Gui Yuanshu saw the woman, but only because that violet-purple long robe was so breathtakingly striking that for a moment he failed to recognize her as the village woman selling mountain fruit by the road.

Perhaps he recognized her, but couldn’t confirm it in the first instant.

The woman then had possessed a kind of plain, unadorned beauty. The woman now possessed a kind of noble, elevated beauty.

Two utterly different qualities of presence — manifested in the same woman — without the slightest contradiction between them.

Gui Yuanshu looked at her. She looked back at Gui Yuanshu.

In this moment, something like a trace of curiosity briefly crossed the woman’s gaze.

But it was of no consequence to her. She had come to kill. She would kill the people who had disrupted her life, and then go back to living it.

Setting up such a meticulously crafted little yard was no easy matter — that rose-covered fence, the hanging swing bed, the gauze canopy, the fragrance of medicinal herbs from the thatched study.

Building such a yard was considerably more troublesome than killing a few people. For her, immeasurably more troublesome.

She raised a finger and pointed. A constable to the side simply collapsed — without any sign, without any reaction. Perhaps that constable felt only a chill against his forehead before his skull was pierced through.

The woman in violet stepped forward, walking casually, pointing as she went, and people kept falling.

She pointed at Gui Yuanshu as well.

In that instant, Gui Yuanshu felt a breath of death. He immediately drew his long saber and raised it before him.

He had only just brought the saber up when something unknown struck the flat of the blade. He couldn’t keep hold of the handle, and the back of the blade struck him squarely on the forehead — not a light blow.

Gui Yuanshu stepped back. The men around him immediately surged forward, forming a defensive formation with him at the center.

Seeing this, the woman in violet appeared faintly puzzled.

She continued to walk forward. Flashes of light flew past to Gui Yuanshu’s left and right. He couldn’t make out what those flashes were — each one a momentary gleam.

Magistrate Zhang fell, a hole in his forehead. Magistrate Qian fell as well — a hole in his forehead, exactly the same.

Gui Yuanshu was no common fighter. According to the tier system that Little Zhang Zhenren had devised for martial practitioners, Gui Yuanshu might not be fully within the first tier, but he had at least one foot across the threshold.

So to say he was unmatched below the first tier would not be an exaggeration.

The few young officers of the Tingwei Army each possessed combat ability within the second tier, but in single combat, none of them would likely be a match for Gui Yuanshu.

Yet the force behind those flashes of light was enough to knock the saber hilt from Gui Yuanshu’s grip.

Fortunately that strike had been the flat of the blade against his forehead. Had it been the edge, it might well have split his skull.

People fell one by one. Some turned to flee, only to drop face-first three or four steps later, a hole in the back of their heads. The men who had already jumped through windows to the outside — a flash of light pierced through the window frame, and the fleeing man’s head sprouted the same hole.

Perhaps she intended to leave the harder ones for last, or perhaps it was still that trace of curiosity, or perhaps it was because the first time they met, Gui Yuanshu had stopped the magistrate from berating the woman in violet — for whatever reason, when the woman in violet stopped, only Gui Yuanshu’s group remained.

Seeing that they had not attempted to flee and had not attacked, the woman in violet was equally unconcerned. She had a trace of curiosity — but whether she was curious or not had nothing to do with whether she would kill Gui Yuanshu’s group.

“Wait!”

At this moment, Old Sun rushed over from the kitchen. Seeing the scene, his expression visibly changed.

“Stop.”

Old Sun spoke to the woman in violet in a tone that was almost pleading.

The woman in violet looked over. Her gaze was without ripple. Compared to the complexity in Old Sun’s eyes, her stillness was almost without feeling.

“You go.”

Old Sun said to the woman in violet, “I’ll kill them. You don’t need to act anymore.”

This left Gui Yuanshu and the others rather bewildered, but what was not bewildering was that regardless of the relationship between these two, both intended to kill.

“No need.”

The woman in violet finally responded — only two words.

She stepped forward.

Gui Yuanshu said in a low voice, “Saber formation!”

Zheng Shunshun and the others responded immediately, four men forming a defensive shield around Gui Yuanshu, five people taking the same stance simultaneously.

The woman in violet raised a hand. Several flashes of light flew from her palm at inconceivable speed.

Zheng Shunshun and the other three, arrayed before Gui Yuanshu — when the flashes shot out, nearly all four of them brought their sabers down at the same time… but only appeared to be simultaneous; each person’s movement was separated by a fraction of a breath, and there was a sequence to the four blades falling.

Four blades fell — the first cut empty air, the second struck something — first came a shower of sparks, then a clear metallic clang.

The third and fourth blades each caught one of the flashes. Three of the flashes of light were cut down by the four blades.

Their speed was not overwhelmingly fast, but knowing Gui Yuanshu was the target, all four had positioned their blades squarely before him.

After four blades fell, the expression of the woman in violet shifted faintly.

Just at this moment, all the intelligence soldiers from the rear courtyard came rushing over, round shields and straight sabers drawn.

They charged forward, forming another defensive line in front of Gui Yuanshu.

The woman in violet seemed somewhat displeased at being blocked in a strike, and her brow arched very slightly upward.

“Using a military formation to block my fire darts.”

The woman in violet raised both hands. “How many times will it hold?”

Gui Yuanshu took a round shield and gripped his saber in his right hand. “On my command.”

“Huoh!”

The intelligence soldiers gave a low, resonant acknowledgment.

In this moment, flashes of light glimmered in both hands of the woman in violet — as though gathering force. Moments later, the light erupted outward.

“Bodies down, shields up!”

In the instant the light erupted, Gui Yuanshu shouted. All the intelligence soldiers lowered their bodies in unison, half-extending their arms, using the round shields to cover their heads.

Bang bang bang bang bang…

A series of muffled impacts.

Those flashes of light — which seemed to carry enough force to punch through brick and stone — were blocked entirely by the round shields. Not one shield was pierced.

These shields were clearly unlike ordinary soldiers’ equipment — no one knew what kind of layering had been used inside them.

The woman in violet frowned slightly.

On this trip to Daxing City, Li Chi — wanting to ensure they had sufficient means to protect themselves — had supplied Gui Yuanshu’s group with specially crafted equipment from the Tingwei Army’s third division.

The Tingwei Army was now divided into three parts: the Tingwei proper, the Black Cavalry, and a logistics and supply division — the Third Division of the Tingwei Army.

This Third Division gathered a large number of highly capable specialists, and their daily work was devoted entirely to finding ways to improve the Tingwei Army’s combat effectiveness, self-protection, and various auxiliary equipment.

The round shields carried by Gui Yuanshu’s group were wrapped on the outside with three layers of hide. Beneath the hide was not wooden board but hemp.

Hemp fibers were extracted and adhered together with paste, compressed into thin sheets. The core of each shield was built from at least fifteen such sheets of layered compressed hemp.

Much lighter than an iron shield — but in terms of durability, comparable to an iron shield more than a finger’s width thick.

“Let me!”

This time, without further attempts at persuasion, Old Sun launched himself skyward and swept toward Gui Yuanshu’s shield formation.

His lightness technique was — there was no lightness technique.

Pure brute force alone: both feet driving off the ground, the earth cracking and cratering beneath him, the man shooting out as if from an explosion, and in an instant he was before the shield formation.

“Blades down!”

Gui Yuanshu called out at once.

Several straight sabers fell simultaneously, the timing precisely judged.

Every blade landed — yet those razor-sharp sabers striking Old Sun’s shoulders couldn’t cut through.

Perhaps he wore some kind of tough soft armor beneath his clothes — but the fact that the blades left not a mark shook everyone present.

“Break!”

Old Sun brought both palms crashing into the shield formation.

There was a heavy thud. The intelligence soldiers holding shields were sent flying backward — even a solid horse stance could do nothing. That monstrous force seemed beyond all human resistance.

Two shield-bearing soldiers flew back, tearing a gap in the formation immediately.

Two more straight sabers fell left and right, aimed at Old Sun’s neck — but Old Sun didn’t dodge or flinch. Both hands shot out and grabbed the blades directly.

He wrenched them from their wielders’ grips with both hands — but didn’t use them. He casually swept them aside, then slapped his palms again into two more shields.

Two more thuds. Two more intelligence soldiers were sent flying, the formation battered into disarray.

Gui Yuanshu’s eyes sharpened. He vaulted out from behind the broken formation, long saber sweeping down at Old Sun’s forehead.

Old Sun dropped into a horse stance, raised both hands, and snapped them shut — clap!

Those two palms caught Gui Yuanshu’s saber with perfect precision — utterly unreasonable as it was. With a twist of both wrists, the blade was stripped from Gui Yuanshu’s hand.

He didn’t use the saber either. He tossed it aside. One fist drove toward Gui Yuanshu’s chest. Gui Yuanshu immediately crossed both arms to block.

That fist struck Gui Yuanshu on the forearms and lifted him clean off his feet.

Yet Gui Yuanshu didn’t go flying backward — Old Sun’s other hand shot out, seized Gui Yuanshu by the waistband, lifted him with one arm, and hurled him down onto the ground with tremendous force.

A crushing impact. Something locked up in Gui Yuanshu’s chest.

“Hmm?”

Old Sun, who had been about to stamp Gui Yuanshu to death, suddenly paused. He looked down.

Several objects had fallen out when Gui Yuanshu was slammed to the ground. His gaze landed on one of the tokens among them.

“You’re with the Mountain River Seal?”

Old Sun asked.

Gui Yuanshu had been slammed so hard that the air in his chest felt wedged solid — pain making it impossible to speak right away.

Old Sun crouched down and picked up the token, turned it over and looked at it again. “The young master’s people?”

He turned to look at the woman in violet.

The woman in violet walked over and glanced at the token. A flicker of something — clearly something like confusion — passed through her eyes.

“So it seems you’re here looking for us.”

Old Sun said, “We will not be going back. When we left, it was already said — from that moment on, we have no further connection to the Misty Chart, and naturally no further connection to the Mountain River Seal.”

Gui Yuanshu coughed several times. That locked-up breath finally came free. He steadied himself with a hand on his shoulder and stood. He had been slammed hard enough that his right arm seemed to have been dislocated.

“I’m not here looking for you. I’m going to Daxing City.”

Gui Yuanshu looked at Old Sun. “I didn’t even know who you were.”

Old Sun turned back to look at the woman in violet, as though waiting for her decision.

But clearly, Old Sun’s own expression suggested he still favored killing these people to eliminate any risk.

“Let him go.”

The woman in violet said, “Whether what you say is true or false, and whatever it is you’re here to do — I don’t care. Please go back and tell the Mountain River Seal’s people: we no longer involve ourselves in the affairs of the martial world, and we do not wish to be disturbed. This time, I will spare you. Consider it a full settlement between us and the Mountain River Seal — debts and grievances alike are cleared.”

Having said this, the woman in violet turned and walked away.

Old Sun immediately followed, as though his interest in Gui Yuanshu’s group had vanished in an instant.

Gui Yuanshu crouched down, catching his breath, left hand pressed to his shoulder. But beneath that palm he was concealing something — a hidden weapon he had quietly picked up the moment he was slammed to the ground.

After they were gone, he looked at the object in his hand.

It was a silver nail, roughly an inch in length.

This was the woman’s hidden weapon.

Gui Yuanshu was widely experienced and knowledgeable — which was precisely why he could be certain: this woman’s mastery of hidden weapons was beyond any comparison that could be found in the current age.

—