At first, Zhang Xingming had not understood why killing a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator from a small kingdom in the Border Region required someone in the Golden Core Realm like him.
The reasons seemed to involve matters at a higher level, beyond the authority of even a Golden Core Realm steward like him to investigate.
Still, the senior who had assigned him the task had revealed a little.
Song Yan and Chen Linyuan probably followed the same path-the lineage of Sword Cultivators from High Antiquity. That was why suppression by a major realm was needed to make certain of success.
This had made Zhang Xingming far more wary.
If it were only Song Yan, killing him would naturally have been as easy as turning his hand.
A Sword Cultivator disciple at the Foundation Establishment Realm middle stage, however talented or fortunate, was nothing more than a somewhat stronger ant before a Golden Core Realm cultivator like him.
Yet the fact that Song Yan and Chen Linyuan were both Sword Cultivators gave him something to ponder.
Could this Song Yan be a disciple Chen Linyuan secretly taught?
Zhang Xingming's original plan had been to find a suitable opportunity when Song Yan was alone, strike like thunder, annihilate him in body and spirit, then immediately flee far away to keep Chen Linyuan from coming after him.
But man's plans could not outmatch heaven's.
Now that Chen Linyuan's Sword Talisman had also fallen into Song Yan's hands, Zhang Xingming found himself wavering again.
When Zhang Xingming said he was a timid man, it was neither polite modesty nor idle nonsense.
He knew that, as an ordinary Demon Ruins Cultivator with neither much talent nor any backing, he had reached his current Golden Core Realm entirely through his steadiness and caution.
Even among Golden