a Soul Beast after death hides within the Soul Ring. It launches a fatal strike when the Soul Master absorbs it, which Soul Masters call a Soul Shock.
However, some Soul Beasts with powerful talent can also achieve this when their cultivation is close to ten thousand years.
As it happened, this Silver Moon Wolf King could.
Yet, after that surging resentment charged in, it suddenly came to a dead halt, as if it had slammed into an invisible and cold precipice.
Its ferocious aura, which was enough to cause a mental breakdown in an ordinary Soul Elder, seemed completely out of place here.
Because Lin Xuan's Mental Sea was fundamentally different from any other Soul Master.
There was no pure lake condensed from mental force here, only a boundless, viscous crimson sea.
Most terrifying were the colossal white bones that seemed to support the heavens and earth, making one feel as if they were inside the body of a World-propping giant.
And atop a mountain of corpses piled high with countless broken remains and bleached bones, a figure sat casually.
It was Lin Xuan.
He still had the appearance of a youth, but his face was interlaced with pitch-black cursed markings, and four blood-red eyes opened calmly, looking down from above.
An aura that was sinister, cold, twisted, and seemingly the convergence of all the World's ultimate evil spread out with him as the center, filling every inch of this space.
The Silver Moon Wolf King's resentment condensed into a phantom of its former self, standing at the edge of the foul-smelling sea of blood. In its crimson eyes, formed of pure hatred, a look of bewilderment appeared for the first time.
It looked at the surrounding scene of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, then looked at the existence atop the mountain of corpses, whose evil aura soared to the heavens and was more like an "evil Martial Soul" than itself.
This... isn't right, is it?
It had come to launch a Soul Shock, to destroy the consciousness of the Soul Master who had killed it.
But here... how did this look like the mental World of a living person?
What kind of living person's Mental Sea would be a hundred times more suffocating and evil than the soul remnant of a Soul Beast that died full of resentment?!
Atop the mountain of corpses, the four-eyed Lin Xuan seemed to notice this little thing that had intruded.
He slowly turned his head, his gaze falling upon it.
No words, no extra movements.
He simply sat there, like a monarch looking down at an insect that had blundered into his palace.
Then, with extreme nonchalance, he raised his right hand and gave a light flick toward the tiny wolf phantom at the edge of the sea of blood below.
"Ssh!"
A sharp slash, invisible yet seemingly capable of severing intent and tearing the soul, appeared out of thin air and arrived in an instant.
The Silver Moon Wolf King's resentment couldn't even manage a symbolic resistance or a wail before it was split in two and then shattered inch by inch, turning into the purest mental energy.
It then fell at the foot of that massive mountain of corpses, becoming a new, insignificant piece of debris among the piles.
Looking down at all this, Lin Xuan's expression became somewhat strange.
"Looking at it this way... having a fight with Sukuna seems like it might have been a good thing?"
Lin Xuan was a transmigrator—to be precise, a transmigrator who had transmigrated twice.
The first time, he transmigrated into the jujutsu kaisen World with a god-tier start, as the person with the strongest talent the Zenin Family had seen in eight hundred years.
He possessed the Ten Shadows Technique and was the first sorcerer in history to successfully taming the strongest quality checker, Mahoraga.
However, this wasn't necessarily a good thing. In the jujutsu kaisen World, being strong basically meant you'd have to fight Sukuna later.
The joke from his previous life's internet, "If the fight goes on any longer, it'll be our turn to fight Sukuna," became a reality for him.
The ending held no surprises; in the end, he failed to satisfy Lord Sukuna and was sent heading south~
The only unexpected thing was that after the battle, Sukuna seemed to find Lin Xuan's body more useful than Megumi Fushiguro's.
Thus, on the brink of death, Sukuna condensed all of his cursed energy and soul imprint into a small finger bone and forcibly fed it into Lin Xuan's mouth.
However, perhaps even the King of Curses didn't expect that before his overbearing possession could be completed, Lin Xuan's soul would take the lead and flee.
Carrying Sukuna's techniques, he transmigrated to this Douluo Continent.
Later, upon arriving at the Douluo Continent, the two different techniques transformed into two Martial Souls.
One was Sukuna's technique, Malevolent Shrine, which became pure slashes and flames, manifesting in the form of cursed markings.
The other was his own technique, the Ten Shadows Technique, which became shadows. The ten Shikigami still needed to be tamed.
"That bastard Gege Akutami, he really treats his readers like Mahoraga!"
Lin Xuan got angry whenever he thought about this.
Now it was great—with Sukuna's incredibly evil aura, he was practically a textbook Evil Soul Master in this era of the Douluo Continent; there was no way to hide it even if he wanted to.
His consciousness returned to reality.
The seated Lin Xuan slowly opened his eyes. A sharp light flashed through them for an instant before he returned to a state of calm.
The deep-colored thousand-year Soul Ring beneath him had been completely absorbed. His Soul Power had steadily increased, and he had officially stepped into the Soul Elder realm.
Lin Xuan stood up and began to loot the spoils with agile movements. His actions were extremely practiced, as if he had done this hundreds of times.
It couldn't be helped; he had started as an orphan upon landing here, so he had no choice.
Perhaps this was the price of becoming a protagonist.
After looting Gongchang Wei and his two companions, Lin Xuan turned his gaze to the Silver Moon Wolf King's corpse, performing a routine check for a Soul Bone.
But suddenly, he froze. With a flick of his finger, the slash "Dismantle" shot out, cutting open the flesh of the Silver Moon Wolf King's left leg.
There, a Soul Bone was actually lying within!
This Soul Bone shimmered with a silver light all over, as if it were forged from silver. Its shape was extremely complete, with not a single bit of Soul Power leaking out.
A nearly ten-thousand-year Silver Moon Wolf King left leg bone of perfect quality!
"Oho? It seems luck is on my side today."
Lin Xuan was in a quite good mood, but he had no intention of absorbing this Soul Bone.
A mere thousand-year Soul Bone wasn't worthy.
After handling everything, Lin Xuan took out a small item from his storage spirit tool.
It was a piece of ordinary, slightly worn child's clothing. Looking at the style and size, it was likely worn by a child of about six or seven years old.
He placed this small garment in front of the two Divine Dogs, one black and one white.
"Remember this scent."
Lin Xuan's fingers gently stroked the two Divine Dogs' furry heads.
"Once you detect this scent appearing in the Star Dou Great Forest, lead the way immediately."
This was the clothing from Huo Yuhao's childhood.
Back when he was still weak, Lin Xuan had gone to great lengths to steal it, all for the sake of today.
The Divine Dogs lowered their heads, their noses twitching slightly as they firmly memorized that faint scent.
Watching the clothing in his hand turn to dust under a slight tremor of Soul Power and scatter with the wind, Lin Xuan's eyes became deep and unreadable.
Planning for six years, all for this moment.
The Tianmeng Ice Silkworm, the Holy Necromancer Electrolux... these opportunities, he was determined to have them.
Confirming that the Divine Dogs had firmly memorized the target's scent, Lin Xuan didn't delay any longer. His figure vanished like smoke into the dense forest, heading rapidly toward the Star Luo Empire.