Tap, tap, tap-
As the two faced off with cold eyes, the man with the straight saber who had been carried on someone's back also arrived some distance away. He stood in the street with his saber raised, his gaze wary, even tinged with fear.
The man's name was Cao Aning. He had originally been a eunuch in Great Wei's imperial palace and a minor commander of the Secret Guard.
But after Cao Gonggong, the "gate guardian of the imperial palace," fell from power along with the deposed emperor, this elusive palace expert had become an exiled wanderer.
Cao Aning had killed the Ministry of Works clerk on Zhuji Street the previous night. He had thought he had covered his tracks without leaving so much as a seam, only for a mole in the Government to report that someone called "Ye Jingtang" had suddenly appeared in the Black Bureau. He had seen at a glance that Cao Aning used a straight saber and had even noticed a problem with his palm technique.
Cao Aning had learned his Wandering Body Palm from Cao Gonggong and did not believe there was anything wrong with it. But to be safe, he had still gone to the morgue that night to destroy the corpse and erase the evidence.
What he had not expected was that Ye Jingtang's meticulousness bordered on foreknowledge. He had actually lain in ambush at the morgue, waiting for Cao Aning to walk into his net, and had severely wounded him.
Had that been all, Cao Aning would hardly have been frightened. He would merely have blamed his own carelessness for falling into an expert's trap.
But what Cao Aning could not understand was that Ye Jingtang clearly had not pursued him, and he had confirmed that no one was tailing