At that moment, Meng Wuya stood at the garden entrance, a sharp glint flickering in his cloudy old eyes.
He swept his gaze over the garden's layout, then over the pavilion, then over the woman leaning against its railing.
At last, his eyes landed on the pile of flames burning in the corner of the garden.
His pupils abruptly contracted.
He was the only one of the three who had noticed those flames.
Or rather, he was the only one with enough experience to pay attention to them.
In Black Tortoise Town, dead bodies were the most common sight, but flames of that color... he had seen them once before.
It had been amid the ruins of a cultivation family that had been massacred. The corpses on the ground had burned through the entire night, and the flames had been that same ghostly blue.
They gave off no smoke and did not spread. They simply burned in silence, as if they intended to purify everything completely.
Even so, he did not retreat.
One hundred thousand spirit stones was too much. Enough to make an old fox who had spent most of his life scraping by in Black Tortoise Town forget every lesson he had ever learned.
The three men stood at the garden entrance, and silence lingered for roughly three breaths.
Then Golden Swallow took the first step.
His stride was neither large nor fast. The longsword in its scabbard hummed, as though it had sensed its master's fighting intent and could not wait to leave its sheath and drink blood.
Sikong Yun glanced at Golden Swallow but did not move.
Meng Wuya did not move either.
It was not because they did not want to, but because they were waiting.
Waiting for Golden Swallow to make the first move,