The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, While the Oriole Waits Behind

It was late winter. The weather was cold, the moon dim, and the stars sparse.

The two figures reached the edge of the small lake. One removed his clothes, took a net bag tied to a rope, waded into the lake, and dove down to the bottom.

The other stood on the shore, holding the rope and waiting.

There was a faint glimmer of starlight. With Commander Zhao and Xiao Qiuyue's eyesight, they could roughly make out everything within a hundred meters.

Huang Shaojie's Insight Technique, however, allowed him to roughly see within three hundred meters, while everything within a hundred meters was almost perfectly clear.

Commander Zhao said in a low voice, "Someone really did come to fish up the silver. That means the bandits truly sank it at the bottom of this lake."

He had not fully believed Huang Shaojie's deduction before. But now, seeing two men sneaking down into the lake in the dead of night, he could have figured it out with his toes—they had to be here for the silver.

Xiao Qiuyue said softly, "Why are there only two of them? Those three hundred thousand taels of silver fill a hundred and fifty chests. How much can two people retrieve?"

Commander Zhao pondered. "The bandits won't haul up too much official silver at once. They're afraid the authorities will discover it during a search. The official silver has to be processed before they dare use it."

Official silver was mainly used for military pay, official salaries, palace expenses, construction projects across the land, disaster relief, and other expenditures. Words or patterns were engraved on the bottoms of the ingots for identification and accounting.

However, official silver could not circulate directly among the people. It first had to be melted down into new silver ingots or broken silver before it could enter the market.

Using official silver directly for purchases would get one beheaded if caught.

Therefore, after robbing these three hundred thousand taels of tax silver, the bandits had to melt it into silver that could circulate among the common people before they could use it.

Naturally, three hundred thousand taels of silver could not be melted down so easily. That was why the bandits had first sunk the official silver in the lake, planning to retrieve it bit by bit.

Xiao Qiuyue and Huang Shaojie naturally understood this as well.

At that moment, the man who had dived into the lake climbed out of the water.

After getting dressed, the two men pulled on the rope and dragged out a large wooden chest.

The chest had been caught in the net. The two lifted it out, then hoisted the large wooden chest onto their shoulders and departed.

"Move. Follow them."

Commander Zhao made a hand signal and silently followed after them.

Xiao Qiuyue and Huang Shaojie followed behind Commander Zhao.

The three kept a distance of roughly forty to fifty meters behind the two bandits retrieving the silver.

From the bandits' footsteps, they could tell that their cultivation was not particularly high, likely below the Postnatal Fifth Level.

With Commander Zhao and the others' Lightness Skills, tailing two low-level Postnatal martial artists was effortless. The two bandits would never notice a thing.

But Commander Zhao and the others did not know that another shadow was lying in wait within the dense forest ahead, holding his breath as he watched the movements around the two bandits.

When he discovered several figures stealthily following behind the bandits carrying the chest, the concealed shadow's eyes turned cold.

When the two bandits, taking turns carrying the large wooden chest, came within fifty meters, the lurking shadow picked up two small dead branches from the ground and casually flicked them out.

The two dead branches shot forth, piercing straight through the two bandits' throats.

The two bandits did not even make a sound before slowly collapsing.

The shadow then shot off to the left, vanishing like a ghost without a trace.

"Not good! Something's happened!"

Seeing the two bandits suddenly fall without a sound, Commander Zhao knew something was wrong and leaped forward.

Xiao Qiuyue immediately followed, bounding after him.

Only Huang Shaojie shot into the woods to the left in pursuit.

The shadow had hidden in the dark, killed the two bandits with dead branches, and then fled to the left. None of it escaped Huang Shaojie's Insight Technique.

"Damn it! Someone was lying in wait here and killed these two to silence them!"

Commander Zhao landed beside the two bandits' corpses, checked the surroundings, and cursed under his breath.

Though Commander Zhao was a Second Rank Grandmaster, in the dense forest at night, he could not determine which direction that figure had fled.

"Looks like the bandits sent these two to retrieve silver tonight just to test whether we had laid an ambush by the lake. They're cunning indeed!"

Xiao Qiuyue could not help furrowing her delicate brows as she gripped the Embroidered Spring Blade at her waist.

Originally, they only needed to follow these two bandits back to their hideout. Tomorrow, they could directly mobilize troops to arrest and surround them.

Who could have imagined that the bandits had kept another card up their sleeve and silenced these two men?

Now the bandits knew that the Imperial Guard had discovered the silver sunk in the small lake. They certainly would not return to retrieve official silver from the lake again. That would make capturing this gang of bandits harder than ever.

"This killer's martial arts are formidable. He may not be beneath me, and in this wilderness in the middle of the night, we can no longer catch him."

Commander Zhao sighed, his face full of frustration.

He had just examined the bandits' throats and found fragments of dead branches still lodged inside. From this, it was clear that the killer had shot them dead with dead branches.

To use dead branches as hidden weapons and easily pierce the throats of two Postnatal martial artists showed that this person possessed profound internal power.

And his silent escape further showed that the lurking killer's Lightness Skill was exceptional.

"Eh? Where did Huang Shaojie go?"

Xiao Qiuyue suddenly realized someone was missing beside her.

Her bright eyes searched through the darkness in every direction, but she saw no sign of Huang Shaojie.

"Where did that kid go?"

Commander Zhao also looked astonished. He was a Second Rank Grandmaster—when had one of his Banner Officers slipped away without him noticing in the slightest?

"Could Huang Shaojie have gone after that killer?"

Xiao Qiuyue guessed.

Commander Zhao curled his lip and shook his head. "Even I couldn't tell which direction that killer fled. There's no way he could have noticed either. I'm not worried that he won't be able to track the killer. I'm worried that the killer will kill him instead."

Hearing this, Xiao Qiuyue could not help feeling worried as well.

Though she knew Huang Shaojie's martial arts surpassed hers, that killer's skills were exceedingly high. Even Commander Zhao said he might not be inferior to him.

Commander Zhao was a Second Rank Grandmaster. If that killer truly possessed the cultivation of a Second Rank Grandmaster, then if Huang Shaojie encountered him, he would surely die.

"My lord, let's search around and see if we can find that killer, or whether Huang Shaojie is in danger," Xiao Qiuyue said to Commander Zhao.

Commander Zhao shook his head. "In this wilderness, in the dead of night, where would we even begin? Let's go. We'll take this chest back first. Let's hope the kid's life is tough!"

With that, Commander Zhao tucked the large wooden chest containing two thousand taels of silver beneath his arm and leaped away as though it weighed nothing.

Xiao Qiuyue also bounded after him.

In the darkness, Huang Shaojie used the Wind God Leg Lightness Skill to quietly follow the shadow.

To avoid being discovered, Huang Shaojie maintained a distance of over a hundred meters from the shadow.

The shadow was extremely cautious as well.

He first made a wide circuit through the mountains, and only after confirming that no one was following him did he turn back and speed toward Suzhou City.

But he never imagined that a tail had been following him from over a hundred meters away, silently tracking him.