Even riding day and night and spurring their horses on, there was no chance of reaching Nine-Congealing Mountain in five days.
If they used lightness skills, however, their inner force would inevitably be heavily depleted. The time spent meditating to restore it would be longer than the time spent traveling.
If Zhou Qingmei had been alone this time, there really would have been nothing she could do.
Fortunately, Fang Shuwen was with her.
Zhou Qingmei had already had a taste of the benefits when they had pursued the man who abducted Fang Lingxin.
This time, she simply did the same again. Holding Fang Shuwen's hand, she drew on his inner force to use her lightness skill, covering more than ten zhang in a single leap.
It was as if the wind rushed beneath their feet, carrying them a thousand li in an instant.
She truly experienced the exhilaration of racing through the jianghu with a lightness skill.
Most importantly, Fang Shuwen's inner force seemed inexhaustible. No matter how much she used or drew upon, he showed no sign of losing the slightest bit.
Its depth made Zhou Qingmei feel that even the Pavilion Master of the Pearl Pavilion could scarcely hope to see his back.
Zhou Qingmei, on the other hand, could barely withstand the mental strain of traveling day and night and needed to stop and rest for an hour or two.
Thus the two raced onward. Perhaps because Zhang Fang was dead, the Black Sha Cult never intercepted them again along the way. Nine-Congealing Mountain, which would originally have taken at least seven or eight days to reach even riding day and night and spurring their horses on, was already in sight on the fourth night.
As they raced along, Fang Shuwen's ear suddenly twitched.
"There's something."
It was now past the chou hour, and the two of them were out in the wild mountains.
Zhou Qingmei scanned their surroundings but found nothing. Even so, she stopped.
"What is it?"
Fang Shuwen's expression was a little strange.
"Someone's calling for help."
His inner cultivation had reached great accomplishment, and his hearing was beyond comparison with that of ordinary people. What Zhou Qingmei could not hear, he heard clearly.
The voice belonged to a woman, but it sounded a little strange... as though she were doing what she could and leaving the rest to heaven. Even her cries for help had a touch of listlessness and sounded utterly feeble.
Although Zhou Qingmei was anxious to return to the Pearl Pavilion, she decided to investigate first after hearing what Fang Shuwen said.
The two followed the voice to look for its source. They had yet to find the person calling for help, but they found quite a few corpses.
Zhou Qingmei recognized their clothing at a glance, and her brows knitted tightly.
"They're from the Cloudflight Escort Agency."
Even without Zhou Qingmei saying so, Fang Shuwen had recognized who they were.
The Cloudflight Escort Agency was an escort agency in Julu City.
There were three escort agencies in Julu City altogether: Cloudflight, Lu'an, and Yuanyang.
Fang Shuwen knew about them because Mo Beidou, the eldest senior brother of the Four Seas Martial Hall, worked as an escort leader at the Lu'an Escort Agency.
Many of Fang Shuwen's senior brothers and sisters from the Four Seas Martial Hall had followed their eldest senior brother Mo Beidou to the Lu'an Escort Agency.
But the work of an escort was far more dangerous than that of a household guard.
Household guards, when all was said and done, faced only "dark hangers"—a term for burglars.
These people specialized in visiting wealthy households to steal.
Household guards, meanwhile, were known as "support hangers." The two sides communicated in underworld cant, and if they spoke clearly enough, the other party might withdraw without even coming to blows.
But if the other party showed them that courtesy, the "support hanger" also had to make a gesture in return, inviting them for tea or a meal the next day. After that, they could be considered friends.
That "dark hanger" would not come calling again in the future.
But escorts were different.
Escorts, too, made their living on face. If the other side showed them courtesy, everyone got along.
If the other side refused to show them courtesy, however, they had to fight.
But how much face they had depended mainly on the value of what they were escorting.
There were far too many ins and outs to it, and the risks of traveling away from home were too high.
At the time, Mo Beidou had considered that Fang Shuwen's foundation was damaged and his martial arts could progress no further. Working at an escort agency was too dangerous, so it would be better to find him a safe position where he would have no worries about food or clothing.
That was why he had called in a favor from Wang Tao and recommended Fang Shuwen to the Zhou Family as a household guard.
As for the Black Sha Cult later attacking the Zhou Family at their home, that was something no one could have foreseen...
They were not dark hangers, either. They wanted lives, not valuables, so nothing anyone said would have worked.
Under normal circumstances, though, an ordinary household would never encounter something like that.
It could only be called a twist of fate.
To return to the matter at hand, the Cloudflight Escort Agency was the one Zhou Qingmei had entrusted with delivering her letter that day.
Now it appeared that the letter had been intercepted here, and the agency's escorts and escort leaders had all died here as well.
There was no need to ask who had done it.
Zhou Qingmei only had to examine the wounds to know they had died under the [Thousand-Character Sword Technique], and she also saw traces of the [Black Sha Demonic Art] on the corpses.
The voice calling for help was not here, however. Farther ahead, beyond a thicket, they saw a large patch of dead branches and fallen leaves on the ground, as if something had been deliberately covered up.
Fang Shuwen swept his sleeve, and the dead branches and leaves were instantly blown aside by his inner force, revealing a hole in the ground.
The voice was coming from inside the hole.
When they drew closer, Zhou Qingmei could also hear the cries for help. The voice called out feebly, as if doing what it could and leaving the rest to heaven.
"Help... hel—ptooey, ptooey, ptooey! Where did this sand come from..."
Zhou Qingmei heard the voice clearly, and her eyes widened.
"That voice... Senior Sister Lu?"
She hurried to the hole and peered inside. It was pitch-black below, like a bottomless pit.
Unable to see anything clearly, she had no choice but to call out.
"Senior Sister Lu? Is that you, Senior Sister Lu?"
"Hm?"
The voice below was suddenly full of astonishment, all its listlessness and boredom swept away.
"Qingmei!?"
"It's me!!"
Zhou Qingmei immediately grew excited.
"Senior Sister Lu, it really is you! How did you fall down there?
"Wait there. I'll find a way to get you up."
"Don't!"
Senior Sister Lu said hurriedly:
"Since it's you, that's wonderful. Li Nanchen knocked me down here.
"That fellow has ties to the Black Sha Cult, which was wiped out thirty years ago. He killed the people from the Cloudflight Escort Agency, and I suspect there are more fiends from the Black Sha Cult within our sect.
"Go back to the Pearl Pavilion immediately and report this to Master. Then come back and find a way to save me.
"Although the hole you see isn't large, it's actually a small opening into an underground cavern. The surrounding soil isn't firm, and if you're the least bit careless, you might fall in too."
Zhou Qingmei immediately asked:
"Senior Sister, how badly are you hurt?"
"I was struck by Black Sha True Qi... I'm not quite going to die, but I'm not doing too well, either. Several of my bones are broken..."
Senior Sister Lu said somewhat helplessly:
"Even if I'm lucky enough to survive this time, I'm afraid I'll be crippled."
Zhou Qingmei's heart ached. Then she saw Fang Shuwen hand her something, and when she looked down, she saw that it was a bundle of vines.
"Wrap these vines around your waist. I'll hold on to you while you go down and save her, then pull both of you up together."