The two corpses lay there, pallid as badly made mannequins. The Crown Prince of Shule glanced at them, and his face turned just as white. He turned away and retched, then hurried to the doorway, unwilling to face the bodies again.
Shangguan Fa pressed a hand against the wound in the first corpse's chest. "A knife wound."
The murder weapon lay beside him, a typical Golden Peng Narrow Saber. The dead man was Ma Lian's bodyguard. The blade had struck straight through his heart. The wound, no bigger than a fingertip, showed that the knife had not gone deep and had been pulled out almost instantly—a sign that the assassin was a skilled fighter.
The second corpse was believed to be the assassin himself.
He was a very young man. His slightly parted lips still held a trace of childishness. There were two wounds on his body, one at his temple and one in his side.
"A sword wound," Gu Shenwei said. "The first strike hit his side; the second struck a vital spot."
On the surface, these two wounds were less perfect than the one on the first corpse. But the assassin had been highly skilled and on guard, so whoever killed him had to be even more formidable.
The two men examining the bodies looked up and exchanged glances, both finding the scene before them unbelievable. They stood in the same tent, conversing politely, yet neither had made a move against the other.
It took a certain courage to meet the Unrivaled King's gaze. Gu Shenwei felt no fear. The longer he spent in Shangguan Fa's company, the weaker the tension stretched across his chest became. Again and again, the urge to draw his saber surged up—not out of revenge, but simply to prove his strength.
Killing the