The abrupt change of subject caught Wu Jinliang off guard, but he quickly understood. His eyes lit up at once. "His cultivation's crippled. Out here in these barren mountains, even if he's silencing witnesses, he can't possibly leave himself without protection. That's a pretty dream you've got, but they won't let us off either way. If there's a chance, we have to try. What if we pull it off?"
Clearly, he too was a desperado. Given a chance to stake everything on one throw, he had no intention of letting it slip away.
"They've already sent word. Unless something goes wrong, people will be here soon. We'll go around." Shi Chun pointed toward the gorge's exit, indicating that they should circle around outside. As he spoke, he darted to the opening and poked his head out to check.
Wu Jinliang pulled the clothing from around his neck and stuffed it haphazardly into the bundle on his back. Glancing at the corpses on the ground, he shouldered his saber and ran over to Shi Chun, grumbling, "Honestly, if we're going back anyway, why go to all this trouble to kill them? Aren't you tired?"
"Their deaths here will make it more convincing that we escaped." Leaving those words behind, Shi Chun darted out and pressed onward.
Wu Jinliang paused, then realized that made sense. Only by making others believe they had fled could they slip back more safely. Even if they found no chance to strike, they would still be better able to slip away unnoticed.
He chuckled and darted after him.
They did not return along their original route. Shi Chun led the way, using the positions of the hidden men he had seen in the strange images in his right eye to find another route back. Above all, he feared running into enemy reinforcements responding to the report.
In fact, the enemy reinforcements did arrive quickly. They had already reached the former hiding place of the two dead men.
Their leader was a powerfully built masked man wearing a complete set of clothes-he even had boots on his feet. A dozen or so masked men followed behind him.
Finding no one there, they looked around and spotted the glowing fingerprint markers. The whole group immediately rushed off in pursuit.
The murder site was not actually far away. The main reason was that Shi Chun had feared a long night would breed troublesome dreams, so he had not dared drag things out and had struck nearby.
The dozen or so masked men soon reached the gorge where it had happened. The smell of blood made them pause briefly, and then they discovered the bodies.
The burly masked man took an exquisite firelighter from his waist and blew it alight. He personally pulled the masks off the two heads. After illuminating the dead men's faces, he let out a deep breath. He inspected the scene of the fight, then walked outside the gorge and gazed for a long while at the rolling wilderness beneath the night sky.
With no idea where the killers had gone, he knew a blind pursuit would be pointless. He turned back, left a single instruction, and departed alone. "Clean this up."
He sped along without going anywhere else, heading straight for the mining area.
A bright moon was already shining in the night sky, its cold light spilling down like mercury.
Outside the mine, Qi Ziru rested with his eyes closed on a reclining chair. Two sedan bearers stood on either side of him, while seven or eight overseers guarded and sealed off the entrance.
Shen Youkun was not there. His uncle outside had sent him into the mine to supervise personally.
A figure leaped straight down from the mountain into the valley. The guards at the entrance turned toward him, and one shouted, "Who's there?"
The guards drew their weapons. Qi Ziru opened his eyes and looked over as well, seeing a powerfully built masked man approaching at an unhurried pace. He immediately reassured those around him. "It's fine. He's one of ours."
The burly masked man did not come all the way over. He stopped several dozen feet away and gave Qi Ziru a slight nod.
Qi Ziru braced himself and rose, refusing the sedan bearers' assistance and stopping them from following. He walked over alone and continued past the masked man without stopping. The latter immediately followed him.
The guards at the entrance exchanged looks. They could all feel how powerful Shen Youkun's backing was. He actually had still more men at his disposal.
Only after reaching a spot where they were probably safe from eavesdroppers did Qi Ziru stop. He said nothing, waiting.
The burly masked man leaned closer and reported quietly, "Someone broke through our outer perimeter and killed two of our men."
"I thought you'd come with good news." Qi Ziru's face darkened instantly as he turned toward him. "Even what I gave you couldn't subdue them?"
The burly masked man said, "They never got a chance to use it. The enemy struck too quickly-abnormally quickly. I reached the scene as fast as I could, but I was still too late. I didn't see who the killers were or how many there were.
"Judging by the location, our men hadn't followed the killers far before they were discovered. There wasn't even the slightest trace of any prolonged struggle at the scene. Clearly, the fight ended very quickly.
"From the way they died, both were probably killed by the same person. One of them didn't even manage to draw his weapon. Either the killer was so powerful that our men had no chance to fight back or flee, or it was an ambush. Either way, this killer is no ordinary person. Was he someone who escaped from here?"
Having finished, he waited quietly.
Qi Ziru's expression was grim. Naturally, he knew who had done it. He simply had not expected his carefully arranged outer defenses to prove so utterly fragile. That fellow had escaped so easily that uncle and nephew both looked rather ridiculous.
He had already worried that his backup measures might fail to stop them, and sure enough, they had slipped through the net. It seemed he could only report the matter to the Lineage.
He had considered concealing it before, but then remembered that the escaped chief also knew. Who knew what she had gone off to do after seizing the treasure, or whether she might reveal everything someday? After weighing things up, he had abandoned the idea of withholding the report.
After a few breaths, he calmed himself and said slowly, "Things here are nearly finished. Gather your men nearby and await orders."
"Understood." The burly masked man nodded slightly, then turned away. In a few bounding leaps, he reached the mountaintop and disappeared.
In a nearby mountain hollow, Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang pressed close to the mountainside's shadow, not daring to move. They saw the burly masked man leave.
They had only just arrived.
Indeed, despite setting off first, they had arrived later than the burly masked man. He had dared travel straight here at full speed, while they had been more cautious.
By the time they crept to the valley's edge, where they could see the valley and the mine entrance, Qi Ziru had already returned to his chair and lain down.
"Why does it feel like all the guards on the mountain are gone? Surely they haven't already silenced them?" Wu Jinliang murmured curiously.
Shi Chun gestured for him to keep quiet. Though they were hiding some distance away, caution was still best.
What followed was a dull wait. While watching, Shi Chun also secretly used his power to examine the inside of his body. At last, he had time to ponder the strange change caused by the glittering purple nebula entering him.
The stars shifted, and the bright moon gradually moved to the other side of the sky. As the night wore into its latter half, Wu Jinliang, who was about to yawn, suddenly widened his eyes and nudged Shi Chun lightly with his elbow.
Shi Chun had seen it without needing the reminder. Shen Youkun had emerged from the mine, apparently holding something glowing.
It was a burning incense stick. Shen Youkun walked up to the reclining chair. "Uncle, the work's finished. It's all been dug out."
Qi Ziru glanced at the incense in his hand and asked, "Have they all been lit?"
Shen Youkun nodded, stealing a glance at the guards by the entrance.
Qi Ziru said to one of the sedan bearers, "Call the men over to carry it out."
Soon, a shooting star launched from a sedan bearer's hand with a bang, then burst into fireworks overhead with another bang.
Lying in the darkness on the mountain, Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang looked up.
Before long, a group of masked men charged down the mountain beside the mine. There were nearly three hundred of them.
Wu Jinliang bared his teeth at the sight, nudged Shi Chun again, and gestured that they had no chance.
The burly masked man leading the group approached Qi Ziru to await orders. Qi Ziru took a small black cloth pouch from his sleeve and handed it over. "If it won't fit easily, take it apart before packing it. Don't leave behind a single bone. Pack everything."
Most local natives would not have recognized the little black cloth pouch, but Shen Youkun's eyes lit up. Others might not know it, but he did. This was the magical treasure known as the Heaven-and-Earth Bag, with a considerable space inside. He had never used a magical treasure of this caliber.
He had not expected even this magical treasure to have been brought in. Now he finally knew how they intended to carry away such an enormous skeleton.
The burly masked man accepted the bag and nodded, then waved his men along and headed straight into the mine.
As the crowd streamed past the seven or eight guards at the entrance, cold flashes of steel flickered in a chaotic blur, accompanied by several screams of "Aah!"
Already inside the mine and striding at the head of the group, the burly masked man barked, "Remember, leave no one alive!"
A chorus of weapons being drawn immediately rang out behind him.
By the time the entire force had entered, seven or eight corpses lay at the entrance.
Shen Youkun looked at his uncle, resting with his eyes closed on the reclining chair, then at the bodies in their pools of blood. Smelling the heavy reek of blood, he could not stop the corner of his mouth from twitching. He had good reason to fear this uncle.
Lying still in the darkness, Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang exchanged looks. The latter whispered, "They've really started!"
The mine was filled with the smell of smoke. Thin wisps drifted through the air, and here and there, partly burned incense sticks could still be seen wedged into the walls.
As they moved deeper into the mine, dead bodies began appearing on the ground, growing more numerous the farther they went.
Someone crouched to examine them. Seeing their dark, bluish faces and wide-open eyes, he asked in alarm, "Were they poisoned?"
He had barely finished speaking when someone braced himself against the wall, panting. "Something's wrong, boss. There's something wrong with the smoke in here."
Similar reactions began appearing one after another, and the whole place quickly descended into panic.
"Boss, get out! It's poison!"
The burly masked leader continued onward as though he had heard nothing. As he drew farther away, he replied calmly, "Too late. You've been taking it for over a month. The catalyst has already triggered it."
The panicking crowd did not hear clearly what he said. People were already collapsing one after another.
Some sprinted toward the exit, but not one made it out. They all fell along the way.
At the T-junction at the end of the mine, the burly masked man saw the dragon skeleton stretching across the passage and shook open the Heaven-and-Earth Bag in his hand...
When he appeared outside again, he emerged alone. A violent rumbling came from the mine behind him.
Lying on the ground, Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang exchanged startled looks. They could feel violent tremors passing through the ground, wave after wave, but had no idea what was happening.
Boom! With a thunderous roar, a huge cloud of dust blasted from the mine like a cannon shot, clearly visible in the moonlight. The burly masked man who had emerged alone allowed the impact to strike his back, and thick dust swallowed him whole.
The two sedan bearers had already carried Qi Ziru farther away, pulling Shen Youkun along with them.
His face full of alarm and uncertainty, Shi Chun muttered to himself, "It collapsed!"
Wu Jinliang felt the same. He had no idea what method these people had used to collapse the mine. Only one man had come out?
Both were deeply shaken. They had originally assumed only the people already in the mine would be silenced. When they saw the three hundred newcomers commit the killings, they thought they had come for nothing and lost their chance to strike. They had never expected the other side to kill those three hundred men as well.
Before long, the burly masked man walked out of the rolling dust and presented the Heaven-and-Earth Bag to Qi Ziru.
After checking it, Qi Ziru nodded in satisfaction. "Let's go."
The two sedan bearers lifted him and turned away. The burly masked man took Shen Youkun by the arm, and together they sped toward a mountain peak to one side.
A fierce look flashed across Shi Chun's face as he lay hidden in the darkness. He grabbed Wu Jinliang's shoulder and said in a low voice, "Kill those three, and the other two are useless. Two against three. Dare to go?"
"Heh, my saber's been thirsting for blood!" With a savage grin, Wu Jinliang sprang up and charged toward their quarry, dragging his great saber behind him.