Three days later, Shangzhou City lifted its lockdown. The Pure Heaven Bureau shifted its search outside the city, while intensifying its campaign against the remaining forces of the Evil Path.
At dusk, Su Ziye strolled out of the city wearing a bamboo hat.
The gates of Shangzhou City slowly closed behind him.
Night gradually shrouded the wilderness.
He took the last ferry across the Qingchun River and entered the mountains, where spring was even more abundant.
In the first half of the night, the mountains resembled countless giants against the dim heavens.
The giants held hundreds of invisible ropes, blocking every way out.
Several streaks of sword light illuminated the cliffs, revealing traces of the formations hidden within them.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ma Hua, a Green Mountain disciple. Every battle fought by Twofold Forgetting Peak over the past fifty years was my handiwork."
Ma Hua narrowed his eyes at Su Ziye and asked with a smile, "What do you think of the formation I prepared for you today?"
Su Ziye looked at the surrounding peaks and said, "Surrounding three sides and leaving one open works in military strategy, but how will you keep me here?"
"If this were a complete Green Mountain Sword Formation, how could I have tricked you into walking inside?"
Ma Hua said, "What I am using to keep you here is a person."
As his words fell, a sword restraint descended between the cliffs. A woman was bound to its lower end-the madam from Shangzhou City.
The madam's face was pale, her eyes filled with terror. She was about to cry for help when she spotted the man in the bamboo hat below the mountain and forcibly shut her mouth.
She did it so forcefully that she bit through her lip.
Su