Chapter 19: Chapter 19
“Heh heh!”
“Song Xian — you’ve gotten old!”
“One genius who’s grasped blade intent, and you’re too scared to make a move?”
A mocking laugh drifted in from the distance.
A figure soared across the rooftops like a great bird, landing squarely on the ruined study’s ridge beam.
The newcomer looked to be in his forties. His cultivation was unmistakably sixth-rank.
“Sun Dahai — here to watch me embarrass myself?”
Song Xian’s words were sharp, but a smile had crept onto his face.
“Hah!”
“I don’t have time for your drama.”
“I’m here on Elder Yun’s orders to receive the herb shipment. Where is it?” Sun Dahai snorted, his tone cold.
Song Xian gestured toward Ye Qingmei and Li Suifeng.
“The herbs — you’ll have to ask Ye Qingmei and this young friend of hers.”
“I’d wager the shipment is already in their hands.”
“Plum Blossom Blade Sun Dahai — sixth-rank.” Ye Qingmei’s voice reached Li Suifeng’s ear. She had already moved to his side, speaking low. “Two sixth-rank fighters on the other side now. I have a friend en route to Nanyang — better if we pull back.”
At full strength, paired with Li Suifeng’s blade work, she’d have been confident enough to fight.
But the lingering poison still had her at roughly seventy percent. She couldn’t hold a sixth-rank opponent for long.
“No need.”
“Song Xian dies tonight. Nobody stops me.”
Li Suifeng shook his head.
“Heh heh!”
“Big talk!”
Contempt painted Sun Dahai’s face. “Song Xian — you’re really a disgrace to our sect.”
“Genius or not, he’s still just a seventh-rank.”
Song Xian’s lips curled into a matching sneer. A seventh-rank fighter might have comprehended blade intent, but the gulf between sixth and seventh rank wasn’t something blade intent alone could bridge.
“Why don’t we find out?”
Li Suifeng’s eyes held nothing — no joy, no sorrow. He took a single step forward.
A flash of blade-light—
—and vanished.
“Hm?”
Every hair on Song Xian’s body stood on end. A sound of confusion escaped his lips — and then a bead of blood appeared at the center of his brow. The bead slid downward, tracing a line past his nose, his mouth… His entire body split apart.
Blood drenched the ground.
“What a blade!”
Every face changed — including Ye Qingmei’s.
They’d all been watching the exchange with absolute focus. Yet not a single one of them had seen how that slash was delivered. Not Ye Qingmei. Not Sun Dahai.
Especially Sun Dahai. He now stood barely three zhang from Song Xian’s corpse.
The instant Li Suifeng had moved, Sun Dahai had moved too.
He hadn’t expected this outcome.
That blade was too fast.
So fast that even he — a fellow saber practitioner — felt a chill in his bones.
One hand rested on the hilt at his waist, but facing Li Suifeng from three zhang away, he didn’t dare draw.
【Ding!】
【Host has successfully killed Song Xian. Frigid Ice True Qi obtained. Extract now?】
The system chimed.
Li Suifeng stood motionless. An unnatural flush had crept across his face.
Backlash from the blade intent?
A calculating gleam lit Sun Dahai’s eyes.
A peak seventh-rank fighter one-shotting a peak sixth-rank master — there had to be a price.
“Boy — unleashing that slash didn’t come cheap, did it?” Sun Dahai laughed. “Today was just Song Xian’s bad luck. But your head? I’ll be taking that!”
SHING!
The Plum Blossom Blade cleared its sheath.
A flash of cold steel.
Sun Dahai’s blade fragmented into seven points of frigid starlight, each one targeting a different vital point on Li Suifeng’s body.
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
Ye Qingmei’s sword joined the fray. Sword qi surged, intercepting four of the seven strikes.
But Li Suifeng’s face remained blank.
His own saber slashed diagonally upward.
Steel blazed. The remaining stars scattered.
SQUELCH!
Blood sprayed. Sun Dahai threw himself backward in desperate retreat.
A gash ran from his shoulder all the way to his lower abdomen. Blood had painted half his body crimson.
THUD!
Sun Dahai dropped to one knee, saber braced against the ground, barely holding himself upright.
Now he understood why Song Xian hadn’t been able to stop this masked man’s blade. It was simply too fast.
“That first slash did cost me. But dealing with you? I don’t need it.”
Li Suifeng looked down at Sun Dahai and shook his head. A wound like that, without miracle-grade medicine, was a death sentence.
And even if Sun Dahai had such medicine, Li Suifeng wasn’t about to give him the chance to use it.
“You—”
PFFT!
A final gush of blood, and Sun Dahai collapsed.
“Mm.”
A stifled grunt escaped Li Suifeng. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
The Divine Blade Slash is still too much for me to handle cleanly.
He sighed inwardly.
Sun Dahai and Song Xian were nothing like the small fry he’d cut down with the Divine Blade Slash before. These were genuine sixth-rank masters — not far below Helmsman Liu Zhenhe himself.
Without the Divine Blade Slash, he might not have been able to keep them here.
But forcing the technique at his current level had rattled his internal organs. He’d need time to recover.
“White Phoenix Pills. For healing.”
Ye Qingmei tossed him a small medicine bottle, her voice even.
Curiosity flickered in her gaze.
She too had received certain fortuitous encounters after the Sword-Washing Sect’s destruction — that was how she’d reached her current heights.
But over the past few days, she’d quietly looked into Li Suifeng’s background.
He’d joined the Canal Gang as a child. Nothing remarkable about his career — until recently, when he’d suddenly begun making waves in Nanyang Prefecture.
Yet who would have guessed that Li Suifeng had been hiding this much?
“Don’t look at me like that. I might start thinking you’ve fallen for me.”
Li Suifeng caught the bottle and popped a pill into his mouth.
A gentle warmth spread through his body, soothing his battered organs.
“Grab anything valuable and let’s go.”
“The Canal Gang will be here soon.”
By now, every Yang family guard had long since scattered. Only two remained — too petrified to move.
Li Suifeng searched Yang Tianqing’s body first, slicing through the robes with his saber. No banknotes. Then he checked Sun Dahai’s and Song Xian’s corpses, finding two blood-soaked martial manuals.
One for the Plum Blossom Blade Art. One for the Five Poisons Palm.
Both were drenched in gore. He didn’t bother flipping through them — just wrapped them in a strip of cloth.
Then he pointed at one of the frozen guards.
“You. Take me to wherever the Yang family keeps its silver.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
The trembling guard led Li Suifeng to Yang Tianqing’s private chambers.
Inside, Li Suifeng found a thick stack of banknotes and a chest brimming with gold.
From there, the guard brought him to the Yang family’s most valuable medicinal stores.
Li Suifeng packed up every rare herb worth taking, then swept out of the Yang compound without a backward glance.