As the door was blasted to pieces, the dead silence and darkness within the room were ruthlessly torn apart by moonlight from outside.
Amid the swirling dust and wood splinters, a man clad in black light armor slowly emerged.
Lean and capable, with eyes as sharp as a hawk's, he was Lu Chen, trusted deputy of Black-Armor Army Thousand Commander Tu Gang.
At that moment, Lu Chen held level a strictly controlled military killing weapon—the Armor-Piercing Repeating Crossbow.
Its mechanism had already been cocked, and three refined steel bolts glinting with ghostly white poison-light were locked firmly on Chen Jing's brow.
"Back on the city wall during the day, that thunderous display of yours was certainly impressive."
Lu Chen's gaze was icy, as though he were looking at a corpse gradually turning cold. "But a place like the Canglan Sect could never teach someone how to forge their five viscera and six bowels into raw iron."
"The Da Gan military's secret Gold-Swallowing Organ-Shaking Technique—stealing it is a grave crime punishable by extermination of nine clans!"
Facing the poison crossbow at such close range, capable of piercing iron armor with a single pull of the trigger, Chen Jing did not even blink. Not only was he not alarmed, he calmly set the wooden case in his left hand firmly on the table beside him.
"Extermination of nine clans?"
Chen Jing flicked away the wood dust on his clothes, his tone brimming with undisguised mockery. "You losers who lost the battle are certainly quicker at pinning labels on people than you are with the blades in your hands."
Chen Jing then tilted his head slightly, looking past the crossbow bolts and meeting Lu Chen's gaze. "If the Thousand Commander truly intended to punish me, this courtyard would have been surrounded by riflemen