Interception!

"It's the Black Camel Guard!"

Wangxingji was a renowned trading house in the Suzhou region, its goods flowing north and south, so naturally it had skilled experts standing guard. The purple-faced burly man standing before Wang Zhiqiu's carriage, dressed in a fitted outfit with slanted fastenings and black cloth boots with white soles, was a disciple of Gusu's Xuanmiao Temple—the foremost expert beside Wang Zhiwei, Wang Ting'an.

As Wang Zhiwei boarded the carriage, he could only make out dozens of extremely swift figures, unable to see what they looked like. Wang Ting'an, however, recognized them at a glance.

Those black figures converging upon that street at astonishing speed were none other than the elite among elites of the Xiongnu-Qiang allied army—the deathsworn guards tasked with secretly protecting the central army command tent, the Black Camel Guard!

The Black Camel Guards of the Xiongnu and Qiang tribes underwent brutal training from childhood. Only one out of every hundred could rise above the rest, and every one of them was a formidable master of astonishing skill. But Wang Ting'an knew that the Black Camel Guard's most fearsome feature was that each carried a New Moon Iron Bow. These iron-forged longbows had been crafted jointly by the master artisans of the Xiongnu and Qiang tribes, with an astonishing range of eight hundred paces!

Moreover, their arrows were Demon-Breaking Arrows forged by mixing refined gold with the blood and vitality of fire lizards, Strange Beasts of the great desert!

Though these Demon-Breaking Arrows were not like flying swords, which could fly and coil at will and alter direction freely in midair, every Black Camel Guard had mastered the rapid-fire arrow technique. In the blink of an eye, they could loose over a dozen arrows in succession. Once several dozen men drew and fired together, a towering rain of arrows would descend at once.

One or two ordinary cultivators, without exceptionally powerful defensive artifacts, had no way to withstand them.

By then, every nation's armies possessed strange men and extraordinary individuals. The Black Camel Guard were nominally deathsworn warriors guarding the central command tent, but their more important role was to break magic and kill the cultivators within enemy armies!

Now, with a single glance, Wang Ting'an saw that besides the dozens of black figures racing across the rooftops with such speed their feet barely seemed to touch the ground, dozens more black figures were hurtling wildly toward the sealed street through countless alleys and roads.

More than a hundred Black Camel Guards in total—this was nearly every Black Camel Guard among the four armies within a thousand li.

And judging by the way these Black Camel Guards were gathering toward that street, they clearly were not there to deal with the Gouli Dao men who had just killed someone in the street. They were joining forces with Gouli Dao to deal with the people on that street.

"Even the army has been dragged into this!"

After another look at the hundred-plus black figures, Wang Ting'an, who came from Xuanmiao Temple, did not dare linger in the slightest. He drove the carriage in a mad dash toward the western side of the city.

At a time like this, cultivators were often even more dangerous than ordinary people. Though he desperately wanted to know who these Gouli Dao men and Black Camel Guards were both trying to deal with, Wang Ting'an knew even better that the safest course was to stay far away from that place of trouble.

Before the carriage had run even half a li, the ground of the street sealed off by Gouli Dao suddenly trembled faintly. Even the small stones embedded in filthy water and mud began to bounce.

A booming sound like war drums suddenly rang through the air.

It was not the sound of war drums, but merely the synchronized footsteps of the hundred-plus Black Camel Guards rapidly closing in!

The Black Camel Guards converging at startling speed from all directions had footsteps and breaths as perfectly aligned as if they were a single person!

Their blood and vitality were fierce and pure, their killing intent crisscrossed the air. The bloodlust and killing aura gathered and released by the hundred-plus Black Camel Guards as they surged forward like a tide alone could break certain spells designed to bewilder the mind or forged from yin souls.

One thousand paces, eight hundred paces, five hundred paces!

When they reached a distance of five hundred paces from the sealed street, a tremendous metallic twang rang out. Every Black Camel Guard removed a New Moon Iron Bow from his back and instantly drew it to full circle. "Fire!" At the simultaneous roar of more than a dozen men, bang bang bang! The bowstrings, toughened from the sinews of massive black-boned pythons, exploded sharply. In an instant, arrows densely filled the skies on all sides!

A frenzied barrage of rapid-fire arrows!

In that instant, every one of the hundred-plus Black Camel Guards loosed no fewer than ten long arrows. This volley from a hundred men was even denser and more violent than the arrows fired by a thousand ordinary archers!

The iron-forged longbows in the Black Camel Guard's hands had a range of eight hundred paces, but five hundred paces was precisely the distance at which their killing power was greatest.

And all the arrows fired in that instant were Demon-Breaking Golden Arrows, black from shaft to fletching, their tips glowing red!

As these arrows flew through the air, they were no slower than ordinary flying swords, producing piercing shrieks as they tore through the air.

From afar, it looked as though a black spinning top had suddenly appeared in the sky, rapidly contracting toward that street.

The targets of those thousand-plus Demon-Breaking Arrows were an inconspicuous two-story teahouse on that street. A small Li Ji flag hung slanted from the building. Three or four seats stood by the south-facing entrance and roadside, while its ordinary wooden doors were tightly shut. Clearly, it had not yet opened for business that day.

"Pfft!" "Pfft!" "Pfft!" "Pfft!" ... Amid a series of explosive sounds, the thousand-plus Demon-Breaking Golden Arrows shot into the ordinary teahouse, instantly riddling it with holes. Yet the teahouse did not collapse at once. Threads of sunlight from the rising eastern sun streamed through countless holes, creating a magnificent spectacle.

Given the density of holes in that teahouse which still refused to fall, let alone a person, even a dog or rabbit inside would have had several holes pierced through its body at once.

"I do not offend others, yet why do they offend me without cause, forcing my hand?"

Yet at that moment, a faintly aged sigh unexpectedly drifted from within the riddled teahouse.

With that slightly aged sigh, the sunlight shining through the riddled teahouse seemed to become several times more dazzling in an instant.

In the blink of an eye, blood mist exploded behind the heads of every one of the hundred-plus Black Camel Guards!

What shot from the holes in the teahouse was not sunlight, but the tips of the snapped Demon-Breaking Golden Arrows. The person within the teahouse had not only survived the thousand-plus Demon-Breaking Arrows, but had somehow snapped off more than a hundred arrowheads and hurled them out through the holes they had originally created. The force and speed of those thrown arrowheads were far greater than when fired from the iron-forged bows. Not a single one of the hundred-plus Black Camel Guards could react before they were instantly killed by shots through the head.

"Ye Zhaonan." The moment such a technique appeared, even the Gouli Dao men who had just killed Master Zhang changed color several times. But at that moment, the faint voice that so easily decided life and death rang out again, drifting like white clouds in the sky and impossible to locate. "You strike with such ruthless savagery, taking over a hundred lives in an instant, yet you still put on such a hypocritical show?"

"If others respect me by an inch, I repay them with a foot. If others wrong me by a foot, I wrong them by a fathom. You cultivate the Daoist Scripture of True Essence Mysteries, so you must be Zhuo Chendao, Xuan Yuan's disciple. There is faint Golden Gang Sword Qi to the west, so that should be Tang Qingxiang, Wentian's disciple. You two came prepared. If I were to fight you, these may all be mortal soldiers, but I would still have to divide my attention to deal with these demon-breaking bows and arrows. I could only remove them first." The voice in the teahouse spoke slowly, carrying an undercurrent of desolation and helplessness.

The drifting voice gave no response for a time, as though considering something. Only after a moment did it slowly sound again. "Ye Zhaonan, your cultivation is extraordinarily profound, but you should also know that Kunlun commands the world. By your strength alone, you cannot stand against us. In consideration of how hard-won your cultivation is, tell us the whereabouts of Yuan Tianyi's disciple, and I will withdraw my hand and let you leave."

"Has Kunlun already learned that Luofu has an inheritance? Do you wish to find him and eliminate him? How can one do everything so absolutely, so completely? This seems rather at odds with the vast righteous aura befitting Kunlun, leader of the orthodox path."

"Since your resolve is firm, I shall say no more."

As that faint, elusive voice sounded, figures appeared in the skies to the east, south, west, and north.

As those four figures revealed themselves, the Wangxingji people in the carriage that was still racing toward the western part of the city saw only that the sky seemed to change color all at once. The clouds above that street gathered together, forming the shape of a funnel.

"Ye Zhaonan, perhaps you have not noticed that far more than two of us have come."

In the eastern sky, a handsome young man in a light-blue Daoist robe, his hair tied in a Daoist topknot, continued coolly. As he spoke, lightning seemed to flash through his pupils, giving the wondrous impression that an identical world existed within his eyes.

As the lightning flashed through his pupils, a thunderous boom erupted. A purple bolt of lightning as thick as a water barrel crashed down from the sky, striking toward the already ruined teahouse.

"Thus have I heard..." At the same time, a short, stout ascetic monk in a yellow kasaya and a golden ring upon his head chanted a Buddhist phrase from the west. The funnel-shaped clouds abruptly contracted, forming a gigantic demonic claw with sharp nails in midair. It clawed downward alongside the purple lightning.

The one appearing to the south was a young man in yellow robes, holding a feather fan and wearing a silk headscarf, with the bearing of a scholar. His face was like jade, and he appeared only around twenty years old. Yet someone who could stand in empty air without sparing Daoist essence or relying on any magical artifact was clearly an expert who had cultivated for many years and possessed the art of preserving his appearance. Seeing that the young man to the east and the stout ascetic monk had already attacked, this tall scholar-like man raised a hand and tossed something out. A giant golden net spanning several dozen zhang descended over the teahouse.

Every rope forming the giant net was only as thick as a finger, yet the gaps in the net were merely palm-sized. Moreover, blazing white flames burned upon every slender golden cord!

The young man to the east, whose eyes had seemed to flash with lightning, was the commander of this operation—Zhuo Chendao, disciple of Xuan Yuan, one of Kunlun's Ten Golden Immortals. The ascetic monk in the yellow kasaya was Zen Master Bule, abbot of Datong Temple.

The instant they saw these two strike, every Gouli Dao member present changed expression. Only then did they realize that they were nothing more than pawns sent to test the waters by hurling stones into the river.

And upon seeing the giant net descending, even the two richly dressed men who each possessed a Yin Scale Black Banner turned deathly pale and charged wildly outward!

For they had recognized from this giant net that the scholar-like man was True Person Gong Li, headmaster of Qianyuan Palace. This giant net was Qianyuan Palace's sect-protecting artifact, the Earth Immortal grade Heavenly Golden Spider Fire Spirit!