He did not bother wasting any time. All the prisoners he encountered along the way he killed with a single attack, not even bothering to wait for them to speak.
In the short space of less than an hour, he had killed more than ten ninth-rank true god-level prisoners, and now securely occupied the top position on the Hunter's Gold Leaderboard with 10 hunting points.
The second and third places only had 3 hunting points each, while the fourth to ninth places only had 2 hunting points respectively.
In reality, most of the hunters had only just gotten into their various hunting modes. Under these circumstances where their Divine Telekinesis was so severely restricted, most individuals had only just encountered their first prisoner and had yet to come across their second hunting target.
The reason Lin Huang had encountered a large number of prisoners was that, for one, he had acquired Ba Lin's memories and therefore knew of the approximate locations of nearby prisoners. For another, it was because the strength of his Divine Telekinesis was comparable to that of a Heavenly God, and his detection range was much greater than those of other True Gods.
Apart from these two factors, he also differed from other hunters in terms of cautiousness. He could not care less at all about whether or not he would be discovered by the prisoners in the secret territory. Within just an hour, the distance that he had covered was hundreds of times that of other hunters.
The name Xiu Mu also became very familiar to all the hunters in less than an hour.
"I don't know where this fellow sprang from, but he's really strong!"
"Let's set aside this fellow's abilities for the time being. If this sort of hunting efficiency isn't because he's cheating, then he probably has some special detection-type techniques. If I'd known earlier, I would've also learned a detection technique or bought a detection-type god rule relic."
"Based on his hunting speed, all the prisoners encountered by this fellow named Xiu Mu were probably killed instantly. He's hunted down ten prisoners of the same rank in less than an hour, so that's an average of a little over five minutes per person, with an estimate of five minutes spent on the road..."
What this hunter did not know was that the average of five minutes-plus that Lin Huang took for each kill not only included his time on the road but also the time spent reading the minds of each corpse.
Lin Huang's outstanding performance caught the attention of not just the hunters inside the secret territory, but also the numerous Heavenly Gods outside the secret territory.
"All the ninth-rank true god-level prisoners were killed instantly, and he didn't even use a second flying dagger."
"Ultimately, he's only at true god-level. The strength of his Divine Telekinesis is limited, and so is his Divine Power. For him to use one telekinetic flying dagger with such power, I'm guessing he's already at the far end of his limits. Even if he has a complete set, he wouldn't be able to use every one of them with the same amount of power. His Divine Power wouldn't be able to withstand such degree of depletion," the Heavenly God team leader of the Combat God Temple frankly stated the problem that he had noticed.
"Moreover, there probably aren't that many rules that he's mastered up to Control-level. At present, it seems that the total number of rules he's compounded at any given time is twenty-eight at most. If he's only mastered that number of Control-level rules, then his overall abilities should be a bit lower than those at the top-tier level." At this point, the Heavenly God team leader of God Capital spoke up from where he was standing off to one side, "Currently, we're only at the warm-up stage. Once the others familiarize themselves with their surroundings, they'll probably enter the Heavenly God domain to hunt for heavenly god-level powerhouse prisoners. That's when the competition will truly begin!"
As Heavenly God team leaders who had top-tier geniuses within their own teams, they obviously did not want to see a dark horse like Lin Huang thriving all the way to the end.
Of course, they said this as well because they were genuinely not very optimistic about Lin Huang's subsequent performance.
After all, once the several top-tier geniuses started hunting down Heavenly Gods, their points would increase by the hundreds, which would be much faster than the current one-point increases.
Even if Lin Huang continued at his current hunting speed, it would take him almost nine more hours to accumulate up to 100 points.
It was much easier to earn points by hunting down Heavenly Gods. One only needed to kill one single first-rank to directly earn 100 hunting points.
Although the initial stage of the hunt had been shocking, most of the Heavenly Gods present were not very optimistic about Lin Huang's subsequent performance either, just like the Heavenly God team leaders of the grade-7 organizations.
Buried Heaven did not refute any of the onlookers' discussions.
For one, there was some degree of truth to their words. For another, he really did not know what Lin Huang's current abilities were.
After all, the Lin Huang that he knew was a sword cultivator, and in this trial, Lin Huang had not used his sword at all to avoid arousing suspicion.
Buried Heaven could not be bothered to participate in debating topics like this, but when the discussion was at its most intense, he smiled and took out a storage ring. He then retrieved all the god sequence relics he had won from the wager earlier and lined them up in front of him, carefully inspecting them one by one and completely disregarding everyone else present.
At the sight of this, the babble of spectator discussion suddenly died down.
Even the team leaders of the grade-7 organizations just smiled awkwardly and ceased their words.
However, at this moment, a Heavenly God team leader suddenly gave vent to a low mutter.
"This fellow isn't planning on hunting down Heavenly Gods, is he?!"
Although he had said that sotto voce, his words were still clearly heard by everyone present, and they immediately looked toward the surveillance video.
Everyone soon located the main subject of discussion—Lin Huang.
At present, Lin Huang was already nearing a border between the True God domain and the Heavenly God domain.
The route he had taken was not a straight line, but one with many twists and turns instead. He had even doubled back twice to hunt some targets down, so everyone had not realized his destination at first.
Right now, however, as he got closer and closer to the border area, everyone finally realized what his actual destination was.
As Lin Huang's travel route revealed itself, the expressions of the two Heavenly God team leaders from the Combat God Temple and God Capital instantly became acutely embarrassed.
Right after they had just predicted that Lin Huang's abilities would probably not be good enough for him to hunt down Heavenly Gods and that his hunting points would be overtaken by someone else sooner or later, Lin Huang's course of action had given them a direct slap in the face.
He did not even need to warm up, merely headed straight for the Heavenly God domain on the very first day of entering the secret territory.
Buried Heaven also looked up at the surveillance video. His face still bore a faint smile as he watched Lin Huang making haste the entire way, giving the impression that he had known since the beginning that Lin Huang would do this.
In reality, the expression on his face was a remnant from when he had been inspecting the god sequence relics earlier. He himself was actually quite confused as well upon seeing Lin Huang heading directly toward the Heavenly God domain.
After some time, he noticed that many of the Heavenly God team leaders were looking at him, their faces full of admiration and envy. It took Buried Heaven considerable effort to maintain control of his expression, as he forced himself to stifle his astonishment and surprise.
He still had a faint smile on his face as he looked away from the surveillance video and slowly put back into his storage space each of the god sequence relics spread out in front of him, but his mind was full of puzzlement.
'Can this fellow still be so impressive even when he's not using a sword?!'