Qi-Blood Fourth Level! Assassins Attack!

Two evenings later, dim lamplight filled the second floor of the Archive Hall.

Yi Yang sat alone at a desk, a Heaven Patrol Office regulation saber beside his knee, leafing through an old case file on the Nine Evil Sect.

The file recorded a massacre committed by the Nine Evil Sect.

Seven households, thirty-two lives.

Living sacrifices, purplish-black altar ash, bodies missing their organs.

After reading two pages, Yi Yang lowered his eyelids. His fingertip pressed against the edge of the scroll. To anyone watching, he was studying the case; in truth, the Five Viscera Inner Refinement Method was slowly circulating within him.

His lungs expanded and contracted, his heart vessels pulsed, and his liver, spleen, and kidneys rose and fell in rhythm.

The sensation was strange. It was neither heat in his muscles nor swelling pain in his skin and bones, but like five old wells being dredged little by little, fresh springs bubbling up through their murky depths, coolness alternating with warmth as it seeped outward through the seams of his bones.

Last night, he had used his last two Water Essence Pills and prepared another medicinal bath.

He had practiced standing beneath the Old Locust Tree until dawn. When his progress in the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art broke past twelve thousand, his entire skeleton had started cracking.

Crack, crack, crack.

As rapid as beans roasting in an iron wok.

His spine, shoulder bones, ribs, and leg bones had all been ground over again and again by his qi and blood, forcibly expelling the sour, rotten weakness that had lurked in his old bones for decades.

At dawn, Yi Yang had raised a hand and tapped his forearm.

Tok.

It had sounded not like flesh, but the solid, heavy clink of metal against stone.

Qi-blood fourth level, the Bone Tempering Realm.

Ordinary blades might not even be able to cut through these old bones of his.

Small lines of text appeared before his eyes.

[Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art, fourth layer: (360/30000)]

[Nine Peaks Saber, minor mastery: (5700/6000)]

[Five Viscera Inner Refinement Method, beginner: (4100/5000)]

The Nine Peaks Saber was nearing minor mastery, and the Five Viscera Inner Refinement Method was also close to crossing its threshold.

A young prodigy in his place would probably have climbed onto a rooftop and shouted, "My fate is mine, not Heaven's!"

Yi Yang did no such thing. The old man merely closed the file, his brows drawing lower.

Over the past two days, something had been wrong outside the Heaven Patrol Office courtyard. Unfamiliar presences had circled it several times.

Light footsteps, scattered stopping points, frequent changes of position.

Like stray dogs sniffing out a bone, they had followed the scent here, yet dared not leap over the courtyard wall.

People from the County Office?

Or dogs from Tang Hao's side?

Yi Yang returned the file to its shelf and blew out a lamp at the corner of the desk, leaving only the smallest one burning.

The flame shrank to the size of a soybean, illuminating his white hair and the deep wrinkles of his aged face.

The older he grew, the less he could afford to rush.

After his shift ended.

Yi Yang changed out of his official uniform and put on an old blue-green robe, his saber still hanging at his waist.

The Archive Hall doors were locked.

Sun Hao was yawning with a register in his arms. Seeing him emerge, he hurriedly straightened.

"Sir, heading home?"

"Yes."

Huang Yushu came down from the second floor, still holding a case summary. "Sir, there are two discrepancies in the timeline of that Nine Evil Sect case."

Yi Yang glanced at him.

"Tomorrow."

Huang Yushu nodded without asking anything further.

Li Tong leaned against the doorway and lazily cupped his hands.

"Safe travels, sir."

As Yi Yang passed him, he left him with one sentence: "Don't be late tomorrow." Li Tong's face twitched, and he muttered, "I haven't been late that many times."

Yi Yang was already outside. Night pressed down over Cloud Pattern Town, and the back street was quieter than usual.

The wonton stall had packed up early. The steam from its pot had mostly dispersed, leaving only the acrid smell of burned damp firewood.

Of the two lanterns by the road, one was out and the other nearly so. The remaining faint light swayed in the wind, its yellow glow crawling over the flagstones, only to be swallowed by darkness a few feet farther on.

Yi Yang slowed his steps and opened his hearing.

After tempering his bones, his hearing had almost doubled in acuity.

At the street corner, cloth boots brushed against the flagstones.

Very softly. Once, then again half a beat later.

At least two people, their breathing kept low, about five paces away. Behind the eaves on the left, fabric scraped against roof tiles.

Yi Yang lowered his eyelids and thought:

Here they come.

He neither looked back nor quickened his pace.

As though he had noticed nothing around him, he walked on at an unhurried pace.

Ahead lay a narrow alley, deep and dimly lit, with high courtyard walls on either side.

A good place for murder.

Yi Yang turned into it as he walked.

Midway down the alley.

A stray cat darted out from the eaves on the left, its tail sweeping over broken tiles.

Clatter.

Two fragments fell to the ground, their crisp sound bouncing through the nighttime alley.

Yi Yang's pupils contracted at the sound, but not because of the cat.

At the exact moment the tiles struck the ground, someone sliced through the air behind him to his right.

A dark figure dropped from the wall.

Both palms struck, one high and one low, toward the back of his neck and his lumbar spine.

County Office Grappling Hand.

Seasoned and vicious, it targeted the joints of the spine.

If it landed squarely on an ordinary qi-blood third level fighter, half his body would go limp on the spot. He would have no strength left to stand defiant under interrogation.

Yi Yang's body reacted before his mind-the integration of his bones in the Bone Tempering Realm let him shift his center of gravity as swiftly as a turning axle.

He sank at the waist and leaned his upper body half a foot forward. The attacker's palms skimmed past the roots of his hair at the nape, the wind from his fingers shearing off several white strands.

Yi Yang drove his right elbow backward with the motion. Its tip, bearing the hardness and force of the Bone Tempering Realm, slammed into the dark figure's chest. A Bone Tempering Realm elbow was outrageously hard.

Thud.

The blow drove the dark figure back three steps, his boot soles scraping the flagstones with a harsh screech.

Yi Yang used the momentum to turn.

The attacker wore a black face cloth. He was lean and wiry, his high cheekbones pushing two ridges into the fabric.

His right hand held a Goose-Feather Saber, its hilt polished bright with use-the kind of saber constables commonly carried.

The wiry man did not panic after being knocked back. Instead, he made a gesture with his left hand.

He pressed his index and middle fingers together, then swept them outward.

A County Office signal.

Surround him.

Yi Yang caught two more sets of footsteps.

On the left, heavy steps, an iron weapon weighing down the hand; on the right, light steps hugging the wall.

The two men soon appeared.

The man on the left had a fleshy face and carried an iron ruler, with broad shoulders and a solid waist and legs.

The man on the right had a narrow face and thin eyes, a short saber held against his forearm. He moved as though sliding along a filthy gutter.

The three surrounded him in a triangle within the alley.

They sealed off Yi Yang's retreat.

The wiry man held his Goose-Feather Saber across his chest, his voice muffled behind the black cloth. "Old bastard, be sensible. Hand it over, and we can still leave your corpse intact."

Yi Yang did not reply. He swept his gaze over the three and quickly assessed them. Judging by their steps alone, the wiry man has the strongest qi and blood-at least qi-blood third level. His saber work has an orthodox County Office foundation. The fleshy-faced one is midway through qi-blood second level. The narrow-faced one has only just entered the second level, but he has speed on his side. These three have practiced working together. They aren't street riffraff gathered to make up the numbers.

Killing them would not be difficult.

Doing it quickly and cleanly would.

The night patrol followed a fixed route. If they stumbled upon this, even if he was in the right, dead County Office men would leave him reeking of trouble.

Yi Yang moved suddenly. Instead of retreating, he lunged straight at the narrow-faced man. A three-man encirclement was most vulnerable to being broken apart one man at a time, and he chose the weakest link to tear open.

The narrow-faced man's eyelid twitched, and he hurriedly thrust out his short saber.

Yi Yang turned sideways to evade it and slapped his left palm against the man's saber wrist.

Crack.

The wrist bones shifted out of place, and the short saber flew from his hand. Before his scream could escape his throat, Yi Yang's right foot had already driven into his belly.

The kick sent him flying into the courtyard wall.

Brick dust showered down.

The narrow-faced man slid to the foot of the wall and bent over, vomiting blood, his wrist dangling. He would not be getting up again anytime soon.

The encirclement was broken.

Yi Yang used the momentum to retreat beside an old tree at the alley entrance, bracing his back against its trunk to guard his rear.

The wiry man and the fleshy-faced man exchanged a glance, shock flashing in their eyes-that move had been too fast, too hard. Such force could never have come from someone at qi-blood second level. But matters had reached this point; the arrow was already on the string.

The wiry man lowered his voice.

"Together!"

They stopped probing and attacked at once. The fleshy-faced man swept his iron ruler across in broad, forceful strokes, preventing Yi Yang from dodging easily. The wiry man's Goose-Feather Saber followed close behind, its edge cutting into the wake of the ruler to strike beneath Yi Yang's ribs. One led and the other followed, one heavy and the other swift, their coordination almost seamless.

The narrow-faced man also struggled up from the base of the wall. Enduring the agonizing pain of his dislocated wrist, he picked up his short saber with his left hand and gritted his teeth as he circled around to flank Yi Yang.

Their assault was fiercer and more cautious than the first, leaving no room for him to survive.

Coldness rose in Yi Yang's eyes at the sight. He no longer intended to conceal his strength either.

His right hand settled on his saber, his thumb pressing against the guard.

Shing.

The long saber left its sheath.

Nine Peaks Saber.

The first peak, Heavy Peak. The saber stroke sought not the man, but his momentum.

Yi Yang stepped forward, lifting his saber from his right ribs and pushing it horizontally outward, like a mountain wall shifting sideways.

There was nothing flashy about the saber's energy, only a crushing sense of weight. The blade's flat pushed the air aside with a low hum.

The fleshy-faced man took the brunt of it.

He had barely raised his iron ruler across his body before the pressure made both arms tremble. The webs between his thumbs and forefingers split, blood trickling down his palms.

"What kind of strength is this?"

He squeezed half a sentence from his throat, disbelief filling his eyes. The saber's momentum forced the rest back into his belly.

Yi Yang gave him no chance to breathe.

The second peak, Perilous Peak.

The horizontal stroke suddenly turned at an oblique angle, slipping past the iron ruler's defense and cutting into the hollow of the fleshy-faced man's shoulder.

Squelch.

Cloth tore, flesh parted, and bone shattered, the three sounds blending into one.

Half the fleshy-faced man's shoulder was cleaved open. Blood surged out, and he unleashed a tearing scream. His iron ruler clanged to the ground, and he toppled stiffly like a felled tree stump. Blood spread across the flagstones, steaming with heat, its metallic reek instantly filling the alley.

The narrow-faced man's short saber was still halfway through its flanking strike when Yi Yang flowed into another stroke-the third peak, Sharp Peak.

The saber tip thrust forward in a short burst, tracing no broad arc, seeking only a vital point.

He had used this move many times. Yang Shuqing had died beneath this very stroke.

The tip pierced beneath the narrow-faced man's ribs, avoiding the bone seams and driving straight into his chest cavity.

The narrow-faced man's eyes bulged and his mouth opened wide, but he could not make a sound.

Yi Yang withdrew his saber. The narrow-faced man stumbled another two steps forward before falling facedown, twitching a few times, then going still.

In fewer than three breaths, both subordinates were gone.

Only the wiry man, Lu Neng, remained in the alley. His saber hand trembled. Not from cold, but from fear seeping out through the seams of his bones.

His eyes fixed on Yi Yang. At last, from that aged figure, that way of holding a saber, and that utterly familiar woodcutting habit of exerting force, he pieced together an answer he could not believe.

"You... you're in the Bone Tempering Realm?" His voice squeezed out from behind the black cloth. "Qi-blood fourth level?!"

A sixty-year-old woodcutter was actually at qi-blood fourth level, in the Bone Tempering Realm.

Lu Neng thought of Yang Shuqing-that Deputy Chief Constable who had gone up the mountain with a Sinew-Breaking Bone-Pulling Pill, the "Five-Organ Internal Refining Force," and two trusted men, never to return.

Now he understood. He understood everything.

How could the truth have been the Nine Evil Sect?

It had plainly been this old man before him.

Lu Neng's reason crumbled swiftly beneath his terror. He dropped to his knees in the pool of blood with a thud, flinging his Goose-Feather Saber aside. He planted both hands on the ground and knocked his forehead against the flagstones.

"Spare me, senior!"

His voice had changed completely, stripped of its earlier sinister composure as he spoke in terror. "The County Commandant ordered me here. I had no choice! If you spare me, senior, I'll go back and report that we couldn't find you, that the trail went cold. I'll never come again!"

"The silver-the silver the County Commandant gave me is all at my house! Spare my life, senior, and I'll go back and bring you every bit of it, along with everything I own!"

His pleas echoed through the deep alley, squeezed between the high walls into a buzzing like a voice trapped inside a jar.

Yi Yang stood three paces away, his saber pointed downward. Blood dripped from its edge onto the stone paving as he watched Lu Neng kneeling on the ground. There was neither anger nor pity on his face, only the calm silence of a man settling accounts after the harvest.

But seeing Yi Yang remain silent, Lu Neng knew there was no chance he would spare him. He hurriedly pretended to fumble inside his robes for banknotes, his hands flailing as he babbled, "Senior, you can have all my silver. I won't breathe a word-"

Halfway through his sentence, what his right hand drew from deep inside his robes was not a banknote, but a three-inch poisoned blade.

The blade was pitch-black, its edge gleaming with a dark green oily sheen. It was a single-use concealed weapon coated in Centipede Saliva; a mere scratch could paralyze a person's sinews and meridians.

Lu Neng sprang into action, driving his knees against the ground and launching himself from his kneeling position. The short blade stabbed straight toward Yi Yang's lower abdomen-his final, desperate strike.

He was gambling on that single instant before Yi Yang could react.

Yet Yi Yang had never let his attention wander.

His Bone Tempering Realm senses had detected the killing intent the moment Lu Neng's fingers touched the blade, picking it out from the faint, unusual rustle of fabric.

Yi Yang's left hand shot out like lightning. His five fingers clamped around Lu Neng's weapon-bearing wrist, their iron-hard bones locking tight like pincers.

Crack.

The sound of shattering wrist bones rang exceptionally clear in the night-shrouded alley. Before Lu Neng's scream could leave his throat, the saber in Yi Yang's right hand had already arrived.

Nine Peaks Saber, Third Peak-Sharp Peak. One clean, decisive thrust.

The saber's tip pierced beneath Lu Neng's jaw and drove through the base of his skull.

Shhk.

Lu Neng's scream froze in his throat, his eyes fixed in place. He died even faster than his two underlings.

Yi Yang released him, and Lu Neng's corpse slumped into the pool of blood. The poisoned blade remained clenched in his mangled right hand, its poison seeping into the cracks between the stones with a cold, eerie green gleam.