No Martial Honor

After issuing secret orders, the rat-tail-queued men scattered and departed.

Before long, screams rose from every direction in the Capital City, one after another, while raging fires blazed up.

The Flying Fish Guard and the Eastern City Marshal's Office mobilized upon hearing the alarm and rushed toward various locations.

An Baogu stood atop a roof, a triumphant smile spreading across his face.

He knew neither literary nor military strategy, yet he had been born knowing how to fight wars, because war and hunting followed the same principle.

When you wanted to steal a bear cub, you had to find a way to lure the bear away.

Seeing that the timing was about right, An Baogu hefted his heavy saber and headed toward the Imperial Prison of the Flying Fish Guard's Northern Commandery.

With the Punishment Slave missing, the most likely place was the Flying Fish Guard's Imperial Prison.

Lure the tiger from the mountain, get in fast and get out fast, then launch a surprise raid and seize the target.

"Who's there?"

As he turned out of the alley, he happened to run into a squad of soldiers.

The man at their head wore iron armor beneath a green Flying Fish robe. A scar ran across his face. He was none other than the scar-faced Battalion Commander from before.

"You lot aren't qualified to know who I am."

A cruel smile appeared on An Baogu's face, and the bloodthirsty gleam in his eyes flared fiercely.

"A Di Barbarian spy!"

The scar-faced Battalion Commander immediately drew his saber.

Yet before he could fully unsheathe his Xiuchun Saber, a black heavy saber rapidly swelled in his pupils.

"Pfft!"

"Bang!"

The heavy saber tore through the crowd and embedded itself viciously in the bluestone ground.

Blood and shattered viscera sprayed across the walls and ground. More than a dozen corpses crashed down in quick succession, every one of them severed in two.

The scar-faced Battalion Commander lay on the ground. For the first time in his life, he saw the soles of his own feet, along with the smoothly severed Xiuchun Saber and iron armor.

In the last few seconds of his life, he suddenly remembered that black cat.

An Baogu pulled out his heavy saber and licked the blood from its edge. The cruelty in his eyes became even more chilling.

At that moment, the Capital City sank completely into panic.

Amid the chaos, no one knew exactly how many bandits were causing trouble.

Before long, another squad of soldiers carrying water buckets appeared before An Baogu.

After a rain of blood and a gale of slaughter, corpses littered the ground.

Only the last soldier remained, crawling away with wails of agony. The hellish sight had rendered his legs completely useless.

An Baogu was in no hurry. Carrying his blood-dripping heavy saber, he approached step by step with a savage grin.

"Prey. The entire city is full of prey."

An Baogu greatly enjoyed the fear of his prey. Many years ago in Liaodong, he had slaughtered more than three thousand people in an entire city in a single night.

The despair and wails of prey before death still left him savoring the memory.

And tonight's Capital City had once again given him that feeling.

At a nearby residence, a pair of terrified eyes withdrew from behind a window.

An Baogu stopped, turned, and kicked the residence's front gate open.

Immediately afterward, pleas for mercy and screams came from within.

All thirteen people in the household, young and old alike, were slaughtered. Not even the dog was spared.

Seeing this, the crawling soldier staggered to his feet, braced himself against the wall, and fled. But before he could get very far—

A flying cap suddenly descended from the sky and covered his head. With a "crack," it flew away again.

The soldier's head was gone. His corpse fell to the ground with a "thud."

The Head-taking Flying Cap, also known as the Blood Dropper.

It was a hidden weapon unique to Di Barbarian spies, capable of taking a person's head within a hundred paces as easily as reaching into a bag for something.

It used leather as a pouch, with sharp blades hidden within and mechanisms controlling them. When used, it caught its victim unprepared, covered their head with the pouch, triggered the mechanism, and took the head at once—terrifying and vicious.

"Aaaahhh..."

Across the vast Capital City, screams rose and fell without end. The fire burned ever fiercer, and the entire city trembled in fear.

The soldiers were useless, and the Flying Fish Guard had also fallen into chaos.

The dynasty's weakness was laid bare for all to see.

The more An Baogu killed, the more excited he became, his face twisting with madness.

Wherever he passed, not a single person survived. No one could withstand even one exchange with him, not even the elite of the Flying Fish Guard.

Before long, he arrived at the entrance to the Northern Commandery Imperial Prison.

Licking his lips, he brandished his heavy saber and charged inside like a whirlwind.

"Who?!"

"It's a Di Barbarian!"

"Defend! Defend!"

"Aah!!"

Cries of alarm and miserable screams once more became a single chorus.

After roughly the time it took to burn half an incense stick, An Baogu charged back out like a whirlwind. After several leaps, he vanished into the night, his wild laughter drifting back.

"Hahaha! Flying Fish Guard, a bunch of wine sacks and rice bags!"

Three red-robed Flying Fish Guard Thousand Commanders, drenched in blood, chased out through the gates, their faces as ugly as if they had eaten shit.

The Imperial Prison of the Flying Fish Guard's Northern Commandery had actually been stormed by a lone Di Barbarian spy, who had killed his way in and out.

An utter humiliation!

Yet after An Baogu escaped his pursuers, his expression turned several degrees graver.

The Punishment Slave was not in the Imperial Prison.

Crossing the towering city walls, An Baogu headed east.

If the Imperial Prison did not have him, then the East City Corpse Burning Facility was the final clue.

He leaped across roofs and walls, treading willows and riding the wind. Though An Baogu was built like an iron tower, his lightness skill was not lacking in the slightest. He was one of the Di Barbarians' renowned Baturu.

What was a Baturu? It meant warrior.

The Di Barbarians came from the vast wilderness of mountains and forests, living by fishing and hunting. Fierce and brave by nature, any warrior publicly acknowledged as a Baturu possessed absolutely explosive martial strength.

Very soon, An Baogu arrived near the Corpse Burning Facility.

From afar, wisps of black smoke rose from the facility's burning corpses, twisting like snakes in the night wind.

Just as he was preparing to strike, he suddenly heard a sound from the cowshed beside him.

Looking closely, it seemed to be a person, squatting beneath a cow and bobbing up and down, doing who knew what.

A vicious glint flashed through An Baogu's eyes. Since he had run into him, it was simply his bad luck.

"Leave neither chickens nor dogs alive wherever I pass" was his principle, and An Baogu was especially principled. Never mind people—even the cows here had to die.

He strode forward and slashed down with his saber.

"Clang!"

"Bang!"

"Whoosh!"

"Thud!"

In an instant, saber light and blade shadows flashed. The scene he had imagined, of the other party being cut in two, did not appear.

Instead, the man stood up, holding a shovel. He stared at the saber in his hand in astonishment and cried, "Damn it, I only borrowed a bowl of milk! You're using such a huge saber and even ambushed me? Do you have any martial honor at all?"

An Baogu did not understand what martial honor meant. He asked, "Who are you?" but before he could receive an answer, blood spurted from his seven orifices, and he fell dead with a "thud."

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that a thin sheet-metal shovel would smack him to death in one blow.

Sabers, spears, swords, halberds, axes, battle-axes, hooks, forks, whips, maces, hammers, claws, tridents, staffs, lances, clubs, crutches, meteor hammers.

He had seen all eighteen kinds of weapons, but he had never seen a metal shovel.