Chapter 158: Dying Was the Only Reasonable Outcome |
The old man in hemp and the little girl in pink were leaning against a large bluestone slab about half a zhang long, resting in the shade.
Seeing Li Musheng's group arrive, the old man in hemp narrowed his eyes slightly, while the little girl in pink kept her gaze fixed on Li Musheng as he stepped out of the carriage, looking him over intently.
The scene she had witnessed from a distance the night before floated back into her mind, and her eyes flickered with thought. She seemed to be trying to read something from Li Musheng's appearance.
Yet no matter how closely she observed, all she could find was that Li Musheng carried not a trace of True Qi within him, and he showed no sign whatsoever of concealing a hidden cultivation.
The little girl in pink furrowed her delicate brows slightly, her puzzlement no closer to being resolved. She simply could not shake the feeling that something about Li Musheng was not quite right.
At this point, Hu Rui'an, noticing the little girl's gaze, showed a peculiar expression.
First Shen Anran had been following Li Musheng relentlessly, and now a small child was paying him this much attention. He knew perfectly well that Li Musheng possessed formidable martial Dao cultivation, yet he still could not quite understand what it was about this prince that drew people in so completely.
Li Musheng had naturally noticed the little girl's gaze as well. He glanced at Hu Rui'an, and felt he detected a trace of naked envy in the man's eyes. After all, the man did not have anything close to Li Musheng's looks, and could not attract the admiration of women young and old alike.
"That little one is clearly hungry. Take the roast chicken we packed and give it to her."
Very shortly, the little girl in pink stared at the roast chicken Wu Shang brought over with an expression of utter blankness and considerable speechlessness.
At the same time, Shen Anran tied up her white horse and rested in the shade at the cliff base at a modest distance from Li Musheng and the others.
She kept a suitable distance from his group, making her intentions clearly enough without being so forward as to seem presumptuous.
And so, everyone rested for roughly half an incense stick's worth of time. A pleasant breeze drifted along the cliff base, and the horses were no longer overheated and struggling.
Just at that moment, the sound of urgent hoofbeats came from the road behind them. An ornate carriage and a group of over ten riders came galloping up at speed, drawing steadily closer.
Seeing this, the expressions of both the old man in hemp and the little girl in pink shifted slightly, while Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong exchanged a glance, and Wu Shang said with a furrowed brow and a low voice, "It is people from Falling God Peak."
"Whoa!"
The urgent sound of reins being pulled came, and the Falling God Peak group that had been racing up from behind came to a sudden stop before the cliff face where Hu Rui'an and the others were resting.
Then a young man in cloud-peak black robes reached out to lift his carriage curtain, his gaze dark as he looked in a particular direction, saying, "Shen Anran, you are here too?"
Shen Anran, seated on a small smooth stone, had naturally also seen him. But she only furrowed her brows slightly, showing no inclination to engage in further conversation.
Seeing Shen Anran's manner of keeping him at a distance, a faint glint of menace flickered through the young man's eyes.
He narrowed his gaze slightly, showing a smile that did not reach his eyes, and said, "I traveled a long and arduous road to take part in the competition, yet Zhanliu Manor simply called it off at will, treating us like something to be picked up and put down as they pleased. Is this how you regard Falling God Peak?"
As he spoke, his gaze shifted in a subtle signal, and over a dozen Falling God Peak disciples quietly drove their horses forward, surrounding Shen Anran and her white horse in a loose ring.
Seeing this, Shen Anran's expression changed. She pressed her hand to the short blade at her waist and looked up at the young man in the carriage, her gaze filled with wary alertness.
The young man suddenly let out a cold laugh, and said in a sinister, low voice, "Shen Anran, since we have run into each other, why not come back to Falling God Peak with me? I happen to still need a guard dog at my quarters, so at least this trip was not entirely wasted."
The young man had been seething with suppressed fury throughout the journey. Shen Anran had walked straight into his path at precisely the wrong moment.
What was more, he was firmly convinced that even if he dragged Shen Anran away and brought her back to Falling God Peak, Zhanliu Manor would not dare so much as breathe a word of protest.
By the time it was a done deal, even Shen Juesheng would have no choice but to hold his nose and accept it.
Inside the carriage, Bei Shi watched all of this without a word, and had clearly given the young Peak Master's actions his silent approval.
Had they still been within Zhanliu Manor with Shen Juesheng there, they would naturally not have dared act like this. But this was already far from the manor.
Without Shen Juesheng as a threat, they were Falling God Peak disciples and could naturally do as they pleased.
"Take her down."
The young man gave a wave of his hand, cleanly and decisively, directly signaling the Falling God Peak disciples to act.
At the same time, his gaze swept across Hu Rui'an and the others and he said in a cold tone of warning, "Falling God Peak is conducting its business. Bystanders keep out of it."
He clearly understood that Hu Rui'an's group was not easily trifled with, so he made their identity plain at once.
He was convinced that anyone in front of him with even a basic grasp of the martial world would not dare provoke a colossus of it like Falling God Peak.
At the same time, Shen Anran's expression was grave, yet she showed not a trace of fear in the face of the Falling God Peak disciples. Instead, she looked at the young man and said, "I already have someone in my heart, so there is no question of continuing with the competition. If you are seeking revenge for that, Shen Anran will not simply surrender without a fight."
With that, Shen Anran suddenly drew the short blade at her waist, a flash of cold light splitting the air, its blade energy fierce and sharp as it swept toward the Falling God Peak disciples who had closed in around her.
From where they stood not far away, the old man in hemp and the little girl in pink looked at each other, both giving a slight nod.
And in the next instant, the old man in hemp suddenly vanished from where he stood, becoming a gust of wind that shot toward the carriage where the young man and Bei Shi were.
The little girl in pink stayed where she was without moving, as though she were doing nothing at all.
At the same time, Hu Rui'an, seeing Shen Anran surrounded and under attack, naturally could not stand by and watch.
What was more, their whole purpose on this trip was to exterminate Falling God Peak. There was simply no reason to be wary of Falling God Peak's standing.
So the old man in hemp and Hu Rui'an both acted at almost exactly the same moment.
The young man had assumed that the name of Falling God Peak would be enough to suppress the people before him. Little did he know it had become his own death warrant.
After all, one group had been lying in wait on this very road specifically to kill them, while the other was actually on its way to destroy their sect entirely.
To run into two separate groups who had absolutely no regard for Falling God Peak, a colossus of the martial world, at the same time and in the same place could only be described as their fate. Dying was the only reasonable outcome.
Boom!
A thunderous crash rang out. The carriage where the young man and Bei Shi were sitting was instantly blasted into splinters beneath a sweeping force of overwhelming palm energy.
"How dare you!"
The powerfully built Bei Shi let out a furious roar, his martial True Qi surging in torrents around him, layer upon layer of dense, heavy aura solidifying into form as faint phantom outlines of mountains and peaks began to emerge.
He launched a punch skyward, clashing head-on with the old man in hemp who had appeared from nowhere, and the two of them flew apart in opposite directions. The explosive shockwave from their True Qi left a crater dozens of zhang wide blasted into the ground where they had been.
Bei Shi, gripping the young man who had not yet processed what was happening, retreated several zhang before barely managing to stop himself. His gaze locked onto the old man in hemp, and his eyes turned cold, saying, "Who are you? Why are you attacking us?"
But the old man in hemp said nothing in reply, only shifted, and in the next instant appeared at Bei Shi's side.
The old man in hemp's movement technique was blindingly fast, impossible to track with the naked eye. His strikes were equally fast as thunder, and in the blink of an eye he had launched a hundred shadowy afterimages.
Within those dim, flickering afterimages were hidden countless terrifying palm prints and surging waves of martial True Qi. Shadows layered upon shadows, each move connecting seamlessly to the next, building a combined force so overwhelming that even the space around Bei Shi and the young man seemed to darken into a gloomy void.
"Chasm-Breaking Divine Strength!"
Bei Shi did not dare be careless in the slightest. He poured everything into circulating his True Qi, drawing the surrounding heaven and earth True Qi to converge around him.
His entire frame swelled by a size, transforming the already enormously powerfully built giant into a figure nearly a zhang taller.
Faint golden lines of energy gathered and pulsed through the bulging muscles, and he raised both fists to the sky, generating an expanding phantom silhouette of towering mountains that shook the very air, as though pushing up and propping apart the entire stretch of sky above.
While Bei Shi and the old man in hemp were locked in combat, the Falling God Peak disciples who had been surrounding Shen Anran were naturally no match for Hu Rui'an in a single exchange.
He simply gave a casual wave, running his True Qi in a sweep across the throats of all ten or more of them at once, and every last Falling God Peak disciple fell dead on the spot.
"Thank you for your aid, Uncle Hu."
Shen Anran put away her short blade and thanked Hu Rui'an at the first opportunity.
She had actually already learned of Hu Rui'an from her mother's own lips.
As for the history between Hu Rui'an and Ruan Zhenhui, Shen Anran felt a great deal of sorrow for both of them, though she was in no position to pass judgment on any of it.
What she had taken from her mother's story, however, had only strengthened her own resolve to be the kind of woman who dared to love and dared to act on it.
If she had set her heart on Li Musheng at a single glance, then she had to be brave enough to pursue it. That was the only way she would not spend the rest of her life regretting the one she let get away.
With that thought, Shen Anran's gaze drifted to Li Musheng by the cliff face. Feeling the intensity of that look, Li Musheng raised an eyebrow and thought privately to himself, "Good thing it was Commissioner Hu who went to her aid. If I had been the one to rescue her, this girl might have been so overwhelmed she fainted on the spot."
A girl this deep in the throes of infatuation really was a bit much to handle.
Li Musheng gave a cough and shifted his gaze to the little girl in pink not far away.
The old man in hemp was locked in a closely matched battle with the Falling God Peak Elder Bei Shi, while she stood rooted to the spot with her dark eyes darting about, clearly thinking about something else entirely.
Li Musheng narrowed his eyes slightly and looked the little girl over, a flicker of puzzlement in his gaze.
At this point, Hu Rui'an, having helped Shen Anran, came back to Li Musheng's side and looked in the old man in hemp's direction, asking, "Sir, shall I step in?"
Hearing this, Li Musheng thought for a moment, then shook his head.
Very quickly, a sudden thunderous explosion came from the old man in hemp's direction. A wide section of the cliff face crumbled and broke apart beneath the shockwaves from the two combatants.
In a cloud of flying stone and billowing dust, the Falling God Peak Elder Bei Shi suddenly burst into a violent fit of coughing, then his footing gave way as the old man in hemp's palm sent him flying, and he plunged straight down into a great crack in the earth blown open by the True Qi shockwaves.
"Hmm? He won so easily?"
Hu Rui'an saw this and looked genuinely surprised.
From the way the exchange had been going, it seemed the Falling God Peak Elder Bei Shi and the old man in hemp were fairly evenly matched, and it would take at least a hundred moves before either of them gained the upper hand.
For Bei Shi to go down so quickly was clearly more than Hu Rui'an had anticipated.
Bang!
At that moment, the crack in the earth where Bei Shi had fallen suddenly erupted, and Bei Shi leaped out from the rising cloud of dirt and shot away in the distance at top speed.
Seeing this, the old man in hemp showed no intention of letting him go. He narrowed his eyes, set himself in motion, and was instantly in pursuit.
Not long after, the old man in hemp returned, his clothes somewhat tattered and his appearance somewhat disheveled.
In his hand, he was carrying the Falling God Peak Elder Bei Shi.
Bei Shi, whose frame had shrunk back to its normal size, was deathly pale, and had been completely immobilized by the old man in hemp through some technique.
After the old man in hemp returned with Bei Shi, he tossed the man down in front of the little girl in pink.
Then he turned to face Li Musheng and the others, saying, "We are all in the same boat, as it were. If there are no objections, this old one will deal with this person?"
Hearing this, Hu Rui'an naturally had no objection whatsoever.
Setting aside the fact that they had no interest in the Falling God Peak Elder, Bei Shi had been brought down by the old man in hemp acting alone, and it was only right that the man should decide his fate.
Even so, Hu Rui'an looked toward Li Musheng, seeking his opinion.
Only after seeing Li Musheng wave a hand did Hu Rui'an turn back to the old man in hemp and say, "Please, go ahead."
The old man in hemp gave a light nod, glanced at Li Musheng, then went back to the little girl in pink's side.
He flicked a finger to release the mute acupoint in the Falling God Peak Elder Bei Shi's throat, then said plainly, "How would you like to die?"
Hearing this, the deathly pale Bei Shi opened his mouth, and then looked at the old man in hemp with a furious and startled expression, saying, "Despicable. You used poison."
As he spoke, his peripheral vision drifted toward a stretch of rubble from the cliff face not far away, where a section of a young man's severed limb was visible among the debris.
Earlier, while fighting the old man in hemp, he had still been trying to protect the Young Peak Master. But then the poison in his body had activated at a critical moment, and in the split second it took to dodge the old man in hemp's killing blow, he had used the young man as a human shield in a feinting move and barely managed to escape. The price was that the young man had been nearly flattened to nothing by the old man in hemp's palm strike.
"It was nothing but poison. Against people from Falling God Peak, this old one is willing to resort to absolutely anything."
The old man in hemp said with a composed expression, then glanced at the little girl in pink beside him, saying, "Do you want to do it, or shall I?"
Hearing this, the little girl in pink's face, with its cherry-red lips and pearly white teeth, broke into a smile, saying, "I'll do it."
She then glanced at Li Musheng and the others, and turned back to say, "There are too many people here. Let us find somewhere without anyone around first."
The old man in hemp said nothing more, and with a light raise of his hand, tossed Bei Shi onto the back of the mule.
Having done all of this, the old man in hemp and the little girl in pink began gathering their things to leave.
But just at that moment, the main road ahead once again erupted with the thunderous sound of galloping hooves, as though an army were on the move.
And before long, a column of armored cavalry came riding up through a rolling cloud of dust, escorting a carriage. The hoofbeats shook the earth and echoed back and forth through the surrounding mountains.