"Lady Lin certainly sounds confident."
The second voice was cool, clear, and refined, with the soft, lilting accent of the south. Even when he threatened someone, it sounded as if he were apologizing. Just from the voice, its owner seemed more like a young scholar from an eminent official family. How could a bandit's den have produced someone like him?
"I wonder if you've guessed that you might not make it back?"
"I came here because I'm sure I can return." Lin Feng gazed toward the dense fog and smiled. "Isn't that right, Marquis Wei?"
Those addressed by others as "Marquis So-and-So" were either ennobled in the secular world or had reached the realm of a Nineteenth Rank Marquis Within the Pass or a 20th Rank Che Hou through their own cultivation, earning the honorific of a lord without needing a title.
The air seemed to freeze for an instant.
Several breaths passed, but no one replied.
Just as everyone began to worry that Lin Feng was bluffing, a more shrill, uncanny laugh rang out from all directions, complete with an echoing, electronic effect. "I say, old friend, you're old enough to be getting into a coffin. Isn't it a little shameful to bully children here? Do me a favor and let them go. How about the two of us old pals find somewhere to catch up properly?"
Scarlet fog surged up from the ground.
A whirlwind gathered on the spot, taking the shape of someone with a bizarre appearance—or, more accurately, a skeleton whose form was downright horrifying.
The skeleton wore a sinister suit of armor patterned with ferocious demons and beasts. He held his helmet in one hand and toyed with a bone-spiked mace in the other. Two lively flames of life danced in the eye sockets of