Zhang Xiaohua emerged from the inner hall only a short while after Qin Shiyue. Yet in that brief span of time, the reception hall had already become a hell of slaughter.
Qin Shiyue's martial arts were extraordinarily formidable. Like a wolf among sheep, his soft sword relentlessly reaped the lives of those fleeing in panic through the hall. When Zhang Xiaohua entered, he could not help feeling both shocked and enraged. He was shocked by Qin Shiyue's murderous zeal. Like Zhang Xiaohua, Qin Shiyue used only one method to kill. Zhang Xiaohua's was a refined thrust that ended a life with a single stroke, leaving a spot of red at the throat. This man also used one stroke, but his stroke severed heads. Swords were generally sharpened at the tip and used to stab enemies. Though the edges on either side were sharp as well, a sword was not a broadsword, and was seldom used for chopping people apart. Seeing how practiced Qin Shiyue was at slicing off heads with his soft sword, it was likely that this weapon had been specially treated.
What enraged Zhang Xiaohua was that Qin Shiyue was not truly slaughtering innocents at random. Rather, Ma Rulong and Qiu Xidao knew their qinggong could not match Qin Shiyue's, so they kept burrowing into the most crowded parts of the hall, hoping the guests who had come to offer birthday congratulations could hold Qin Shiyue back for a while. Among those guests, the cleverer ones and those with stronger martial arts had long since fled far away. Only those who had yet to understand what was happening, those with weak martial arts, or even those with no martial arts at all remained, thrown into a chaotic heap. They stood directly in Qin Shiyue's path, forcing him to