The sun blazed fiercely overhead. Heat steamed up from the ground. In places outside the forest shade, aside from the half-withered weeds scorched by the sun, living creatures were hardly visible.

Xiao Li led the Wolf Riders in pursuit for a night and half a day. Both men and horses were exhausted and parched. Passing by a stream, Xiao Li immediately ordered the horses to drink water and rest briefly.

The Wolf Riders also bent down at the water’s edge. After cupping water and pouring two mouthfuls into their mouths, they removed the water pouches they carried and filled them.

Urgent hoofbeats came from the distance. The Wolf Riders drinking water all became alert, but seeing the scout they’d sent ahead to scout the road galloping back, they lowered their guard and continued drinking and resting.

“Your Lordship, Azure Cloud Cavalry was discovered ten li ahead. They seem to want to cross Raincoat Lake via a shortcut to rendezvous with the Liang army.”

After the scout dismounted, he ran straight to Xiao Li to report.

Xiao Li’s eyes were ice-cold: “How far is the nearest ferry crossing from here?”

The Wolf Rider answered: “Fifteen li.”

Xiao Li tossed his water pouch to the scout who hadn’t had time to get water, then mounted his horse: “Pursue!”

The Wolf Riders mounted their horses one after another and galloped swiftly through mountain forest roads, like a pack of hunting wolves surging forth.

When they were about to reach the ferry crossing the scout mentioned, the wind blowing from that direction carried a bloody smell hidden within the scorching heat.

Xiao Li realized something. He viciously cracked his whip with a shout: “Hah!”

The warhorse finally galloped wildly to the ferry crossing, only to see several corpses lying on the ground—some Azure Cloud Guards, and also a group dressed as boatmen, clearly disguised assassins.

The horse carriage escorted by the Azure Cloud Guards had been shot full of holes like a sieve, overturned on the roadside. The horse pulling the carriage had also been struck by several arrows, a large pool of blood spreading beneath it.

Xiao Li’s heart suddenly tightened. Without thinking, he spurred his horse urgently forward, almost tumbling off to look at the carriage lying on the roadside.

“Wen Yu!”

He lifted the carriage curtain. Fortunately, as far as he could see there were only bloodstains inside the carriage, no corpse.

Xiao Li supported himself on the carriage door frame and stood up. His breathing was chaotic under the great emotional ups and downs, the violence and gloom around his entire body almost impossible to suppress.

“Your Lordship, there’s a boat on the lake.” A Wolf Rider who arrived afterward squinted toward the distant lake surface.

Xiao Li raised his eyes to look at the lake and saw that canopy-topped large boat gradually moving away. His gaze swept across the ferry crossing and also saw fresh traces where boats had docked.

His face was taut. He took his bow and arrows from the horseback, saying coldly: “Launch boats to pursue.”

Several small boats were still moored at the ferry crossing, without canopy tops for shelter. Not knowing how long they’d been exposed to wind and sun, the boat rails had already cracked somewhat.

After the Wolf Riders severed the mooring ropes, they pushed all those small boats into the water.

One small boat could only carry four or five people. The Wolf Riders rowed strenuously trying to catch up with the canopy-topped large boat ahead, but from the moment they appeared on the shore, the people on the large boat had already noticed them.

As soon as the small boats approached arrow range, a swarm of arrows pressed over from the large boat’s direction.

Some Wolf Riders inadvertently fell into the water trying to avoid the arrows.

The Wolf Rider responsible for rowing shouted to Xiao Li: “Your Lordship, the arrows are too dense. We can’t get close.”

Xiao Li held his bow and stared coldly at the people on the large boat opposite. When Pei Yuan saw Xiao Li, his expression also became stern. He shouted to the people on the boat: “Shoot arrows! Quickly shoot arrows!”

Xiao Li instructed the Wolf Riders: “Continue approaching.”

If Pei Yuan appeared within Chen Kingdom’s borders, then had Pei Song also hidden over here?

If Wen Yu had fallen into their hands…

With one hand he held his bow. From his quiver he took several long arrows and nocked them. The firm muscle fibers of his elbow and arm tensed. Drawing the bow like a full moon, sharp arrows rode the floating waves under the scorching sun and left the string. Several archers on the opposite large boat who were still trying to shoot arrows were pierced through by this arrow and nailed to the cabin wall in succession.

An even denser net of arrows rained down on the boats behind. The Wolf Riders within shooting range all jumped into the water to avoid the arrows.

The armor on Xiao Li’s body was heavy. When that dark-colored cloak floated on the water surface, Pei Yuan quickly shouted: “Shoot arrows! Whoever kills Xiao Li will be heavily rewarded!”

In an instant, a swarm of arrows all shot toward where the cloak floated.

But after quite a while, that water area still showed no blood rising.

To avoid exhausting the arrows on the boat, Pei Yuan made a gesture, signaling the group of subordinates with bows and crossbows standing at the boat’s edge to stop. Then he personally leaned on the boat rail, watching that water area where the cloak floated with both wariness and apprehension.

Unexpectedly, huge splashes suddenly surged from beneath the large boat. Pei Yuan and his group at the boat’s stern staring at the water area behind were caught off guard, all temporarily blinded by the spray. In their urgency, the crossbow archers only shot the crossbow bolts in their hands in a chaotic flurry, completely lacking accuracy.

Taking advantage of this gap, Xiao Li and a Wolf Rider who had dived over together climbed over the boat rail and leapt aboard. The instant short blades were unsheathed, blood sprayed. Several corpses at the boat’s stern toppled into the water, dyeing the azure lake water bright red.

When he entered the water earlier, he had already stripped off his armor. The cloak floating on the lake surface was merely a target.

As soon as Pei Yuan saw Xiao Li board the boat, he knew things had gone badly wrong. After snatching a bow and crossbow from a lackey’s hands, he fled backward while shooting arrows at Xiao Li.

Those fiercely shot arrows were severed by Xiao Li wielding his short blade. However, the range a short blade could defend was ultimately limited. His toe flicked up from the ground, a long blade entered his hand, and with the momentum he flourished it. The arrows shot afterward were deflected even more cleanly, deeply embedded in both sides of the boat deck.

“Where is Wen Yu?” His blade pointed directly at Pei Yuan as he questioned coldly.

But arrows flew toward him from ahead again. Xiao Li turned his head to avoid that sharp arrow different from short crossbow bolts. When he raised his blade to deflect other arrows, he glanced with slight surprise at the arrow embedded in the wooden pillar beside him, quivering incessantly.

That arrow was extremely long. It didn’t resemble arrows used in the military to break armor, but rather looked somewhat like arrows used for hunting by nomadic tribes.

Pei Yuan took the opportunity to flee farther, making a gesture for the people on the deck to go forward first to delay him.

Xiao Li’s gaze fell on those several archers holding bows. He saw that when they drew their bows, they didn’t use the iron thumb ring string-pressing method customary in the militaries of both Liang and Chen regions, but instead used three-finger archery, quite similar to the bow-drawing technique of that team of Western Ling soldiers he had killed earlier. The unusual color in his eyes deepened.

Sneak arrows came swishing. Instead of retreating, he advanced, using his blade to deflect those deadly arrows as he strode forward rapidly. After closing in on several lackeys, he directly captured one alive, using him as a human shield to block the sharp arrows while engaging the other lackeys in combat.

During the fighting, after closing in on an archer who repeatedly shot sneak arrows, he directly kicked up a long blade from a lackey’s hands with his foot and kicked it toward that archer.

After that archer discovered his intention, he still wanted to flee, but ultimately couldn’t escape that blade. He was struck through the back of the heart and fell to the ground.

The Wolf Riders from behind finally arrived at this moment. The lackeys and fighters of unknown identity who had been tangling with Xiao Li were all detained.

Just as Xiao Li was about to continue killing his way toward the boat cabin, Pei Yuan’s voice suddenly came from below the boat: “Xiao Li, Hanyang is in my hands. Since you also have a grudge with her, how about I settle her life for you?”

Xiao Li turned his head to look down below the boat and saw that Pei Yuan had somehow already boarded a small boat with people, having already rowed some distance from the large boat. On the boat besides him and a lackey, there was also a white-clothed woman wearing a white veiled hat. The veil hanging from that woman’s hat draped all the way to below her knees, completely obscuring her face.

The blade in Pei Yuan’s hand pressed against the woman’s neck through the thin gauze. Because he applied downward pressure, the blood that seeped out was quite glaring on the snow-white veil.

That woman, being restrained, kept shaking her head in small movements.

The veins on the back of Xiao Li’s hand gripping the dagger bulged as he said coldly: “If you dare touch a single hair on her head, I’ll slice and cook you alive just like I did to Yu Jingwen in the past, you Pei clan running dog, within a quarter hour!”

Hearing this, Pei Yuan laughed with unclear meaning: “Your Lordship’s words truly frighten this lowly one.

“However, since Your Lordship cares so much about the Wen woman’s life, whether to save her depends on Your Lordship.”

After speaking, he actually directly pushed that woman whose hands were bound into the river.

“Wen Yu!”

Xiao Li’s eyes became scarlet with rage. The dagger in his hand was hurled viciously toward Pei Yuan. Then his entire person stepped on the boat rail and leapt into the water.

Pei Yuan narrowly dodged that dagger. Watching the dagger embed itself with a “clang” into the partition at the boat’s stern, he shouted in lingering fear: “Shoot arrows! Today we must take this Xiao clan wolf cub’s life!”

He himself also pulled the mechanism on the bow and crossbow, continuously shooting over ten short arrows toward where Xiao Li entered the water.

This time Xiao Li had no cover underwater and was extremely close to shooting range. The overwhelming arrows shot fiercely down from above the water surface. Though he swam forward with all his might, he still couldn’t avoid them. His shoulder was quickly struck by an arrow, spreading blood color in the water.

Pei Yuan on the boat stared at where the blood color spread in the lake and shouted loudly: “There! Continue shooting arrows!”

The short arrows shot from crossbows continued to embed into the water one batch after another.

“Your Lordship!” Seeing things going badly, the Wolf Riders on the large boat who were good swimmers also quickly jumped into the water to search for Xiao Li.

Xiao Li’s swimming skills were exceptional. Even after being struck by that arrow, he still charged straight toward that white-clothed woman whose bound hands made it impossible to float.

That woman didn’t know how to swim. Underwater, she breathed using both mouth and nose, exhaling large patches of bubbles.

Fortunately, the place where she fell into the water wasn’t far from Pei Yuan’s boat. Using the boat body for cover, Xiao Li continued sinking to rescue her. That woman’s veiled hat had fallen off when she entered the water. Now completely drowning, her mouth and nose no longer exhaled large patches of bubbles to obscure her face. Only then did Xiao Li see clearly she wasn’t Wen Yu.

His entire body’s tense nerves suddenly relaxed. Only now did Xiao Li feel the arrow wound on his shoulder beginning to throb with waves of numbing pain.

The Wolf Riders skilled at swimming caught up. Seeing Xiao Li continuing to sink, thinking his strength was failing, they tried to take him farther away before surfacing.

Xiao Li pointed at that woman with bound hands sinking in the lake.

The Wolf Riders understood and went to rescue that woman.

Xiao Li himself continued swimming toward the small boat Pei Yuan and his group were riding.

Pei Yuan held his crossbow with a cold expression, staring at the water surface for quite a while. Large patches of blood churned and muddied the water surface, but no corpse floated up.

On the large boat, a middle-aged man holding a large bow with a quiver on his back shouted something to him in tribal language.

Pei Yuan couldn’t understand that person’s words. The lackey at his side translated: “Captain, the people from Puershi tribe say that since we didn’t capture Hanyang on this trip, to prevent them from escaping to rendezvous with the Liang army, we should continue pursuing and shouldn’t waste more time here.”

Earlier at the ferry crossing, they ambushed that team of Azure Cloud Cavalry trying to board boats. They just hadn’t expected that the veiled woman in the carriage was also skilled in martial arts—clearly just a body double. After discovering the ambush, they decisively abandoned the carriage and fled.

They split off part of their forces to continue pursuit, while the remaining forces chose to take boats via a shortcut to continue intercepting that Azure Cloud Cavalry unit at the road junction ahead.

Unexpectedly, while the large boat was on the lake, it was spotted by Xiao Li’s group who were also chasing that team of Azure Cloud Guards. Thinking they had successfully intercepted and killed the Azure Cloud Guards, he bit onto them demanding the person.

Pei Yuan recalled the several times he’d narrowly escaped death at Xiao Li’s hands. Unable to conceal the malice in his expression, he cursed: “What the hell do they know! If we don’t kill that wolf today, when will there be such an opportunity again?”