34 The Fishnet is Set, the Swan is Caught

The guards of the He Family walked down the damp, muddy slope of the mountain path. Surrounded by lush trees and wild grass, the only break in the greenery was a narrow trail worn into the earth by passing hunters and woodcutters, winding its way downward.

A few bearers carried a soft-topped sedan chair, their footsteps heavy as they traversed the path. The procession seemed like a silent tomb, not a soul uttering a word throughout the journey.

Strangely, everyone from the He Mansion—bearers, guards, and servants alike—wore a faint, ashen pallor. They were all tight-lipped and silent, utterly devoid of the vitality one would expect from the living.

The sedan chair had just been carried down the slope and onto a narrow mountain pass when the unexpected struck—

With a sudden, thunderous bang, several smoke bombs detonated ahead, billowing out thick clouds of colorful smoke.

As the smoke rose, the sound of arrows whistling through the air erupted from the trees on both sides of the path.

It turned out that the archers hiding on either side had used the colored smoke as a signal. A sharp, rushing sound filled the pass as hundreds of arrows streaked through the wind, slamming into the ground in front of the sedan chair with a rhythmic thud-thud-thud that formed a solid wall of wood and steel.

The guards surrounding the chair were struck by multiple arrows, pinned to the ground like hedgehogs. Others had their limbs pierced through, struggling and twitching on the earth.

It was a silent slaughter. The many guards in front of the chair had no time to draw their blades or flee; they didn't even have time to cry out before the sheer force of the arrows cut them down in an instant.

The archers in the trees continued to draw their bows, raining down a storm of shafts. The soft-topped sedan chair—the very spot where He Ping was located—was riddled with countless arrows, turning it into a giant pincushion.

Sharp, wolf-tooth arrows whistled in. The soft-topped chair, lacking any iron plating to deflect the projectiles, became like a water skin punctured with a thousand holes. At this point, even if an iron man had been sitting inside, there would have been no hope of survival.

"Kill!"

Xiao Hao drew the beast-faced axe from his waist, raised it with one arm, and let out a roar from his vantage point.

Instantly, the members of the Long Wind Society who had been lying in ambush on both sides swarmed out like a disturbed hive.

No matter how elite the He Family guards were, they had been caught off guard by the volley of arrows and suffered heavy casualties. Once surrounded by the Long Wind Society, they were subjected to a brutal, desperate slaughter.

"Get out of the way."

Yan the Second, a "fierce general" of the Long Wind Society, charged forward wielding a horse-chopping saber. He moved like swirling clouds and wind, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

The smoke was sliced apart, and blades severed heads. A guard nearby tried to close in, but before his sword was even half-drawn, a wolf-tooth arrow fired by an elite archer in the trees pierced his forehead.

"Kill them! Kill them all! Remember, don't let a single one escape."

"Smiling Leopard" Xiao Hao held a pair of axes, laughing heartily, his face twisted into a grin that looked like that of a malevolent ghost.

He swung his axes in a wide arc, and with every sweep, several figures were hacked in two. In the blink of an eye, the mountain path turned into a Shura field, with scene after scene of horrific slaughter playing out.

Moments later, the path was littered with corpses, the ground soaked in blood—a sight too gruesome to behold. Not a single servant or guard from the He Family remained alive. The Long Wind Society had wiped them out, root and branch.

"Everyone, remember to tidy up the bodies. Dig a pit and bury them all. Make sure this is done cleanly."

As Xiao Hao ordered his men to dig the pit, he walked quickly toward the sedan chair, which was bristling with a dense forest of arrow shafts.

It had to be said, this ambush had gone far too smoothly. Even an old hand like Xiao Hao felt it had been almost too easy. He needed to confirm whether He Ping was truly dead inside.

"This broken chair has been shot to pieces. Any living soul inside would have been a target, shot into a human porcupine..."

A cold sneer curled Xiao Hao's lips. He reached out to lift the sedan curtain, but at that very instant, a strange hand shot out from within and clamped firmly onto his throat.

The hand was carved from wood. With a palm-up motion, its fingers gripped the "Smiling Leopard's" neck like iron pincers. Had it been anyone else, their eyes would have popped and their bones would have snapped instantly.

Fortunately, Xiao Hao possessed innate, monstrous strength. He gripped the wooden fingers with one hand while swinging his axe toward the interior of the chair with the other.

The "Smiling Leopard's" reaction speed was incredibly fast. Xiao Hao was a master of the axe, having studied under the Cuiyue Sect of Wuding Mountain at Qinggeng Peak, where he learned the "Mountain Crushing Break," a unique art of blade and axe. This strike, "Armor-Splitting Ding-Puller," was ferocious and immensely powerful.

Yet, as the axe wind whistled down, it didn't slice through the curtain. Instead, it struck something as hard as refined steel or solid rock, the recoil causing the webbing between Xiao Hao's thumb and forefinger to split.

"What... what is this?"

His eyes widened. Another wooden arm emerged from behind the curtain, intercepting his axe. Those fingers, clearly carved from wood, possessed a destructive force harder than gold or iron. With a sharp twist, the axe blade shattered with a loud boom.

"What... are... you..."

"Smiling Leopard" Xiao Hao's eyes bulged, his face turning a deep, bruised purple. He released the axe handle and clawed desperately at the wooden palm that remained unmoved on his throat. Then, with a slight exertion of force from the hand, the man's neck snapped like dry wood with a loud crack.

"Boss Xiao is dead!!!"

Yan the Second's eyes went wide, and the surrounding gang members were stunned. No one could have imagined that a top-tier figure in the martial world like "Smiling Leopard" Xiao Hao would die here.

With a series of strange, clicking sounds of wooden joints shifting, the sedan curtain was pulled wide open, and a grotesque figure stepped out.

"What... what is that?"

Panic erupted among the crowd.

The thing that emerged from the soft-topped sedan was an alien-like monstrosity. It had a human head, but no facial features.

The creature's body was made of wood. It hunched over, back arched, and with a light wave of its hand, it tossed Xiao Hao's lifeless corpse aside. Four long arms with spherical joints hung down from its torso.

"...A spider demon? Is this a spider demon?"

Yan the Second's voice cracked. He couldn't fathom what this thing was. The monster had four arms and four legs, resembling a half-human, half-spider abomination.

"Help... help me!!!"

Suddenly, a cry rang out from the side.

It was a member of the Long Wind Society who had been assigned to dig in the nearby dense forest. He was running toward them, his face twisted in terror.

"Save me, those corpses..."

Just as the man shouted for help, something reached out from the pitch-black forest and grabbed him by the chin.

It was a human hand, the skin covered in livid, deathly spots.

The man let out a piercing shriek. In an instant, several ghastly pale hands reached out from the pitch-black void behind him, seizing his shoulders and wrists before dragging him into the darkness in the blink of an eye.

"Aaaaaaaah!"

The man screamed in agony, and soon, the sound of crunching and gnawing echoed from the dense, dark forest.

The members of the Changfeng Gang were already panicking. No one knew what was happening in those woods, but moments later, a pale, bloodless face emerged from the shadows.

"That... that's a guard from the He Mansion."

Someone recognized it—a face split clean in two. Then, the owner of that face, a man wearing a guard's uniform with a severed arm and a dragging, crippled leg, stepped out from the thicket.

Behind him, several more walking corpses shuffled out, their mouths chewing on flesh. One of them held a thigh covered in teeth marks.

The man with a blood-smeared mouth opened his jaws wide, his bloodshot eyes staring fixedly at the crowd.

The members of the Changfeng Gang stood frozen, their mouths agape, their bodies stiff with terror.

"Ghosts!"

Someone screamed, and the men drew their weapons again, realizing that more figures were slowly emerging from the trees.

What was even more terrifying was that the corpses of the guards and servants that hadn't been dragged away—those with severed limbs and eviscerated guts—were struggling to crawl up from the ground.

The scene turned grim and eerie as the multitude of corpses, like puppets on strings, were hoisted up by an invisible force, reaching out with sharp claws toward the gang members.

"What, what are these things?"

Yan the Second's throat tightened, his voice strained with panic.

"Archers! What are the archers doing?"

The archers stationed on both flanks were silent, as if they had vanished into thin air. The forest remained deathly quiet, an unnerving stillness hanging in the air.

"The net is cast for the swan, yet the swan is caught within; the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. Schemes within schemes, changes upon changes—what worth is your petty cunning now..."

Suddenly, a raspy, bizarre voice drifted from nowhere.

Yan the Second felt a jolt of alarm. He looked up, his eyes widening in disbelief. High above the mountain path, a figure in black robes seemed to hang in the void. Countless shadow-like threads radiated from this center, crisscrossing in the air to weave a massive web.

Only when Yan the Second looked up did he realize that his own archers had been bound by these threads and hoisted into the air, like prey caught in a giant trap.

The black-robed figure, wearing a ghost mask, perched in the center of this eerie web like a monstrous spider, plucking at the threads with his fingertips and toying with everyone below.

"As the saying goes, 'Man hunts the tiger, but the tiger hunts man.' You have exhausted your schemes, and now the time has come to pay the price."

The black-robed figure let out a cold laugh. With a flick of his ten fingers, a brutal and bloody slaughter was about to begin.