"Master."
Chu Tian stared wide-eyed at the head on the spearpoint. Perhaps he had already suspected the worst when he discovered the scale of this White Lotus Sect blood-sacrifice branch. But suspicion and seeing it with his own eyes were two different things.
Huang Silang was dead.
Li Xiang stood beside Chu Tian, his gaze also resting on Huang Silang's head. No emotion stirred in his eyes.
From the moment they set foot on this path, every Profession holder had to be ready to die in the street. Huang Silang had been outmatched and died while gathering intelligence. That was the cruelest, truest iron law of the martial world.
Li Xiang offered Chu Tian no comfort. For someone who lived with his tongue against a blade's edge, the best comfort was to honor the dead with an enemy's blood.
"Damned White Lotus Sect."
The words burst through the cavern, so tightly suppressed they seemed squeezed from Zhang Yunqing's chest.
His face was dark as a storm, his eyes burning with enough killing intent to consume everything.
He was furious.
But Huang Silang's gruesome death was not the reason.
To Zhang Yunqing, Huang Silang had been no more than a somewhat useful pawn. The death of one peripheral informant was not enough to make an officer commanding tens of thousands lose his composure.
What enraged him was the act of displaying that head on a spear.
Huang Silang had come to Dragon City on the Beiyang Warlords' orders.
These stinking White Lotus Sect rats, who normally dared only hide in gutters and deceive the ignorant, had killed Huang Silang openly in Dragon City. They had even mounted his head above the altar in a show of defiance.
This was no mere murder. It was a public trampling of the Beiyang Warlords'