Suspicion

The jade pendant was carved with dragons and phoenixes. A dragon adorned the front, and a phoenix the back. The jade was pure white all the way through, without a single blemish, and looked to be of especially fine quality.

It had been baked amid a raging fire for so long, yet the pendant remained as bright and clean as new. She found that very strange.

"This... must be a valuable treasure. No wonder that fellow was so greedy for money and still refused to pawn the pendant."

Without a word, she picked it up, only to get burned by the lingering heat. She nearly dropped it.

Once it had cooled, she tucked it into her clothes, then continued searching through the ashes, which were still warm.

Soon she found the silver, warped by the heat. It had lost its original luster and turned somewhat black, but it was still usable, more or less.

She rummaged up quite a bit of money and valuables here, adding up to around ten taels of silver.

After finishing with the valuables in this spot, she went to another rice storehouse to see if any rice remained. She could cook some to fill her stomach and, while she was at it, see if she could feed the children too.

To her delight, although the two men had carried off a great deal of food, some was still left—around ten jin. The small storehouse could also serve as a temporary shelter.

She wouldn't have to worry about survival for a little while.

Good fortune lifted everyone's spirits. Having escaped the bandits' lair, the women walked with a spring in their steps. Only now did they realize how pure and vast the sky was.

Warm sunlight fell on their faces, and a gentle breeze brushed their fingertips. The gloom that had weighed on them for so long was swept away.

After asking around, the women soon found Qin Sheng's home. They knelt and begged him to take them in.

"We were abducted by the bandits of Wolf Cave Mountain. The bandits there—more than a dozen of them—were wiped out by two masked young heroes whose names we don't know. They told us to seek refuge with Young Master Qin. They said Young Master Qin could give us a way to live."

Another woman pleaded, "Please, we can work, and we can endure hardship. We're not here to freeload. We just want to find work here and make a living."

A steward of the Qin Family told the women, "Don't raise your voices just yet. I understand what you want. Young Master Qin isn't here right now. Wait until he returns, and we'll see whether he can take you in."

Qin Sheng kept a fairly tight rein on his servants. The five women weren't driven away or treated violently. Instead, they were led aside to wait for Qin Sheng to return and decide what to do.

Half an hour later, Qin Sheng returned from outside. Seeing several unfamiliar women in the residence, he looked puzzled and asked the steward, "What's going on? Why have these women come here?"

"Master, here's what happened..." The steward recounted the whole story to Qin Sheng.

Qin Sheng listened, his face full of disbelief.

He muttered to himself, "The bandits of Wolf Cave Mountain had a Breath-Connecting Realm leader and more than a dozen Bone Binding fighters, yet they were wiped out overnight? I wonder what kind of people those two young heroes are!"

"Young Master Qin, the two young heroes were a man and a woman. They didn't seem very old." One of the women, eager to make herself useful, offered him this crucial detail.

"A man and a woman... A man and a woman!" Qin Sheng seemed to realize something. He paused, then looked at the woman who had spoken.

Qin Sheng immediately said, "Don't mention this to anyone. Don't tell anyone else about those two young heroes, and don't reveal anything about them to anyone.

"Whether you live or die depends on this. Do you understand?"

Seeing how serious Qin Sheng was, the woman was badly frightened. She silently nodded.

Qin Sheng didn't really want to concern himself with such trifles. That sort of thing could be left to the servants.

"All right, Uncle Li. Find out which of the military households under our jurisdiction still have unmarried men. Also ask these women their ages. If their ages are a good match, make arrangements for them."

He was secretly pleased. "Lin Xuan... You've given me quite a surprise. You haven't been practicing martial arts for long, yet you can already kill someone in the Breath-Connecting Realm?

"You're vicious, too. You killed every last one of those bandits. How did you manage it?"

What Qin Sheng pictured now wasn't Lin Xuan slaughtering the bandits' lair. Instead, he remembered the awkward boy from nearly two months ago, who had fired several arrows without hitting the Pheasant King once.

Commander Zhang had been in a foul mood lately. Only in the past few days had he realized that the bandits of Wolf Cave Mountain, whom he had allowed to run free, hadn't paid him their customary tribute in quite some time.

He sent someone to investigate. Only then did he understand what had happened.

"Commander Zhang, pretty much the entire stronghold on Wolf Cave Mountain burned down. Only the storehouse escaped the fire, but all the grain inside was carried off. The bandits have vanished without a trace. We couldn't even find all the bodies.

"That boy in his teens, the one with Eidetic Memory, is also missing. We don't know whether he's alive or dead."

"So he's 'alive or dead,' is he? That means he's dead!" Commander Zhang had been struggling to hold back his anger. Those people weren't merely bandits.

The bandit chief Xiao Chongyang was his brother-in-law, and he brought in a sizable sum of illicit income every year. His unusually gifted nephew also had a limitless future if he pursued a career in literature.

But now they had been killed, and he didn't even know who the culprit was. Worse, he couldn't report the matter to the authorities.

"Who burned down Wolf Cave Mountain?"

Whoever had done it probably hadn't come for money. After all, how much silver could one small bandit stronghold yield? Someone with that kind of ability could make far more money elsewhere.

They must have come for revenge.

He went over everyone he'd made enemies with over the years, again and again, but he still couldn't figure out who had done it.

The name "Lin Xuan" flashed through his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. Lin Xuan was only a Bone Binding fighter. No matter how astonishing his martial talent was, could he really wipe out a Breath-Connecting Realm fighter and more than a dozen Bone Binding fighters after barely two months of training?

Besides, the job had been done without leaving a trace. If any bodies had remained, he could have examined their wounds to determine whether the culprit had used an official saber or a weapon from the martial world.

But now, most of the bandits had been burned to ashes. He couldn't find the slightest clue.

If Lin Xuan really had done this, it would be too horrifying to contemplate. Could a fifteen-year-old boy actually have pulled all this off?

It was beyond anything he could comprehend.

Two days later, one of his subordinates brought him a new piece of information: Xiao Chongyang's body had been found on Rou Mountain. It was in a terrible state, but his identity could still be made out.

After turning it over in his mind, Commander Zhang decided that his enemy must be in the Thousand-Household Office—in other words, a resident of Liang City.

He couldn't help growing nervous. Now that the other party had cut away his wings, would he be next?