Zhao Si slowed half a step and edged closer. "Boss, are we really letting that old man off?"
He kept his voice low, the chain swaying gently in his hand, its iron links clinking with a faint rattle.
"Of everyone who went up the mountain that day, he was the only one who came back alive."
Yang Shuqing kept walking, his boots grinding against the dry yellow dirt of the village road. The setting sun hung low, shining on the edges of his black uniform and lending even that official skin a sinister cast.
"Let him off?"
He sneered, his smile revealing a cruelty that could scrape flesh from bone.
"When did I ever say I'd let him off?"
Zhao Si shut his mouth. That was his boss's true nature, all right. Ma Liu walked on the other side, his eyes lowered and one hand resting on his saber hilt.
Yang Shuqing rubbed his thumb over the pommel of his saber, polished smooth by years of handling.
It was a habit of his when thinking things over, and a small gesture that surfaced whenever his killing intent began to seep out.
"Did you see that old man's courtyard? Poor as a damned beggar. Broken walls, broken chairs, even his teacups were chipped."
A dark fire smoldered in Yang Shuqing's eyes. "But before Wang Yue went up the mountain, my younger brother wrote to me. He said the old man had purplewood worth a good sum of silver."
"Where was the purplewood?"
Zhao Si frowned. "Didn't see any."
"Exactly. We didn't see any."
Yang Shuqing lowered his voice further. "And Wang Yue? No living man, no dead body. He was at the blood qi first stage, with three constables under him. However vicious that snake was, it couldn't have swallowed every last bone."
Ma Liu caught his meaning and asked quietly, "You mean we should search the mountain first, boss?"
Yang Shuqing nodded. "If we touch the old man now, dozens of households will be watching. I've just earned a promotion, and plenty of people at the County Office have their eyes on me. Beating a half-dead old man to death in front of the villagers wouldn't sound good if word got out."
He paused, forcing the words through his teeth.
"Tonight, once the village is asleep, we'll take him up the mountain. There are no eyes up there, and no mouths."
"If he's willing to talk, we can leave him alive."
"If he keeps his mouth shut..."
He left the rest unsaid.
Zhao Si and Ma Liu both understood. The mountains had plenty of pits, plenty of wild beasts, and plenty of unlucky souls who fell and broke their necks.
Ma Liu hesitated, then leaned closer. "Boss, that matter the County Commandant entrusted to you-is it done?"
At the mention of it, a streak of smug satisfaction leaped out of the anger burning in Yang Shuqing's chest.
He patted a spot where something was hidden close to his body.
"It's done."
"The Commandant praised me himself, and my appointment as Deputy Chief Constable has come through. Once we've cleared things up here and returned to the county town, I'll be one of the Commandant's men."
Zhao Si's eyes lit up.
"Congratulations, boss!"
Ma Liu hurried to add, "When you soar to the top, boss, don't forget your brothers."
Yang Shuqing glanced at them both and smiled. "Do your jobs well, and you'll have silver, women, and official uniforms aplenty."
The three talked as they walked, keeping their voices extremely low.
An ordinary person a dozen paces away would have heard, at most, a few indistinct murmurs.
But Yi Yang was no ordinary person.
In the Yi Family's little courtyard, Yi Yang still reclined in his wicker chair, a battered fan resting against his chest.
He fanned himself slowly. The faint breeze could not dispel the summer heat, but it could conceal the steadiness of his breathing.
Qi-blood third level, Sinew Tempering Realm.
After his sinews had been unified, his hearing had risen another notch.
Across half a village road and two courtyard walls, Yang Shuqing's murmured words reached his ears, every sentence, every syllable.
Up the mountain tonight.
Yi Yang's eyelids drooped. His face was still that of a doddering old man, but deep in his eyes lay a heavy chill.
Then I'll see you off.
He repeated it inwardly and gently folded his battered fan.
Toward evening.
Yang Shuqing went to the Village Chief Yang Shuyu's home and spoke briefly with him. Publicly, he said only that he was going up the mountain to investigate some clues and look for Wang Yue's remains along the way.
Yang Shuyu bowed and nodded, not daring to voice even half an objection.
Armed with sabers and rope, the three entered the mountain by the old trail behind the village.
The villagers watched from afar, none daring to follow. Someone peeked through a crack in a door, then quickly shut it tight.
After night fell on Greenwood Mountain, dampness rose through the forest. Moisture clung to the grass, which rustled beneath their feet.
Yang Shuqing led the way.
Zhao Si carried the chain, while Ma Liu held up a firelighter. Its yellow glow swayed among the trunks, stretching their three shadows long and crooked.
They reached the clearing halfway up the mountain, the very battlefield where the great snake had been surrounded and attacked that day.
Rotting leaves covered most of the traces, but the deep furrow crushed out by the snake's body remained. Broken shrub stumps jutted in every direction, and dark brown bloodstains had sunk into the soil. After insects and ants had gnawed at them, only mottled marks remained.
Zhao Si pushed aside the dead leaves with a short saber and picked out several bone fragments. Their surfaces were pale, their edges still bearing tooth marks.
"Boss, these are human."
Yang Shuqing crouched and took a look. "Yang Dongxi and the others. Zhou Liang didn't collect all the remains."
Ma Liu cursed. "This mountain's damned unlucky."
Yang Shuqing ignored him. Bending down, he circled the clearing, scrutinizing it inch by inch.
Years of investigating cases had given him an almost instinctive sensitivity to traces.
Suddenly, he stopped beside the shrubs on the western side.
The bushes there had been smashed apart, their branches bent and broken. A drag mark stretched toward the rear at an angle for roughly twenty feet, ending at the roots of a crooked tree.
Yang Shuqing walked over, crouched, and touched the dark mark on the root.
He rubbed it with his fingertip, crumbling the hard, dried crust of blood into powder.
"Blood." He sniffed it and said with certainty, "Human blood."
Zhao Si approached with the chain.
"Boss, is this where the old man said he rolled down and hit the tree?"
"Mm."
The suspicion in Yang Shuqing's eyes deepened. "He wasn't lying about everything."
Ma Liu asked, "Then should we go back and seize him now?"
Yang Shuqing was about to speak when a faint sound suddenly drifted down from above them.
Very faint.
As faint as a dead leaf turning over, yet Yang Shuqing had spent years living on a knife's edge, and his back instantly tensed.
"Who's there?"
The words had barely left his mouth when a dark figure swept out from behind a tree.
An old woodcutter's cleaver traced a gray-white arc through the night.
Zhao Si had only enough time to look up.
The last thing he saw was an unremarkable woodcutter's cleaver.
Battered, shabby, but exceedingly sharp.
Yet as it descended, the wind split in two. The force of the blade pressed against his chest until he could not even shout.
Squelch!
The woodcutter's cleaver slashed diagonally down from his shoulder and neck.
Half of Zhao Si's body fell open. His chain clattered to the ground, and blood sprayed onto the dead leaves, steaming as its rank smell instantly filled the clearing.
Ma Liu reacted faster, drawing his saber and retreating.
"Boss!"
He had barely taken half a step back when Yi Yang shifted his footing.
Nine Peaks Saber, Perilous Peak.
The blade bore down from the front, then abruptly veered around Ma Liu's saber when it was just half a foot away, sweeping horizontally along his waist.
Ma Liu's pupils contracted.
To his eyes, that cleaver had clearly been chopping toward his chest, yet in the next blink it was at his waist and belly-a movement so bizarre it scarcely seemed possible for a human hand.
Rrrip!
Cloth split, flesh split, and bone split as well.
Ma Liu was cut in half at the waist. His upper body pitched to the ground, his hand still clamped around his saber hilt. Bloody bubbles spilled from his mouth, and he failed to leave behind even a single complete sentence.
Both subordinates were gone in the blink of an eye.
Yang Shuqing drew his saber.
It left its sheath with a metallic ring, piercingly loud in the mountain forest.
His eyes reddened, rage and horror churning together.
"You skulking bastard!"
Yi Yang wore a black cloth over his face and close-fitting gray clothes. Blood dripped from the woodcutter's cleaver in his hand.
He did not answer. Wasted words were the surest way to ruin things.
Yang Shuqing stamped down and swung his saber.
He was at the peak of the Muscle Training Realm, only a step away from tendon refining. His saber technique followed the County Office's style: vicious, steady, and swift, aimed solely at vital points.
Clang!
The cleaver collided with the saber, showering sparks onto the dead leaves.
Yang Shuqing's arm went numb, and his heart sank.
That strength was wrong.
It was not the blood qi first stage, nor was it ordinary flesh-training.
Yi Yang's second strike pressed down.
Heavy Peak.
There was nothing fancy about the strike, only weight and overwhelming force, like an entire mountainside collapsing, leaving no room to maneuver.
Yang Shuqing gritted his teeth and met the blade.
Clang!
His saber bowed into an arc. The web between his thumb and forefinger split, and blood ran down the hilt.
The third strike followed.
Yang Shuqing dared not meet it head-on. He abandoned his saber and flipped backward, planting a foot on the tree root and circling behind Yi Yang. A short dagger slipped from his left sleeve and stabbed straight for the small of Yi Yang's back.
He had used this move many times.
If a martial artist of the same realm fell for his feint, there was an eighty-percent chance they would suffer for it.
But Yi Yang shifted his foot just half an inch.
The dagger skimmed past the edge of his clothes without even touching his skin.
A chill struck Yang Shuqing's heart.
Yi Yang turned, unleashing the first strike of the Nine Peaks Saber with all his strength.
Heavy Peak bore down.
The woodcutter's cleaver fell with the immense, unified strength of the Sinew Tempering Realm.
Crack!
Yang Shuqing raised his arm to block. The sinews and bones shattered on the spot, his entire arm bending at a grotesque angle as the dagger flew into the grass.
Before his scream could escape his throat, Yi Yang's blade had already changed course.
The third strike, Sharp Peak.
The blade's tip thrust forward in a short, clean burst of speed.
Squelch!
The woodcutter's cleaver pierced his chest, half its blade emerging from his back.
Yang Shuqing lowered his head to look at his chest.
Blood poured along the blade, warm and wet, quickly soaking his black uniform.
His pupils dilated as he stared fixedly at the gaunt, dark-clad figure before him.
That build.
That woodcutter's cleaver.
That grip on the blade, a habit only an old woodcutter would have.
"Yi... Yi Yang?!"
There was no anger left in his voice, only disbelief.
An old woodcutter whom the martial school had judged to have no future in martial arts.
An old country man who had spent his entire life chopping firewood.
He was actually at the qi-blood third level, in the Sinew Tempering Realm.
Yang Shuqing stared at Yi Yang's old gray clothes, patched over patches.
Those cheapest, most lowly things had just ground his pride as Deputy Chief Constable into dust.
"Yang Er... Wang Yue... it was all you?"
His lips turned pale.
The fire in his chest that had burned to avenge his younger brother was drenched in fear, unable to give off even a wisp of smoke.
Yi Yang did not reply.
He pulled out his blade.
Yang Shuqing fell into the dead leaves, his eyes still open, staring at the dark canopy overhead. Only broken breaths remained in his throat.
Yi Yang crouched down to search the bodies.
Zhao Si and Ma Liu had little loose silver on them, barely a dozen taels between them.
Yang Shuqing's pockets were much better lined.
Loose silver, banknotes, a County Office Deputy Chief Constable's waist token, a letter of commendation from the Commandant's Office, and the Blackwood Pill Case hidden close against his body.
Yi Yang opened the case.
Red velvet lined its interior. In the center sat a pill, round and smooth as a pearl, its color copper-red and its medicinal fragrance so potent it burrowed into his nostrils.
A Sinew-Breaking Bone-Pulling Pill.
Yi Yang had already entered the Sinew Tempering Realm, so this pill could no longer help him break through.
But its medicinal potency was still valuable.
The fourth level of the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art, the Bone Tempering Realm, was precisely where he needed resources like this.
He closed the pill case and tucked it securely against his body.
The silver totaled more than forty taels, and he took the letter of commendation as well.
After looking the waist token over a few times, Yi Yang left it behind. That thing would only invite trouble.
Finally, he found a piece of sheepskin parchment tucked deep inside Yang Shuqing's robes.
The parchment was tightly rolled, its edges worn, with a trace of a cinnabar stamp still lingering on the seal.
Yi Yang tucked the parchment into his robes, erased several footprints on the ground that should not have been there, then dragged the three bodies deeper into a gully on the slope.
The mountain wind swept past, and dead leaves covered the blood once more.
Once that was done, Yi Yang headed down the mountain with the Woodcutter's Cleaver in hand.
In the darkness, his back was still slightly bent, and his steps still resembled those of an old woodcutter.
Only the pill case and parchment inside his robes, one cold and one warm, rested against his chest.
At the foot of the mountain, Yi Yang paused and looked back at Greenwood Mountain.
"Yang Shuqing, oh, Yang Shuqing. Thank you for delivering such a fine gift. Let this settle the matter of your younger brother and your offense against me."
Before you continue