My lord, could you give me a chance?

Having already begun killing, Song Xuan cast aside all restraint.

His figure moved like a roaming dragon, weaving through the crowd. All anyone could see were afterimages flashing outside the prefectural office, sword light flickering in every direction as the hiss of a blade slicing through flesh rang out again and again.

By the time Song Xuan stood at the entrance with his sword in one hand, corpses lay strewn all around him.

"Run!"

At last, the dozen or so surviving guards of the prefectural office broke down completely. Someone shouted, and they scrambled and stumbled toward the compound.

His blood up, Song Xuan let out a long, piercing cry. With a light tap of his toes against the ground, he shot after them like a swallow in flight.

The sword in his hand flashed like thunder and lightning. A silver dragon of sword light soared with a whistle through the air, swept across their path, and sent great heads flying amid sounds like tearing silk.

"Splendid swordsmanship, my lord!"

An admiring shout rose from among the Black Robe Guard.

With a casual flourish of his sword, Song Xuan spun twice in midair before descending gently. Looking at the corpses covering the ground around him, he exhaled softly.

There was nothing splendid about his swordsmanship. In truth, he had used no sword technique at all, relying entirely on speed.

In that brief instant, everyone else had seen godlike swordsmanship-a single stroke taking twelve heads. In reality, he had struck more than a dozen times in a flash, at extraordinary speed.

He had moved too quickly for anyone to follow, creating the illusion of twelve kills with one stroke.

No finesse whatsoever. Speed was the entire point!

Of all martial arts under heaven, none could withstand overwhelming force, yet speed alone could not be countered!

With speed pushed to its limit, one sword could shatter ten thousand techniques!

At the office entrance, slaughter raged, and blood burbled along the street.

Yet the rear garden remained strangely quiet. Not a trace of the fighting in the front courtyard reached it.

At that moment, the prefect, Tian Yuan, dressed in splendid brocade robes, sat beneath a flowering tree, leisurely sipping tea.

Only a close look would reveal the faint trembling of the hand holding his cup.

"Father!"

A young man hurried in from a distance. He was short and slight, and his white robes, rosy lips, and gleaming teeth gave him the air of a graceful, handsome youth.

Yet perhaps because he was nervous, his voice came out rather shrill, grating painfully on the ear.

"Father, the Black Robe Guard is fighting its way in! How can you still be sitting here drinking tea?"

"What else can I do besides drink tea?"

Tian Yuan looked at his son with doting eyes and sighed. "Do all you can, then leave the rest to Heaven. If the private soldiers I've kept all these years can't stop those gods of slaughter, then our doom has come, and neither of us can escape it!"

The young man's expression shifted repeatedly before settling into guilt. "I've brought this on you, Father! You told me to keep a low profile lately, but I couldn't resist going out and running wild. Now I've brought disaster down on us!"

Tian Yuan shook his head. "I thought I'd covered everything up well. With your uncle helping us at court, nothing should have gone wrong at the Ministry of Justice, either.

"But in the end, this case still landed in the Black Robe Guard's hands.

"I was careless. I should have silenced those people from the Sun Household beforehand!"

The young man fell silent for a moment, then asked, "Father, is someone at court targeting our Tian Household?"

"Indeed!" Tian Yuan said. "The Minister of Justice is advanced in years. Barring anything unexpected, he'll petition to retire and return home this year. As the left vice minister, your uncle naturally wants to contend for the position.

"But the right vice minister has his eye on it, too.

"Over these past few years, you've kept causing trouble, and I've kept covering it up. Your uncle has also done everything he could to smooth things over, precisely because he didn't want your affairs to affect his chances of becoming minister.

"Unfortunately, the right vice minister finally found the chink in our armor-you-and brought those harbingers of doom from the Black Robe Guard down on us!

"The Black Robe Guard... Even if our Tian Household is a great clan of Jianghuai, how could we possibly stand against such a behemoth?"

The young man looked puzzled. "Father, if you don't want to oppose the Black Robe Guard, why order the guards to fight them to the death? What's the point?"

"There is a point, of course!" Tian Yuan tightened his grip on his teacup. "I need to buy time!"

With that, he hurled the cup to the ground.

The shattering cup was the signal!

In the next instant, several black iron nets fell from above. Caught completely off guard, the young man had no time to react before they dropped over his head and trapped him.

Several men in black emerged from a corner of the rear garden with sabers in hand and secured the iron nets firmly in place.

"Father, what are you doing?"

"What am I doing? Killing you, of course!"

Tian Yuan rose, drew a dagger from his sleeve, and strode forward.

"This is all my fault. I should never have spoiled you so much!"

"Father, I'm your only son!"

"Yes, you're my only son. That's why I've always wiped your backside for you. And now, because of you, the entire Tian Household faces annihilation."

Conflict flickered across Tian Yuan's face before it finally twisted into a savage expression. "Son, I know you learned lightness skills from that unfilial wretch Tian Boguang. That's why, as soon as I heard your case had been handed over to the Black Robe Guard, I ordered men to start making these iron nets.

"I kept clinging to a sliver of hope that the Black Robe Guard wouldn't trace it here. But now there's no other way. They've come knocking at our door. Unless you die, the entire Tian Household will be buried with you!

"Don't blame me for being ruthless. I've done everything in my power to protect you, but now I simply can't protect you any longer!

"If you must blame someone, blame yourself for being so thoughtless! You like playing with women, so I took dozens of concubines for you. Weren't they enough? Why did you have to go into other people's homes and play with their wives?

"And if you were going to do it, couldn't you at least have been careful enough not to get caught?!"

Growing angrier with every word, Tian Yuan roared, "Fuck your mother! You've brought this enormous mess down on me. Now it's time for you to fulfill your filial duty to the Tian Household!"

As he spoke, he thrust the dagger toward his son's neck. But just before the blade pierced flesh, a pebble streaked through the air like a blazing meteor. With a bang, it knocked the dagger from Tian Yuan's hand!

"Lord Tian, isn't it a little late to be thinking of killing someone to silence him?"

At the garden entrance, Song Xuan strode over the bloodstained ground, sword in one hand.

Behind him, Song Qian, Shen Lian, and the other members of the Black Robe Guard surged in like a dark tide. They cut down the men in black as easily as slicing melons and chopping vegetables, then sealed off every exit from the garden.

Tian Yuan trembled all over. His lips quivered as he turned a pleading gaze toward Song Xuan.

"My lord, could you give this old man-give the Tian Household-a chance?"

"Oh?" Song Xuan regarded him with interest. "What sort of chance do you want?"

Tian Yuan pointed at his son and said quietly, "This unfilial wretch committed all the crimes. I wouldn't presume to ask you to spare him. I only beg that you leave the Tian Household out of it when you try the case.

"As long as you can preserve the Tian Household..."

He shakily raised one finger. "A gift of one million taels of silver for every member of the Black Robe Guard present!"