To ensure a fatal strike, Gu Shen had been waiting patiently. In the end, the silver arrows had successfully pierced Qu Shui’s face, but he had miscalculated her ability.

This wasn’t the real Qu Shui.

It was her ability… a shadow.

From Qu Shui’s current reaction, it was clear that her shadow was injured, and she was in great pain. But the injuries that should have been fatal had been significantly reduced. Blood kept flowing out from her eyes, which matched the wounds caused by the silver arrows.

The shadow at Qu Shui’s feet moved irregularly. Sometimes, it condensed into a petite girl, and sometimes, it morphed into a tall man, like a wild beast struggling in a cage.

Is her ability to control shadows and condense them into physical forms? Gu Shen’s eyes were grim as he stared at Qu Shui. The gleaming pair of scissors seemed exceptionally dangerous.

She was too cautious.

She didn’t know that he was a transcendent, but she had actually used a shadow to enter the cave… If she had entered with her real body, the arrows would have already ended the battle.

In the Profile world, she had cut her ‘father’s’ throat!

It was the same in the files that Hu Danian had given him. All the victims had died from sharp objects cutting their throats, and their bones were crushed, leaving only a thin layer of skin. Moreover, transcendental aura could be detected in the wounds.

Or rather, what she wanted to do after he entered the cave, she required a shadow to do it?

No! Gu Shen suddenly recalled a detail.

In the clinic, when he used the power of the Blazing Fire to hypnotize Qu Shui, she already knew that he was a transcendent.

Had she been acting since then?

Swish.

Gu Shen swiped a finger across his forehead and ignited the Blazing Fire.

Qu Shui was startled.

She stared at the flame on Gu Shen’s forehead, and the anger in her eyes suddenly dissipated, replaced with infatuation.

“This flame looks more beautiful the more I look at it.” She giggled. “As expected of the person I like. When I cut off your shadow, it will definitely accompany me… for a very long time.”

The flame flickered, illuminating the stone walls around them.

Gu Shen’s face turned pale.

Shadows lingered on the desolate walls of the caves, swaying and twisting like murals hung on the walls as the wind blew. These were all the victims of the River Shoal murder case. There were far more than in Hu Danian’s report, numbering close to fifteen.

All of them were male.

Qu Shui had cut off these shadows and nailed them in the cave.

This was what she meant by ‘be together forever’.

That pair of scissors should be the key to cutting shadows. But Gu Shen’s intuition told him that it wasn’t a sealed object but rather an item carrying Qu Shui’s transcendental ability.

Even without the scissors, she could cut shadows with any sharp instrument.

After his thoughts settled, Gu Shen had a rough understanding.

He gripped the ruler tightly and said coldly, “How many people have you killed in River Shoal?”

Upon hearing this, the girl actually lowered her head and counted with her fingers seriously. “One… two…”

After counting for a while, she gave up. “Dr. Gu, what are you talking about…”

Qu Shui looked up, and an innocent and bright smile bloomed on her cute and harmless face.

She pointed at the desolate walls of the cave. “I didn’t kill anyone… Aren’t they all here?”

Just as she finished speaking…

The figures on the walls trembled violently. Seemingly driven by some will, they slowly floated down one after another and stood on the ground to take shape.

“Hold him down,” Qu Shui commanded coldly.

After landing, the dozen or so shadows took about three seconds to condense bodies and flex their wrists. The next moment, a tall shadow instantly rushed forward at a terrifying speed, and a fist the size of a sandbag whistled as it smashed at Gu Shen.

The next moment…

Before the fist could land on Gu Shen’s face, the tall shadow split itself into pieces. It wailed in pain and fell to the ground piece by piece.

Qu Shui’s pupils constricted. She was not a mental-type transcendent, so she couldn’t capture the exact scene in the dim environment.

She didn’t know what had happened… The shadow she controlled had been instantly cut apart.

She had already seen Gu Shen’s ability in the clinic.

The slender fire looked ordinary and harmless and had no apparent lethality.

But the ruler was anything but ordinary. The arrows that struck her main body’s shadow should be the power of the ruler.

The danger she felt now all came from the silver ruler in Gu Shen’s hand.

Was it the power of the ruler that just killed the shadow?

Could this ruler burst out with the power of cutting and nailing?

“As I expected, these shadows… need to condense bodies to cause damage in the material world. Correspondingly, after condensing bodies, they will also be subject to damage from the material world.”

Gu Shen chuckled.

“When the arrows hit your main body’s shadow, you felt pain. When these people’s shadows are injured, you won’t have any reaction. It means that they are merely under your command and don’t have any further connection. Interesting. Are you a nature-type transcendent or a mental-type?”

His complexion grew paler, not out of fear for these shadows but because every second spent maintaining the Ruler of Truth consumed his mental power.

The stabbing pain became more and more pronounced, indicating that the ruler’s duration was running out.

Yet his thoughts became clearer and clearer.

He noticed Qu Shui subconsciously frown. Clearly, she was unfamiliar with the terms ‘nature-type’ and ‘mental-type’. It was very likely that she was a transcendent who had awakened freely and did not attract the attention of the upper echelons of Dadu.

With the enhancement of the Blazing Fire, the pitch-black cave was filled with slender, silvery-white threads that crisscrossed and densely covered two meters around Gu Shen. These threads had cut apart the tall shadow just now.

This was Gu Shen’s tactic during his crisis, a familiar move.

Back during the fire case, he had used this move against the assault-type transcendent on the rooftop.

It was an extremely useful method against enemies who suddenly charged and attacked.

However, the Gu Shen of today possessed more solid and lasting mental power, along with greater experience. He chose to create threads that were almost invisible to the naked eye in the cramped and dim environment.

Once anyone charged in, it would be a path of self-destruction.

But the problem was… the Ruler of Truth was not suitable for a battle of attrition, and this was his second activation today.

Time was running out.

He had to end this quickly.

“Do you want to cut off my shadow?”

Gu Shen stared at Qu Shui and enunciated word by word, “Since you’re not pretending anymore, I’ll lay my cards on the table too. From the moment I saw you, I felt disgusted and nauseated.

“Do you know what you remind me of? A fly, a worm.”

Qu Shui’s expression indeed changed.

Veins bulged on her forehead, and her pretty face darkened with fury.

“A self-pitying fly trying to gain the sympathy of others, a hypocritical, pretentious worm who only knows how to feign being pitiful…” Gu Shen stared intently at Qu Shui, observing the changes in her expression.

He spoke faster and faster, trying his best to say words that angered her. He wasn’t good at cursing, and these ‘dirty words’ were already the result of him racking his brain.

If it were anyone else, it would be very difficult to provoke anger.

But for a girl in love, these unpleasant vulgarities were enough to shatter her heart.

“Enough!” The girl’s angry shout interrupted Gu Shen.

The tall shadows that almost filled the entire cave erupted at this moment. Amidst roars, more than ten shadows swarmed toward Gu Shen’s ‘Truth Domain’!