"Get up here!" Ji Feihua called out a warning.
Hu Xiaotian looked up. He lacked Ji Feihua's ability to leap straight onto a rooftop, but fortunately, he had learned the Golden Spider Eight Steps. With danger pressing in, he could no longer afford to hide the fact that he knew martial arts. He climbed up the wall while the driver urged the carriage onward, trying to break through the encirclement of mastiffs. Driven hard, the two horses charged desperately ahead. Suddenly, several mastiffs sprang up at once, their bloodied jaws opening in midair, their gleaming white fangs sinking savagely into the horses' necks.
Amid the horses' screams, Hu Xiaotian climbed onto the roof. Before he could catch his breath, he saw a dense black mass swooping toward them. Ji Feihua snorted coldly. "Move!" He raced along the rooftops, and Hu Xiaotian strained to keep pace, leaping from roof to roof. His martial skills were inadequate, however, and before long Ji Feihua had left him behind. Seeing the black cloud drawing closer, he looked carefully and realized it was a vast swarm of bats. This was not his first encounter with such a scene. When he escaped from Xiezhou, Xi Yan had used the same method to punish him, but this swarm was far larger, blotting out the sky. Even before it reached him, its squeaking sent shivers through his heart.
Ji Feihua had not abandoned Hu Xiaotian. He snatched up a roof tile and hurled it out. Glimmering blue, the tile traced an arc through the night and shot straight into the swarm. Such was the strength of Ji Feihua's internal power that his throw surpassed a shot from a powerful bow or crossbow, bringing down at least a hundred bats.
The bats scattered briefly as they fled to either