A Horse Won't Grow Fat Without Night Fodder

Amid a crackling barrage,

the partition behind him was smashed open into a huge hole.

As the wooden wall finally gave way, Su Xinghe crashed through it, knocking over a weapons rack leaning against the other side. Dust billowed everywhere, and the compartment was instantly reduced to a complete mess.

"My spear!"

The sword relied on nimbleness; he could only break skill with brute force!

Enduring the aches all over his body, he tossed aside his steel saber and quickly grabbed the twelve-foot spear wrapped in hemp rope.

"Crash!"

But before he could rise, a figure in a tube top and short skirt burst through the gap in the blasted wooden wall.

Su Xinghe had long expected her to follow, but he had not expected her to come so quickly.

In his haste, he reached into his waist pouch and flung out a large handful of lime powder.

"Whoosh!"

At some point, a half-door had appeared in the ponytailed girl's hand. Standing on the other side of the hole in the wall, she used it to block the incoming lime powder and chili dust.

"Brat, I was guarding against that trick of yours!"

The chili-lime powder rebounded off the door, scattering clouds of dust through the small storeroom.

"Cough, cough, cough!"

"Cough, cough, cough..."

His eyes were instantly burned by the lime powder, and boundless pain flooded in. It felt as though a fire had been lit in his nose; every breath was like steel blades scraping through him.

Su Xinghe had never imagined that his own hidden weapon would be so formidable.

Just as his eyes stung and his breathing grew labored,

a crisp laugh rang out in the darkness.

"Hehehe... How fun~"

"Ding!"

The shrill whistle of a sword tearing through the air suddenly rose again, and an intense sense of danger stabbed straight at his heart.

"Not good!"

Sword Qi descended.

Ignoring the stabbing pain in his eyes, Su Xinghe gripped his spear until it creaked.

He knew this might be his final strike.

A hunched figure quietly appeared at the doorway to the minor leader's room in the darkness.

His legs were bent, his back bowed, and one hand braced against his knee. He was a cripple.

Without a sound, the hunched figure quickly shuffled to Li Tiebang's bedside.

A kitchen cleaver polished to a gleaming shine appeared in his hand.

Then he sprang up fiercely and chopped hard at the ponytailed girl's back.

At that moment, his waist was no longer hunched, and his legs stretched straight. Like a leopard concealed in the grass, he pounced upon his prey like lightning.

Only when the cleaver was about to land on her back did Qingmei, a ninth-rank martial artist, react.

Her waist suddenly became incomparably supple. The sword that had originally been aimed at Su Xinghe stabbed out from beneath her other arm, while her entire upper body spun one hundred and eighty degrees with it.

"Smack!"

But Qingmei's sword was still one step too late. The gleaming cleaver had already slashed viciously into her fair, towering twin peaks.

"Pfft!"

A tenth of a breath later, the longsword pierced the attacker's heart.

Looking at the untouched peak beneath the cleaver, a deep helplessness rose in the old cripple's heart.

In the end, he had been nothing more than an ordinary man all his life.

A martial artist—perhaps that had only been an ignorant dream muttered in his youth.

He had chased it all his life, only to gain a body full of old wounds.

He cast one deep glance toward the weapons warehouse. In the pitch-black darkness, there was only heavy, urgent breathing.

He knew his companion was searching for an opportunity to strike, for a death-defying blow against a powerful enemy.

In a daze,

a long-lost heat from his youth surged through the old cripple's body. Back then, he had still been able to fight bathed in blood alongside his companions.

What a wonderful feeling...

"Blackie, kill!"

With the sword in his chest, he threw himself with all his strength at the ninth-rank martial artist before him.

Qingmei froze.

She wanted to pull back her longsword, but the distance between them did not allow it. She wanted to dodge aside, but the old man's desperate charge blocked her front, while walls hemmed her in on both sides.

Caught off guard, she was shoved backward into that pitch-black hole in the wall.

At the moment of despair, Su Xinghe suddenly heard a familiar shout.

This was the coordination cry most commonly used by Great River Gang disciples in battle. After half a year, he had become incomparably familiar with it.

The target was ahead, roughly five body-lengths away.

Though he could not see, the instinct forged through countless bouts of cooperation remained.

The spear that had long been gathering force in his hand shot forward fiercely.

"Pfft!"

The resistance was somewhat strong, as though he had pierced a great shield of oxhide.

"Crack!"

That was the sound of ribs breaking and caving in.

She was only a ninth-rank martial artist who had tempered her skin and membranes, not yet begun bone-forging. Otherwise, this spear thrust would only have gotten stuck against her ribs.

At that moment, Qingmei's flamboyant momentum swiftly deflated like a punctured leather ball.

"Am I going to die?"

She had only seen life and death in those storybooks.

Legend had it that it was the most sorrowful parting in the human world.

She would only allow herself to wither at her most radiant and magnificent moment.

Never silently, in this stench-filled warehouse, together with a hulking man she had never met and had thrown lime powder at, and a cripple so old he was nearly toothless.

She glared with her beautiful eyes wide, her gaze filled with disbelief.

At last, her body tilted, and she fell back through the hole in the partition onto the bed in the room.

"Gurgle, gurgle..."

Crimson blood sprayed from her wound, splashing across the face of the minor leader Li Tiebang, whose eyes remained open in death.

Their worlds had been different, yet both were frozen together in that little dark room before dawn.

"Kill!"

Fierce sounds of fighting came from outside the warehouse.

Panting heavily, Su Xinghe poked his head through the hole in the wall. The fresh air helped calm his mind, and he slowly opened his eyes.

Three people lay on the bed before him, one of whom was still struggling to breathe.

"Uncle Cripple..."

He swiftly climbed over the wall, and his hands were immediately covered in scorching, slick blood.

"There's no saving him..."

The old cripple looked at the longsword embedded in his chest. The hot blood and passion rapidly faded from his body.

"No..."

Su Xinghe could no longer hold back his tears. He tried desperately to keep himself from crying aloud.

"Blackie... you're a good man!"

After forcing out those words, a great rush of bright red blood poured from the old cripple's mouth.

With difficulty, he raised a hand and pointed overhead.

"Run. Help us live well..."

"..."

With a "thud," his arm dropped limply.

"Uncle..."

Suppressing his grief, Su Xinghe stood up.

Over the past half year, too many companions had already left his side.

Listening to the waves of slaughter and screams outside, he wiped away his tears.

Time was pressing. Uncle Cripple was right.

He had to leave this place quickly.

Picking up his spear, he quickly poked around the ponytailed girl's corpse a few times. Her tight short skirt was completely clean inside, and he found nothing at all.

He could only turn his attention to minor leader Li Tiebang and hurriedly search him.

This time, the haul was decent: over a dozen taels of loose silver and several copper coins.

Just as Su Xinghe was about to leave, the corner of his eye caught the ponytailed girl's round, straight legs, along with the tall leather boots covering them.

She was a ninth-rank martial artist. He did not believe she would leave home without any money on her.

Enduring the sharp, sour stench assaulting his nose, he bent down.

Sure enough, his fingers felt a hard lump.

"Got something!"

With a hard tug from both hands, three banknotes and a copper plaque emerged from a hidden layer inside the boot shaft.

But the moment he saw that copper plaque, he nearly jumped.

He hurriedly stuffed it back in.

The wails and fighting in the hall gradually died down.

There was no thunder of muskets, only the sounds of steel sabers chopping into flesh, rising and falling one after another.

He could not leave through the main gate, and he could not get to the rear courtyard.

Su Xinghe climbed onto a weapons rack in the small warehouse and thrust his spear up, punching through the roof.

It was not that he did not want to help resist, but the enemy was simply too dangerous to provoke.

He swiftly climbed onto the warehouse roof, then leapt down outside.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the alley,

while the cries of battle behind him gradually faded into the distance.

When he looked back again, he saw flames soaring into the sky in the direction of Eight-Zhang Street.

Beside the Central River at the border between the city's south and west districts,

Su Xinghe sat on a river landing used for washing clothes and rinsing rice, carefully cleaning the bloodstains and wounds on his body.

Thanks to his improved "battle robe," he had only suffered a few shallow cuts.

But at this time, he could not return to Tongzi Ward, much less go inspect the Great River Gang's site.

A red lotus!

That ponytailed girl had actually possessed a copper plaque identifying her as a transmission disciple of the Red Lotus branch of the Peaceful Heaven Sect.

Su Xinghe did not know why the Peaceful Heaven Sect had ambushed Veteran's Trade House, but he knew this secret could only rot in the depths of his heart.

His escape alive this time had been bought with Uncle Cripple's life.

He could only wait until dawn and see what happened next.

If the Great River Gang was gone after this battle, his whole family might even have to move somewhere else.

Though he had hidden his personal information well, it would be useless before a great power.

After all, on the third floor of the trade house last time, the old gang leader had already laid out every detail of his family background.

Most crucially, he had killed one of their transmission disciples.

He touched the three banknotes in his chest, and his desire to move grew ever stronger. Seven hundred taels should be enough to buy a small courtyard in the city.

Sure enough, wealth had to be sought amid danger!

Something wriggled in his chest.

A small pink head slowly poked out.

Tonight had frightened it terribly. It had kept hidden beneath his clothes and dared not show itself. Only now, sensing that the surroundings were safe, did it realize its owner had not fed it yet.

Just as Su Xinghe hid by the riverbank "feeding milk,"

Lu Zhengquan, the Lin County deputy magistrate clad in an eighth-rank Steed Robe, wore a dark expression.

Before he had even had time to comb his hair, his nephew had dragged him out of his concubine's bed.

His belly was full of waking rage, along with a belly full of questions.

His temper was blazing.

"You went and made such a huge spectacle out of killing a few old eighth-ranks with one foot already in the coffin!"

"And you even left Old Third's dowry maid dead over there!"

"She was..."

"Whose rotten idea was this?"

With every roar, the overwhelming aura of a seventh-rank Force Transformation martial master pressed everyone until they could barely breathe.

Because of his position, he had not taken part in this operation.

And because of his position, he had received the news first and taken on this mess concerning the Lineage's development.

After a long while,

the dozen or so men in black kneeling on the ground finally replied tremblingly:

"Mi... my lord, it was... Miss Qingmei..."

The moment Lu Zhengquan heard that, his fury surged even higher. He raised a foot and kicked the man who had spoken.

"Why don't you all just die?!"

In terms of status, the slain Qingmei had been the same as Hongxiu, the Third Master's concubine. Though their mistress had already been stripped of her imperial title, she had still once been a commandery princess.

The web of connections in her hands was something the entire martial world of the Great Zhou Dynasty coveted but could never obtain.

Now, less than two months after her arrival, one of them had died. It might have a tremendous impact on the cooperation between both sides going forward.

And that was an outcome the entire Lu Family did not wish to see.

Seeing his companion kicked until blood flowed from his nose and mouth, barely clinging to life, someone beside him begged:

"Mercy, my lord! Everything was normal this time. It was Miss Qingmei's side—someone discovered our ambush beforehand and cried out a warning..."

"Who noticed something was wrong?"

"Seems like it was a cripple. Miss Qingmei died together with him."

"Fuck! The Great River Gang has a cripple in the Ninth Grade Realm?"

"Could that gang of Head-Chopping Bandits have come down from the mountains again?"

"What the hell are those people from the Martial Dao Bureau doing? They actually let wanted criminals enter the city!"

The Head-Chopping Bandits specialized in chopping off Lu Family heads, and every time they fought as though they would rather die together with their enemies. Whenever something went wrong, he instinctively thought of those fierce bandits.

"Right, did you bring the goods back?"

At that, the black-robed burly men kneeling on the ground trembled even more violently.

"Useless trash!"

"A whole pack of useless trash!"

"You can all wait to have your heads chopped off!"

"Get lost! The whole city is about to be searched!"

He cursed them, but he knew the Lu Family truly could not do without these gang leaders. Outsiders only saw the splendor of the Lu Family's grandmasters, but that splendor had been supported by the entire Lin County.

As the county lieutenant in charge of city defense, he knew what awaited these people next.

He immediately waved them away.

This batch of goods had only been acquired through cooperation with that commandery princess. Last time, they had thought it was at the Qian Family Trading Company. The Lu Family had reacted quickly, yet they still found nothing.

Who would have thought there would be nothing at Veteran's Trade House either, and that they would even lose an important person there?

In truth, it did not matter if the other side lost someone. As long as they obtained the goods, they could answer to Qingzhou Academy.

But they had never expected both operations to end empty-handed.

Could that gang of Head-Chopping Bandits have acted in the shadows again?

But his reach still could not extend into the Bandit Suppression Bureau...

Looking at the empty secret chamber, Lu Zhengquan sank into thought.

The Lu Family was indeed half the sky over Lin County, but Lin County had another half of the sky.

The Martial Dao Bureau oversaw all under heaven. Though they were a family of grandmasters, their reach had only just touched the lowest-level public security offices.

Tonight's operation had been a complete and utter defeat.

Not only had it delayed the breakthrough of that Qilin child of his family, it had also alerted the Martial Dao Bureau.

Even the clue they had originally seized had been cut off.

After tonight, the Inspection Bureau would certainly intervene in the investigation.

The Lu Family did not even have time to cover its tracks. How could they search for new clues?

Dawn was just beginning to break.

Early-rising vendors had started appearing on the streets.

In the bustling district south of the city, a pastry stall stood at the entrance to an alley along the street.

Several old men sat around a table, holding bowls of soy milk as they murmured with their heads lowered.

"Those demon-worshippers from the Peaceful Heaven Sect are truly cruel!"

"That scene... they say the corpses covered the entire alley."

"The county office has already raised the reward to a hundred taels of silver per head. I wonder who will become the lucky one."

"Quiet! The government's pursuit has not stopped. Those Peaceful Heaven Sect thieves may be nearby..."

One of them suddenly changed expression.

"I'm finished eating. Enjoy yourselves."

At a table on the other side, Su Xinghe drained his noodle soup in one gulp. Having heard what he wanted, he called out to the busy owner:

"Boss, bring me another basket of meat buns. I'm taking them away."

"How much altogether?"

"Right away, sir. That'll be eight cash!"