Chapter 351

Chapter 351: Mu Lin’s Attack, the Pen that Determines Life and Death

“Are you so pleased just for blocking my basic attack?”

When people grasped the meaning behind Mu Lin’s words, their faces paled with disbelief.

Zhuang Yuan, the northern prodigy facing Mu Lin, contorted his features in denial. Neither the opponent nor the spectators could accept this reality.

“Impossible! You’ve only practiced cultivation for a year! Even with monstrous talent, you can’t reach Grandmaster Level in multiple spells!”

“Stop bluffing!”

“That substitution counter-damage must be your ultimate technique!”

Zhuang Yuan shouted angrily, refusing—or fearing—to acknowledge the truth.

Instead of arguing, Mu Lin casually stretched his hand into empty air and retrieved a thick, weathered black book covered in unreadable square characters. Holding the tome in one hand, he flipped its pages with the other. As he did so, his aura became solemn and majestic.

Huff…

Under this pressure, Zhuang Yuan’s breathing turned labored. What chilled him more was the book itself. Though inert, it filled him with primal dread—his pulse raced, goosebumps rising as if facing divine judgment.

In the past, Zhuang Yuan would’ve either attacked preemptively or fled from such danger. But here, he could do neither. This was a match, not a death duel—fleeing meant surrender. Attacking first? His defeated friends had shown how that ended.

Trapped, he could only wait while muttering encouragement:

“Calm down… He’s faking it to provoke me into striking…”

“He’s too young. Reaching Grandmaster Level in one cultivation method is already miraculous. Multiple? Impossible…”

The self-talk failed. With each turned page, Zhuang Yuan’s terror mounted until he felt like an ant beneath a god—Mu Lin now loomed over him from a celestial throne, leafing through a book that seemed to hold Zhuang Yuan’s entire existence. Stripped of power, he lay mentally exposed in frozen wastes, awaiting verdict.

The judgment came swiftly. After a dozen breaths, Mu Lin stopped flipping pages. His voice rang out like a gavel, reciting the Information.

“Commoner Zhuang Yuan, born in the 1793rd year of the Great Spirit Dynasty, from a military household…”

Zhuang Yuan didn’t pay much attention to Mu Lin reciting his information and wasn’t particularly surprised.

Since the North-South conflict began, the southern aristocrats had been collecting details about them. As part of the southern clans, it made sense for Mu Lin to have his own sources.

Zhuang Yuan couldn’t grasp why Mu Lin was reading his information aloud.

To push down his fear, he snorted coldly:

“Hmph. Knowing that won’t help you beat me.”

“Oh?”

Smiling calmly, Mu Lin continued unfazed:

“At thirteen, your village was wiped out by a strange lingering echo. You survived alone—and that sound never left your mind.”

“This forbidden power lets you sense echoes of others’ techniques. You instinctively understand them… but the more you learn, the louder those echoes grow.”

Zhuang Yuan’s fists clenched, face tightening.

“How could you—”

Mu Lin spoke over him, revealing things even Zhuang Yuan didn’t know. His eyes bulged.

“You realized the danger of the echoes and barely used this forbidden power. Yet they kept erupting anyway.”

“You endured six eruptions. The seventh shattered your mind at forty-one.”

“Lies!”

Zhuang Yuan didn’t care about his past being known, but hearing his future? Unbearable. He roared in fury.

Mu Lin ignored him. After finishing the account, his book-holding hand reached into empty air. A talisman brush appeared.

He frowned at the artifact-grade brush.

“This doesn’t suit the ledger of life and death.”

The ledger—forged from Mu Lin’s powers—could display anyone’s life-death status. Now he raised the brush to…

“Stop!”

Zhuang Yuan shouted, trembling on the edge of attacking. But remembering his allies’ defeats, he froze. Striking Mu Lin would rebound all damage through their karmic link.

Helpless, he watched Mu Lin write in the ledger like a judging god:

“Age eighteen: battling Mu Lin, fear and anger cracked your mental defenses. The forbidden echo power seized this chance, triggering an extra eruption.”

“?!!”

Mu Lin’s voice carried clearly as he wrote—not attacking, but passing divine judgment.

Zhuang Yuan’s heart pounded. So did every watching cultivator’s.

“Will it actually work?”

“No way… He’s just writing in a book!”

“This beats even his substitution counter-damage trick!”

“Word-made-law is godly power! He’s just a combining Essence and Evil realm mage!”

“But… he’s Mu Lin.”

That name silenced the crowd. Since his cultivation began, Mu Lin had shattered all expectations.

As doubters and believers held their breath, Zhuang Yuan’s face twisted.

The echo erupted exactly as written.

“AAAGH!”

Zhuang Yuan collapsed, clawing at his skull.

Gasps rippled through the observers. This pen that rewrote fate chilled them to the bone.