The backup passage was dim and damp, thick with the musty stench of age. Xu Qian leaned against the stone wall, his heart pounding like a drum—not just from the danger he had narrowly escaped, but even more from the thrill of glimpsing a hidden secret.
He carefully pushed the Qi Gazing Technique to its limits, his gaze piercing the stone wall as he "looked" into cell E-98. At that moment, the property of his Dao Fruit, Untainted by Karma, worked in a subtle way: his spying failed to arouse the spiritual senses of any of the experts inside, as if he were nothing more than a lifeless stone.
The scene inside the cell was utterly unlike the desperate struggle to the death he had imagined!
The instant the two black-clad men stepped into the cell, something unexpected happened!
The young man leaning in the corner looked utterly frail, yet the moment the assassins approached, he suddenly raised his head! There was no trace of lifelessness in his eyes. Instead, they held a bone-chilling sharpness and... the cold gleam of a scheme fulfilled!
He didn't get up. His hand, which seemed to hang limply at his side, pressed down on a spot on the ground with the utmost stealth.
"Click!"
A faint mechanical sound rang out!
Immediately afterward, several seemingly ordinary flagstones near the doorway sprang up, revealing what had been laid in the shallow pit beneath them—not some divine weapon, but a large handful of pungent, stinging powder mixed with filthy soil and an unknown slime! The flagstones' sudden movement stirred the powder with a deft burst of force, sending it billowing out in an instant like yellow smoke and blanketing the doorway!
[Slaked lime?! With extra ingredients?!] Xu Qian's eyes twitched as he watched. [This guy's got guts! He came up with the same idea I did? But his recipe looks even nastier!]
The two assassins clearly hadn't expected the dying man to have a trick like this. Caught off guard, they immediately held their breath and retreated, but plenty of the stinging powder still got into their eyes, noses, and mouths!
"Ah! My eyes!"
"Cough, cough! It's poisonous!"
The two men grunted and broke into violent coughing. Their movements instantly went awry, and their attack faltered! The one leading the charge, who wielded a short blade, was hit especially hard: his eyes burned fiercely, and his vision blurred.
Seizing the opportunity, the young man moved!
Like a leopard that had been lying in wait for ages, he still looked frail, but his movements were decisive and ruthless! He didn't choose to fight head-on. Instead, he suddenly reached beneath the straw bedding and pulled out a sharpened bone—some animal's leg bone, he couldn't tell what. Keeping his body close to the wall, he slipped sideways like a fish through water, heading straight for the temporarily blinded assassin with the short blade!
His attack came from an extremely tricky angle. He didn't go for the heart or throat, but struck directly at the man's exposed, weakly defended armpit and lower back—spots left vulnerable by his pain and impaired vision!
"Thwack!"
The sharpened bone spike plunged accurately beneath the short-blade assassin's ribs!
The assassin let out a shrill scream. The agony made him instinctively swing an arm to block, but with his vision blurred, his movement came a half beat too late!
The young man landed his blow and didn't linger. He immediately let go and retreated, barely dodging the other assassin's poisoned dagger as it slashed toward him by feel despite his impaired vision!
"Rip!"
The dagger tore through his already ragged prison clothes, leaving a shallow bloody line on his arm.
The whole exchange took place in the space of a breath!
With a crude but effective trap and a sharpened bone, the young man had managed to turn the tables for the moment against two assassins at the Houtian Mid-Late Stage—and had even wounded one of them!
Watching from the shadows, Xu Qian was thrilled. [Brilliant! He stays calm in a crisis and strikes without mercy! No wonder he's a prince—his combat instincts are impressive!]
Still, Xu Qian could see that the young man was at the end of his rope. That whole series of moves had drained what little strength he had left. Now he leaned against the opposite wall, chest heaving, face even paler. Black blood had begun to seep from the wound on his arm, clear evidence that the poison on the dagger was spreading.
The two assassins, meanwhile, had one man wounded and the other still struggling to see, but they were both seasoned experts with deep cultivation. They quickly adjusted: the wounded one endured the pain and used his hearing to pinpoint the young man's position, while the other blinked furiously, trying to recover some of his vision. Their murderous intent once again fixed firmly on the young man!
The odds were still overwhelmingly against him!
Watching the assassins close in step by step, the young man showed no despair. Instead, a strange smile crossed his face. In a hoarse voice, he murmured as if talking to himself, or perhaps addressing someone unseen:
"Looks like... 'they' are dead set on silencing me... They even sent people from Shadow Sha... They really... think highly of me..."
Shadow Sha?
Xu Qian's heart stirred, and he committed the name to memory. It sounded like an assassin organization. If even a prince was so wary of them, they had to be a force to reckon with.
Just then, the assassin whose vision had begun to recover seemed to sense something. He suddenly turned, his gaze sweeping like a falcon toward the backup passage where Xu Qian was hiding!
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