The night of the clan massacre

"Only with medicinal baths and my help refining it did this whale rubber deliver its full effect..."

Lu Cheng studied the girl's flushed face and spoke softly.

Whale rubber was certainly not something ordinary people could afford.

Of course, it was mainly because he was poor that he insisted on not wasting a single drop. After all, this one piece of thousand-year whale rubber would fetch at least thirty thousand Gold Soul Coins on the market. Even at one piece a month... it was still no small expense.

"One piece of thousand-year whale rubber a month? Who in their right mind eats like that..." Zhang Lexuan leaned against Lu Cheng's chest and grumbled quietly.

"And shouldn't Soul Masters focus more on Soul Power and their Martial Souls? Why keep fixating on physique?"

"I haven't seen you accomplish much with your Martial Soul either." Lu Cheng found it amusing and lightly tapped the girl between the brows.

"Mmph..."

"Oh, right, big brother, my birthday's coming up. Aren't you getting me a present?" Her beautiful eyes darted about, and she grinned mischievously as she wrapped her arms around Lu Cheng's neck.

"A present?" Lu Cheng paused.

"As luck would have it... I came across an ornament at the market a few days ago. It could rather rival your beauty." As he spoke, he took a jade-green hairpin from his storage diamond ring. A wind chime of the same color hung from its end, ringing sweetly in the gentle breeze.

"It's beautiful!" Zhang Lexuan's eyes lit up.

"Big brother, put my hair up with it!"

She straightened and turned her back to Lu Cheng, letting her beautiful, jet-black hair fall loose.

"Mm, beautiful..."

Looking at the playful girl as she turned back toward him with the hairpin in her hair, Lu Cheng's gaze briefly grew unfocused.

But the next second.

His pupils abruptly contracted.

An utterly piercing chill swept through his entire body.

This was...

Boom!

With a thunderous crash that tore through the silent night sky, a deadly trap raised its curtain.

Lu Cheng scrambled into a roll with Zhang Lexuan in a princess carry. Fiery wings sprang from his back, and like a streak of open flame, he burned straight through the bamboo house's roof. Yet he did not flee into the distance, instead hovering silently in midair.

The next instant, the bamboo house had already been reduced to dust and smoke, a charred ruin. Had he reacted even a second slower...

Lu Cheng's gaze shifted. The Lu Clan guards who had concealed themselves near the bamboo house were already bleeding from all seven orifices, without a breath of life.

Roughly a hundred meters away, three figures slowly closed in in a triangular encirclement, all clad in black robes and giving off an icy presence.

Evil Soul Masters...

The night of the clan massacre had come after all.

It cruelly ripped the peace and beauty to shreds, as though everything that had just happened had been an illusion. Only the hairpin in the girl's hair swayed, giving off the clear sound of silver bells.

"Big brother, big brother... I'm scared." Tears shimmered in Zhang Lexuan's eyes. A flower raised in a greenhouse, how could she ever have seen anything like this? She hid in Lu Cheng's arms, clutching his sleeve and trembling.

"It's all right. I'm here."

Lu Cheng slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air.

He surveyed the three closing in from mutually supporting positions. Their cultivation was at least at the Soul Saint realm; he could not discern their true strength at all. Otherwise, the two Lu Clan guards protecting him, both at least Soul Kings, would not have died without a sound...

But this was just as well.

At least it confirmed he hadn't been targeting an imaginary enemy.

"Kekeke, still putting on a bluff at death's door, brat? Listen to those distant screams. Tonight, your Lu Clan and the Zhang Clan will be wiped out completely..."

The leading shadow spoke with a strange laugh, his voice low and hoarse.

"Tomorrow, I'll let everyone on the continent know that this is the fate of anyone who dares oppose the White Spirit Duke!"

As expected. A classic frame-up.

Like villains woodenly finishing their lines, the three black-robed figures exchanged glances and began a "hunt" in which they were clearly holding back.

Even with one arm around Zhang Lexuan, Lu Cheng managed to escape their encirclement alive...

Outside Heaven Dou City.

Boom...

A fiery-red figure crashed down like a meteor.

Beneath the pitch-black night sky, a patch of trees shook.

Zhang Lexuan lay atop Lu Cheng, her little face covered in blood, and asked in a trembling voice, "Big brother, are you all right...?"

"Pfft-"

Lu Cheng spat out a mouthful of blood, his face deathly pale. He reached out and gently pinched the girl's fair, tender cheek, smearing a trace of blood onto her otherwise clean face.

"Big brother... sob..." At last, the girl could no longer hold back her tears and began to sob quietly. When they had escaped, the Lu Clan had already been a sea of flames. And judging by what those black-robed men had said, the Zhang Clan had probably been unable to escape disaster either. Her father, her mother...

"Shh."

Lu Cheng held a finger to his lips and surveyed their surroundings.

The girl hurriedly covered her mouth as well, curling into Lu Cheng's arms as tightly as she could. Feeling that burning heartbeat seemed to be the only way she could find a little peace.

Their surroundings were utterly silent.

Those men seemed to have "lost their trail." Clearly, according to the mastermind's plan, the two of them should have been eating in the wind and sleeping beneath the dew, traveling day and night toward Shrek Academy, where they would happen upon a Shrek Academy teacher, be brought before Mu En, and ask him to avenge them.

But...

But Lu Cheng caught a whiff of something wrong.

During the three men's encirclement just now, that utterly piercing killing intent had not been fake.

Had he been even a fraction later in escaping the house with Zhang Lexuan, they could very well have been gravely wounded. And just now, those three had hardly held back. Had he not risked his life to protect her, Zhang Lexuan might have...

Wait!!

Lu Cheng's pupils abruptly contracted.

Zhang Lexuan... was on the death list too!!

From beginning to end, these people had only one target: him!

They wanted to force him to take a master, while Zhang Lexuan... had to die in this catastrophe.

Zhang Lexuan was his childhood sweetheart, and their feelings ran extremely deep. Barring any surprises, they would most likely become husband and wife. But Mu En might already have made arrangements for him... Ma Xiaotao.

Only if Zhang Lexuan died would the latter be likely to fill the vacancy she left, binding him irrevocably to Shrek. Just as Zhang Lexuan had become Bei Bei's child bride, emotional chains were, in fact, the strongest and most tenacious.

In that case... the attack probably wasn't over yet.

Lu Cheng's heart lurched.

"Watch out!"

Lu Cheng abruptly wrapped his arms around the girl's waist and rolled to the side.

"Kekeke, boy, you even reacted to that..."

A black-robed figure slowly emerged.

Heart-palpitating dark power surged in his palm.

Yet a trace of impatience flickered in his eyes. His orders from above were to leave only this boy alive without arousing his suspicions, but now...

He was proving far too troublesome.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Lu Cheng knelt on one knee, clutching his chest and coughing up mouthfuls of crimson blood that dripped onto the withered grass.

"Big brother!"

Zhang Lexuan's beautiful eyes were red.

She showered Lu Cheng with Silver Moon Amplification, heedless of the expenditure, but it seemed to have little effect.

The girl stared fixedly at the black-robed man approaching step by step.

She stood in front of Lu Cheng.

"If you're going to kill him, kill me first!"

"Hehe, I couldn't ask for more..."