Harvest

"Phew! Even a martial arts master was still nothing more than flesh and blood!"

Chen Fan turned, grabbed the steel saber that had fallen beside him, and gave Brother Biao and Pi Liu another slash each!

Quite a few of the people Yuan Kuanglin had killed nearby had also been wounded by blades. Clearly, Yuan Kuanglin had snatched weapons at random and cut them down. Their deaths came in all manner of grotesque forms, so Chen Fan felt safe enough to finish them off.

He then arranged the two corpses to look as though they had been trying to flee.

Only after confirming that neither the two of them nor any of those lying nearby had survived did Chen Fan let out a breath. Yet he had no time to relax. Summoning his courage, he headed straight for Yuan Kuanglin's corpse not far away.

Despite being grievously wounded, this fellow had slaughtered dozens of people in mere minutes. He had been like a demon god.

"This man was called Yuan Kuanglin, a sixth-realm martial arts expert..."

Chen Fan still remembered the man's dying roar.

Greed surged within him.

He immediately stepped forward and began searching the corpse.

Chen Fan was bold yet meticulous. After searching the body, he carefully restored the clothing to its original state and did not linger any longer!

He did not even search the other corpses.

He immediately vaulted away, silently vanishing into the darkness.

Less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea after Chen Fan left, a group carrying torches rushed into the area beneath the night sky.

After washing the blood from his body at home, Chen Fan burned his bloodstained clothes to ashes and threw them into the latrine. Only then did he quietly return to his little room with the treasures he had found on the corpse.

Only now did Chen Fan have the chance to look at the prompt that had appeared before him again.

[You used Tiger Fist in actual combat, comprehended Tiger Intent, and comprehended the sixth form of Tiger Fist.]

Chen Fan froze.

He knew that Tiger Fist was a martial arts foundation technique for training strength, and it had only five forms. Yet after using it once in actual combat, he had actually conjured a sixth form out of thin air!

Seeing the progress of Tiger Fist, which had already completed its cultivation, change once more before him, Chen Fan felt an indescribable emotion well up inside him.

Tiger Fist was a basic martial art used to temper the body. Naturally, the more levels it had, the better!

Unfortunately, Chen Fan already had three martial arts hanging up for automatic training. Even if Tiger Fist broke through, he could not hang it up for now, so he temporarily calmed his mind.

He examined the items taken from Yuan Kuanglin.

There was not much.

A waist pouch, and a black ring threaded on a cord and worn around his neck.

Inside the pouch were a silver ingot, some loose silver, dry rations, and a few miscellaneous items.

There were no martial arts manuals, treasure maps, or anything of the sort Chen Fan had imagined, leaving him rather disappointed!

But then again, it made sense. How could someone like that carry martial arts manuals on him every day?

Even Chen Fan had burned his manuals long ago after unlocking several martial arts!

Chen Fan shook his head and picked up the ring Yuan Kuanglin had left behind, his heart filled with curiosity.

"This was clearly a ring, yet Yuan Kuanglin had threaded it onto a cord and worn it as a necklace. He obviously didn't want anyone to see it. It shouldn't be anything ordinary..."

He rubbed the ring back and forth, but found no unusual changes.

The ring was black and of the most ordinary design—plain and unadorned, without a single pattern.

"Could it be some kind of treasure that requires blood to recognize its master?"

Chen Fan immediately pricked his finger, but the blood did not seep into the ring at all, instead sliding right off its surface.

Chen Fan shook his head. He studied it for a while longer, yet still discovered nothing.

Lying on his bed, he could not make heads or tails of it.

The dark clouds outside that had covered the moon drifted away, and moonlight shone through the window into the room, falling right onto Chen Fan.

Then Chen Fan noticed that the black ring in his hand had begun to glow faintly, shimmering with a hazy radiance.

Chen Fan abruptly sat up.

He observed it for quite some time.

"This ring seems to be absorbing the moon's radiance?"

Just as Chen Fan had returned home and destroyed all the evidence.

Countless torches lit up the night with a scorching brilliance.

You Shahu narrowed his eyes as he looked at the devastation covering the ground and sighed softly.

A man dressed like a scholarly gentleman in blue said, "Gang Leader! We have found Yuan Kuanglin's corpse. He truly did not escape! It is just a pity about our brothers..."

You Shahu looked at Yuan Kuanglin's corpse, and a flicker of delight passed through his eyes before vanishing.

Then he frowned.

Yuan Kuanglin's body had been turned inside out, yet after his death, not a single valuable item had been left behind.

You Shahu frowned and said:

"How could there be such a coincidence in this world? It would not have been difficult for our brothers to take down a gravely wounded and dying Yuan Kuanglin, but I do not believe that before dying, he just happened to kill every last one of our men and perish together with them... And Yuan Kuanglin was a sixth-realm martial artist. How could he not even have traveling money on him? How could it all be so coincidental?"

The surrounding gang members were all stunned. The blue-robed scholar could not help asking, "Gang Leader, you mean..."

You Shahu tilted his head, straightened up, and his eyes filled with icy severity. "Bring me every coroner in Flying Spirit County! I want to know the cause of death for everyone! Also, detain the group that discovered the scene first and interrogate them. Find out whether any of those bastards... took something they should not have taken!"

Two days later.

Black Tiger Gang stronghold.

Morgue.

"My lord, this is the rebel's corpse!"

As the gang leader, You Shahu respectfully led a young man inside.

The young man was slender and wore a silver half-mask.

If the Black Tiger Gang's members, or the people of Flying Spirit County's great clans, saw this scene, their jaws would surely drop.

You Shahu was not the strongest person in Flying Spirit County. Every great clan had people stronger than him. Yet anyone who could make him so respectful, whom he addressed as "my lord," could never be from Flying Spirit County!

A stone bed stood in the center of the morgue. Upon it lay a burly corpse—it was none other than Yuan Kuanglin!

At the sight of Yuan Kuanglin's corpse, a flash of delight passed through the young man's eyes.

Then he looked toward the other side, where a table stood piled with clothing and other miscellaneous items. He stepped forward to inspect them, then turned to You Shahu.

"These are all the things Yuan Kuanglin had on him?"

You Shahu nodded in confirmation.

The young man shook his head. Apart from clothing, handkerchiefs, and other personal belongings, there was nothing else.

He walked over to Yuan Kuanglin's corpse again. A crescent-shaped curved blade in his hand sliced through the air, gleaming like flowing light.

Sss! Sss!

Countless bloody lines suddenly appeared across Yuan Kuanglin's bronze-colored corpse. In the blink of an eye, it was carved into countless chunks of flesh and blood.

As a sixth-realm martial arts expert, Yuan Kuanglin's body had been extremely tough, like cowhide, yet he had been so easily dismembered completely!

You Shahu's eyes were filled with shock as he watched the scene.

The young man reached out without the slightest concern and searched through the flesh and blood. After a long while, he shook his head. "There is nothing unusual about the body either. It is said that Yuan Kuanglin obtained the inheritance of the Star Demon Sect. How could he have left nothing behind..."

Gurgle, gurgle.

Blood continuously flowed down along the edges of the stone bed.

Looking at the countless pieces of flesh on the stone bed, even You Shahu, a man who killed without batting an eye, felt some mental and physical discomfort at such a sight.

"Could Yuan Kuanglin have known someone was coming after him and hidden the items in advance?"

The young man muttered to himself. After a long while, he turned to You Shahu. "Are you certain... none of your men kept anything they should not have?"

Cold sweat streamed down You Shahu's forehead. "My lord, I have investigated several times. There truly was nothing. However..."

"I had the county's coroners examine the bodies of my dead brothers and found some clues. Among those brothers of mine who perished together with Yuan Kuanglin, the wounds on two of the corpses differed from those on the others. There were traces of a third party making a move against them..."