Chapter 124

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Protagonist:

Shaowei

Liu Qi

Shan Gu swiftly crawled out of the cage.

And at the same moment the cage door was split open, the prison cell door was also opened from the outside by someone.

The person responsible for guard duty was Zhu Zhi's capable confidant; he noticed something was wrong with the fire, felt uneasy, and thus planned to enter to check. The instant the door was pushed open, he heard terrifying screams.

Those were screams from his companions, and under the dimly flickering firelight, the girl who should have been in the cage stood gripping a blade, releasing a fierce and unmatched killing intent from her whole body — the dying appearance from before was nowhere to be seen.

On the contrary, that dying appearance quickly manifested on him instead.

After just a moment of eye contact, he shouted "Come here!" while swiftly drawing his blade and stepping forward.

Shan Gu, having come out of the cage, crawled straight toward that corpse with its chest split open; his fingers were about to touch that blade, but Shaowei beat him to it, flicking it up first.

Her right foot flicked up, her left foot swept sideways in a kick; the heavy blade whistled through the air, driving horizontally into the leader's waist and abdomen.

If the one kicking had been at full monstrous strength, this blade would have severed his torso.

The dying appearance quickly turned into a dead state; that man's body stiffened and fell, but behind him even more people swarmed in.

The dense, continuous unsheathing sounds were like evil ghosts sharpening knives.

Shaowei gripped her blade and regulated her breath for an instant, while Shan Gu did not wait in place for A Jie to seize a weapon for him — he had already bravely lunged forward on his own.

Weapons must be taken by oneself; only then can one speak of protecting others and protecting oneself.

Shan Gu lunged forward, carrying pent-up resentment from many suppressed days, as well as the boundless courage ignited because A Jie was at his side.

When approaching the foremost enemy raising a blade, he suddenly lowered his body, forcibly shoving that person sideways back several steps while both his hands clenched left and right around the enemy's blade-holding wrist, forcibly bending that wrist, turning the blade horizontal, and then exerting force again with a fierce bite of his teeth, driving the man to the wall, and in one continuous motion pressing the blade edge to slice into the enemy's neck.

The enemy fell against the wall; weapon in hand, Shan Gu immediately killed his way into the people surrounding him from behind.

The prison cell soon filled with blood qi; both Shaowei and Shan Gu were covered in blood.

The prison cell was low-ceilinged; Shaowei's agile body technique was greatly suppressed, and she was entangled by three people binding her limbs, struggling with all her might to resist.

Seeing this, Shan Gu anxiously wanted to rush forward to help, but before he could get close, he was forced against the wall by two people wielding blades, one on the left and one on the right. He blocked those two heavy blades with the blade in his hand; the backs of his hands and his temples both bulged with blue veins.

Those two men swiftly exchanged a glance; one of them suddenly withdrew his blade, elbow pulling back, intending to stab the blade upward from below into Shan Gu's chest and abdomen. Shaowei's cry of "Watch out!" made Shan Gu react instantly; he abruptly retracted his blade and dropped down, simultaneously bending his knees and lowering his upper body, his blade pointing forward to carve out a tiny space of protection for himself, quickly rolling to the side, lunging out of the two men's control range.

"Clang!"

One of them pursued with a slash toward where Shan Gu was; as Shan Gu dodged, half of that blade chopped onto that wooden bucket. The huge wooden bucket split apart, revealing a ceramic urn half a person's height inside.

Atop the ceramic urn was a human head; to call it human, it no longer bore the slightest resemblance to a normal person. Its hair was disheveled and sparse, its scalp missing in patches with scars, its eyes bulging, its nose tip cut off, its tooth pulp exposed, its expression numb and bizarre.

And the body beneath the skull seemed to have already fused with the ceramic urn into one, making one unable and unwilling to imagine the specifics.

He twisted his head somewhat sluggishly, looking toward that boy fighting desperately; his bulging eyeballs blinked.

That boy had a familiar face — it was himself from the past in memory.

The capacity for fear, anger, struggle, and thought had long been exhausted in these ten-odd years of torture; human characteristics were erased, turning into a true mutilated corpse and rotten flesh, leaving only chaotic numbness.

But at this moment, that familiar face made him suddenly recover a trace of feeling as a human.

A long-lost anger appeared on his face; struggling with all his strength, the ceramic urn he inhabited fell and shattered, his mutilated body crawling and rolling, suddenly opening his mouth to bite the calf of the guard who was pressing toward the boy with raised blade.

This tearing bite came too suddenly; the guard cried out in pain and turned back, glimpsing this scene, only feeling indescribably eerie and heart-shaking. He shook his leg trying to kick that crazed monster away, but could not shake it off no matter what; a chunk of leg flesh had been bitten clean off through the clothing. The guard could not care about much else; he thrust his blade vertically into its back.

Dark red blood welled out; that man still did not let go. The guard could only stab again and again; just as he was about to deliver a fourth stab, an identical long blade pierced through his chest first.

Shan Gu pulled out his blade; the guard fell. That mutilated man stared with round eyes, his blood-stained mouth corners bearing a smile.

Shan Gu's eyes trembled; he opened his mouth to speak, but did not know what he could say. He was just about to rush forward when another person raised a blade and chopped at him.

Shaowei fought her way close with all her might, taking care of that person from behind for him, urging him: "Go, kill forward! Only by getting out can we survive!"

Shan Gu nodded, but his eyes held tears. As he advanced alongside A Jie, he choked out in a trembling voice: "A Jie, I still don't know who he once was! What he was called!"

These words had no head or tail; at first hearing one wouldn't know which one he meant. Shaowei hurriedly glanced back, but instantly understood. She urgently said one sentence: "Cover me! I'll ask for you!"

As she spoke, she swung her blade up, directly sweeping the blade from one person's hand, then suddenly lunged forward, slamming the person down to kneel on the ground, pressing her blade horizontally against their neck, interrogating fiercely: "What is the origin of the person in that urn? Speak!"

Shan Gu obeyed, covering her by blocking those people approaching from around them.

The person threatened by Shaowei looked to be thirty years old or above; clearly an old confidant of Zhu Zhi. He answered in a trembling voice: "He... he was once the Head of Household's most capable dead warrior!"

Shaowei's blade pressed closer again: "What surname, what name!"

"Zhou Ju! Zhou Ju! Zhou..." The man answered loudly again and again, subconsciously wanting to use this method to delay death; however, the third time could not be fully spoken before his voice was severed along with his throat by Shaowei's blade.

Straightening up swiftly, Shaowei asked: "Did you hear clearly!"

"Mm!" Blood and tears rolled down together; Shan Gu instinctively entrusted his back to A Jie and she to him, expending all their strength to kill their way out together.

The two's tacit understanding was built when they practiced martial arts together, and cultivated during "military formation drills" by the Hou River. Back then, no one imagined there would be a day it would be used in life-and-death cooperative combat, yet this day came with extreme suddenness and extreme ferocity.

This desperate fight with no other choice was even more arduous than Shaowei had imagined.

Even though Shan Gu and Shaowei cooperated seamlessly, everything following her arrangements, Shan Gu ultimately lacked experience in killing, especially facing well-trained enemies. Even though he was learning while killing, neither his skill nor his adaptability could compare to Zhao Qie'an.

This comparison is not to belittle Shan Gu, but because Shaowei needed to draw inferences from it. She had once joined forces with Zhao Qie'an to kill thirteen Embroidered Uniform Guards; that had been a hard battle requiring self-injury of three parts.

And right now Shaowei possessed only three parts of her strength from that time. Even with a firm and lofty resolve and inexhaustible courage, the fact of injury and blood loss remained, and she had not eaten for two days and two nights; her physical strength had declined too much.

More troublesome was that these men left by Zhu Zhi were actually no easier to deal with than those Embroidered Uniform Guards. Shaowei had originally thought that by killing a few people first with a brutal posture, she could deter them to some extent, making them shrink back — but there was not the slightest effect.

These people fundamentally did not have the leisure to be afraid.

They were different from the Embroidered Uniform Guards; the Embroidered Uniform Guards ultimately belonged to the Emperor, but these people belonged only to Zhu Zhi — their life and death were deeply bound to Zhu Zhi's joy and anger. Puppets devoted to an evil ghost, their deepest fear source is the evil ghost itself; they will only be killed, never scared into retreat.

Therefore, they executed Zhu Zhi's orders highly; even though a great fire had started, they did not relax their guard on the prison cell, still leaving twenty-eight people — this greatly increased the escape difficulty Shaowei had anticipated.

Not everything in military treatises is unchanging truth; feinting east and striking west does not necessarily always produce sufficient effect.

Thirteen people fell one after another under Shaowei and Shan Gu's blades; both of them pushed to the limits of being human, only then barely tearing open a gap and rushing out of the prison cell.

Shaowei carried Shan Gu and ran into a dim little path.

When she came, Shaowei had paid careful attention to every road, and the Spider Woman had also traced the fastest exit to the back door on her arm; she had repeated the tracing in her mind a hundred times, and would absolutely not take a wrong turn.

But pursuers came swiftly from behind; they were more familiar with every path, and while giving chase they also formed a pincer movement to blockade the road ahead from two sides.

The last wisp of twilight had already vanished; tonight there was no need to light lamps, the sky-reaching firelight illuminated everything.

Blood splattered before the firelight; people fled amid the burning destruction.

The fire grew larger and larger, and news therefore became difficult to transmit and learn in time.

Not far from the continuous sea of fire, outside a moon gate, two guards held long spears crossed to block the way, not allowing those doctors to escape; only if the fire continued to expand were the doctors allowed to retreat, but they still remained within their control range.

Inside the moon gate, doctors wailed, guards fought the fire; in the chaos, A Yan tightly gripped the Spider Woman's hand, her voice trembling as she comforted her: "Don't be afraid, it will be extinguished!"

The soaring great fire was reflected in the Spider Woman's eyes; the fear on her face stemmed from only one thing: the people drawn by the fire were still too few — would Huali be able to escape?

Her mind taut, the Spider Woman strove to distinguish every sound by her ear, until a figure swiftly stepped across this moon gate, shouting loudly: "The prisoner has broken out of the cage, all archers follow me!"

The Spider Woman abruptly broke free of A Yan, walked quickly toward that man with a fierce god evil spirit face stained with blood: "She escaped? I understand... she must have used that evil technique! I know how to deal with her!"

It was too chaotic all around; those busy fighting fires everywhere simply hadn't heard the man's words; the man still wanted to approach and call out, but his attention was temporarily drawn by this flustered, harmless Wu Nu.

The Wu Nu's words sounded sinister, but a dying prey suddenly rising to injure someone is even more sinister!

"I have this, it can be used to deal with her..." The Spider Woman approached quickly, pulled out a copper hairpin from her hair, held it in both hands and offered it to that man.

Her movements trembled; she felt she completely lacked the talent for great deeds, and therefore she had never been able to use this method on Zhu Zhi; when she needled, there was always someone watching closely beside her, and the slightest abnormality in movement or attitude would be scrutinized.

Zhu Zhi was extremely suspicious; every time he required at least three doctors to examine her needles, and when she administered needles there was always someone staring tightly at her from the side; any slight difference in movement or attitude would be examined.

She faithfully followed Huali's instructions; until the time was right she would absolutely not act impulsively and foolishly; until this moment, she thought this was her own small opportunity.

The man, half-believing half-doubting, reached to take the copper hairpin, when the Spider Woman suddenly changed to gripping it tightly with both hands, the pin head stabbing toward the other's palm.

The man's palm was pierced, his expression changed, he withdrew his hand and dodged, simultaneously kicking that Wu Nu: "Vile woman! Whose spy!"

He immediately moved to draw his blade, but his figure suddenly swayed.

In the chaos, his voice attracted no one's attention, until he knelt on the ground.

And A Yan took advantage of the chaos to help up the Spider Woman, quickly taking her to hide behind the fake mountain, questioning in a low voice: "What did you do? Are you crazy! You'll die!"

The Spider Woman threw away the copper hairpin in her hand; that copper hairpin concealed a mechanism, its interior hollow, containing poison made from the most venomous snake venom, death upon contact with blood.

"Whether the fire can be extinguished or not we die, whether it catches fire or not we die, whatever happens he will kill me, kill us..." The Spider Woman muttered: "If we want gods and ghosts to protect us, we cannot do nothing at all."

A Yan was both anxious and afraid: "A Zhu, what exactly are you saying!"

The Spider Woman just muttered: "A Yan, you will know eventually..."

She looked through the fake mountain's cracks at the coming and going figures.

Huali had forbidden her from taking risks, only letting her hide in the crowd and watch quietly after setting the fire, but she still did something; though she didn't know if it had any use, even delaying for a moment, even killing just one enemy was good.

The great fire roared.

Shaowei carried Shan Gu and fled all the way to the back courtyard, where they encountered the final encirclement and slaughter.

Blood mist sprayed; Shan Gu watched with wide eyes as those two back doors, opened for the convenience of drawing water, were shut, and the archers finally still climbed onto the roof and courtyard wall.

The gate of life was closed, the surrounding kill formation had already taken shape; the two people in the formation seemed like trapped beasts struggling to the death.

Arrows flew from three sides; Shan Gu blocked an arrow for Shaowei, who was already overwhelmed yet still charging into the solid formation trying to tear open the formation; he endured the pain in his shoulder, continuing to wave his blade to block arrows on one hand, and shouted hoarsely on the other: "A Jie, you know lightness skill, use me as a shield, there's still a sliver of hope!"

He didn't want to wait until later to repay A Jie; he wanted to repay her right now; he needed A Jie to absolutely have a later!

Shan Gu's arm took another arrow, the blade in his hand propped and fell; he once more shouted with all his strength: "A Jie, use me as a shield!"

Blood overflowed from the corner of Shaowei's mouth, her eyes red as if they would also drip blood, her ears could no longer hear clearly; she grabbed Shan Gu and pulled him behind her, waved her blade and killed another person.

She felt she had not much strength left, lightness skill could no longer be deployed; at this moment only one thought remained: kill until wherever it reaches.

Swallowing a mouthful of blood, Shaowei said to Shan Gu: "Only the living who save themselves can save others; save yourself first!"

The world often says, books also often say, matters in this world are not such that obstinacy alone brings good results; Jiang Fu also often said he disliked striving to survive, that it was too lousy.

But Shaowei derived a principle she recognized in the tomb: when a desperate situation arrives, those who give up self-rescue will only die immediately on the spot, unworthy of seeing the hope of life.

She didn't want to be, and didn't want those around her to be, people who give up self-rescue.

"Clang——!"

A huge sound.

The house beam not far away collapsed in the great fire.

But this one sound was not only the sound of the house beam collapsing.

Through blood-stained eyelashes, Shaowei saw that tightly shut back door boom open from the outside.

At the same moment, a grey figure vaulted in from outside the wall, pouncing and killing an archer on the wall.

The door was open; Mo Li, carrying a bundle on her back, rushed in first, followed closely by a group of black shadows holding blades and spears.

Not just ten black shadows; behind a stretch of black shadows there were layer upon layer of black shadows, surging in like dark clouds; at the end of the dark clouds was a lapis-lazuli-colored youthful figure.

"Young Master!" Mo Li's long blade charged straight in, in an instant protecting before Shaowei.

The grey-clothed servant lifted his own sword with one hand, waved a seized blade with the other, killing five or six people in succession, breaking open that death formation.

Shaowei shoved the heavily injured Shan Gu into the servant's arms, and simultaneously said to Mo Li: "Go!"

She immediately set off, not pausing, not asking, not resting, not lingering in battle; only under Mo Li's protection, she hurried toward that door.

Firelight blazed; Liu Qi watched that reunited person stumble out covered in blood; behind her was the great fire, her clothes also seemed to have caught fire; the instant she crossed the courtyard gate, she finally let go of the blood blade she could no longer hold steady.

?? Good night everyone.