Amid a crackling barrage,
the partition behind him was smashed open with a huge hole.
As the wooden wall gave way under the strain, Su Xinghe crashed through and knocked over a weapon rack leaning against the other side. Dust billowed up, and the compartment was instantly thrown into disarray.
"My spear!"
The sword favored nimble grace; he could only break cleverness with brute force!
Enduring the aches all over his body, he tossed aside the steel saber and swiftly picked up the twelve-foot spear wrapped in hemp rope.
Crash!
Before he could even rise, a figure in a strapless short dress charged through the gap blasted open in the wooden wall.
Su Xinghe had expected his opponent to follow, but he had not expected her to arrive 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, she used it to block the lime powder and chili dust flying toward her.
"Stinking brat, I was already on guard against that trick!"
The chili-lime powder was blocked and rebounded, scattering great clouds of dust through the small storeroom.
Cough, cough, cough!
Cough, cough, cough...
His eyes were instantly seared by the lime powder, and boundless pain surged through him. It felt as though a fire had been lit inside his nose; every breath was like steel blades scraping through it.
Su Xinghe had never expected his own hidden weapon to be so formidable.
Just as his eyes stung and his breathing grew labored,
a crisp laugh rang out in the darkness.
"Hehehe... how fun~"
Clang!
The ear-piercing shriek of a sword tearing through the air suddenly rang out again, and an intense sense of danger stabbed straight at his heart.
"This is bad!"
Sword Qi descended.
Ignoring the pain in his eyes, Su Xinghe gripped the spear in his hand until it creaked.
He knew this might be his final strike.
A hunched figure quietly appeared in the darkness at the doorway to the little boss's room.
His legs were bent, his body bowed, one hand braced against his knee. He was a cripple.
Without making a sound, the hunched figure swiftly shuffled to Li Tiebang's bedside.
A gleaming kitchen cleaver appeared in his hand.
Then he sprang up and brought it down viciously toward the ponytailed girl's back.
At that moment, his waist was no longer hunched, and his legs straightened taut. Like a cheetah hidden in the grass, he pounced upon his prey like lightning.
Only when the cleaver was about to fall upon her back did Qingmei, a Ninth-Rank Martial Warrior, react.
Her waist suddenly became incomparably supple. The sword that had been striking toward Su Xinghe thrust 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 a step too late. The gleaming cleaver had already hacked fiercely into her white, towering twin peaks.
Pfft!
A tenth of a breath later, the longsword pierced through the ambusher's heart.
Looking at the intact peaks beneath the cleaver, deep helplessness rose in Old Cripple's heart.
In the end, he had only ever been an ordinary man.
A martial warrior—perhaps that had merely been the ignorant ravings of his youth.
He had pursued it all his life, only to gain a body full of old wounds.
He cast one deep look toward the weapon storeroom. In the darkness, there was only heavy, hurried breathing.
He knew his comrade was seeking a chance to strike, preparing a death-defying blow against a powerful enemy.
In a daze,
a long-lost heat from his youth surged through Old Cripple's body. Back then, he had still been able to fight bathed in blood alongside his comrades.
What a wonderful feeling...
"Blackie, kill!"
With the sword still through his chest, he threw himself with all his strength at the Ninth-Rank Martial Warrior before him.
Qingmei froze.
She wanted to pull back her sword, but the distance between them did not allow it. She also wanted to dodge aside, but the old man's desperate lunge was before her, while walls blocked her on both sides.
Caught unprepared, she was shoved backward toward that pitch-black hole in the wall.
At the moment of despair, Su Xinghe suddenly heard a familiar shout.
It was the coordination cry most commonly used by Great River Gang disciples in battle. After half a year, he had become intimately familiar with it.
The target was ahead, about the distance of five bodies away.
Though he could not see, the instinct forged through countless coordinated battles remained.
The spear that had long been poised in his hand shot out violently.
Pfft!
The resistance was somewhat great, as though he had pierced a huge shield of cowhide.
Crack!
That was the sound of ribs breaking and caving in.
His opponent was only a Ninth-Rank Martial Warrior who had tempered skin and membranes, not yet begun Bone Forging. Otherwise, this thrust would have merely lodged against her ribs.
At that moment, Qingmei's flamboyant presence rapidly fell silent like a deflated ball.
"Am I going to die?"
She had only read about life and death in those storybooks.
Legend said it was the most mournful parting in the human world.
She would only allow herself to wither at her most radiant and magnificent moment.
Certainly not in obscurity, in this foul-smelling warehouse, alongside a burly man she had never met and had thrown lime powder at, and a cripple so old that nearly all his teeth had fallen out.
She glared with her beautiful eyes wide open, disbelief filling them.
At last, her body tipped sideways and fell back through the hole in the partition onto the bed in the room.
Gurgle, gurgle...
Crimson blood sprayed from her wound, splashing over the face of the little boss Li Tiebang, whose eyes had remained open in death.
Their worlds had been different, yet both became frozen together in that little dark room before dawn.
"Kill!"
Fierce sounds of fighting came from outside the storeroom.
Panting heavily, Su Xinghe poked his head through the hole in the wall. The fresh air gradually calmed his mind, and he slowly opened his eyes.
Three people lay on the bed before him, one of whom was still struggling to breathe.
"Cripple Uncle..."
He swiftly climbed over the wall, and his hands came away covered in scorching, slick blood.
"There's no saving him..."
Old Cripple looked at the sword lodged in his chest as the heat of blood and passion rapidly drained from his body.
"No..."
Su Xinghe could no longer hold back his tears. He tried his utmost to keep himself from crying aloud.
"Blackie... you're a good man!"
After forcing out those words, great gushes of bright blood poured from Old Cripple's mouth.
He raised a hand with difficulty and pointed upward.
"Run. Live well for us..."
"..."
With a soft thud, his arm dropped limply.
"Uncle..."
Suppressing his grief, Su Xinghe rose to his feet.
Over these past six months, too many comrades had already left his side.
Listening to the waves of slaughter and screams outside, he put away his tears.
Time was pressing. Cripple Uncle 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 dress was clean as a whistle inside, yielding nothing at all.
He could only turn his attention to the little boss Li Tiebang and hurriedly searched him once.
This haul was not bad. He got more than ten taels of loose silver and several copper coins.
Just as Su Xinghe was preparing to leave, the corner of his eye caught the ponytailed girl's rounded, straight legs and the tall leather boots covering them.
She was a Ninth-Rank Martial Warrior. He did not believe she had gone out without carrying money.
Suppressing the sharp, sour stench rushing up his nose, he bent down.
Sure enough, his fingers found a hard lump.
"There's something here!"
With a hard tug from both hands, three banknotes and a copper token appeared from a hidden layer inside the boot shaft.
But the moment he saw that copper token, he nearly jumped.
He hurriedly stuffed it back in.
The wails and fighting in the main hall gradually subsided.
There was no thunder of firearms, only the sounds of steel sabers chopping into flesh rising and falling one after another.
He could not use the main entrance, and he could not get to the rear courtyard.
Su Xinghe climbed onto a weapon rack in the small storeroom and thrust his spear through the roof with one strike.
It was not that he did not want to help resist; the enemy was simply too dangerous to provoke.
He swiftly climbed onto the storeroom roof, then leaped down outside.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the alley,
while the cries of battle behind him gradually faded away.
When he looked back again, he could see flames soaring into the sky in the direction of Eight-Zhang Street.
Beside the Central River at the border between the southern and western parts of the city,
Su Xinghe sat on a riverside 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 suffered only a few shallow cuts.
But at this time, he could not return to Tongzi Ward, much less go inspect the Great River Gang's scene.
A red lotus!
That ponytailed girl had actually carried the copper token of a transmitting disciple from the Red Lotus Branch of the Peaceful Heaven Sect.
Su Xinghe did not know why the Peaceful Heaven Sect had ambushed the Veteran's Trade House, but he knew that secret could only rot in his heart.
His escape alive this time had been bought with Cripple Uncle's life.
He could only wait until dawn and see what happened next.
If the Great River Gang was gone after this battle, his entire family might even have to move elsewhere.
Though he had hidden his personal information well, it would be useless before a great power.
After all, on the third floor of the Brokerage Guild last time, the old gang leader had laid out every detail of his family background.
Most crucially, he had killed one of their transmitting disciples.
Touching the three banknotes in his robes, his desire to move grew ever stronger. Seven hundred taels should be enough to buy a small courtyard in the city.
Sure enough, wealth and honor had to be sought amid danger!
Something wriggled in his arms.
A tiny pink little head slowly poked out.
Tonight had frightened it badly. It had kept hidden under his clothes, not daring to show itself. Only now that it sensed safety around them did it realize its master had not fed it yet.
Just as Su Xinghe hid by the river "feeding milk,"
Lin County's commandant, Lu Zhengquan, dressed in an Eighth-Rank Steed Robe, wore a dark expression.
Before he even had time to comb his hair, his nephew had dragged him here from his concubine's bed.
His belly was full of waking rage, along with a bellyful of confusion.
His temper was blazing.
"You killed a few old Eighth Ranks with one foot already in the grave, and you made such a huge mess of it!"
"And you even left the life of Old Third's dowry maid over there!"
"She was..."
"Whose rotten idea was this?"
With every roar, the powerful aura of a Seventh Rank Force Transformation martial master pressed down until no one could catch their breath.
Because of his position, he had not taken part in this operation.
And because of that same position, he had received the news first. He had also taken on this mess concerning the Lineage's development.
After a long while,
only then did the dozen or so black-clad men kneeling on the ground reply in trembling voices:
"Mi... my lord, it was... Miss Qingmei..."
The moment Lu Zhengquan heard that, his anger flared even hotter. He raised his foot and kicked the man who had spoken.
"Why don't you all just die?!"
In terms of status, the slain Qingmei was the same as Hongxiu, the Third Master's concubine. Although their mistress had been stripped of her royal title, she had once been a princess.
The network of connections in her hands was something the entire martial world of the Great Zhou Dynasty coveted with mouths watering, yet could never obtain.
Now, less than two months after arriving, one of them had died. It could greatly affect 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, leaving him barely alive, someone beside him begged for mercy.
"My lord, spare us! Everything was normal this time. But someone on Miss Qingmei's side noticed our ambush beforehand and cried out a warning..."
"Who noticed something was wrong?"
"Seemed to be a cripple. Miss Qingmei perished together with him."
"Damn it! The Great River Gang has a cripple in the Ninth Grade Realm?"
"Could those Head-Chopping Bandits have come down from the mountains again?"
"What the hell are those people at the Martial Dao Bureau doing? They actually let wanted criminals into the city!"
The Head-Chopping Bandits specialized in chopping off the heads of Lu Family members, and every time they fought with the reckless resolve to die together. Whenever anything went wrong, he instinctively thought of those savage bandits.
"Right, did you bring the goods back?"
At that, the black-robed burly men kneeling on the ground trembled even harder.
"Useless trash!"
"A whole pack of useless trash!"
"Just wait to have your heads chopped off!"
"Get lost! A citywide manhunt is about to begin!"
Though he cursed them, he knew the Lu Family truly could not do without these gang bosses. Outsiders only saw the splendor of the Lu Family Grandmaster, but that splendor was supported by the whole of 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 obtained through cooperation with that princess. Last time, they had thought it was at the Qian Family Trading Company. The Lu Family had reacted quickly enough, yet still gained nothing.
Who would have thought Veteran's Trade House would not have it 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 got the goods, they could answer to Qingzhou Academy.
But who could have imagined that both operations would return empty-handed?
Could those Head-Chopping Bandits have been secretly at work again?
But his hand had yet to reach into the Bandit Suppression Bureau...
Staring at the empty secret chamber, Lu Zhengquan sank into thought.
The Lu Family was indeed half the sky of Lin County, but Lin County still had another half of the sky.
The Martial Dao Bureau oversaw the realm. Though they were a Grandmaster lineage, their reach had only just touched the lowest-level Public Security Office.
Tonight's operation had been a complete and utter defeat.
Not only had it delayed the breakthrough of their family's young qilin, it had also alerted the Martial Dao Bureau.
Even the lead they had previously 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 leads?
Dawn's light was faintly breaking.
Early-rising vendors began appearing on the streets.
In the bustling district south of the city, a pastry stall stood at the entrance to an alley along the road.
Several old men sat around a table, holding bowls of soy milk as they bent their heads and whispered.
"Those demonic fiends of the Peaceful Heaven Sect are truly cruel!"
"That scene—supposedly, corpses covered the entire alley."
"The county office's bounty has already risen to a hundred taels of silver per head. Wonder who will be the lucky one."
"Keep your voices down! The authorities' pursuit has not stopped. Those Peaceful Heaven Sect thieves might be nearby..."
One of them suddenly changed color.
"I'm done eating. Enjoy yourselves."
At the table on the other side, Su Xinghe drained his noodle soup in one gulp. Having heard what he wanted to know, he called to the busy owner.
"Boss, bring me another steamer of meat buns. I'm taking them to go."
"How much altogether?"
"Certainly, sir. That'll be eight copper coins!"
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