Three exceedingly faint whistles tore through the seemingly frozen air of the snowy morning, striking suddenly just as Loa sealed the jade vial and relaxed his vigilance a little!
They were three arrows, faint cyan magical halos flowing over their shafts, their poisoned heads gleaming coldly in the thin sunlight. Arranged in a triangle, they targeted the wrist of his right hand holding the jade vial, the vital spot between his brows, and his heart in his left chest! Precise, vicious, and fiendishly timed-this was clearly a long-planned, lethal ambush!
Yet Loa, who had survived countless life-and-death battles and was extraordinarily sensitive to shifts in airflow, had tensed every nerve and sense like a bowstring almost the instant the faint vibration of bowstrings reached him! Those subtle trails tearing through the air registered clearly in his superhuman combat intuition.
There was no panic, no wasted movement. At the last instant before the arrows struck, he drew his right hand holding the jade vial inward with utter naturalness. Like a willow branch stirred by the wind, his body swayed slightly to the right with incredible suppleness and speed.
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
The three sharp arrows missed him by a hair, brushing his sleeve, skimming his forelock, and passing close against the leather armor over his chest, their gusts whipping his sleeves. They buried themselves deep in the dark red rock face beside the bear cave behind him, sinking to their fletching with three dull thunks, their tails still quivering violently.
"Hey! Brat! Hand over what you're holding! Do that, and I'll spare your life!"
An arrogant shout, thick with superiority and greed, came from behind a rubble-strewn slope several hundred meters away.
The speaker immediately continued, "Uncle Eng! I told you there was something good over here! This nose of mine