They had escaped!
The instant An Wu cut through the prison bars, the martial monk realized something was wrong.
In Chang'an City, where people could not harm one another, capturing a single person required the help of several others. Now that more than a dozen prisoners had escaped, the two of them alone could never handle the situation. The entire Anguo Temple had to come and suppress these people!
He turned and punched the bronze bell hanging on the wall. The clear ringing instantly reverberated from above all the way down into the prison. Then the two martial monks together blocked the narrow passage and shouted, "You won't escape! As long as we hold this place, not one of you will get away!"
That was why they had gone to such great lengths to dig out an underground space and build the prison. In Chang'an, it might take five people to capture one person, but blocking a hundred people required only two!
An Wu could cut through the iron bars, but he could not injure them!
Soon, Anguo Temple would seal its gates, and dozens of martial monks would come down together to suppress this bunch of lunatics. The two of them only needed to hold the passage for fifteen minutes... No, seven and a half minutes would be enough!
An Wu did not look at the martial monks. Instead, he turned to Xue Yan and the others and said, "Once we get upstairs, we'll draw the monks' attention. They won't have time to bother with you. When that happens, find your own way out."
"If you had medicine, why didn't you save us sooner?"
"Exactly! Why did you just watch us starve for so many days?"
"You nearly starved us to death!"
"Whose subordinates are you? How can you disregard whether we live or die?"
As soon as they left the prison, someone began complaining. The others immediately joined in, all of them reproaching An Wu and An Liu.
Xue Yan was furious, and now that he had regained some strength, he loudly cursed, "A bunch of ungrateful idiots! It was those bald donkeys from Anguo Temple who starved you. Why are you cursing these two? If they hadn't saved you, who knows where you'd have been sold by now!"
A pampered noblewoman immediately retorted, "Weren't they saving us for the merit? It was their duty!"
"Their greatest duty would be to slap you!"
The speaker was not Xue Yan, but the petite Third Miss Yang. She practically leaped into the air as she said, "Don't you only dare say this because no one in Chang'an can hit you? When they blocked the door a few days ago, did you think they were trying to starve that bald donkey Ben Zhi to death? They were protecting us! You're a bunch of ungrateful beasts, you don't even—"
"Haha."
An Wu suddenly laughed aloud. Everyone looked at him, but he lowered his head and muttered to himself, "Someone really did complain..."
He looked at the crowd and said something rather strange: "If you complain about me, I have only one answer."
If? Hadn't that already happened?
"Although I wanted to save you, if you suffered or even died because of my actions, I wouldn't care." An Wu spoke calmly. "I saved you simply because I wanted to."
"I don't need your gratitude, and I won't accept your complaints. Even if every one of you died right now, I wouldn't mind."
"I saved you only so that this world would move according to my will!"
Not only the noble who had complained, but even Xue Yan and Third Miss Yang were stunned by An Wu's words.
Even the emperor would not dare say something so arrogant, would he?
Before they could say anything, several things suddenly fell inside the prison. They turned to look and discovered that they were triplets identical to An Wu and An Liu... Or perhaps quintuplets?
Even though some people continued berating An Wu, he and An Liu no longer paid the prisoners any attention. Instead, they went to lift the jars of Fire Oil that the martial monks had placed in the corner.
These jars of Fire Oil were weapons the martial monks used to kill people and even destroy their corpses. But... weapons did not belong exclusively to their owners.
The martial monks blocking the staircase immediately knew what they intended when they saw them carrying the jars of Fire Oil. When An Wu approached, one of them cursed harshly, "You want to burn me with Fire Oil? Hahaha! Before you burn someone, you have to burn yourself first. Do you dare? We've trained specifically for this. You'd probably turn into roasted chicken the moment you caught fire!"
An Wu picked up a jar of Fire Oil and splashed it toward the martial monks. They felt a little intimidated, but still were not afraid—only flames on a human body could ignite the oil on their bodies.
That was the law of the main city. Only by injuring oneself first could one exploit a loophole to hurt others.
"An Wu," Xue Yan said as he took off his outer garment. "Use our clothes as padding—"
An Wu ignored them. Instead, he picked up the Fire Oil and poured it over his right arm.
The martial monks, who had not even been afraid when An Wu cut through the prison bars, finally grew terrified at this sight. "What are you trying to do? Think this through! Someone could die! Once the Fire Oil catches fire, you won't be able to control it—"
Whoosh!
An Wu picked up a candlestick and set it alight. His right arm instantly erupted into blazing flames, and the fierce heat was enough to make anyone afraid to approach!
An Wu did not even need to reach out. When the martial monks covered in Fire Oil saw this, they screamed and scrambled up the passage on all fours. An Wu followed close behind, raising his right arm high. Like a torch, he led the way at the front, guiding everyone out of the dark dungeon.
At that moment, even the noble who had loudly berated An Wu earlier obediently shut her mouth.
The iron door at the end of the passage was closed, and it could not be opened from inside. Someone outside had to open it. The two martial monks frantically pounded on the door. Soon, a fat, big-eared monk opened it and asked carelessly, "What are you rushing for? You accidentally struck the bronze bell just now, and I haven't even gone down to lecture you—"
"Close the door!"
As the dungeon supervisor, the martial monks normally had to bow and scrape before him. But now they had no time to pay him any attention. They pushed past him and ran outside, leaving behind only one sentence.
The supervisor had gotten Fire Oil smeared across one hand. While he was still puzzled, he lowered his head and looked down the passage. There, he saw a person running out with a flaming hand held high.
The supervisor reacted quickly—he slammed the iron door shut. But that flaming hand was even faster, thrusting through the gap first. The force brought by the iron door's weight was terrifying. The wrist of that hand was nearly crushed off, and charred flesh smeared across the doorframe like minced meat, exposing pale, bloodstained splinters of bone. It was impossible to imagine the agony.
But!
But!
That hand, on the verge of being severed, was like a claw reaching out from a yaksha demon imprisoned and tortured day and night inside the great Iron-Enclosed Mountain. It clung tightly to the supervisor's arm—the one smeared with Fire Oil—as though it intended to drag him into the Eighteen Great Hells to atone for his sins!
"AAAHHHHH!"
The burning supervisor wailed as he ran outside, repeatedly striking the bronze bell in the room and shouting toward the exterior, "Close the doors! Close them quickly! A demon has escaped the underworld! A demon has escaped the underworld!"
At the same time, the main hall of Anguo Temple was engulfed by ringing bells from all directions. The Guest Monk ordered people to close the hall doors while going over to the visitors who had just entered and saying, "I'm sorry, patrons. A fire has broken out inside Anguo Temple, so we can't receive outsiders at the moment. Please come again tomorrow."
The visitor at the very front was a strange man whose entire head was wrapped in bandages.
His companions were strange as well: a mask merchant wearing a mask, a lively young girl wearing sunglasses, and a young man whose appearance alone made it clear that he had an extremely explosive temper.
When the Guest Monk saw that they ignored him and continued walking forward, he signaled to the martial monk beside the counter, then hurried to close the doors himself. A temple that opened the Longevity Vault to issue loans naturally needed someone to play the good cop and someone to play the bad cop.
"The timing is perfect."
The bandaged strange man pointed toward the doors of the main hall and said, "Look. Someone is going to close the doors for us."
"Then let's begin the mission."
He pulled a mask from inside his robe. It bore a yellow dog and looked rather cute. He put it on and casually drew his blade, slashing at the approaching martial monk as though he were simply saying hello.
The martial monk was still confused. This was Chang'an City—what was he drawing his blade for? Even if he slashed at someone, he could not cut through their clothes—
Smack.
Only when a severed hand fell to the ground, fresh blood splattering everywhere, did the pain reported by countless neurons finally jolt the martial monk's sluggish brain fully awake.
It also awakened the fear of every monk nearby.
"AAAHHHHH—my hand! My hand!"
Yaoshi Yuan, Ying Ru Shi, and Shang Xin Lei all put on their masks. Yan Qing walked at the front, holding up the blood-dripping White Iron Straight Blade as he swept his gaze around and said:
"Nobody move. This is a robbery."
Before you continue