The Chaos Was About to Begin (2)
"Hm?"
"This is..."
Seeing that Ren Yingying had handed him one of those monthly journals of martial-arts gossip, Xiang Wentian was surprised. He didn't know what she meant when she said they were short on time, but he took it from her and quickly unfolded it. He saw that two front-page stories had been circled in rouge:
First: <The Two Beauties of Mount Hua Appear in Huai'an; the Twelve Linked Strongholds Erased in a Single Night>
The martial world had yet to settle after its recent upheavals, and now fresh turmoil had erupted along the Huai River.
At dawn the day before yesterday, smoke billowed into the sky from the headquarters of the Twelve Linked Strongholds in Huai'an Prefecture. The notorious bandit Hawkeye Ba, who had dominated the Yellow River waterways for decades, and his four leading chieftains had all been slain!
According to boatmen who witnessed the events, a riverboat had approached the Twelve Linked Strongholds that night. At a quarter past ten, two streaks of sword light suddenly flashed across the sky like meteors. The white-clad woman's twin swords were as dazzling as startled swallows, while the girl in red followed close behind as they charged straight into the stronghold's heart.
That night, shouts of battle rang across the stronghold as flames blazed into the sky. All eighteen water forts of the Twelve Linked Strongholds, along with seventy-two fast boats, were burned to the ground!
By the next morning, corpses floated across the river and filled the reed beds along both banks. The Huai'an Prefecture authorities later confirmed that five of the eight chieftains of the Twelve Linked Strongholds had been slain, while three had been crippled. The remaining bandits had all surrendered voluntarily and agreed to be shackled. The