The thing in the ancestral hall's rear courtyard

The sounds of fighting from the ancestral hall had gone on too long.

Yi Yang crouched behind a broken wall south of the village, his fingers resting on his saber's hilt as he counted his breaths.

One hundred breaths. Two hundred. Three hundred.

According to Liao Xu's plan, five people surrounding and killing a qi-blood third level deacon and two qi-blood second level followers should have finished the job in thirty breaths at most. Yet the commotion at the ancestral hall had not stopped. It was growing louder.

Metal clashed against metal. Muffled groans. Bones cracking.

And a surge of qi and blood, far too powerful.

That was not the kind of disturbance someone at the qi-blood third level should have made.

Yi Yang lowered his eyelids, lifted his standard-issue saber from his knees, and crept north along the base of the ruined wall. His footsteps made no sound. Concealed by moon shadows and weeds, he was no different from an old cat hunting at night.

When he came within fifty paces of the ancestral hall, he stopped.

He could go no closer.

Someone at the qi-blood fourth level had sharp enough hearing.

Fragments of speech drifted from the hall, broken up by the walls and the sounds of fighting.

"...Nine Evil Sect fiends..."

"...all of you will stay... become blood pills... help me break through to the qi-blood fifth level..."

Yi Yang's pupils contracted.

The qi-blood fifth level. The organ refining realm.

That fiend was not at the qi-blood third level, but the fourth. And he intended to use these people's blood and qi to refine pills and push into the fifth.

The intelligence was false.

Or rather, the intelligence itself was bait.

Yi Yang pressed his back against the wall and made his breathing as shallow as possible. Thoughts raced through his mind.

Help them?

Help, my ass.

A Nine Evil Sect deacon at qi-blood fourth-level perfection would become even stronger after swallowing a Blood Origin Pill. If Yi Yang charged in now, it was not as though he could not defeat the man, but why take that kind of risk?

Yi Yang knew his own strength well: qi-blood cultivation at the bone tempering realm, minor mastery of the Nine Peaks Saber, and an internal refinement art he had only just begun learning. In a head-on clash with a sect lunatic at qi-blood fourth-level perfection, he should have a sixty or seventy percent chance of winning.

But unless the odds were ten out of ten, he would not place the bet.

He was sixty years old. Rice, firewood, oil, and salt had long since worn away his appetite for gambling.

He chose to wait.

Wait for the situation to become clear. Wait for the best moment.

Rumble.

A tremendous crash came from the ancestral hall, making even the ground tremble. Yi Yang peered out. Beneath the moonlight, the hall's central beam had tilted, and most of the roof had collapsed. Broken tiles and timber flew everywhere as dust billowed into the sky.

Then four figures burst out of the dust.

Liao Xu ran in front, his left arm dangling, his sword held in his right hand, his steps stumbling. Yi Zhanzhi followed close behind, blood on his face-whether his own or someone else's was unclear. Shen Qingyue supported Zhao He, whose arm hung limp as he staggered along.

Four people.

Only four.

Song Wu had not come out.

Yi Yang glanced toward the direction the four were fleeing, then looked back at the ruins of the ancestral hall.

A Gray Robe figure stepped out of the wreckage, treading on broken tiles at an unhurried pace. Wang Gongqin raised a hand to wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth, a sickly red gleam in his eyes, and pursued Liao Xu and the others.

He did not look toward the south of the village.

Yi Yang huddled in the broken wall's shadow, suppressing even the circulation of his qi and blood to the bare minimum.

Only after Gray Robe vanished toward the woods north of the village did Yi Yang release a stale breath.

Without hesitation, he bent low and slipped into the ruined ancestral hall.

Broken timbers lay strewn about, rubble covering the ground. An overturned brazier still gave off wisps of blue smoke from its embers. The air reeked of blood, thick enough to choke on.

The bodies of Nine Evil Sect followers lay scattered everywhere, each having met a different end. Some had been pierced by swords, others split open by broad sabers. Their limbs were twisted, pools of blood spreading beneath them.

Yi Yang swept his gaze over them, then fixed it on a sturdy corpse in the corner.

Song Wu.

His chest had caved in, every rib shattered, his eyes bulging. His final breath had never escaped, and his mouth still hung open.

Yi Yang did not linger over him. Dead men were not worth wasting time on.

Something else caught his attention.

Bloodstains.

Not the kind splashed about during a fight, but a trail extending steadily toward the back of the ancestral hall. A thin line followed the seams between the floor tiles, winding toward the rear courtyard.

The ancestral hall's rear courtyard.

In an ordinary clan's ancestral hall, the rear courtyard was where the clan elders discussed affairs. Its status stood even a notch above the main hall's.

Yi Yang stepped over broken tiles and crossed a fallen beam, following the bloodstains deeper inside.

The rear courtyard's gate stood half open, cobwebs hanging from its frame, but someone had stepped through the dust on the threshold. The footprints were fresh.

He pushed the gate open and entered.

The courtyard was small, paved with gray bricks, with a shallow pit at its center. The pit was barely half a foot deep, but a dark red liquid had gathered at its bottom, thick and cloyingly bloody, gleaming eerily in the moonlight.

Patterns had been carved into the paving around the shallow pit.

They were not decorative designs. The lines curved and intersected, radiating outward from the pit, each stained with dried blood. Some were deep, others shallow, as though someone had traced them over and over.

Yi Yang crouched and examined them for two breaths.

Sect rubbish.

He knew nothing about arrays and had no desire to learn. But the sinister chill seeping from the ground made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

It was not fear. It was instinct warning him.

The trail of blood did not end at the pit. A thin line continued along a groove in the paving, extending into the rear courtyard's only room.

Yi Yang rose, his hand on his saber's hilt, and made his footsteps exceedingly light.

The door stood ajar.

He pushed it open with the back of his saber.

Creak.

The room was small and sparsely furnished. There was an offering table and two oil lamps, long extinguished, their wicks burned black.

At the center of the offering table lay a saber.

Its blade was long and slender, a little narrower than an ordinary waist saber, its spine gently curved. Most striking were the patterns on the blade: black and irregular, like veins growing from the saber's very bones, or traces left behind after something had eaten into it.

The blood flowing in from the rear courtyard followed the grooves to the foot of the offering table, forming a dark red ring.

The incoming blood was suppressing it.

Yi Yang stared at the saber for three breaths.

It was not as though he had never seen fine weapons. The standard-issue saber paired with the Nine Peaks Saber art and Lu Neng's Goose-Feather Saber both counted as superior pieces. But this one, simply lying motionless on the offering table, radiated a keen edge that made his fingers itch.

The sect deacon had enshrined it here, suppressed it with a blood array, and deliberately hidden it in the rear courtyard.

It was clearly a treasure, but one the man could not yet use.

No matter how he looked at it, this thing was valuable.

Yi Yang did not hesitate for long.

He reached out and wrapped all five fingers around the hilt.

The instant he took hold of it, the blade trembled.

Humm.

A clear note rang from within the blade. It was not loud, but it pierced straight through, as though someone had plucked a string beside his ear. The black patterns on the blade twitched once, then settled.

The saber was light. Much lighter than it looked.

Yi Yang held it across his chest and ran his thumb over the spine. It felt cold and smooth, without a single burr, polished finer than a mirror.

"A fine saber."

The words squeezed through his teeth, carrying the kind of greed an old woodcutter felt upon seeing a century-old tree.

Without the saber drawing it in, the ring of blood at the foot of the offering table began seeping outward. The array markings on the floor dimmed as well, as though their soul had been sucked away.

Yi Yang did not linger.

He tucked the saber behind his waist, covered it with his outer robe, and left the rear courtyard.

His steps were quick and steady as he crossed the ruined ancestral hall, avoided the corpses, and withdrew toward the south of the village.

Meanwhile.

Deep in the woods north of the village, Wang Gongqin was pursuing Liao Xu and the other three.

His speed was absurd. The wind billowed out his gray robe, and he seemed to skim across the ground. Liao Xu and the others ran for their lives. Yi Zhanzhi had even discarded his long saber to lighten his load, yet the distance between them kept shrinking.

Just as Wang Gongqin was about to catch them, he stopped dead.

It was as though someone had seized him by the throat.

He turned his head.

He looked toward the abandoned Stone Bridge Village, several miles behind him.

The smile vanished from his face. In its place came a fury so intense it nearly twisted his features out of shape.

"Put down what's mine!"

His roar split the night, startling countless birds from the trees.

Liao Xu and the others ran another dozen paces before realizing the pressure of pursuit behind them had vanished. They looked back, only to see Gray Robe charging back like a madman, disappearing into the darkness in an instant.

The four exchanged bewildered looks. None of them knew what had happened.

Liao Xu clutched his left arm, his face deathly pale, blood dripping between his fingers. Gritting his teeth, he glanced over the three behind him, then toward the abandoned village.

"Go."

Yi Zhanzhi panted hard, the taste of blood in his throat. "Senior Brother Liao, those three from the Heaven Patrol Office are still in the village..."

"We can't worry about them."

Liao Xu's voice was cold, without the slightest hesitation.

"That fiend is at qi-blood fourth-level perfection, and he's even stronger after swallowing a Blood Origin Pill. The four of us together are no match for him. Going back would only mean death."

Yi Zhanzhi opened his mouth, then said nothing more.

Supporting Zhao He, Shen Qingyue said quietly, "Let's report back first and have the Heaven Patrol Office send experts."

Liao Xu nodded and led the three into the night.

An hour later.

Cloud Pattern Town, the Heaven Patrol Office's rear courtyard.

When Yi Yang entered through the side gate, the courtyard was quiet. The patrol guard on night duty was dozing in the gatehouse and did not even lift his eyelids.

No one noticed him.

Nor did anyone care that an old man ranked thirty-fourth had returned from outside in the middle of the night.

Yi Yang returned to his little courtyard, shut the gate, and slid the bolt into place.

He had not brought the saber back.

He had taken a detour on the way home and gone to Greenwood Mountain. The cave where he had hidden the purplewood last year had an entrance thoroughly concealed by weeds and loose stones. Yi Yang had wrapped the saber in three layers of oilcloth and tucked it into a crack in the rock deep inside.

No hurry.

It was a fine thing, but its origins were far too sinister. The Nine Evil Sect deacon had enshrined it and suppressed it with blood. There had to be a reason.

Using it recklessly would be no different from picking up a bomb without knowing when it would explode.

Wait until I've figured it out.

Yi Yang sat on the edge of his bed, took off his boots, and flexed his toes.

Tonight's haul had been considerable.

The Thundercloud Martial Arts Hall had lost Song Wu, Liao Xu and the other three had fled in disgrace, and the Nine Evil Sect deacon had exposed his true strength.

As for Yi Yang, he had not lost a single hair, and had helped himself to a fine saber along the way.

"Keep your head down, and you've already won."

Yi Yang lay down, the corners of his mouth lifting before he closed his eyes. The feel of that black-patterned saber still lingered in his palm. Cold, keen, as though it were alive.