The junior martial uncle of the Sacred Blade Sect, Jian Li, had lacked just a bit more courage to charge straight into the Songhe Tower — for it was true that the hall was full of injured people, and it was true that everyone inside had given their all.

But firstly, he did not have quite that much boldness. And secondly, he needed to find a quiet place as quickly as possible to absorb and process everything he had witnessed.

At the fundamental level, his goals and those of the Sect Master were entirely different.

The Sect Master had already reached such heights. Within the realm of the consummate, with no further advancement possible, already at the pinnacle — the absolute ceiling, nothing above and nowhere higher to go.

But he was different. He hungered for that height. He wanted to experience what it felt like to be invincible after reaching it.

For so many years, his master’s elder martial brother had always been the towering mountain he looked up at — and also the inner demon he feared.

Long ago, he had watched with his own eyes as that man, alone with one blade, slaughtered nearly the entire Sacred Blade Sect. The inner demon had taken root in his terror on that day.

So if he had chosen to go into the Songhe Tower and kill people — why would he have done it?

To avenge his master’s elder martial brother?

No. No, no. Even if one day he reached the heights that his master’s elder martial brother had reached, and he went to kill Li Chi, to kill that woman with the sword, to kill every person in the Songhe Tower today — none of it would ever be for the sake of avenging him.

It would only be because, if and when he reached that height, he would need to kill these people to prove he had truly arrived there.

Jian Li headed north. He did not want to spend even one more breath in Yuzhou City — slipping out of a city was, given his abilities, far from difficult.

Just as Jian Li was walking toward the city gate, a convoy from a transport escort agency brushed past him.

This was the escort convoy that had drawn the attention of the Tingwei Army on the main street. After a thorough inspection, the Tingwei Army confirmed there was nothing suspicious about them.

The only suspicious element was simply their presence there.

And even that suspicion had been planted deliberately by the Tingwei Army, who assumed the convoy might be an accomplice of the assassins.

But after inspection, it turned out that the escort agency’s documentation was entirely complete. After verification at the prefecture office, the convoy had also properly registered their departure in advance.

The identities of every member of the agency had been verified — no anomalies found.

They carried official government paperwork, and every individual had government-issued documentation authorizing them to carry weapons.

The Tingwei Army had also checked the goods they were transporting, then confirmed with the corresponding merchant house. Everything matched.

A convoy like this gave the Tingwei Army no grounds for detention.

At this moment, the number of people in the convoy was no different from before — because just as they had turned the street corner, one person had used the confusion of the crowd to slip away, while another had used the same moment to join.

Just now, rounding the street corner, the escort agency’s cart had sideswiped an oncoming cart. People from both sides climbed down to inspect the damage.

The exchange had happened then.

One person from the convoy had used the distraction to roll beneath the other cart. That cart was specially built — it had a cavity in the undercarriage, and the person who rolled underneath crawled up inside.

Meanwhile, a person from inside that other cart rolled out and joined the escort convoy.

Before rolling out, this person had removed his hooded cloak and thrown it into the cart. He was already wearing a set of escort agency clothes prepared in advance.

The convoy passed inspection at the city gate with no issues whatsoever, and the gate soldiers let them through.

The Tingwei Army had indeed dispatched people to shadow them covertly, but they truly failed to notice the trick with the cart’s undercarriage.

Even after leaving the city, the Tingwei Army’s people continued their covert surveillance.

Inside the cart, the man who had shed his cloak appeared, in truth, not particularly old. His complexion was unusually pale — the kind of pallor that suggested illness and frailty.

He was, in the way of his features, quite a refined-looking man. But there was an unmistakably heavy, yin-like quality to him.

The driver asked: “Sir, shall we go directly back to the capital?”

The young man nodded: “Back.”

He was Qu Nanhuai.

He had orchestrated everything. His only miscalculation was that he had not anticipated that Fang Zhuhhou — a member of the Dachu imperial family — would, at the critical moment, choose not to kill Li Chi.

Everything else had been within his plan. Fang Zhuhhou was to appear before Li Chi at precisely the right time, needing only a single strike to send Li Chi to hell.

That was Fang Zhuhhou — Fang Zhuhhou, whose single strike could shake all under heaven.

It was precisely Fang Zhuhhou’s actual actions that left Qu Nanhuai stunned.

That day, he had said he was going to gather some intelligence — and then was killed by Li Chi’s people. Of course, that too had been something he had arranged.

He needed to disappear from sight. The best method was to die. No one would continue suspecting a man who was already dead.

Qu Nanhuai had arranged for people at a location not far from the Songhe Tower to carry out an assassination attempt on him — but at that point in time, he had already switched places with someone else.

Shortly after leaving the residence where Fang Zhuhhou and the others were staying, he had sent a subordinate dressed identically to him walking toward the Songhe Tower. The two men were nearly the same build and frame, wore the same clothes, and styled their hair the same way — so at a casual glance, they were indistinguishable.

He had then arranged for the young assistant at that painting and calligraphy shop to lead people to attack and kill the man impersonating him, near the Songhe Tower.

His calculations were meticulous. To ensure there would be witnesses confirming his death, he deliberately positioned four people nearby to keep watch on the Songhe Tower.

Two of them were his own trusted agents. The other two were not his people and could be used as independent witnesses.

The two who were his: Xie Tingtai and Deng Lu.

Qu Nanhuai knew that Fang Zhuhhou was not easily controlled — with his level of strength, it was difficult to control him in any case.

He also knew that the jianghu figures brought in from Daxing were not, in truth, particularly loyal to Dachu or to His Majesty.

The reason they had been willing to come was largely because Fang Zhuhhou had come. They trusted Fang Zhuhhou — far more than they trusted Dachu or the Dachu Emperor.

People like these — with no certainty about whether Fang Zhuhhou would give his full effort — how could they be relied upon?

By manufacturing hatred.

He Lianhong was killed by him.

That day, after Qu Nanhuai left the small courtyard, Fang Zhuhhou had sent He Lianhong to tail Qu Nanhuai.

He Lianhong was the member of their group with notably superior lightness skill, which was why Fang Zhuhhou had arranged for him to go.

He Lianhong had followed at a distance — though in truth, long before that, the person he was following was no longer Qu Nanhuai, but the decoy.

As they approached the Songhe Tower, He Lianhong, hiding in an alley, saw Qu Nanhuai being killed. His first instinct was to rush forward and try to help.

At precisely that moment, a voice called to him from behind. He Lianhong looked back — and found that it was his companions Xie Tingtai and Deng Lu.

Xie Tingtai had called out softly behind him: “Brother He Lianhong, wait for us — let’s go together and see if we can recover Eunuch Qu’s body.”

Hearing those words, and seeing that it was his companions, He Lianhong felt no suspicion at all.

But in the very moment he turned to look at the two of them, Qu Nanhuai slipped out from the other side and drove a blade through He Lianhong.

He Lianhong never saw the face of the one who had struck him. After being stabbed, he looked back for a moment and saw only a figure in black brocade fleeing the scene.

In that instant, he assumed it was the Tingwei Army.

Then Xie Tingtai and Deng Lu rushed over in feigned concern to help him, and between them carried him back to the small courtyard.

From beginning to end, He Lianhong never suspected Xie Tingtai or Deng Lu. It never occurred to him that if Xie Tingtai had not called out to him, he would not have died.

He Lianhong thus became another eyewitness to Qu Nanhuai’s killing — moreover, a witness who was dying.

Would a man like that lie?

He Lianhong died. This not only served as proof that Qu Nanhuai had been killed, but also drove He Lianxia and the others into deep hatred for Prince Ning, Li Chi.

The only one who had harbored any suspicion about his death was Fang Zhuhhou.

After learning that Qu Nanhuai had been killed, Fang Zhuhhou had gone to the scene personally to investigate. He looked at the corpse that had been laid out in the Songhe Tower.

This was precisely one ring in Qu Nanhuai’s calculations. The decoy had died near the Songhe Tower, and Qu Nanhuai had calculated that the people inside the tower would bring the body in — firstly to identify the deceased, and secondly because they could not leave a corpse lying in the street for ordinary people to see.

Qu Nanhuai had also calculated that Fang Zhuhhou would certainly go to examine the scene — but the body was already inside the Songhe Tower. Would Fang Zhuhhou truly dare to enter the Songhe Tower to look?

Naturally he would only look from a distance. And from a distance, there would be nothing to give it away.

But Fang Zhuhhou had truly gone to look.

When Fang Zhuhhou left the tavern, he had encountered Cen Xiaoxiao. He had also seen Li Chi and Cao Lie bringing people around from left and right to close in.

After subduing Cen Xiaoxiao with a chopstick and slipping out the back window, Fang Zhuhhou had not fled — as Cen Xiaoxiao assumed. He had entered the Songhe Tower.

Given his abilities, entering the Songhe Tower was not difficult, especially since at that moment Li Chi and Cao Lie had taken the majority of their powerful fighters over to the other side.

Fang Zhuhhou suspected that the corpse was not Qu Nanhuai at all, and so he had to see for himself. It was fortunate that he looked.

That was what had led to Fang Zhuhhou saying to Li Chi, later — *someone thought they could trick me into killing you.*

Qu Nanhuai’s plan was, by all reasoning, highly successful. It had not only drawn Fang Zhuhhou and the others into its net — it had drawn in Liu Chongxin’s people as well, and drawn in the Sect Master, all of them becoming the blade he aimed at Li Chi.

He had merely underestimated Fang Zhuhhou.

And in the course of all this, a number of people had appeared who needed to die.

One of them was Jin Mantang.

Jin Mantang was a powerful fighter that Cao Lie had recruited. He had volunteered for death.

Before the fight began, Jin Mantang had said to Cao Lie: “Young Marquess, things are different now — everything is different, because Prince Ning has come. Before, I felt that this chaotic world was the most beautiful world possible for someone like me, who walks the dark paths. But then I started worrying about what kind of future my son would have.”

He said: “If I don’t die, Prince Ning’s people will eventually root out someone like me — a man with so much blood on his hands. The Tingwei Army will drag out everyone like me. My son may be clean, but what can he do? He would watch his father publicly beheaded, and then be despised by ten thousand people.”

Cao Lie understood Jin Mantang’s intention.

In this world, fathers and mothers — so many of them are willing to give their own lives to purchase a future for their children.

And so Cao Lie’s response was only a single sentence: “I will tell Prince Ning — your son is named Jin Zhanyi, and he is a clean man.”

Jin Mantang walked out of the Songhe Tower with a smile.

Walked to his death with a smile.

And so when Jin Mantang had engaged Yan Beicheng in combat, Cen Xiaoxiao had simply stood there watching, arms wrapped around his sword, apparently cold and unmoved.

Every bit of that stillness was made of reverence.

On the road outside the city, the cart rolled onward into the distance.

Sitting in the cart, Qu Nanhuai let out a long, heavy breath. He was thinking about how to tell His Majesty the full account of events when he returned to Daxing City. Would His Majesty still favor him after learning the truth? Could he still become someone like Zhen Xiaodao?

It was not that he carried some deep, bone-etched loyalty to the Dachu emperor. It was more that he was already a eunuch — a castrated man — and the paths available to him were precious few.

Just then, the convoy suddenly came to a halt. The driver said in a voice that trembled: “Sir… we’re finished.”

Qu Nanhuai snapped the curtain of the cart aside and looked out — and there on the road ahead was an iron-armored column of Tingwei Army black cavalry, cold and imposing.

Gao Xining sat astride her warhorse and pointed at the escort convoy: “Move quickly.”

The black cavalry thundered out.

In that moment, Qu Nanhuai suddenly understood everything — and he actually began to laugh. A bitter, wry laugh of *so that’s how it was, of course that’s how it was.*

The Tingwei Army, naturally, could not move against a convoy with no incriminating evidence — not in Yuzhou City, not before the eyes of ordinary citizens.

But once the Tingwei Army had become suspicious, how could they possibly let someone walk away so easily?

And so — how perfect it was, outside the city.

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