Qian Commandery, Luoxi County, at a branch hall of the Flying Fish Gang. A secluded courtyard paved with blue bricks and enclosed by walls on three sides was now thick with the stench of blood. Corpses carpeted the ground in dense layers.
Lei Mian and Wang Qing's bodies had been pieced back together. A shattered lump of red flesh was Bai Ziyang's corpse. There was also Zhu Biao's body, that of the one among the twelve experts whose head Xiang Yang had crushed, and over a hundred Flying Fish Gang members.
Besides the dead, there were quite a few living people in the courtyard. Zhu Biao's immediate superior in the Flying Fish Gang, a middle-aged man with a small mustache; the remaining eleven of the twelve experts, all sprawled weakly on the ground, barely drawing breath; and finally, a tall, stern middle-aged man in a black robe embroidered with dragons.
The middle-aged man had hard, angular features and eyes bright as stars. His hair was coiled into a topknot and pinned with a jade hairpin. He did not appear particularly remarkable, yet the other twelve breathing people in the courtyard regarded him as though facing a god or demon.
"Three Terraces Fish-Dragon Transformation was formed by extracting part of the essence of the Fish-Dragon Transformation divine art I cultivated. Four people form a minor array, twelve form a grand array. Those who can break it while still in the acquired realm are all peerless talents of exceptional gifts.
"One man dies, and the other eleven suffer grievous injuries as well. Their inner qi rebounds against them, their organs and spirits are drained day and night. You can scarcely save yourselves, so you could not save Ziyang. I do not blame you."
The middle-aged man's voice rang like bells and chimes,