A pot of hot tea sat on the middle-aged man's table.
A sword lay beside his hand as he leisurely drank a cup of tea.
"The Empress's men?"
"Looks like it."
The middle-aged man grinned, revealing a neat row of white teeth.
Meanwhile.
Inside the abandoned house, Li Ping'an sat cross-legged on the straw-covered floor, holding a tea bowl in one hand and a black game piece in the other.
The floating life was absent; the tea spoke in delicate fragrance.
"Hurry up and make your move~" Jing Yu urged, pinching a game piece.
"They're here!!"
Jing Yu seemed to sense it too. He abruptly stood, gripping his sword.
"How did they know where we were?"
"This is their territory. How could we escape them?"
"What do we do now?"
"The simplest way... fight our way out."
Li Ping'an drew his saber, a long blade as brilliantly white as snow.
Its shimmering light rippled like river waves beneath the moon, soft and limpid, spreading outward in successive layers.
In the rainy night, Li Ping'an pushed open the door and stepped outside.
Beneath the moonlight, he wore blue robes.
Crystalline moonlight stained the saber's tip, like a streak of silver light that grew clearer the farther away one looked.
"Old Ox, Run Tu, protect the witnesses and be ready to run at any moment."
"Understood!"
"Moo~"
Speaking of which, those three poor bastards Li Ping'an had captured truly were unlucky.
Since he had no way to keep them under control, Li Ping'an had simply prepared some poison pills for them.
The pills knocked them unconscious for two days at a time, and after two days, he fed them more.
Sword in hand, Jing Yu stood beside Li Ping'an.
"What do we do?"
"What else? Fight our way out," Li Ping'an said.