Chapter 32: Chapter 32
At that moment, the music inside the room shifted — turning wistful, melancholic, with a hundred aching turns.
A faint perfume drifted through the air. Subtle, yet it loosened every knot of tension in the body, drawing out an almost narcotic sense of ease.
Li Suifeng glanced sideways.
Wen San and Elder Liu both had a haze settling behind their eyes.
Just as the room sank deeper into the spell, a young woman leaped into the center of the dancers. Bare midriff, devastating beauty, a figure that strained against the fabric of her bodice. She joined the dance, moving with the music.
“Bravo!”
Yuan Hai’s face flushed with excitement as he shouted his approval.
HISS!
Blade intent surged through Li Suifeng’s body, scouring the fog from his mind in an instant.
Something was wrong. No matter how captivating a dance might be, a weathered old man like Yuan Hai shouldn’t be this far gone.
Even Wen San and Elder Liu — whose martial cultivation dwarfed Yuan Hai’s by orders of magnitude — were showing signs of intoxication, though they still retained a measure of control.
And the lead dancer’s eyes kept drifting back to him.
Not good.
Li Suifeng’s guard snapped to full alert — but he let the glaze creep back over his features, matching the others.
The dance continued.
The drumbeats quickened. Yuan Hai’s breathing had turned ragged, his face a deep crimson. He looked like a man who couldn’t catch his breath — yet he was completely unaware, his eyes drunk with wonder.
“Is my dancing not to the gentleman’s liking?”
Suddenly, the lead dancer was standing before Li Suifeng. He hadn’t even seen her move.
“It’s exquisite.”
Li Suifeng’s eyes were perfectly glazed.
“Then why does the gentleman keep looking elsewhere?” Her voice poured into his ears like warm honey.
Exposed!
Li Suifeng threw himself backward.
WHAM!
One foot launched the table between them. It hurtled toward the dancer.
But her hand moved like a shadow — the silk ribbon in her grasp flicked once, and the table split cleanly down the middle. The ribbon then divided into four lashing tendrils, each one streaking toward a different person’s skull.
THUM THUM THUM!
The musicians in the room didn’t flinch. Fingers plucked strings without pause, and the music transformed instantly into the clash of armies — war drums and iron hooves drowning out every sound of combat inside the room.
WHAM!
Li Suifeng kicked a chair, sending it rocketing forward. It struck the silk tendrils, knocking them off course. They slammed into the walls instead, punching clean through and leaving gaping holes.
Gang qi!
Li Suifeng’s jaw tightened.
“Intoxicating down to the bone — worthy of the name Celestial Demon Dance.”
Wen San rose to his feet. Not a trace of the earlier haze remained in his eyes.
Elder Liu was much the same — his face was still flushed, but his gaze was clear and sharp.
“Getting old. Outperformed in self-control by someone half my age.”
Elder Liu glanced at Li Suifeng and sighed.
Only Yuan Hai still showed signs of struggle — face burning red, eyes unfocused, rooted helplessly in place.
“You weren’t affected?”
The lead dancer’s expression shifted.
They’d invested considerable effort into tonight’s operation. And only one person had fallen for it.
“Fortunately, I carry a Spirit-Warding Jade my father gave me. Otherwise, I might have succumbed and been completely at your mercy.”
Wen San’s face held no trace of humor.
“Lucky Young Master Wen warned me — otherwise this old man would have fallen too.” Elder Liu exhaled.
“Why waste words on dead men?” A cold voice cut from behind the lead dancer — the old woman at the zither. “The Thirteen Fiends of South Mountain have never failed to kill a target.”
At her words, the aura of every person in the room transformed.
Thirteen of them. The weakest was seventh-rank.
The lead dancer and the zither-playing crone were both fifth-rank.
TWANG!
The old woman’s fingers swept the strings.
HISS!
Qi condensed into a crescent of gang qi — a blade of pure force slashing toward Wen San.
“Hmph!”
Elder Liu snorted.
“The Thirteen Fiends of South Mountain — brazen enough to strike at Young Master Wen on Canal Gang ground!”
One step forward. Both palms blazed crimson.
Even Li Suifeng, standing several zhang away, felt a wave of heat.
BOOM!
The gang-qi blade shattered under a single palm strike.
“Red Sand Divine Palm — Liu Sanmao!”
The lead dancer recoiled first.
“Others may fear Liu Sanmao. I don’t.”
A slender, jade-like hand thrust forward, meeting Liu Sanmao’s palm head-on.
“I’ve been wanting to test your Scarlet Seduction Palm.”
Liu Sanmao’s voice was ice.
BOOM!
Liu Sanmao fell back a single step.
PFFT!
The lead dancer spat blood, horror flooding her face. Her right hand had already turned scarlet. Within moments, the crimson was creeping up her entire arm.
“Late fifth-rank?”
“You’ve mastered the Red Sand Divine Palm to its highest level?”
Every member of the Thirteen Fiends tensed. They knew their leader’s strength intimately. Even a late fifth-rank fighter shouldn’t have been able to wound her this decisively in a single exchange. Liu Sanmao’s mastery of the Red Sand Divine Palm was simply that deep.
PFFT!
Another mouthful of blood. The dancer’s features began to shift — the face of a girl in the bloom of youth dissolving into that of a woman nearing fifty, plain-featured. A world away from the earlier vision of otherworldly beauty.
“They say the Thirteen Fiends’ leader is a matchless beauty. Turns out it was just a disguise.”
Wen San shook his head.
“The Thirteen Fiends have been active for years — they’ve rotated members more than once.” Liu Sanmao spoke evenly. “Only the leader and the second-in-command have never changed. Even if the leader was a beauty in her youth, time catches up with everyone.”
“Together!” The leader produced a pill from her robes and swallowed it.
The crimson staining her arm began to fade.
The crone — also fifth-rank — set down her zither and rose. Side by side with the leader, they closed on Liu Sanmao from two flanks.
The remaining eleven split up. Two continued playing their instruments — a pipa and a hand drum — masking the sounds of combat inside the room. The rest moved simultaneously: five converged on Wen San, their primary target.
Two broke toward Li Suifeng. Two more toward Yuan Hai.
Yuan Hai’s decades of experience kicked in. He threw himself backward in immediate retreat.
The Thirteen Fiends of South Mountain had been infamous across Nanzhou for years. They weren’t professional assassins in the strictest sense, but they killed and robbed for money regularly. They’d crossed several of Nanzhou’s major factions and lived to tell the tale.
He couldn’t handle a single one of them.
Still, he didn’t try to redirect the threat toward Li Suifeng. Instead, he bolted straight for the door.
Escape from this room was his only chance.
But the two hunting him had read his intent. They blocked the exit and pressed inward.
“Over here!”
Li Suifeng’s voice cut through the chaos.
“Boss Li—”
Yuan Hai started to protest, but the two attackers were already on top of him. He scrambled toward Li Suifeng’s position.
Li Suifeng stepped forward.
“Trying to stop a chariot with your arms!”
All four assailants sneered as Li Suifeng placed himself between them and Yuan Hai.
Their target was Wen San. These two bystanders were simply unlucky — but tonight, everyone in this room died.
Four fighters. One blocked the door. The other three drew weapons and lunged at Li Suifeng simultaneously.
Three arcs of blade-light flared.
All three were seventh-rank. Years of teamwork had honed their coordination — three sabers covered every vital point on Li Suifeng’s body.
Even if he stopped one or two, the third would find its mark.
“You’re asking for it!”
Li Suifeng didn’t retreat. He surged forward, both arms’ skin darkening to a blue-black shade shot through with faint threads of gold.
Iron Shirt and Golden Body Art, driven to their absolute peak.
Both hands shot out, each one seizing a saber blade with unerring precision. Two blades, frozen mid-swing.
SNAP!
Both sabers shattered. Two shards of gleaming steel buried themselves in their former wielders’ chests.
The raw force launched both corpses across the room, pinning them to the wall.
CLANG!
The third man’s saber bit into Li Suifeng’s back.
Steel met stone — a ring of metal on metal.
The blow felt like hacking into an unyielding boulder. The rebound nearly wrenched the saber from the man’s hands.
Not a chance!
Naked terror filled his eyes. He threw himself into retreat.
A beat too slow. A massive hand curled around his blade like a cow’s tongue gathering grass, and wrenched. The forged-iron saber was torn free and twisted into a corkscrew.
Even the flesh of the man’s sword hand was sheared away by the torque.
“Mercy—”
The plea had barely left his lips when a palm the size of a dinner plate descended.
CRUNCH!
His entire skull was hammered into his chest cavity. Blood gushed from the stump of his neck.