Strong Enemy Appears

"Oh, so you really are a Taoist from Lao Mountain..."

Kuai Dayou gave a slight nod, satisfying his curiosity.

As for Lu San, he was completely uninterested and did not even bother to respond.

Seeing the two fall silent, Bai Lao Jiu's fingers tightened slightly around his wine cup. With a bitter expression, he said in a low voice, "Please don't blame me for being so presumptuous."

"To be honest, ever since I entered Tai'an and registered at the prefectural yamen, I've felt as though a poisonous snake were staring at my back. It's made my skin crawl. The person watching me from the shadows moved in a strange and elusive manner. If I hadn't practiced Listening to the Wind to Identify Weapons in my younger years, I would have had almost no way to detect him."

He suddenly drained a mouthful of chilled wine. His Adam's apple bobbed. "What's even stranger is that the four constables traveling with me vanished from the inn this morning without a trace. There were no signs of a struggle in the room, and even their sabers were left beneath their pillows."

"And not one of the three Hidden Stakes that were supposed to meet us has responded to this day. It's as though they vanished into thin air!"

He raised his eyes toward Lu San and Kuai Dayou. A chill lay buried deep in his pupils. "This is no ordinary martial-world trickery. To abduct people from the authorities right under the nose of the Tai'an prefectural yamen, the culprit must either be an old master of the arcane arts skilled in the Mysterious Gate Evasion Technique..."

"Or... it's the work of ghosts!" The oil lamp in the tavern suddenly crackled, sparks bursting from it and casting half his face into murky shadow.

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