In less than an hour, An Ciru had confessed most of what he knew—Yu Jiuling did have his own unique methods when it came to extracting information.
“The people in that inn are from the Sacred Blade Sect. Four direct-line Sect heirs came in total, and the strongest among them should be that Fourth Young Master, the one called Nan Lan.”
Yu Jiuling said: “An Ciru says the Sacred Blade Sect’s people are all highly skilled. Four direct-line heirs working together—no one can defeat them.”
Li Chi, hearing this, laughed outright. “They are far too confident.”
Yu Jiuling said: “I think so too.”
Li Chi said: “I think our ninth sister alone could deal with three of them. The rest of us can join forces and handle one.”
Yu Jiuling: “Suddenly I feel a rapidly mounting urge to rebel.”
Li Chi said: “Should we just purge them outright right now?”
According to what An Ciru had revealed, the Sacred Blade Sect’s people did not entirely trust Gan Daode.
Nan Lan in particular had consistently adhered to a doctrine of bloodline purity—in his view, anyone whose Great Zhou imperial bloodline was insufficiently pure was not fully trustworthy.
“Just the two of us will go in—Dantai and me.”
Li Chi said: “The Tingwei Army covers the outer perimeter for backup. Old Zhenren Zhang and Young Zhenren Zhang position themselves outside the inn for support.”
Yu Jiuling immediately asked: “And me?”
Li Chi said: “You take men and wait outside Gan Daode’s Prince’s residence. Once there’s movement from the residence, find a way to hold them up—don’t take risks, just stall as long as you can.”
Yu Jiuling sighed. “Chief, what you’re asking me to do is genuinely the thing I’m worst at.”
Li Chi: “How so?”
Yu Jiuling said: “You’re telling me to stall as long as possible, but I’ve always been a man who undresses very quickly—quick as the wind, I am.”
Dantai Yajing said: “I heard from our ninth sister that when Jiuling went to a pleasure house once, when he was undressing, the woman there was so astonished she cried out ‘how fast!’, and then looked up to find Jiuling already putting his clothes back on.”
Yu Jiuling: “…”
Li Chi smiled at Yu Jiuling. “I’m begging you, please hurry up and become a proper rebel. If you don’t rebel soon, I’m going to lose patience—and then we’d have to become the rebels, which means we’d be free to move against you instead.”
Half an hour later, the second watch of the night had passed.
It was the stillest hour of the night—even the sound of wind through the grass came through with unusual clarity.
A man in a black robe walked at an unhurried pace up to the inn’s rear door. Every hidden guard in the vicinity tensed, ready to strike the moment necessary.
But the black-robed man raised a hand and knocked lightly at the door in a particular rhythm—the rhythm that was the Sacred Blade Sect’s contact signal.
Every guard who had been about to act held back, though all of them watched the black-robed figure with a new edge of tension.
The inn’s regular proprietor and staff had already been killed, their bodies buried in the rear courtyard. Every person inside was now a member of the Sacred Blade Sect. Someone came and opened the back door, asking: “Who is it?”
The black-robed man raised his head—and in that moment, the person who had opened the door saw a demon’s face.
The hooded black robe was wide and billowing, concealing every line of the body beneath. With his head bowed, the face was invisible entirely. And so when he raised his head, the demon-face mask appeared before the door-opener—in the dead stillness of the night. How could that not be terrifying?
“Someone has hired me to deliver a reckoning to your door.”
Li Chi gave a gentle smile—without any visible movement on his part, the door-opener’s throat gained a thin red line.
Every hidden guard was struck with shock and immediately moved to attack.
First came a volley of countless projectiles aimed at Li Chi—but Li Chi swept his black robe open and launched himself into the air like a great dark bat.
A rapid succession of metallic sounds rang out at the rear entrance as the projectiles struck the wall and gate, sending cascades of sparks.
The moment Li Chi moved, every concealed guard moved with him, surging toward him all at once.
And while they converged on Li Chi, another black-robed figure swept in over the outer wall.
Dantai Yajing raised his wrist, and the grappling line coiled around his forearm shot out, anchoring to a window on the third floor. He gripped the line and walked straight up the wall to the third story.
In the darkness no one could see the grappling line he’d cast before—they only saw a black-robed figure walk up the wall as though it were level ground.
That sight, for anyone who witnessed it, would take a very long time to forget.
Li Chi struck to kill from the first blow, because An Ciru had already confessed that everyone inside the inn had been murdered.
Against people like this, Li Chi saw no reason for any restraint.
In the darkness, Li Chi seemed to fly—weaving and circling through the rear courtyard with movements the Sacred Blade Sect’s people could not keep pace with.
“How dare you.”
A voice called out from a second-floor window—the words barely spoken, and the figure had already swept down from above.
While still some distance from Li Chi, the bladelight erupted outward.
In the darkness, it was like a bolt of lightning, arriving at Li Chi’s throat in an instant.
The speed of that blade even startled Li Chi somewhat.
But Li Chi had already faced this style of fighting before, and there was no chance he would be caught the same way twice.
As he dodged laterally, his left hand came up—a grappling line shot out and coiled around the chain connected to the long blade.
The fighter who had come at him—that first move was identical to the black-clad figure who had struck at Li Chi in the Prince’s residence: a long blade launched outward, pulled by a chain, at extraordinary speed.
Li Chi’s grappling line wrapped around the chain and pulled—the long blade spun off course and fell clattering to the ground.
This clearly startled the one who had thrown the blade. In all the years this fighter had practiced, it was the first time someone had directly countered the chained blade.
Evidently this black-robed intruder had some knowledge of the Sacred Blade Sect’s techniques—otherwise how could they have prepared so specifically and responded so directly?
Li Chi stepped forward, and with a cut of his right-hand blade he severed the chain. Any hope the Sacred Blade Sect’s fighter had of retracting the blade was gone.
“Who are you!”
The fighter immediately shouted.
Li Chi immediately replied: “Your patriarch.”
The fighter paused. “My patriarch?”
Li Chi: “My dear child.”
The fighter erupted in fury, lunging forward to try to reclaim the blade from the ground. Li Chi gave no such opening.
Li Chi’s gaze grew sharp—the meaning in his eyes simple and commanding: *the same move will never work on me a second time.*
Li Chi stepped forward, his blade sweeping horizontally straight for the fighter’s throat. The fighter threw all power into both feet and floated backward.
But then the fighter could only watch as Li Chi’s blade flew out—with a chain attached to it.
In that instant, the fighter’s pupils contracted violently.
There was no evading it. The blade flew in fast and drove through the fighter’s chest—and in that moment, the fighter felt not pain but an ice-cold sensation that reached down to the bone.
The blade punched through and out the fighter’s back. Then the chain rang out as Li Chi yanked it back—and the fighter was dragged forward in a fall, still kneeling. As the body traveled over the chain, the chain turned red.
At another window, a second Sacred Blade Sect member who had witnessed this scene had eyes that snapped wide open.
“Our brother!”
This figure launched off the second floor and swept downward, releasing a long blade through the air mid-descent, aimed straight at Li Chi’s face.
Li Chi seemed to release a quiet sigh.
In that sigh was disdain for the attacker, contempt for the fact that someone was attempting the same thing against him for the third time.
He stepped back half a pace, both hands on his blade.
The blade descended—a flash of pure brilliance.
With a clang, the incoming long blade was struck down, burying itself in the earth.
Li Chi reached out and seized the chain still attached to the blade hilt, and gave it a sharp pull toward himself.
The one who had thrown it was yanked violently toward Li Chi—and just as the fighter was about to reach him, both sleeves lit up.
Li Chi’s eyes flickered.
In the next instant—twin blades cut down.
From within the fighter’s wide sleeves, two more blades had been concealed.
This fighter’s skill was extraordinary—the twin blades swept in a whirlwind, blade-force unbroken, and it felt vaguely as though countless invisible threads were slicing across the body from all directions.
Third floor.
Nan Lan stood at the window looking down at the battle below, his expression grown so dark it was almost unrecognizable.
If he still could not tell that these attackers were mimicking the Sacred Blade Sect’s own people, then his years of hard cultivation had been entirely wasted.
The chained-blade techniques used by the attacker below were identical to their own training.
“Who are you?”
It was at this moment that Nan Lan spoke.
He had not turned around. He had not even moved.
Through the rear window, Dantai Yajing had entered and was straightening his robe, thinking to himself that fighting in these wide-sleeved robes was genuinely inconvenient.
He raised both hands toward Nan Lan’s back and replied in an even tone: “Did you think everyone else was just a puppet on your strings?”
After those words, he extended both arms.
What emerged from the two wide sleeves was not blades—but two repeating crossbows.
Nan Lan launched himself forward in that instant, spinning in mid-air to draw his blade—and a storm of bolts came at him. Yet in mid-air, his long blade left its scabbard with a sound like a dragon’s cry.
The blade swept—crossbow bolts rained down.
Sparks cascaded before him.
“Gan Daode, that rabid dog.”
Nan Lan swept the crossbow bolts aside with his blade and floated down into the rear courtyard.
As he turned back, he saw that the other black-robed figure had vanished.
Li Chi’s feet found a pivot point, a surge of earth rising underfoot—and in an instant he was gone, reappearing in the next breath behind the fighter he’d been contending with. Both hands on the blade, he brought it down with full force.
The fighter’s reaction was extremely fast—spinning around, both blades raised to catch the strike. A great clang—
The fighter’s knees buckled under the force and went straight to the ground, both kneecaps slamming hard into the earth.
Nan Lan let out a shout and charged in toward his companion to render aid.
Li Chi’s blade bore down toward the throat of the kneeling fighter—and at the same moment, Nan Lan’s blade flew out as well.
In that instant, Li Chi suddenly left the ground entirely. His body rotated in the air—the blade that had been descending flipped backward and shot out toward Nan Lan instead.
Two chained blades met in the air, scraping past each other. The friction between the two blade bodies sent both grinding out a shower of golden sparks.
Nan Lan’s expression shifted sharply—he immediately threw himself backward, and Li Chi’s blade passed just over his body.
But Nan Lan’s own blade drove straight through his companion’s chest—the one who had been kneeling on the ground was run through.
Li Chi had already turned to stand behind that fighter, caught the blade that had driven through the body, and planted a kick on the fighter’s back.
The fighter maintained a kneeling posture and flew forward—the chain still running through the body, so that the person slid along the chain like a wheel on a track.
As the body passed through, the chain turned red.
But at this moment, more people had been roused and came rushing out. Nan Lan had brought many—the crowd came pouring in, hurling projectiles at Li Chi from all directions.
Li Chi spun around and flung off his outer robe. In his hands, the robe spun in a wide rotation—projectiles struck it with a rapid staccato rhythm, their force absorbed by the spinning fabric and shed.
Meanwhile, Dantai Yajing was still stationed at the third-floor window, both repeating crossbows blazing in continuous aimed fire, like a machine of relentless destruction.
One after another, the people in the courtyard were felled. Those who were struck went down with cries of pain.
Then, in that moment, Dantai Yajing felt something was wrong—he snapped around.
A dark shadow had appeared at his back, less than a full zhang away. Countless bolts flew toward the figure in an instant.
The figure stepped forward—one step, and arrived before Dantai Yajing.
In the course of that single step, the figure raised its right hand—index and middle fingers pressed together—and with movements fast as lightning, deflected bolt after bolt in rapid back-and-forth sweeps. Every single bolt aimed at this person was batted aside by those two fingers.
Dantai Yajing was shocked.
The black-clad figure drove a palm into Dantai Yajing’s chest. Dantai Yajing was struck by a force like a crashing wave and went flying off the third floor.
Li Chi’s eyes snapped wide open. He launched himself immediately, caught Dantai Yajing, and without a moment’s pause swept out through the rear courtyard and away.
The figure walked to the third-floor window and stood there, looking down.
Every Sacred Blade Sect disciple in the rear courtyard lowered their heads in a uniform bow.
“Junior Uncle!”
—