Black Mud Marsh

The Red Sleeve House was lavish and grand, catering to refined and common tastes alike. It had long been a favorite gathering place for the capital's elite.

Among them were plenty of members of the Yan faction.

Most of the Yan faction knew Zhao Wenhua, and quite a few were familiar with his family.

Lu Kunlun probably could not keep this up for long.

Once the Red Sleeve House uncovered his background, its attitude would certainly change. Cao Jinxing knew time was short. He had to seize this chance to search for those two men.

The most suspicious place was the Warm Fragrance Pavilion!

-the place where Su Miaoyun played the zither for her "cultured guests."

It was easy to find.

Every other room in the Red Sleeve House was fitted with Sound-Absorbing Stones. Even when someone played the zither, no sound escaped the room.

This room alone was not soundproofed. On the contrary, they practically wished the whole capital could hear it, so Su Miaoyun's exquisite music could draw distinguished guests.

At that moment, lilting zither music drifted from a room on the eastern side of the top floor.

Cao Jinxing raced like the wind. While everyone's attention was focused on Lu Kunlun in the hall below, he made several swift leaps and turns, using the shadows to approach the Warm Fragrance Pavilion, then slipped silently through its window.

The music continued.

He stood motionless beneath the window and spread his true qi into his surroundings, sensing changes in the moisture within fifty meters to determine how many people were in the room.

This was a little trick he had figured out after learning the Ice-Controlling Art, but the moment he tried it, he noticed something wrong.

There was only one person in the entire room!

Just Su Miaoyun herself?

Wasn't she supposed to be entertaining a guest?

Cao Jinxing frowned slightly and looked out from behind the screen. A woman dressed in red, her face covered by a veil, was playing the zither.

On the surface, everything seemed normal.

But her age did not fit.

Su Miaoyun was said to have entered the Red Sleeve House at sixteen, ten years ago. She should have been twenty-six, yet this girl's features had not fully matured. She was sixteen at most.

Still just a young girl.

Cao Jinxing could not be bothered to guess. He flashed behind her and held his sword across her neck. "Talk. Where is Su Miaoyun?"

The sudden appearance of the blade startled the girl.

"My lady... my lady isn't here..."

The girl shuddered and answered in a trembling voice.

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know..."

"Hmm?"

"Really!"

She was almost crying with fear and could no longer keep playing. The instant the music stopped, the people below changed expression and looked up. They forgot about dealing with Lu Kunlun for the moment, and several of the stronger fighters started toward the stairs.

Seeing this, Lu Kunlun hurriedly called out, "Hey, hey, hey! You lot, bring me a cup of tea! Neglect me, and I! Will! Kill! You!"

He enunciated every word, his voice and expression fierce.

Those men actually stopped.

They dared not take the risk. Ordinary people would not dare invoke Zhao Wenhua's name to cause trouble.

Until they had thoroughly verified his identity, they could not simply ignore him. They could only placate him with polite words.

Commoners did not contend with officials.

Especially when a behemoth like the Yan Family was involved. For the moment, he truly had them cowed.

The madam was furious. She grabbed a male attendant and said through gritted teeth, "Go upstairs to the Cape Pavilion and fetch Lord Liu at once! He's Lord Zhao's confidant. Ask him whether this man exists. If he doesn't, I'll chop him to pieces! Send the rest to the Warm Fragrance Pavilion... So he has an accomplice. Deal with them both!"

"Understood!"

The attendant hurried away.

Upstairs, Cao Jinxing changed his question. "Did she leave with two men? One of them was ugly. You called him... Master Wei."

According to the Beggar Gang disciples, the wine seller's surname was Wei, and he called himself Wei Wuyan.

The girl stiffened.

"Stop pretending. Do you really think I won't kill you?"

Cao Jinxing sneered. "You may be young, but you're at the seventh level of Houtian. You shouldn't be frightened like this, as though you know no martial arts at all! Didn't your lady tell you not to overdo the acting? Too much is as bad as too little."

He nudged his sword forward.

The icy blade cut her skin.

A thin streak of blood appeared on the girl's neck. Snow Soul's yin energy invaded her body, making her feel as though she had fallen into an ice pit. She trembled all over. This time, her fear was real!

"Yes..."

Her teeth chattered.

"She had you stay here in her place to keep up appearances. Then where did she go? I'll count to three. Three, two, one..."

He made as if to slash!

"Black Mud Marsh!"

She was young, after all, and could not withstand the terror.

The girl hurriedly shut her eyes and screamed!

The sword stopped abruptly at her neck!

-Cao Jinxing had seen that she meant to stall and gave her no chance. Besides, he had left her with the impression of a meticulous, cold-blooded killer. If she gave him a false location now and he caught her out, she would certainly die!

The girl collapsed as soon as she spoke.

The murderous threat of that brush with death had been too terrifying. She had truly thought she was going to die!

Bang!

Just then, several figures burst through the door. They were the Red Sleeve House's remaining guards.

Cao Jinxing casually swung his sword. Sword qi surged like a collapsing snow mountain, and bone-chilling cold engulfed them in an instant!

The three men in front turned straight into ice sculptures, frozen in the act of charging inside. Their bodies were rigid and ice-blue, unable to move at all!

The others shivered violently, as though a bucket of icy water had been poured over them. None dared approach.

Cao Jinxing shot through the window and vanished.

The girl turned back and stared blankly at the three peak-Houtian experts who had been frozen in an instant. She was utterly stunned. From beginning to end, she had not even seen Cao Jinxing's face.

In the ground-floor hall.

After much coaxing, the attendant finally persuaded the drunken Lord Liu to leave the Cape Pavilion.

Lord Liu did not even come downstairs. He merely glanced down from the corridor and laughed drunkenly. "What scoundrel dares cause trouble under Lord Zhao's name... hic... Everyone knows Lord Zhao only had two older male cousins, and now they're gone too... Where did this... hic... younger cousin come from?"

The madam flew into a rage. "Surround him! Beat him!"

The others had long disliked this brat too. Even with their elite fighters absent, they still had strength in numbers. Several of the resident experts immediately lunged at him!

Several poison users also secretly readied hidden weapons.

Lu Kunlun laughed heartily, rose to his feet, and threw three punches in succession. He used the eighth-grade Six Harmonies Fist, one of the most common martial arts in the martial world, yet his punches blended hardness and softness and carried extraordinary power.

The three fiercest attackers were sent flying backward.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

All kinds of hidden weapons came at him from every direction.

Lu Kunlun casually picked up a chopstick and parried left and right, effortlessly blocking every hidden weapon. Then he used Grass-Skimming Flight to retreat swiftly, laughing as he called:

"See you later, girls~"

In a blink, he was gone.

His martial arts were commonplace, but he had clearly chosen them to conceal his own school's techniques. Anyone who could break out so easily had to possess exceptional strength!

"This is bad!"

The madam sensed trouble. "One in the open, one in the shadows... Get upstairs! That wretched girl Zhu'er must have let something slip! Hurry and notify Miaoyun with the Invisible Falcon. Tell her to be careful!"

Black Mud Marsh.

It lay along the White Horse River in Jizhou Town, northeast of the capital. The terrain there was rugged, with rolling mountains. Farther north stood the frontier's White Horse Pass, bordering the territory of the Three Guards of Duoyan.

Precisely because it was so close to the Tatars, the area was sparsely populated.

Cao Jinxing and Lu Kunlun raced onward, one flitting like a phantom, the other soaring high. In no time, they reached the White Horse River.

Black Mud Marsh lay in a great canyon along the White Horse River called Waterwheel Gorge. It took its name from the ten-zhang-deep sludge covering several li around it.

"What a stink!"

Before they even reached Black Mud Marsh, Cao Jinxing and Lu Kunlun caught its stench from afar.

It smelled like animal carcasses rotting in mud.

Lu Kunlun said, "No wonder that wine seller never bothered getting rid of his stench. If Peach Blossom Spring is hidden in there, he must come out covered in sludge and reeking every time he goes in and out. Washing would be pointless."

Cao Jinxing nodded. "His lightness skills probably aren't good enough. He must use something like Earth Escape to travel through the mud. That would explain it."

The sludge in Black Mud Marsh was deep and heavy. Neither boats nor leather rafts could cross it. Anyone with inadequate lightness skills who sank into it would only be dragged beneath the marsh and become part of the sludge.

The two continued on.

When they reached the cliffs of Waterwheel Gorge, Cao Jinxing's keen senses picked something up. He immediately gestured for Lu Kunlun to stay silent.

Lu Kunlun nodded.

They leaped lightly onto a large tree growing on the cliff and looked down at Black Mud Marsh beneath the clear, pale moonlight.

Eight figures were skimming across the surface of the marsh.

Two men and a woman led the way.

The men flanked her on either side.

The woman was in the middle, wearing a red dress with an ancient zither on her back. She was none other than Su Miaoyun.

Each man carried a person, yet their movements remained light and nimble. Every few dozen meters, they tossed out several wooden chips. Using the slight buoyancy of those chips, the party of eight skimmed swiftly across Black Mud Marsh.

"Butterfly-Stepping-Through-Flowers..."

Lu Kunlun narrowed his eyes and sneered, transmitting his voice. "These people really are disciples of the Chess and Sword Music House. No wonder they know Soul-Seizing Zither Music... They've truly fallen low. One of the nine secret-realm sects, and they're singing in a brothel for money! Aren't they afraid Patriarch Li's spirit will beat these unworthy descendants to death?"

"..."

Cao Jinxing raised an eyebrow and replied, "The Chess and Sword Music House-isn't that the renowned sect at Thousand Island Lake in Hangzhou? I think it has separate zither and sword branches?"

"Yes."

Lu Kunlun said, "The Chess and Sword Music House and our Beggar Gang have been on friendly terms for generations. But their last two generations have failed to produce worthy successors. They keep losing at the Dongting Martial Assembly, and every so-called prodigy they put forward is utterly worthless. They don't look like one of the nine sects at all! Who knows what they're up to."

"It doesn't matter."

Cao Jinxing said, "The people they're carrying should be Old Zhou and Wei Wuyan. That woman's internal strength is average. She's probably only just reached Xiantian. Only her zither music will be troublesome. Watch out for the two men beside her. They're at least at the fourth level of Xiantian."

"I'd beat a Chess and Sword Music House disciple even at the ninth level of Xiantian!" Lu Kunlun held the sect in deep contempt. "I know their techniques inside out. Don't worry. Follow me!"

He darted down from the tree.

Cao Jinxing shook his head. There was probably more to this. The woman felt completely different from those two men. Lu Kunlun might be in for a nasty surprise. He flashed after him...