An astonishing rain of blood burst open like a carefully arranged firework display, wild and unrestrained!

“Blade of the Vast Sea,” having already become a corpse in that first exchange, was still being driven forward by tremendous force; the bloodthirsty twin blades, using his body as cover, slashed and hacked their way out from behind him with wild fury, choosing precisely the instant of weakness in the great blade in Tie Tianying’s hand.

And in that same instant, Tie Tianying roared, the blade-light swirling around him like a howling whirlwind, and the corpse that charged at him first from the very front was struck as though it had crashed headlong into a giant meat grinder—blood and flesh sprayed into the air, throwing out grim streak after streak of blade-marks.

In the jianghu, when describing the might of a great blade master, people often say that when such a man wields his blade, not a drop of water could get through; in this moment, the long blade in Tie Tianying’s hand had, perhaps, truly reached that level of mastery, his many years of cultivation reaching their absolute peak in this single instant.

But even with his swordsmanship having entered the realm of a grandmaster, he could not ignore the men closing in fiercely around him.

Fan Zhong’s iron fan came crashing down, Tunyun’s iron sleeve whirled, both attacking Tie Tianying’s back with ferocious force! And in that same instant, it seemed as though Tie Tianying’s body had sprouted three heads and six arms; his white hair flared wildly, his fierce gaze sweeping across Fan Zhong and Tunyun before him, blade-light simultaneously enveloping every direction, his fist swinging out to strike Fan Zhong’s face, his feet driving down with force, sending earth and stone flying as he crashed his body like a mountain into Tunyun to his side, while Tunyun’s own fists and palms struck back like lightning, launching who knew how many counterattacks at the same time.

At this moment, someone hurled lime powder from a distance, someone else threw a fishing net; Yue Yun pulled his chain mace down with all his strength and swung it in furious rage, Silver Bottle’s footwork weaving as her long spear thrust fiercely, trying to relieve the pressure on Tie Tianying. Beside Tie Tianying, including the twin-blade assassin, three men simultaneously unleashed killing strikes at him, the distance between the figures closing to an extremely dangerous range; Tie Tianying, too, was already giving everything he had, and countless sounds of collision, cutting, the clash of metal and iron, and the spray of flesh and blood rang out.

Perhaps the most tragic of all was that corpse being driven forward as a shield—it took who knew how many more blade-strikes in the blink of an eye, and was then, caught in the eddying pressure of the masters’ killing strikes, pushed against Fan Zhong to one side. Fan Zhong, in the midst of swinging his iron fan and unleashing a storm of punches and kicks against Tie Tianying, was suddenly shoved by the incoming figure, and his fan and fists, already in mid-strike, ended up smashing the face of what had, only moments before, been an ally, shattering it in midair.

But in that brief span of time, the assassin with the wrapped floral cloth had already forced his way in, his twin blades leaving who knew how many bloody cuts on Tie Tianying’s body; Tunyun’s fists and palms had also landed effectively on the man. Fan Zhong could not tell exactly how severe Tie Tianying’s injuries had become by now, but in this moment, driving himself to his absolute limit, shoving aside the corpse blocking his way, all he wanted was to seize this chance and settle the outcome of the battle.

Just as it had been many years ago in the encirclement and killing of Liu Dabiao—once an opportunity presented itself, victory or defeat was often decided within the span of a few breaths.

A few days earlier, spotting that young man from Silver Bridge Ward and drawing him here to kill Tie Tianying had been, for him, merely a casual, offhand move—yet looking at it now, it seemed he had guessed right. When the situation had reached a stalemate, this boy—clearly some kind of trained assassin—had, in fact, produced results this significant.

His inner strength driven to its absolute peak, he was just about to give a full-throated roar—

At the edge of his vision, Silver Bottle’s spear had already swept in, trying to force Tunyun away from the fight, but in this moment Tunyun too knew the opportunity was rare, his cassock roaring as he sought to strike down Tie Tianying! And just at that moment—

Bang—

A packet of lime powder exploded in midair between the three of them—Tie Tianying, Fan Zhong, and Tunyun.

White powder billowed outward.

For an instant, Fan Zhong went blank, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood fully on end!

Setting up an ambush to kill Tie Tianying, in order to secure total success at the very first strike, he and the accompanying masters had all treated lime powder packets and fishing nets as standard equipment—nine against three, and from the very first exchange they had begun throwing lime, the whole point being to embody the spirit of “no need to observe any code of honor in the jianghu.” Even with Tie Tianying’s seasoned cunning and the formidable skills of the Yue siblings, such tactics could still cause the three of them no small amount of trouble.

Of course, faced with such tactics, the three grenades Yue Yun had thrown, along with the chain mace in his hand, and his sister Silver Bottle’s long spear, had indeed served as an excellent counter.

None of this was strange, even among masters and near-masters of this caliber.

The two sides had erupted into sudden, violent combat—from the moment everyone had shown themselves, to Yue Yun’s grenades exploding, to this very moment now, the situation had grown ever more complicated and dangerous, yet it had all unfolded in the span of only a few breaths. But at the very moment when the outcome was about to be settled entirely, Fan Zhong could never have imagined that a packet of lime powder would be thrown directly into the space between the several of them.

Sensing the incoming force, all three masters instinctively struck it apart in the same instant.

Bang.

Everyone lost their sight.

It was heart-stopping!

This was, perhaps, the first time in decades that the tactic of lime powder had struck true in combat at such a high level.

The dust-filled space became, in that instant, the most perilous ground imaginable for everyone present.

“Kill—!”

Through the air came the hot-blooded shout of a youth!

The slash of blades, the long wail of the spear, the sweep of the fan, the roar of the iron cassock—all of it, in this instant, was driven to its absolute peak, and there came more dull crashes and collisions besides. Even with grandmaster-level skill, Fan Zhong himself could not tell what exactly he had struck, or what had struck him—and not far off, Yue Yun swung his chain mace with all his strength, the heavy iron mace whistling through the air, nearly sweeping across Fan Zhong’s forehead.

It was impossible to tell whose wild cries these were.

“Waaaahhhh—”

Stirred up by that youth’s shout of “Kill—,” there were always those masters who, in this moment, threw themselves forward all the harder.

The chain mace struck a tree, and its fragments scattered everywhere in the air, while to the side, another tree was snapped in two, crashing down with a great rustling clatter—that was the monk Tunyun, having burst free of the lime dust at full force; after breaking the tree, his body tumbled awkwardly along the ground for a while before finally coming to a stop.

Amid the lime dust, blood-slicked blade-light was still slashing through the air beside Tie Tianying.

“Retreat—”

There was no more time to think. Tunyun was the first to shout, then took off running at full speed. Fan Zhong, too, only spared one more glance at Tie Tianying’s condition before gritting his teeth. “The great matter is settled—withdraw—”

As far as he could see, of the seven first-rate experts he had originally brought along, only three figures remained.

He ran toward Jiuxian Mountain, the others fleeing with him, and at their side, the youth with the wrapped floral cloth, now covered head to toe in flecks of blood, ran along with them, heading in the same direction.

Within the city, the warning flares stretched on and on across the sky; from all sides, the sounds of soldiers, the neighing of horses, and the barking of dogs could faintly be heard approaching…

……

The warning flare burst in the sky. Far off, the sounds of the army, the neighing of horses, and the barking of dogs drifted faintly closer.

Six figures moved through the woods of Jiuxian Mountain.

The scheme to kill Tie Tianying had not lasted long. Although Tie Tianying had fired off his signal flare at the very start of the clash, the soldiers’ response had been slower than usual, their attention drawn by the unrest around Houguan County.

The area of Jiuxian Mountain was land that had only been absorbed into the city of Fuzhou during an earlier expansion; though much of the flatland had already been developed, most of the mountain itself remained occupied by Daoist temples and Buddhist monasteries. The mountain wasn’t especially large, but its terrain was complex and its trees dense—for a first-rate expert of the jianghu, evading pursuit by the authorities in such a place wasn’t especially difficult.

Yet though the fighting had lasted only a short while, the killing intent contained within it had been intense. Fan Zhong’s side, aside from himself and Tunyun, had originally gathered seven trained underworld fighters, and now only three remained—not to mention that the lime packet the young assassin had thrown at the very end had very nearly caught both himself and Tunyun in its blast as well; one of their fighters had also been lured in by the youth’s shout of “Kill—” and had lost his life in that final moment, charging forward with everything he had.

Bringing that youth here through the Fish King, in this critical moment, had originally been a calculated move on their part—if the young man’s performance proved impressive, they would move to recruit him, drawing him in to join their greater cause. Who could have known that, impressive as his performance had indeed been, in the end the boy had shown no scruples at all, playing every one of them for fools in one stroke. Feeling the blade-wounds on his body still oozing blood, the lime powder burning against his skin with a searing sting, Fan Zhong could have gladly turned back that very instant and beaten the youth to death on the spot.

—There was always someone more impulsive than him.

Fan Zhong and Tunyun ran at the front of the group through the woods, the remaining four trailing somewhat behind. Just as they reached the foot of the slope below the mountain, one of the blood-covered men gave a loud shout and lunged toward the floral-cloth-wrapped youth beside him.

“I’ll f*** you—”

The man swung his steel whip; the youth’s body swayed, and with two loud cracks, a small tree in their path was smashed to pieces, sent flying. He was still cursing loudly as he raised the whip again, but before it could come down a second time, the youth’s body had already closed the distance—there came several soft, rapid puncturing sounds as a knife stabbed repeatedly into the man’s body, and the arm he had raised lost all its strength.

“You…” The man’s eyes went wide with fury.

Fan Zhong turned his head as he ran. “Don’t kill him—”

But the man with the steel whip had already been seized by the collar and throat, and dragged bodily along, his footing stumbling as he was pulled forward.

With a tremendous crash, the man’s head slammed into a boulder beside the path, bursting open in a spray of white. The youth’s figure tumbled past like a monkey, continuing on ahead.

Amid the crossing shadows of the trees as they ran, the youth’s body moved low and crouched, like some bloodthirsty beast, already closing in on the other two remaining fighters behind them.

Someone hurled a stone; it struck a branch in the woods with a crack. The youth gave a sinister laugh and hurled a stone back in return; earth and dust sprayed as the danger of the situation intensified. No one had expected that, even as the soldiers were closing in below the mountain, this youth would instead turn around and start hunting them down.

Simply demented.

Fan Zhong’s body surged forward, charging over.

“Sun Wukong, in a moment like this, are you truly still going to turn on your own side? Stop this at once—”

He unfurled his iron fan, sweeping aside a patch of brush and grass; the youth’s body rolled, and in an instant tumbled past a great boulder to the side, then flung a hand back—a small lime powder packet burst open right against the surface of Fan Zhong’s fan.

“Heh, turn on you mtherf**ers.” The youth’s words were arrogant, showing no deference to anyone at all. “What the hell are you, putting on such big airs, thinking we’re all on the same side?”

The group ran on ahead; Fan Zhong swallowed down his fury.

“I brought you here today for a reason—do you really not understand why?”

“Understand your m*ther!” The youth spat filth from his mouth. “Been out in the jianghu long enough that you actually think you’re some kind of big shot now? You call me over and I’m supposed to just come? You set me a task and I’m supposed to just do it? What the hell are you people? Let me teach you some manners today—whether it’s Chen Shuangran or whatever other wretch wants to see young master here, they’d better have tea ready first, and learn some hospitality! If you want young master to do something for you, you’d better get down on your knees and kowtow a few times first. Old fool, that’s what you call manners! Understand?!”

As he cursed, he ran on, hurling stones at the man opposite him; the other side answered in kind with stones and hidden weapons, the destruction spreading forward as they went.

“Old Jin, finish off this little bastard—”

“I’ll kill his whole family—!”

The two masters, now looking thoroughly disheveled, shouted loudly.

Fan Zhong, though, gritted his teeth in fury, batting away a stone thrown at him, and said in a low voice, “Enough, whatever’s happened before can be settled later—today you’ve succeeded in assassinating Tie Tianying, and the court won’t let you go free either. If you keep this up, none of us will get away. Everyone, stop this—”

“Heh, whether the court lets me go is my own business. You schemed against me today, and if you’re not going to feel good about it, I’m going to feel good about it instead—ha ha… today, nobody’s leaving—”

“Damn it—”

Even after all his years mixed up in the Liufa Gate, Fan Zhong had probably never encountered a character quite this destructively, chaotically vicious, harming both himself and others alike. For a moment he found himself at a loss for words, torn in his heart over whether to simply take the ruthless step and finish off this youth to prevent any future trouble.

Yet this time, of the seven skilled fighters he had gathered for the assassination attempt on Tie Tianying, five were already gone; if there were to be great undertakings again in the future, manpower was already sorely lacking. This youth was vicious, yes, but on one hand, he had genuinely given everything in the attempt on Tie Tianying’s life; on the other hand, being this thoroughly, chaotically vile gave a seventy or eighty percent certainty that he wasn’t one of the court’s own men. This test had already succeeded—he could, in principle, still be recruited to join their greater cause.

He was the strategist behind Chen Shuangran’s side of the scheme, and with that responsibility resting on him, mindful of the bigger picture, he found himself unable to help but hesitate. But at the edge of his vision, the monk Tunyun had already swept back through the air, his figure diving like a flying hawk straight at the youth in the brush.

He was laughing too.

“Ha ha ha ha… this little brat, you’re quite to this old monk’s taste. Let me come play with you a while.”

He swooped in, and the youth immediately darted off to the side, plunging into the woods, weaving and tumbling as he went. Yet even as he spoke, he said, “Good! If I can take that bald head of yours today, I’ll make a name for myself across the realm—” His words carried genuine excitement all the same.

Across the rugged mountainside, soldiers and constables were already closing in from all directions.

Tunyun’s lightness-skill was superb, and the youth could not shake him off, but in the complex terrain he wove, twisted, and continually fled, at times even getting knocked down and sent rolling, yet no one could tell where he had trained up such resilience—even with all of Tunyun’s skill, for the moment, he simply could not bring the boy down.

Fan Zhong led the remaining two men, running off toward one side of the mountain. Watching the youth and Tunyun fighting it out with such gusto, the commotion spreading as they moved, he knew well enough that Tunyun’s skill was formidable, that even facing the soldiers directly head-on would pose no threat to him—yet for the moment, he still had no idea whether today’s scheme had, in the end, succeeded or failed. His thoughts were a tangled, complicated mix of feelings…

The chaos, centered on Houguan County, spread outward across the vast expanse of the city.

Just as the disturbance on Jiuxian Mountain was breaking out, on another end of the city, the roundup of another faction under Chen Shuangran’s command was already underway.

This was a courtyard compound beside a run-down market southeast of Houguan County. The horse trader who had earlier been exposed during the framing of Yue Yun had, by now, had his location closely tracked. As government troops closed in from all sides, more than a dozen desperate men in this location put up fierce resistance, but the government forces, led by Zuo Wenrui of the Zuo family, had already prepared manpower ten times their number, and using explosives to clear the way, quickly crushed the defenses here. The majority of the men fell in pools of blood; a smaller number, wounded, were taken captive.

For this operation, Chen Shuangran had implemented different levels of confidentiality and separation for the manpower she had at her disposal. In the case of the unrest centered at Houguan County, the desperate men Qiu Laohu and Liang Run, who had been responsible for that area, had already been treated as discarded pawns from the outset—if they managed to stir up a large enough disturbance, all the better, but even if captured, it wouldn’t be much of a loss to Chen Shuangran, since they couldn’t give up any particularly critical leads.

But the compound that included the horse trader housed men who had, for the time being, already passed through several rounds of loyalty vetting—core figures. Having this group rooted out entirely was, without question, a loss falling well outside Chen Shuangran’s expectations.

Beyond this, several other small-scale arrests were carried out simultaneously across the city that same morning.

Since the little court had taken up residence in Fujian, the first year had been relatively peaceful, but afterward there had been several rounds of bloody conflict with various local powers, to the point that the emperor himself had once personally led troops into battle. Over the past half year or so, the situation in Fuzhou had grown somewhat more moderate; the authorities had done their best to exercise restraint, unwilling to lock down the city carelessly. But with Chen Shuangran now attempting to set off this large-scale disturbance, the counterstrike carried out jointly by the Ministry of Justice, the Imperial Guard Bureau, and the Zuo family was indeed a fierce and decisive one.

Not only was direct, forceful suppression applied against all those participating in the riot at Houguan County, but the arrests at the other locations were also carried out as thoroughly as possible, sweeping up a broad swath of suspects. In all, the aim was first to control and arrest, then to carry out a careful screening afterward, striving to make this unavoidable bloodletting achieve the greatest possible effect, so that there would be no need to drag things out, no need to repeat this three or five more times over.

A great deal of information flowed through the city, and eventually converged with Zuo Wenxuan, who was directing operations at Houguan County.

Most matters were proceeding according to plan, but when unexpected news arrived, he nonetheless felt a moment of difficulty.

From the direction of Jiuxian Mountain: Tie Tianying gravely wounded.

—In critical condition.

Ever since arriving from the southwest, the people of the Zuo family had conducted a systematic survey and assessment of the forces the court had at its disposal. Toward this old constable-turned-official, now at the very core of power, their feelings were somewhat complicated.

On one hand, Tie Tianying had once formed a deep grudge with the leadership of the southwest; he had participated in the encirclement and killing of Liu Dabiao, had clashed and fought with Master Ning on several occasions, and had even taken part in several assassination attempts against Master Ning afterward—this made some among the Zuo family unwilling to grow too close to him.

On the other hand, his many years of experience as a constable and in the jianghu had given him formidable ability; that he could clash with the forces of the southwest on several occasions and still survive was, in itself, enough to prove his own strength. Having withstood the test of a great many affairs, his loyalty to the Wu dynasty was beyond doubt, and in terms of individual combat skill, he was widely regarded as one of the most reliable grandmasters within the city of Fuzhou.

After Chen Shuangran had made her move this time, Tie Tianying had at one point noticed certain traces that felt familiar to him, and had already prepared a mature plan for the possibility that Tunyun and the other masters might attempt an ambush against him. The old man had once declared to Zuo Wenxuan, with great confidence, that if Tunyun and the others truly dared take the risk of moving against him, he had every confidence he could turn the tables and bring them down instead.

He now held the position of Deputy Commissioner of the Imperial Guard Bureau, but it was real power that he wielded, already counting him among the great officials of the court. Zuo Wenxuan had originally meant to counsel him on the wisdom of “a son of great wealth does not sit beneath the eaves”—but the man, bold and hot-blooded by nature, had cut him off before he could even finish. Looking at things now… his confidence in his own nonsense had proven misplaced.

“The old fool’s past his prime… causing trouble for the young ones…”

Receiving this news, Zuo Wenxuan cursed under his breath a few times, crumpling the note into a ball. He then mounted his horse and rode toward Jiuxian Mountain, and at a yamen courtyard nearby, found Silver Bottle and Yue Yun, both disheveled and covered in wounds, and heard from them the full account of how the battle had unfolded.

After the clash by Heyun Pool, Fan Zhong and the other assassins had fled toward Jiuxian Mountain; Silver Bottle and Yue Yun had wanted to give chase, but Tie Tianying, badly wounded, had called them back. Of the three of them, only Tie Tianying possessed the seasoned experience of the jianghu, and considering that neither Fan Zhong nor Tunyun on the other side had suffered especially severe injuries, if the two siblings pursued and were struck down in a counterattack, their own side would suffer even greater losses. Recounting the matter now, the two siblings could not help but feel a measure of frustration.

Yet in the two of them’s account of how the fight had unfolded, one particular detail—a vicious, short-statured blade-fighter among the assassins, his face wrapped in floral cloth—gave Zuo Wenxuan a jolt of unease in his heart.

Not long after, someone brought in two more underworld men. These two had been near Heyun Pool and had run into surrounding government troops while fleeing; seeing their bruised and battered faces and suspicious behavior, the soldiers had arrested them as well.

Now kneeling on the ground, the two of them began, tearfully, to confess to some villain’s brutal, violent conduct—striking anyone he saw, even kicking dogs on the roadside: they themselves, they claimed, were nothing more than innocent messengers who had taken a bit of money to pass along a message, not even understanding the specifics of the matter, only to be kidnapped, threatened, and beaten into this state by that man…