As several blood-clad men crashed into the cabin, Ji Qianqian frowned deeply.
She recognized the burly man holding the enormous iron awl. He was Mountain Awl Zhu Mingshan, an exceptionally powerful Inner Sect disciple of Blood Bat Mountain.
Behind Mountain Awl Zhu Mingshan hid a thin, frail-looking man. He seemed unremarkable, but he was an expert no weaker than Zhu Mingshan or Li Daogui-Ghost Shadow Saber Lü Han.
Ji Qianqian kept firing, her right hand leaving trails of afterimages as she unleashed a furious rain of arrows.
Every arrow she fired carried powerful True Essence and surging thunder.
She had now "taken" the Secret Medicine and possessed Sixth Grade Lower cultivation. Even if her fighting strength exceeded that level somewhat and approached the Fifth Grade, she could still explain it afterward.
After all, her current identity had considerable Talent, far surpassing Li Shenshan, and had reached her present strength through unorthodox training alone.
It was entirely possible for her Talent to awaken suddenly, greatly increasing her fighting strength.
Yet even though Ji Qianqian risked exposing her identity and fired with everything she had, she still could not stop Zhu Mingshan and the others from closing in on Chu Xisheng.
She already held a Smoke Bomb inside her sleeve, ready to throw it at any moment.
For this mission, Ji Qianqian and Cao Xuan had invested enormous amounts of time and effort, along with manpower, connections, and resources. The Demon Silver alone had cost over a hundred thousand taels-a quarter of their two Thousand Household Offices' funding.
If Chu Xisheng fell here and died at the Bloodwind Bandits' hands, everything she had invested would go down the drain.
-That was something Ji Qianqian absolutely could not tolerate!
But even if she acted under cover of smoke this time, her identity would