On a country lane outside Funan County.
Clear moonlight spilled across the winding road, where more than twenty corpses lay scattered in all directions. The heavy stench of blood and the gruesome sight clashed with the tranquility of the surrounding wilderness.
More than a dozen figures wearing Owl-Head Masks and black robes moved among the corpses, meticulously slitting their throats again with steel sabers, coldly making sure they were dead.
In front of the three carriages, the fat man who had claimed to be the Second Disciple under the Heavenly Rhino Cave Master knelt bolt upright. Wounds covered his body, leaving him in a wretched state.
The spiked club he had carried on his shoulder had been smashed into countless lumps of iron, scattered all over the ground.
A tall man wearing an Owl-Head Mask stood before him.
Unlike the others, he wore a broad, gold-threaded jade belt around his waist, and the long black saber held in a reverse grip in his right hand looked extraordinary as well.
Under the moonlight, he stared coldly at the second disciple, his ears twitching rapidly.
Tap, tap!
Soft footsteps sounded as a black-clad man approached and quietly addressed the man with the gold-threaded jade belt. "Commander, we checked the woods. There were only five people. After killing them, we questioned their spirits. The numbers matched."
"Mm." The man with the gold-threaded jade belt nodded slightly.
At that, the men beside him immediately withdrew and stood guard some distance away.
"Do you know whose carriage you stopped?" the man with the gold-threaded jade belt asked quietly, looking down at the second disciple.
Utterly bewildered, the second disciple shook his head, his eyes blank.
Swish!
The man with the gold-threaded jade belt pulled a deerskin-wrapped token from his waist, unwrapped it, and held it