Captured Alive, Fire at the Prince's Residence

Smiling Tiger shuddered. In the chief's calm voice, he heard an unmistakable resolve.

He didn't dare ask further. Scrambling to his feet, he ran off to make the arrangements.

Soon, all of Black Wind Mountain was in motion.

In the gathering hall, torches crackled, illuminating one panic-stricken face after another.

"The soldiers... the soldiers really are attacking!"

"What do we do? We're all going to die!"

"Let's surrender! Let's surrender!"

Panic spread. Many of the bandits' legs were trembling so badly they could barely hold their sabers.

Chen Fan emerged from the rear hall with his ghost-head saber over his shoulder.

He surveyed the rabble, his rugged face betraying little reaction.

"Listen up, every last one of you!"

His towering frame and enormous ghost-head saber gave him a savage, oppressive presence that silenced everyone's wailing.

"The soldiers came for me, but once they're up the mountain, they won't spare a single one of you either."

"If you don't want to die, pick up your sabers and fight your way out with me. Kill one and you've broken even; kill two and you've made a profit!"

"If you want to get on your knees and beg for mercy, throw down your saber now and see if those official lords will be kind enough to leave your corpse whole!"

There were no inspiring words, only the starkest reality.

The bandits looked at one another, the fear in their eyes gradually giving way to the ferocity of outlaws fighting for their lives.

That was right. They were bandits, and their hands were stained with blood. Surrender was a dead end too.

"Let's fight them to the death!"

"Fuck them!"

Iron-Armed Monkey was the first to raise his saber, bellowing at the top of his lungs.

Just then, earth-shaking battle cries rose from the foot of the mountain, and the ground itself seemed to tremble.

The soldiers were already charging up the mountain.

A thousand of the prince's personal guards, clad in standard-issue armor, poured up the narrow mountain path like an unstoppable black torrent of iron.

They were well trained, their steps in perfect unison, their long sabers reflecting a chilling light in the firelight.

The few sentries on the mountain path were swallowed up almost instantly, without even having time to scream.

"Meet the enemy!"

Eyes red, Iron-Armed Monkey led a group of bandits howling out of One-Line Sky.

Then they ran into a wall.

A cold wall of steel, made of shields and long sabers.

"Puchi! Puchi!"

The dozen or so bandits at the front were run clean through, sabers and all, by a perfectly coordinated thrust of long blades.

Blood dyed the mountain path red in an instant.

The bandits' charge came to an abrupt halt.

Their supposed fearlessness in the face of death was a joke before a real army.

It was like chopping melons and vegetables.

This was a one-sided slaughter.

The prince's personal guards didn't even change formation. They simply stepped forward, swung their sabers, then stepped forward and swung again.

The bandits screamed and fled, trying to get back to the stronghold, only to find their way blocked by the men behind them. They trampled one another underfoot.

Chen Fan stood at the entrance to the gathering hall, watching it all with cold eyes.

The bandits of Black Wind Mountain were finished.

Saber in hand, he did not join that pointless slaughter.

He was waiting.

Waiting for the man who could kill him.

Soon, a middle-aged man dressed as a captain, escorted by a squad of personal guards, stepped over the corpses littering the ground and came to the front of the gathering hall.

It was Li Zhong, a captain of the Prince of Xiushan's Residence.

He looked at the towering figure at the entrance, a ghost-head saber slung over his shoulder, his face filled with unyielding coldness and fury.

"Black Wind Baleful Intent!"

"Where is Her Highness the Consort?"

Chen Fan bared his teeth, imitating Black Wind Baleful Intent with a brazen, careless grin.

He said nothing, merely lifting his chin lazily toward the stone chamber behind him.

Li Zhong's body went rigid.

The personal guards behind him all drew sharp breaths.

That gesture was as good as a direct confession.

A towering fury erupted from the depths of Li Zhong's heart.

Her Highness the Consort was a precious daughter of noble birth, yet she had really been... by this rustic from the wilds, this filthy bandit...

"You're courting death!"

Li Zhong roared, and the long saber at his waist flashed from its sheath.

He became an afterimage, charging straight at Chen Fan with a fierce killing intent.

A Seventh Rank martial artist!

Before the blade even reached him, the sharp wind from it had already made Chen Fan's cheeks sting.

Here he comes!

Far from alarmed, Chen Fan was delighted. He swung the massive ghost-head saber in a semicircle, meeting the attack with a howling gale.

As long as he died at this Seventh Rank captain's hands, he could ascend to the heavens in a single step, seize the man's body and identity, and become a captain of the prince's residence.

What a bargain!

"Clang!"

The blades collided, sending a burst of dazzling sparks flying.

A tremendous force traveled through the saber.

Chen Fan felt the web between his thumb and forefinger go numb. He staggered back five or six steps before he managed to steady himself.

Such powerful internal force!

Between the Eighth Rank and the Seventh Rank, a single rank made the difference between heaven and earth.

"Die!"

Having landed his first blow, Li Zhong gave Chen Fan no chance to catch his breath. His saber attacks came without end, like a violent storm, each stroke faster than the last.

Chen Fan could only parry passively, the enormous ghost-head saber seeming unbearably clumsy in his hands.

The few rudimentary variations of the Gale Saber Technique were riddled with openings before his opponent.

In just over a dozen exchanges, several wounds deep enough to expose bone had opened on Chen Fan's body.

Blood dyed one side of him red.

But he was smiling.

Die, come on, hurry up and put me out of my misery!

Seeing the blood-soaked bandit still laughing wildly before him, Li Zhong felt that the man's savage nature had been fully unleashed, and showed even less mercy.

With another strike, Li Zhong's blade tore through Chen Fan's defense and thrust straight toward his heart.

Chen Fan abandoned all resistance, ready to welcome this moment of release.

Yet just as the tip was about to touch his skin, Li Zhong turned his wrist.

The sharp edge became the heavy back of the blade.

"Bang!"

A heavy blow struck Chen Fan squarely in the chest.

His vision went black. He spat out a great mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs, and crumpled to the ground, completely unable to resist.

He's not killing me?

That was his last thought before he lost consciousness.

Breathing heavily, Li Zhong sheathed his saber.

"Tie him up! The prince wants to interrogate him personally!"

Several personal guards immediately stepped forward and bound the unconscious Chen Fan securely with specially made ox-sinew ropes.

Meanwhile, several other guards rushed into the stone chamber.

Soon, they emerged carrying a woman wrapped in a cloak, also unconscious.

It was the Consort of the Prince of Xiushan.

Seeing the consort's disheveled clothes and pale face, all the personal guards clenched their fists.

Their hatred for the bandit chief reached its peak.

The battle on Black Wind Mountain was drawing to a close.

Before the prince's elite troops, the hundreds of bandits were no more than lambs awaiting slaughter.

Inside and outside the gathering hall, corpses lay everywhere and blood flowed like a river.

While Black Wind Mountain was being bathed in blood,

dozens of miles away, deep in the rear courtyard of the Prince of Xiushan's Residence, an elegant pavilion suddenly burst into raging flames.

"Fire! The library pavilion is on fire!"

"Someone come put it out, quickly!"

"Assassins! The books have been stolen!"

In an instant, the entire residence descended into chaos.

Cold rain beat against his face.

Chen Fan awoke in pain.

He found himself being dragged down the mountain like a dead dog.

The excruciating pain in his chest made every breath feel like a knife cutting into him.

He had lost.

Not only had he lost, he had even failed to die.

He had been captured alive.

He turned his head and saw corpses covering the mountainside, and the consort being carefully escorted down the mountain by the personal guards.

White Lotus Sect...

I'll remember this. I have to settle this score someday!

Two personal guards roughly threw him across a horse's back, cold iron chains binding his hands and feet.

"Hyah!"

Li Zhong swung into the saddle and, without so much as looking at him, led the large contingent at a gallop toward the Prince of Xiushan's Residence, escorting him and the consort.