Strongest Scammer: Scamming The World, One Death At A Time-Chapter 732: Chitterfang Fully Awakens
Three days later, Han Yu opened his eyes and tested the ratio again.
Ten units in.
Five units out.
Han Yu exhaled slowly, satisfied.
"Much better."
By the fifth day, the ratio reached ten to seven.
At that point, he finally moved on to the actual skill.
He raised his right hand, palm upward, and guided a small amount of dark elemental Qi toward it.
At first, nothing happened.
Then a faint wisp of dark smoke leaked from his palm, thin and unstable, dispersing almost instantly. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦
Han Yu narrowed his eyes and adjusted his intent.
The manual emphasized one thing repeatedly.
Darkness is not aggression. It is concealment. It is suffocation. It is presence without form.
He changed his mindset.
Instead of pushing the Qi outward, he let it settle.
This time, the smoke thickened slightly. It curled lazily above his palm, still unstable, but visibly darker.
Another hour passed.
Then another.
By the end of the evening, the smoke emerging from his hand had changed.
It was no longer just dark.
It was sooty.
Thick, particulate, as if ash from burned rubber had taken form. It clung together, refusing to disperse quickly, drifting in slow, ominous coils.
Han Yu stared at it with a mix of fascination and satisfaction.
"…So that's it."
He waved his hand slightly, and the soot followed, trailing like a living thing.
Across from him, Qing Luan had been pretending not to watch.
She failed completely.
Her eyes were fixed on Han Yu's hand, on the strange black soot that did not resemble any elemental Qi she had ever seen.
"That's… Dark elemental Qi?" she asked carefully.
"Yes," Han Yu replied without looking away. "And a rather pure form of it, too."
"It looks…" she hesitated, "…unnerving."
Han Yu chuckled softly.
"That means it's working."
Over the next few days, he practiced consistently.
He learned how to keep the soot close to his skin, forming a thin veil over his hands. He learned how to retract it instantly, leaving no trace. He learned how to vary its density, from near invisible haze to thick, vision blocking clouds.
By the time the caravan neared its next major stop, Han Yu had firmly grasped the Sooty Hands stage.
Not perfected.
But stable.
And that alone made the skill terrifying in the right circumstances.
Qing Luan watched him quietly, realization dawning slowly in her eyes.
And Han Yu, sensing her gaze, allowed himself a faint smile.
This trip, it seemed, was productive in more ways than one.
Twelve days passed in a steady rhythm of travel, campfires, and creaking wheels as the caravan made its way across frozen plains and snow bitten roads.
For Han Yu, these twelve days were anything but idle.
His progress with the Sooty Sky Mystic Art had been steady and tangible. By the end of the second week, he could say with confidence that he had firmly stepped into the Early Stage, the so called Sooty Hands level.
The dark elemental Qi now answered his call without hesitation.
When he circulated it, the familiar sooty smoke gathered smoothly around his palms, thick and particulate, clinging to his skin like fine ash. It no longer dispersed at the slightest disturbance, and he could retract it instantly with a thought.
It was stable.
Reliable.
And surprisingly annoying... For others.
That last realization came during the nightly spars.
Whenever the caravan stopped to camp, guards rotated duties, fires were lit, and food was prepared. Once things settled, Han Yu often sparred lightly with Qing Luan or some of the stronger escort guards. It was framed as practice, but in truth it was as much about testing his new skill as it was about keeping sharp.
The first time Qing Luan agreed to spar, she had been curious more than cautious.
She circled Han Yu with measured steps, her Qi flowing smoothly, eyes sharp and focused. Han Yu mirrored her movements, fists loose, posture relaxed.
"Ready?" she asked.
Han Yu nodded.
The moment they exchanged blows, the difference showed.
Han Yu's fist brushed past her cheek, missing cleanly. But the sooty smoke trailing his knuckles did not.
Qing Luan inhaled.
For exactly half a second, nothing happened.
Then her face went stiff.
Her eyes widened.
And she started coughing like her lungs had declared mutiny.
"COUGH COUGH WHAT IS THAT COUGH COUGH HEAVENS ABOVE," she staggered back, clutching her chest as tears streamed from her reddening eyes. "WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE I SNORTED ASH FROM A BURNING STABLE."
Han Yu blinked, startled. "Is it that bad?"
She dropped into a crouch, coughing violently, one hand on the ground, the other waving frantically at him.
"THAT IS NOT A QUESTION YOU SHOULD BE ASKING RIGHT NOW," she wheezed. "WHAT DID YOU JUST HIT ME with?" She almost shouted forgetting all the respect she had been speaking to him with all this time.
"Soot," Han Yu replied honestly.
That answer did not help.
It took her nearly a full minute to recover, eyes bloodshot, nose running, dignity thoroughly damaged.
The guards watching from a distance exchanged glances.
One of them muttered, "Did the honored lord just weaponize coughing."
After that, Qing Luan was much more cautious.
Despite the lack of obvious offensive power, the skill proved surprisingly effective in close combat. The soot disrupted Qi flow when it made contact, not violently, but enough to throw off timing and control. It also clung to clothing and skin briefly, making it irritatingly persistent.
Inhaling it was the worst part.
Strangely enough, Han Yu himself felt nothing when he breathed it in.
No coughing.
No irritation.
No disruption.
Which was a relief, because testing a skill that made the user choke themselves would have been deeply unfortunate.
Still, the limitations were obvious.
The disruption could be brute forced through by simply circulating more Qi. It did not corrode defenses. It did not eat through barriers. And at this stage, it was limited almost entirely to close range.
Han Yu knew why.
His comprehension was still shallow.
This was a foundation stage. A beginning.
