Perhaps it concealed some earth-shattering secret to breaking through the Xiantian realm!
Yet now, all of this had turned to dust.
Seeing that he was surely dead, the burly man's heart turned to ash. He decided to make a desperate gamble and completely destroy the jade pendant, absolutely refusing to let Mu Bai obtain this crucial clue!
Thus, he mustered all his strength, desperately trying to crush the jade pendant.
However, at the very instant he was about to succeed, he suddenly and terror-strickenly discovered that his body was completely unable to move!
Immediately following, a pair of slender and fair fingers appeared before his eyes, plucking the jade pendant out from his hands with the light dexterity of a ghost.
And the owner of these hands was none other than Mu Bai!
Next, he heard Mu Bai speak in a calm and detached tone. "My friend, your mother's keepsake is after all a memento left by the old lady. Treating it so roughly is truly rather inappropriate."
"I think I had best keep it safe for you, which can also be considered doing my humble bit."
The burly man clearly had not expected Mu Bai to say such words. He widened his eyes, staring at Mu Bai with a face full of astonishment, and was momentarily frozen in place.
However, only a moment passed before the burly man recovered his wits. He understood that Mu Bai had already discovered the secret of the jade pendant.
Immediately after, he suddenly let out a burst of miserable laughter, the sound appearing exceptionally grating in this silent environment.
At the same time, his gaze also turned exceptionally venomous, as if he wanted to tear Mu Bai apart alive.
"Mu Bai, don't be so smug! None of you from the Carefree Prince's Estate will come to a good end! The Langya Aristocratic Family will definitely not let you go! I'll be waiting in hell to watch you all die one by one!" the burly man cursed viciously, his voice filled with endless hatred and despair.
Faced with the burly man's curses, Mu Bai merely gave a slight smile. His expression remained unruffled, as though he completely failed to take the other person's words to heart.
"You needn't trouble Your Excellency with that. You had better be on your way in peace first." Mu Bai replied unhurriedly.
However, just as Mu Bai's words fell, the burly man was seen suddenly spitting out a mouthful of fresh blood. The blood spewed forth like an arrow, splashing onto the ground and forming a shocking pool of bloody filth.
Immediately following, the burly man's body seemed to lose all support, tumbling straight down.
His eyes were wide open, his face still retaining the ferocity and unwillingness from right before death, but at this moment he had completely lost breath, evidently having died by severing his own meridians with true Qi.
Mu Bai pushed open the wooden cellar door, the damp, musty odor mingling with a heavy stench of blood rushing over him.
His fingers left five distinct fingerprint marks on the rough door frame, wood shavings falling in a rustle.
In the small courtyard outside the cellar, a middle-aged couple and two children under ten years old lay in pools of blood.
The man still clutched a rusted firewood chopper in his hand, the blade curled at the edge, evidently having once tried to resist.
The woman protected the two children beneath her, yet still failed to block that fatal sword—her back was pierced all the way through, the blade even running through the child in her embrace.
Not even sparing children... Mu Bai's voice was so low it was almost inaudible.
He squatted down, gently brushing over the little girl's wide-open eyes.
Clutched tightly in the little girl's hand was a doll sewn from coarse cloth, the stitches crooked and skewed, likely the last gift from her mother while she lived.
Mu Bai stood up in silence, looking all around.
This was simply an ordinary farming family, with winter potatoes and pickled vegetables piled inside the cellar, and several strings of air-dried chili peppers hanging from the corner of the wall.
Inside the iron pot on the stove was still half a pot of congee that had already solidified, likely an unfinished evening meal.
A world where martial arts reigned supreme... Mu Bai muttered to himself, his gaze growing increasingly cold.
In his past life he had been an internet fiction author, having written countless pugilistic world stories of grievances settled with swift swords and deep wine, but truly placing himself within one made him understand that the cruelty of this world far exceeded imagination.
Ordinary people were just crops in the fields; experts harvested them whenever they pleased, without even needing a reason.
At least he had already avenged this family.
After all, those two assassins from the Langya Aristocratic Family had both been killed by Mu Bai by now.
Mu Bai shook his head, pressing down his chaotic thoughts.
He drew a cowhide paper envelope from his bosom, which had been searched out from the burly man's person.
On the envelope, a brief map was drawn in vermilion, marking the three small characters of White Deer Mountain, alongside a line of tiny, fly-head-sized script: If any of our descendants in the Zhao Family make a breakthrough as a Houtian martial artist, they may carry this token to retrieve my inheritance.
White Deer Mountain... Mu Bai recalled the bearings. It was roughly eighty li from Xiaoyao City, reachable in half a day by spurring a fast horse.
The return trip plus exploration time truly required a day and a night.
Outside the window, the eastern sky was already taking on a fish-belly white.
Mu Bai narrowed his eyes and calculated: the two assassins had just been dealt with, and for the news to be passed back to the Langya Aristocratic Family and the Great Yan Emperor would take at least two or three days.
This was an exceptional window of opportunity, and there is no time like the present.
The legacy of an Xiantian expert... Mu Bai's heartbeat accelerated slightly.
What he lacked most right now was a method to break through to Xiantian, and this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The decision made, Mu Bai no longer hesitated.
He glanced one last time at the tragic scene in the cellar, taking a silver ingot from his bosom and placing it on the stove—though this family could no longer use it, at least it could pay a Daoist priest to deliver the departed souls from suffering.
Leaving the peasant home, Mu Bai did not return to the prince's estate, instead heading straight for the stables outside the city.
He selected a pitch-black steed of uniform color, a night-traveling mount specially bred by the official stables that could travel three hundred li a day without blowing heavily.
Mu Bai clamped his horse's flanks, and the dark steed rushed forth like an arrow loosed from a string. There was virtually no shadow of a person on the morning's imperial highway, only the sound of hooves like thunder, kicking up a trail of smoke and dust.
Ten li outside the city gates, the terrain began to undulate.
In the distance, the outline of White Deer Mountain was already faintly visible.
It was a peak shaped like a lying deer, its summit wreathed in clouds and mist year-round, bearing no small number of mythological legends among the locals.
While galloping his horse, Mu Bai recalled the rumors concerning White Deer Mountain.
It was said that several thousand years ago, a supreme martial arts expert capable of overturning rivers and seas had secluded themselves here, later disappearing without a trace.
Yet at this moment, the contents of the legend were not important; what concerned Mu Bai was whether that Xiantian expert's legacy still existed.
Let us hope his legacy has not been discovered... Mu Bai thought to himself.
He urgently needed a method to break through to Xiantian right now, otherwise, facing the retaliation of the Langya Aristocratic Family, the Carefree Prince's Estate would have no shred of a chance of winning.
Just as he was pondering, the dark steed suddenly let out a neigh, its front hooves rearing high.
Mu Bai reacted extremely quickly, executing a flip to land steadily while his right hand had already pressed onto the hilt of his sword.
This sword had also been looted by Mu Bai from those two fellows!
On the mountain path ahead lay an ancient tree split apart by lightning, blocking the way forward.
This in itself was nothing unusual, but Mu Bai's martial artist intuition made his entire body tense up—the cut on that broken tree was far too neat, looking nothing like a natural fracture.
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