As the turmoil subsided, all of Tianlang Lake seemed to freeze in an instant.
Several miles away, more than a dozen personal guards who had followed them stared from afar, their faces deathly pale, at the figure in golden armor that no longer moved. Then they scrambled and stumbled away toward the Western Sea Protectorate.
On the other side, amid the wrecked ice, four elderly Secret Guards who had accompanied them plunged into the bitterly cold lake, hauled out the red-robed figure floating in the water, and pushed him onto the ice, calling urgently:
"Lord Cao? Lord Cao?"
Cao Gonggong's robes were in tatters, and his dim old eyes had begun to lose focus. But after his subordinates slapped his face a few times, he abruptly sprang upright, making all four elderly Secret Guards shudder in fright.
"Whew... What are you panicking for? I've practiced the Changqing Diagram for sixty years. It's not as though I'm an old man with one foot in the grave. A few internal injuries won't kill me that easily..."
"Lord Cao, look over there."
Cao Gonggong first straightened his disheveled hair. Only after hearing his subordinate's direction did he let them help him to his feet and gaze toward the ice several miles away.
Three specks the size of grains of rice stood at the edge of his vision, two standing and one seated. After a moment of stillness, the white-clad figure walked over to the seated man, while the figure in golden armor beside them remained utterly still, without another movement.
"Whew... They really did beat him to death..."
Cao Gonggong and the Left Xian King were about the same age. Both had lived through the wars between the three kingdoms and witnessed the fall of the northwestern kingdom. They could be said to