When Li Chi saw the bloodstain on the wall, it felt as though something had struck hard at his chest — something with a sharp corner that dug into his heart.

He had no time to think. He called out, letting Tang Pidi go and check the lodgings, and threw himself toward the city gate.

The streets were crowded, traffic flowing in all directions. Li Chi had no patience for it, and since running through the crowd was impossible, he took to the rooftops.

Many people saw him — pointing and murmuring among themselves — watching that young figure move across the rooftops, rising and falling with the undulations of the buildings, like a man riding the cresting swells of a vast sea.

Liangzhou City was large — it was a garrison city within the pass. Beyond the inner city gate lay the checkpoint, which functioned something like a fortified outer enclosure. When he reached the outer enclosure, things became far less smooth — it was packed with merchant caravans and travelers queued for exit, the line stretching a considerable distance.

Likely because of the assassination attempt on General Dantai Qi, the Western Realm merchants were shaken and anxious, most wanting to leave for the time being. The outer enclosure was packed to the point of stagnation.

Li Chi forced his way through the crowd and pushed to the city gate, but the soldiers on duty didn’t know him and had no way to simply let him through.

Besides, Li Chi had come pushing from the back, which had stirred up considerable resentment among those already queued — the people behind him were already shouting curses.

Li Chi stated his identity, but with nothing to prove it, the Liangzhou soldiers could hardly let him through on his word alone.

Those behind were all queuing — this was a rule General Dantai Qi had established. Regardless of whether you were Central Plains or Western Realm, it made no difference — the rules were to be followed. Anyone who broke them could be dealt with by the Liangzhou soldiers on the spot; serious violations were punishable by summary execution.

Li Chi was desperately anxious, and he asked whether any group of people in grassland dress had exited recently. In truth, given how many merchant caravans came and went through Liangzhou from every corner, the soldiers might not have remembered even if they’d left a while back.

But Xiulu’s group had only left not long ago — so the soldiers answered that yes, a group had left perhaps two to three quarters of an hour ago.

Two to three quarters of an hour — already a significant lead. Li Chi glanced back, and Tang Pidi’s group was closing in behind him — but they too were jammed in the crowd, pushing and squeezing their way through.

“Pardon me!”

Li Chi shouted the words, then launched himself through the gate. He kicked off the wall inside the gate tunnel, body ricocheting outward. Moving at such speed, he could actually run sideways along the wall itself — a few steps and he was through the gate tunnel, out onto the road beyond.

The Liangzhou soldiers immediately raised the alarm. The soldiers on the walls above had no idea what was happening, only that someone had broken through — and arrows flew.

Li Chi ran and dodged simultaneously. Fortunately he had a soft armor vest on underneath, and two arrows struck his back without penetrating. But the arrows grew thicker, the Liangzhou soldiers were formidable — their shots accurate and powerful — and Li Chi could no longer be selective. He raised both hands to cradle the back of his skull. As long as he didn’t take an arrow to the head, the rest didn’t matter.

Just as he was nearly beyond the arrows’ range, a shaft caught him in the lower leg from behind.

Though close to the arrow’s maximum range, it still nearly drove clean through — the tip just barely pierced out the front.

Li Chi hissed, glanced down, and kept running. He knew that pulling the arrow free now would cause heavy bleeding, so he left it in place and simply gritted his teeth and pushed on.

How painful was it, running like that?

Li Chi knew well that if he drew the arrow out, blood would flow freely, so he left it where it was and kept charging forward.

Even so, before long his trouser leg was soaked through, his shoe followed, and when blood seeped down into his shoe, every step turned warm and sticky.

Li Chi thought only of Mister Yan — that he must not come to harm. He paid no mind to himself at all.

He ran for a long distance. Bad luck compounded — every person he overtook was on foot, not a single mounted merchant caravan in sight.

He ran for two or three li straight, and finally ahead he saw a column of people. Their dress was Western Realm style.

Li Chi called out as he came up from behind. The column, not knowing what was happening, saw him charging toward them and drew their blades.

He had barely reached them when someone slashed down at him. Li Chi shot out a hand, seized the wrist, and dragged the man off his horse.

He called out an apology, swung up into the saddle, gave the horse a hard slap — the horse let out a shriek and bolted.

Arrows from the caravan guards came flying behind him as well. Li Chi hunched low in the saddle, arrows hissing past on either side.

Once he’d opened some distance, Li Chi looked down at the arrow in his leg, clenched his jaw, and pushed the shaft further forward, forcing the arrowhead out through the front. He flicked out his dagger and cut the tip off, then pulled the shaft out and threw it away — by now the pain had him drenched in sweat.

The horse thundered on along the road. Li Chi tore a strip from his clothing and bound the wound tight.

He chased for another two quarters of an hour. Then he saw a column stopped along the road ahead — men were dragging cargo from a carriage. Before long, they’d pulled someone out.

In that moment, Li Chi’s eyes went red.

Xiulu came back from the head of the column, just as he was ordering his men to drag that scholar-looking man out of the carriage for questioning — when he suddenly saw a rider charging in from the direction of Liangzhou City.

“Give me the bow.”

Xiulu beckoned.

A subordinate immediately handed him the bow. Xiulu nocked an arrow, took a quick aim, and loosed.

Li Chi saw the man draw and fire. He threw himself flat over the horse’s neck — the arrow passed just over his back.

Xiulu, seeing that his arrow had been dodged, narrowed his eyes slightly, reached into the quiver, and drew three arrows. He nocked all three at once. Both arms drove the draw. The bow came to a full moon.

With a sharp release, all three arrows flew together.

These three arrows weren’t aimed at Li Chi — they were aimed at the horse.

All three drove into the horse’s neck. The horse pitched forward violently, forelegs buckling, collapsing to the ground. At the speed they had been moving, Li Chi was thrown from the saddle and launched forward.

Xiulu had anticipated exactly that moment.

As the three arrows flew, he had already drawn a fourth. He adjusted his angle slightly and sent it.

The horse buckled. Li Chi flew forward — and Xiulu’s arrow, timed with uncanny precision, was already at Li Chi’s face.

If that arrow had struck his body, Li Chi’s soft armor might have spared him serious injury, even if it still stung. But this arrow was aimed with suffocating precision — straight for his face.

In that fraction of a heartbeat, Li Chi reacted without any hesitation, raising his left arm to cover both eyes.

The arrow punched through his arm with a wet thud.

But in the same instant the arrow drove into his arm, Li Chi clenched his teeth and wrenched the arm aside, and the arrow was carried off course.

Landing on the ground, Li Chi threw himself to the front of the column.

A Sword Gate disciple came to meet him — they had not brought the broad swords that marked them as Sword Gate members on this journey, and were using grassland sabers instead. Unfamiliar as the weapons were, they still struck out with ferocity and speed.

Li Chi twisted to dodge the slash, then hooked his left arm around the Sword Gate disciple’s neck and wrenched hard. The arrowhead still in his arm drove into the disciple’s throat.

In the next instant, Li Chi seized a saber from the fallen man’s hand and split a Black Wu soldier’s skull with a single stroke — the blade fell, the skull cracked open, and blood and brain matter ran down together.

Li Chi wrenched the saber free and flung it. The blade spun through the air in a blur of rapid rotation, like a disc, and flew three to four zhang before driving into the skull of a Black Wu soldier standing beside the carriage — the blade buried itself deep on impact.

“Hm.”

Xiulu watched this man fight with such ferocity, and his expression shifted.

“Kanluoshi, take him.”

Xiulu gave the order.

Kanluoshi nodded, reached out and took a saber from the soldier beside him, and flung it toward Li Chi — one step forward, drew a second saber, flung it — two more steps, then a third, flung again.

Three sabers. Three spinning discs of steel, flying in rapid succession.

Li Chi had almost reached the carriage when the first saber came hurtling in. He stopped hard — the blade passed a foot in front of him.

He accelerated again. The second saber passed behind his back, slicing away a lock of his hair.

The third saber came. Li Chi judged the timing, and with both extraordinary danger and extraordinary boldness, reached out and caught it.

The saber came to a dead stop in his hand. Li Chi first cut through the arrow shaft lodged in his left arm, then drove the blade through the Black Wu man bearing down on him.

After killing several more, Li Chi looked around. That Black Wu soldier was nearly upon him now. He gritted his teeth and seized a corpse by the collar with his wounded left hand, swung it, and hurled it at Kanluoshi.

A corpse came flying toward Kanluoshi’s face. Without hesitation he drove his fist into it, sending it flying away — but in that instant, Kanluoshi’s expression changed dramatically.

Li Chi was right behind the corpse.

A saber slashed for his throat.

Kanluoshi jerked his head backward in desperation, throwing himself back. Li Chi’s blade swept across his forehead — shaving off a strip of skin along with a patch of hair.

Kanluoshi fell back, both feet slamming into the ground, using the force to drive himself skidding backward a great distance.

He came back up, blood pouring from his forehead, flooding down his face in an instant — blood running even over his eyes. He wiped at it several times, which only made him look more savage.

But Li Chi paid him no further attention. He spun back toward the carriage, reached Mister Yan, and caught him up in his arms, leaning his back against the carriage wheel. He turned Mister Yan’s head to check the wound.

On Mister Yan’s head there was a swollen lump, visibly alarming — it must have been from the impact against the wall earlier.

Li Chi himself was seriously wounded, but paid it no mind. He raised his hand to wipe the blood from Mister Yan’s face — but when he pulled his hand back, he found his hand was covered in blood too. He had only smeared it further.

Li Chi went still for a moment, eyes full of tenderness. Then he drew his saber and cut through the ropes binding Mister Yan’s hands and feet.

By now a good number of Black Wu men had closed in, surrounding them on all sides. Every crossbow and bow was trained on Li Chi.

“Impressive courage. Impressive skill.”

Xiulu walked forward at an unhurried pace, clapping slowly.

There was a touch of faint mockery in his tone. “Only — I can’t quite understand. You came here alone, and you truly thought you could rescue him and walk away unharmed?”

Li Chi paid him no attention whatsoever. He examined Mister Yan thoroughly, and only when he found nothing beyond the one wound on his forehead did he let out a slow, quiet breath.

Mister Yan was somewhat dazed — the severe blow to his head meant he would likely be slow to recover in the short term.

Without even glancing at the Black Wu soldiers surrounding him, Li Chi reached into his deerskin pouch and drew out his wound medicine to apply to the gash on Mister Yan’s forehead.

He had been wounded on the road and hadn’t spent the medicine on himself — he had kept it, thinking he might need it when he found Mister Yan.

He applied the medicine, then bandaged the wound with linen. All the while, blood was flowing freely from Li Chi’s own body.

This scene moved Xiulu, despite himself.

“You’re wounded worse than he is.”

Xiulu said. “Who is he to you? That you care this much?”

Li Chi finished bandaging Mister Yan and propped him up against the carriage wheel, then began picking up rolled hides one by one from nearby and arranging them around Mister Yan’s body on all sides.

These hides were thick enough to stop an arrow.

Only when all of this was done did Li Chi slowly exhale. He turned to face Xiulu.

This blood-soaked figure — the moment his gaze landed on Xiulu’s face, Xiulu felt something lurch deep in his chest.

“Who is he to me?”

Li Chi’s lips pulled back — a feral, bloodied grin.

“He is… the kind of person where, if anyone lays a hand on him, I destroy their entire family.”