A quarter of an hour later.
A fishing boat drifted quietly across the lake, heading toward the lonely island in the night.
Duan Lianshan, cloaked and half-crouched in the bow, took a cloth bundle from his waist as they neared the island. He screwed four sections of shaft together to form a nine-foot spear, its foot-and-a-half blade covered by a sheath to keep it from reflecting a cold gleam.
To guard against an ambush, Duan Lianshan took out a spyglass and carefully examined every blade of grass and tree on the island. Finding nothing amiss, he ordered:
"Ask him where he is."
In the middle of the boat, three trusted followers were rowing. They had all originally been assigned to lie in wait for the Gold-Chasing Gentleman.
He Lin sat in the stern with a three-foot sword resting against his legs. Hearing the order, he pulled a jade tablet from his sleeve. Seeing no message, he took the initiative to ask:
"Where are you?"
The other party responded quickly and quite frankly:
"North side, facing the mouth of the lake, behind a rock."
Duan Lianshan raised his spyglass and examined the north side of the island. Soon, he spotted a young man in a bamboo hat poking his head out from behind a rock. The young man extended his left arm, revealing a wristguard, and gave it a wave.
The moonlight was bright, and the spyglass showed a clear image. He could tell the young man was around twenty, and the wristguard's color and texture did indeed resemble those of the Heaven-Obscuring Arm.
Duan Lianshan frowned slightly, genuinely impressed by the young man's nerve.
The accomplices behind him also looked suspicious:
"Could this be an ambush? Isn't he afraid we'll rush over and kill him?"
Duan Lianshan carefully searched the area around the young man, but found nothing amiss. Frowning, he said:
"Ask him."
He Lin immediately asked:
"You're all alone. Aren't you afraid we'll come and kill you?"
In response, the other party raised his left hand again, holding two black spheres.
If the Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers went off on Green Snail Island, the intense light would be enough to draw every hero and powerhouse on Black Dragon Island. If they saw that and chose to keep pursuing instead of fleeing, they would be real men.
And as long as the other party wasn't from Black Dragon Island, he would probably have to turn tail and run too.
Duan Lianshan thought the young man's thinking was quite clear, but he didn't believe the young man truly had no one backing him. He carefully surveyed the island again and found nothing amiss, then circled it once to inspect it. On the western slope, he found a small boat hidden in a crevice between the reefs.
Seeing no ambush on the shore, Duan Lianshan turned and ordered:
"I'll go ashore and scout things out first. Don't follow too closely. If things look bad, flee at once."
Whoosh~
Tap, tap...
With that, Duan Lianshan leaped from the boat. His feet touched the blue waves, and after two bounds, he arrived above the reefs.
Spear in hand, he checked the area on guard. Once he was sure it was safe, he slowly worked his way inland.
He Lin kept his eyes on the island the whole time, ready to scatter and flee at any moment.
But the result was obvious: Ye Xingge really hadn't prepared an ambush for them and was cooperating in good faith.
After confirming that nothing was amiss on the western slope, Duan Lianshan waved to them from a distance.
Seeing this, He Lin ordered, "Search the hills and wilderness with me. Keep thirty paces between each of us. If anyone is attacked and killed, flee immediately. Do not linger to fight."
"Yes!"
With that, He Lin took his sword and touched his feet to the blue waves, landing on the reefs. The three cultists followed close behind, then spread out in a long single-file formation and cautiously searched along the island's perimeter.
This arrangement let them plausibly search the hills and wilderness as part of the act, while keeping He Lin and Duan Lianshan a hundred and twenty paces apart. Even someone of the Second Rank couldn't possibly kill them both at once without warning.
Tap, tap...
And while the five searched the western slope with their guard fully raised, high on the island,
Hongyu hid silently in the bushes, keeping her spyglass trained on Ye Xingge while her left eye watched the lake and island for any unusual movement. In a low voice, she said:
"Both of them have Third Rank strength, and the other three are all elites. Killing the Gold-Chasing Gentleman wouldn't be hard for them, and killing you would be even easier. Be careful."
Ye Xingge leaned behind a mountain rock. Since he was far enough from the Return to Origin Cult and had someone keeping watch, he could hardly be called tense.
But to trick the Gold-Chasing Gentleman into taking the bait, he held his saber in his right hand and occasionally poked his head out cautiously to look toward the distant lakeshore, acting as though he saw enemies in every tree and blade of grass and feared being caught by Black Dragon Island.
Duan Lianshan and He Lin naturally searched the island's western slope at a very slow pace. After two quarters of an hour passed without incident, the two sides naturally came to a tacit understanding!
No matter who succeeded in the end, they first had to lure the man out and finish him off.
Driven by their shared interests, Duan Lianshan and He Lin played their parts perfectly, and Ye Xingge cooperated flawlessly. No one dropped the ball.
With the two groups putting aside their past grievances and working together, their bellies full of dirty tricks as they dug a pit for someone, they obviously weren't going to come away empty-handed.
Even so, the wait was indeed quite long...
Before anyone realized it, midnight had passed.
As news of Incense Master Li Yi's murder spread, torchlight had set the lakeside towns and villages ablaze. Large numbers of Black Dragon Island disciples, as well as men from nearby gangs, searched between the towns and islands, digging three feet into the ground.
The Dark Goods Wharf was a central hub, and the people who came here were generally ill-suited to the light of day. For that reason, Black Dragon Island didn't break the rules by lifting everyone's cloaks and searching their luggage, but Sect Leader Jiang Jinjiang had come in person and was looking for suspicious people in the market.
Meanwhile, at an inn near the bank.
Duan Lianshan and He Lin's personal luggage lay in a guest room. Two trusted Return to Origin Cult followers waited inside, talking to each other:
"Do you think this person came for Black Dragon Island or the Return to Origin Cult?"
"Probably us. Incense Master Leopard said yesterday that he had important intelligence, and today, when our people went over, he was already gone. If Incense Master Fox hadn't received that urgent letter from the capital, we wouldn't even know Incense Master Leopard was dead..."
"Who is the other party?"
"No idea..."
As they talked, a small hole silently appeared in the room's window.
A little smoke blew into the room through it.
In just a moment, the two chatting cultists grew drowsy. In a daze, they slumped against their chairs and the tea table, snoring:
"Snore~~..."
"Hoo..."
Creak~
Then the window opened, as though a gentle breeze had entered the room.
But there was no sign of anyone inside. Only a faint distortion of the light could be seen silently drifting across the room to the table.
Then a blurred figure began to take shape, revealing a grayish-yellow cloak that covered the entire body and the outline of a saber at the waist.
Rustle~
The figure raised both hands and pulled back the cloak, revealing the face of a man in his fifties in the candlelight. He was lean and ordinary-looking, the sort who would be hard to notice in a crowd.
A flying thief renowned throughout the martial world, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman had first made a name for himself in the final years of the Great Zhou. His lightness skill had long since reached the pinnacle of mastery, and stealing from all the major sects had made him filthy rich.
But given the nature of his profession, the famed weapons he carried were primarily meant to aid his thieving: metal, the Gold-Seeking Bell; wood, the Wind-Traveling Talisman; water, the Water-Repelling Pearl; fire, the Metal-Melting File; and earth, the Dust-Returning Robe.
With this whole set equipped, he was hard to track on land or water, swift as a flying horse, and silent on his feet. He could also find gold and locate burial sites, break through doors, and open locks. As long as he didn't court death, the martial world was his back garden.
But obviously, in a head-on fight, these things were no better than blank equipment.
So after obtaining the Fate-Robbing Saber, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman had found himself in a dilemma.
To use the Fate-Robbing Saber to grow stronger through battle, he would have to replace the equipment he had built up and train hard in practical combat skills. It would be little different from starting over.
And if he changed nothing, a flying thief carrying the Fate-Robbing Saber and challenging people to single combat would simply be throwing himself away.
That was why the Gold-Chasing Gentleman had disappeared for seven or eight years, going off to cram in saber techniques, unarmed combat, and the like.
But if someone who had switched paths midway and trained hard for seven or eight years could catch up to professional martial artists who had honed their killing skills from childhood, he wouldn't have become a flying thief in the first place.
He had now reappeared to climb the rankings not because his martial arts had reached their peak, but because he was running out of time.
At the beginning of the year, he had taken an enormous risk to steal a Ravine-Leaping Tiger Jian, intending to replace the Gold-Chasing Bell, switch professions to become an assassin, and catch people off guard.
But unexpectedly, without a means of detecting famed weapons, he had been caught outright by people from the "Dragon Flower Cult of Shu." The Ravine-Leaping Tiger had been taken from him, and he had only escaped by risking his life.
Because possessing a treasure made him a target, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman dared not trust anyone, yet he still had to trade for resources. That was why he had approached the "Red-Eye Disease Cult."
The Return to Origin Cult really was dependable. When they said they would kill him, they meant it, but when they said they wouldn't let outsiders get a share, they truly kept their mouths shut.
Even after failing a hundred times, they still couldn't bear to ask outsiders for help.
The Gold-Chasing Gentleman had enjoyed working with them and thought he could keep using this channel to fence stolen goods. But unexpectedly, his only black-market partner had somehow died!
Upon hearing the news, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman had quickly come to Forgetful River Mouth to investigate. Black Dragon Island had no clear answers, so he could only look for the other members of the Return to Origin Cult. But none were there, and there was talk of a letter from the capital...
After glancing around, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman untied the bundle on the table, revealing developing powder, tracking incense, and other tools for tracking him, along with bits of silver, documents, and other odds and ends.
Finding no useful information, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman searched the rest of the room. Soon, he discovered a sheet of paper in a wide-mouthed vase used as a decoration by the wall.
Most of the letter had been burned black, but it had not turned to ash, and a strip of white remained along its edge. It looked as though it had been set alight and tossed into the vase, and someone had hurried out before it finished burning.
Seeing this, the Gold-Chasing Gentleman took the candle from the table and brought it beside the vase, shining its light across the paper at an angle as he carefully deciphered it.
As long as writing in ink hadn't been completely burned to white ash, it wasn't too hard to make out. Its general contents soon came into view:
Mantanghong was trapped in Qingxi and rescued by Ye Xingge. The Filth-Severing Whip changed hands...
The Yong River was closed off. Incense Master Leopard lingered in Hexi, learned the news, and was killed...
It was unknown how much Ye Xingge had revealed. He had already seized the jade talisman and left the city; he must have intended to find Incense Master Tiger and silence him...
"The Filth-Severing Whip?!"
The Gold-Chasing Gentleman frowned. To be honest, he didn't quite dare trust the people of the Return to Origin Cult.
After all, the Return to Origin Cult had already tried all sorts of ways to fish for him many times.
Even so, this information did match the rumors of recent days.
Besides, even if they were fishing, how could they lure me out without the real Filth-Severing Whip to bait the spot?
The Gold-Chasing Gentleman thought for a moment, then turned to look at the two unconscious cultists. He walked over and raised a hand to seize one by the throat:
"Where did they go?"
"Ugh!"
The cultist jolted awake and saw the unfamiliar figure in front of him. His liver and gallbladder nearly burst with terror. He grabbed the man's wrist, his face turning bright red as he struggled for breath:
"G-Green Snail Island. Incense Master Fox came to report just now and led a team toward Green Snail Island..."
Crack~
As the words left his mouth, his neck broke, and the room fell still...