"How could he have disappeared..."
Liu Yiyi's heart sank, as if an invisible hand had seized it in a brutal grip.
A seventy-year-old man, already in his twilight years, had suddenly vanished after the chaotic battle...
An ominous thought slithered up from the depths of her heart like a poisonous snake, sending a chill through her.
"Could it be that Old Man Jiang was..."
After hesitating for a moment, Liu Yiyi could only take a deep breath and make her way over to Liu Qingshi, her steps slightly heavy.
Liu Qingshi was crouched beside Guo Wei. His hands were covered in blood as he used a strip torn from his clothes to tightly bind the wound where Guo Wei's arm had been severed.
Guo Wei's face was as pale as paper, and he had fallen into a semi-conscious state.
Liu Qingshi's brows were tightly furrowed, beads of sweat glistening at his temples, but his hands remained steady.
"Father." Liu Yiyi's voice was soft, yet heavy with suppressed emotion. "Old Man Jiang... he's gone."
Liu Qingshi's hands paused abruptly as he wrapped the cloth.
"What did you say?"
He jerked his head up. His eyes, usually as steady as a mountain, held a rare trace of agitation and disbelief.
Even when he had fought to the death against that ugly man from the Seven Kill Cult just moments ago, with his life hanging by a thread, his expression hadn't wavered this violently.
"Old Jiang... is gone?!"
He sprang to his feet, paying no heed to the blood still dripping from his hands, and turned to rush into the crowd.
His gaze swept over every face, every corner, every shadow where someone might be hiding, sharp as an eagle's.
"Old Man Jiang is gone?!"
Su Yan had heard the news as well.
She had just come through a bloody battle. Her gentle face still bore a trace of disarray, her hair had come loose at the temples, and a few spots of blood stained her collar.
Hearing Liu Yiyi's words, she paused in surprise, then joined Liu Qingshi in searching the area.
But the result was the same as before—nothing.
After searching repeatedly, they finally confirmed that Jiang Ye had indeed disappeared.
"Father, I'm sorry. I failed to protect Old Man Jiang."
Liu Yiyi's face was full of remorse.
Liu Qingshi silently shook his head.
He knew the situation had been far too chaotic. Hundreds of refugees had surged forward at once, and Liu Yiyi had already done remarkably well to keep her mother, Huang Xiyu, from being hurt.
"Alas, those refugees were like beasts that had scented blood. They killed and robbed anyone they came across."
Su Chen walked over to the silent Liu Qingshi and said gravely, "Just a moment ago, several of our Su Family's maids were snatched amid the chaos. Old Man Jiang was old and had trouble walking. The bandits may have abducted him too, without realizing who he was."
At those words, Liu Qingshi's eyes narrowed. He pushed off the ground and shot forward like an arrow loosed from its string, racing after the refugees.
"Hey—Brother Liu!!!"
Su Chen was stunned.
He had meant to tell Liu Qingshi that there was little chance the old doorkeeper, Jiang Ye, had survived, so he could grieve and move on instead of delaying their journey.
He hadn't expected Liu Qingshi to chase after the refugees without a moment's hesitation.
This was bad.
Guo Wei had lost an arm and was gravely wounded. Liu Qingshi was the most capable fighter left in their group.
He'd gone after the refugees. Was he out of his mind?!
What if they ran into those fiends from the Seven Kill Cult again?!
"Brother Liu!!!"
Su Chen bellowed, trying to call Liu Qingshi back.
But Liu Qingshi was simply too fast. After a few breaths, his figure had grown indistinct in the distance.
"Hero... spare me, hero!!!"
Liu Qingshi lifted a disheveled refugee off the ground with one hand. The man's face was full of despair as he wept and begged:
"I never saw a seventy-year-old man, not once!!!"
"Besides, when we abduct people, we only take women!!!"
Liu Qingshi, usually a benevolent man, stared at the sobbing refugee with an icy expression. Only cold killing intent remained in his eyes.
He slammed his palm down on the refugee's head.
Thud!
A muffled impact rang out.
The thick, domineering force blasted the refugee's body into a lump of mangled flesh.
Unwilling to give up, Liu Qingshi continued chasing them.
But after grabbing more than a dozen fleeing refugees, he heard almost exactly the same answer from every one of them.
No one had seen the seventy-year-old man, and no one had abducted him.
"Hero, spare me... Aah!!!"
With a heartrending scream, another refugee was blasted into a lump of mangled flesh by Liu Qingshi.
The pale blue clothes on Liu Qingshi's body had been spattered crimson with blood, but the fury in his heart had not lessened in the slightest.
He stood silently where he was for a long while. A look of remorse and pain crossed his face as he murmured, "Old Jiang, you saved my life back then, but I..."
He wanted to keep chasing them.
But the last of his reason told him he couldn't.
If he left them without his protection, Liu Yiyi, his wife, and the Su Family's group would all be in danger.
"Argh!!!!!!"
In the end, the remorse and pain on his face became a furious, anguished roar.
At the same time.
Under cover of night, Jiang Ye followed the route taken by the fleeing fiend from the Seven Kill Cult, neither hurried nor slow.
He moved like a nimble deer threading through the mountain woods. Every step was so light it seemed to land on clouds; he touched down without a sound, not even stirring the dry grass.
He kept his entire aura hidden, as if he had become one with the world. This was the Deer Form True Intent he had comprehended not long ago—Startled Deer Leaves No Trace.
The moment the chaotic battle broke out, he had used the confusion to quietly slip away from the group and disappear into the darkness.
This hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He had already planned this escape route when Liu Qingshi said he intended to travel to Prefecture City with the Su Family.
The reason was simple. In public, he was merely an old doorkeeper in his twilight years.
He possessed Transformation Strength, but couldn't display it in front of others.
He couldn't exactly tell Liu Qingshi that after obtaining the Five Animal Fist manual from him, he had mastered Transformation Strength in just half a month.
Such an incredible rate of progress was impossible to explain by any ordinary reasoning. The secret of the Ascension Stairway was his greatest safeguard for surviving this chaotic world, and he could never let anyone discover it.
So slipping away amid the chaos and moving from the open into the shadows was the best choice.
That way, he could lie low and protect Liu Qingshi's family from a distance, while deciding whether to intervene according to the situation.
He could advance or retreat as needed, making him far more flexible than if he had openly stayed with the group.
He had watched the battle clearly from the shadows.
The ugly man from the Seven Kill Cult had been badly wounded by Liu Qingshi's punch and had fled, spitting blood.
Jiang Ye knew he couldn't let that prey escape.
If the man made it back and warned the others, more fiends from the Seven Kill Cult would surely come.
Besides, the man had committed one evil deed after another along the way. He must have amassed plenty of ill-gotten wealth.
In these chaotic times, money and pills were strength. Resources delivered right to his door—how could he turn them down?
Whatever the reason, this man had to die by his hand!
Deep in the wilderness, in a sparse patch of woodland.
Moonlight filtered through the gaps between the branches, casting dappled shadows across the ground.
The short, ugly man, whose face was as hideous as a yaksha's, stumbled into the woods and collapsed among the thick weeds, gasping for breath.
The dent Liu Qingshi's punch had caved into his back was horrifying to behold. Every breath tugged at the wound and brought up a mouthful of filthy blood flecked with clots.
"Damn it, I really misjudged them today. There was a real hard case among those fat sheep."
He gritted his teeth and caught his breath, then spat out another mouthful of blood.
If he hadn't trained in body-hardening techniques, making his flesh far tougher than an ordinary person's, Liu Qingshi's punch would have snapped his spine clean in half.
"It's all that damned Black Old Five's fault for not meeting up with me. If the two of us had joined forces, what fat sheep couldn't we have slaughtered?!"
The ugly man cursed furiously, his expression dark. "That lecherous bastard is probably off somewhere fooling around with a woman again."
"I'd better wait until my injuries improve before I go looking for him... As for those fat sheep, they won't get away!"
The ugly man carefully pulled a jade porcelain bottle from his clothes and poured out a red pill.
The moment the pill appeared, the air around him filled with a foul, bloody stench.
He raised the pill to his nose and drew in a deep breath of its stench. A look of intoxication appeared on his face, as if it were not a foul odor but the sweetest fragrance in the world.
Even the pain in his back seemed to ease a little with that single breath.
"That's the smell..."
He murmured, opened his mouth, and placed the pill on his tongue. He was about to swallow it.
Suddenly.
Boom!
A shrill sound, sharp enough to nearly tear through the air, erupted behind his head.
The ugly man didn't even have time to turn around before a gaunt fist slammed into the back of his head.
Thud!
A muffled impact rang out.
His head was extraordinarily hard, and the vicious punch failed to shatter it outright.
But sometimes, the harder you were to kill, the more you suffered.
His two blood-soaked eyeballs were violently shaken from their sockets by the force, trailing bloody strands and torn nerves as they rolled onto the ground, where dead leaves and dirt clung to them.
The sight was bizarre and horrifying.
"Argh!!!"
A scream, so agonized it scarcely sounded human, tore through the silence of the night.
The ugly man clapped both hands over his empty eye sockets. His body pitched forward as if his bones had been pulled out, then he rolled frantically across the ground.
The Blood Pill he hadn't managed to swallow slipped from his gaping mouth, rolled through the blood, and disappeared into the weeds.
At that moment, beyond the unimaginable pain and fury, what filled him most was a crushing wave of terror and despair.
He had trained in body-hardening techniques for years, and his five senses were far sharper than an ordinary person's. Even a Transformation Strength master at the peak of his power couldn't have crept within ten paces of him without making a sound.
He instinctively tried to turn around, to see that face.
But he no longer had eyes. He would never know what the person who killed him looked like.
"Oh? His head was that hard!"
Seeing the man's skull withstand his punch, a flicker of surprise crossed Jiang Ye's aged eyes. Without hesitation, he swung two more punches.
Thud! Thud!
Two thunderous impacts rang out.
The ugly man's impossibly hard head finally gave way and exploded.
His hideous body twitched a few times, then fell utterly still.
After killing him, Jiang Ye set to work looting the corpse.
"Hm? What's this..."
With a casual pat, Jiang Ye found two manuals tucked close to the ugly man's chest.
One was the Blood Moon Saber, its strokes fierce and carrying a bloody aura.
The other was the Diamond Body Refining Technique, its characters archaic and weighty.
A glimmer of delight flashed through Jiang Ye's aged eyes.
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