Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

Sun Tian’s question hung in the air.

Lin Yi looked at him. The eleven remaining hunters were distributed across the island in the positions they had been in when the Greater Qilin eliminated the three who attacked, frozen in the specific way of people who had watched something happen that their threat models had no category for and were still in the process of deciding what the correct response was.

Lin Yi reached into his inventory and withdrew the spatial storage token he had been using since the Jianghe wilderness hunts.

He had developed a different application for it since the Allheaven Expanse began. The standard function was storage, a dimensional container that accepted items and preserved them. The alternate function he had discovered in the early days of the expanse, tested first on the hunters who tried to steal his jades in the cave system, was containment. The token’s dimensional access could be directed outward rather than inward. Objects or entities with insufficient power to resist the dimensional pull could be drawn into the storage space and held there rather than items being withdrawn from it.

Eleven hunters. A-Rank, most of them, the quality roster of a guild with Sun Tian’s operational standards. Level range in the 100 to 120 bracket based on the aura readings he had taken during the observation period.

He activated the token.

The dimensional pull extended outward from the token in eleven simultaneous threads, each one oriented to a specific hunter’s position. The precision required for eleven simultaneous targeted containment activations was not trivial, but Predatory Instinct’s passive positional tracking provided the anchor points, and Absolute Precision ensured each thread arrived at the optimal contact point rather than a general approximation.

The eleven hunters had approximately one second between registering what was happening and the containment completing. Some of them activated defensive skills in that window. One of them managed a partial movement skill activation. None of it was sufficient. The token’s dimensional pull at his current Spirit values produced a containment force that required the target to be operating above a certain threshold to resist, and the threshold was calibrated by his own capability level.

They were not above that threshold.

The storage token absorbed all eleven in a sequence that took less than four seconds from first activation to completion. The island cleared. The defensive formation that had been half-reassembled since the qilin’s response dissolved because there was no one left to maintain it.

The central island now contained two entities. Lin Yi and Sun Tian.

Sun Tian had not moved during the containment sequence. He had watched it. His spiritual sense, still extended, had tracked each thread and each containment in real time, the guildmaster’s perception providing a level of detail in the observation that most of the contained hunters had not possessed. He understood what had just happened with complete clarity.

He looked at the storage token in Lin Yi’s hand. Then at Lin Yi. "You planned this from outside our spiritual sense range," he said.

"Yes," Lin Yi said.

"Our perimeter detection didn’t register you at all until you were already inside it."

"Boundless Step," Lin Yi said.

Sun Tian was quiet for a moment. "I’ve heard of spatial techniques that can beat passive perception at range," he said. "They exist. They’re rare and they require significant development to reach that threshold." He looked at Lin Yi with the specific assessment of someone who had been evaluating threats for thirty-eight years. "You are a student."

"First year," Lin Yi said.

Sun Tian held his gaze for a long moment. "That is," he said, choosing the word carefully, "unexpected."

He then reached for the storage token that Sun Yong had handed him before the formation broke up. The Nine Yin Demon Guild’s jade collection. He looked at it and then at Lin Yi. "You want this."

"Yes," Lin Yi said.

"Thirty-eight days of collection from seventeen hunters operating in coordinated sweeps across a significant section of this expanse’s island clusters," Sun Tian said. He turned the token in his hand. "This represents the most organized jade collection effort by any guild operating in this instance."

"I know," Lin Yi said. "Which is why I came here specifically."

Sun Tian looked at him. Something in his expression moved through several things, he knew, just from the mere look of things, that Lin Yi was way above his level. Any direct confrontation with the kid, will be meet with defeat.

Then he set the token down on the island surface between them and took a step backward. "If it’s just the token you want," he said, "take it. I won’t fight you for it."

"The token isn’t the only thing I came for," Lin Yi said.

Sun Tian’s eyes narrowed. "Explain."

Lin Yi looked at him steadily, "The Seven Star Immortal Conversion Halo."

The flatness in Sun Tian’s expression resolved into something completely different. The thirty-eight years of operational experience, the S-Rank Demon Necromancer’s accumulated knowledge, the guildmaster’s awareness of artifacts connected to the original event period, all of it processed the words and produced a result that showed in his face before he had decided to show it.

"You have it," Sun Tian said.

"Yes."

"The Immortal Conversion Halo." He said it again, more slowly. Not for Lin Yi’s benefit. For his own, the repetition of someone confirming that they have heard what they think they heard. "The artifact from the first event period. The one that converts a hunter’s accumulated level experience into vitality and binds the result as a guardian."

"You know it," Lin Yi said.

"I know it," Sun Tian said. "My guild maintains a research archive on event-period artifacts because we operate in dungeon environments where they occasionally surface." He paused. "The conversion is irreversible. The converted entity retains no memory, no will, no individual agency. It exists as a behavioral directive with the vitality mass of whatever level it was converted from."

He then looked at Lin Yi with an expression that had settled into something very calm and very clear. "You want to convert me?"

"Yes," Lin Yi said.

Sun Tian was quiet for a long moment. "Then this is worse than losing," he said. "Losing I recover from. Conversion is." He stopped. "That is not death. Death ends. Conversion produces something that continues without the person it used to be."

Sun Tian looked at Lin Yi for some second. His initial assessment of not wanting to fight this person had changed. If Lin Yi so desires to convert him into an immortal guardian, then he must be killed.

Killing him here and now..

Sun Tian moved.

Demon Necromancer at level 166 was not a class that operated through conventional combat output. Its strength was in what it summoned and what it corrupted, the accumulated spirit entities it had bound over thirty-eight years of operation, the demonic formations it could deploy in combat space, the specific class-based output that made it a threat. Sun Tian deployed all of it.

The first wave was summoned entities, three spirit-class constructs from his bound collection, deployed in a triangular formation around Lin Yi’s position before the first second of the engagement had completed. The constructs were not weak. They were the product of decades of selection and cultivation, each one operating at the upper tier of what spirit-entity constructs could reach.

Lin Yi activated Null Field.

The constructs’ activation was suppressed for ten seconds. Three spirit-class entities in formation, silent and unresponsive, their operational capacity cut off at the source. Sun Tian registered the suppression and adjusted without pausing, the demonic formation technique he deployed next operating through a different energy channel than the standard skill activation that Null Field targeted.

The formation energy was real and it was fast. Lin Yi stepped through it with Void Walk, the five-second partial spatial phasing carrying him through the formation energy as though it was not present, the physical and energy components both registering against the reduced rates that Void Walk’s phasing produced.

He came out of Void Walk inside Sun Tian’s engagement range.

One Strike!