Crack-
Shhhhh...
Before the aftermath in Jade Water Forest had fully subsided, muffled thunder rolled across the gloomy sky. Then soybean-sized raindrops fell, gradually extinguishing the flames still burning in the Manor.
Two heavily armored soldiers were carried beneath the Buddhist Hall's eaves. Their helmets had been removed, revealing faces deformed by twisted bones. Both had their internal organs shattered and blood streaming from all seven orifices. In the candlelight, they looked rather horrifying.
Three imperial eunuchs who had narrowly escaped stood around the Buddhist Hall. Although they knew the intruders must have left and there was no need to stand guard, they had been no help earlier. They still had to look dutiful now, lest they seem like useless mouths to feed.
Inside the Buddhist Hall, Zhongsun Jin sat in his gray robe before a golden Buddha over ten feet tall, gazing at the night rain outside. He had barely spoken since withdrawing from the battlefield.
Protector Song Yi half crouched beside him, pulling up his trouser leg to set and treat the broken bone. The faint scraping of broken bone could even be heard inside the hall, yet Zhongsun Jin showed no expression, as though the leg were not his.
Seeing this, Protector Song understood the founding patriarch's state of mind. It was not that he feared no pain, but that he had no attention to spare for these bodily hurts.
The longer a martial artist trained, the more solidly tempered his physique naturally became. Once his tendons or bones were injured, however, the consequences were likewise more serious than for ordinary people, especially when it came to the legs.
After all, when ordinary people broke a leg, being able to walk and run counted as recovery; at worst, it affected heavy labor. A martial artist's legs, however,