Chapter 186: Assassin: What Do You Think Life Is?!

Red Fox Fortress, city wall.

Swish!

As that voice reached them, a tall figure appeared on the wall in an instant, moving at blinding speed from hundreds of meters away.

Under normal circumstances, such velocity would have torn through the air with a sonic crack, yet the figure made almost no sound, as if the wind itself had parted to make way for him.

“Incredible speed!”

Xia Mingyu watched warily as the towering young man suddenly materialized before him, as if teleporting—he was certain that if the man had intended to kill him just now, he wouldn’t have had time to cast even a single spell before his head was severed.

The young man appeared to be in his early twenties, standing about one meter ninety tall, with a lean, upright build and a longsword at his waist.

His lake-green hair was loosely tied into a high ponytail, a few strands fluttering in the night breeze.

His eyes were sharp, pale blue, and gazing into them brought a phantom pain as if a sword tip pressed against his throat.

His face was sharply chiseled yet not rugged, instead radiating a refined elegance and carefree charm.

At this moment, the young man completely ignored Xia Mingyu behind him, his burning gaze locked tightly on the assassin holding the black longsword.

“Are you his bodyguard?” Qing Yi asked, his expression grave.

He felt a strong sense of threat from this young man, and recalling Qing Er’s failed assassination and death, his vigilance spiked to its limit.

“No, I don’t know the man behind me at all, and I couldn’t care less if he lives or dies,” Osirion replied bluntly, shaking his head.

“If so, could you step aside and let me complete my mission first?” Qing Yi probed.

From an assassin’s perspective, he naturally avoided unnecessary fights.

“If you wish to fight me, wait until I kill the man behind me—then we can move elsewhere for our duel,” Qing Yi added, deducing from the man’s first words that he was likely a sword madman.

After killing the Sage, he’d flee immediately—he had no intention of fighting this troublesome fool.

Everyone knew assassins never kept their word.

Just as Xia Mingyu thought the young man would step aside, Osirion slowly drew the longsword engraved with spiral wind patterns from his waist.

“That would greatly diminish the value of the fight,” the young man grinned, lips curling into an untamed smirk.

“Fight! Kill! Until you’ve killed me, I won’t let you harm a single hair on the man behind me!”

He spread his arms and shouted with fanatical fervor.

Xia Mingyu: “????”

This guy’s brain is weird. But just when I thought death was certain, it seems there’s a glimmer of hope.

Qing Yi’s facial muscles froze—he’d never encountered anything so absurd in his hundreds of assassinations.

Just as he was about to succeed, a mad sword fanatic had appeared out of nowhere, as if the world itself were targeting him.

I should’ve just killed the Sage without wasting a single word!

Qing Yi’s heart burned with regret. He decided to make one final plea—if it failed, he’d strike first with a surprise attack.

“Young man, your life still stretches ahead of you. A genius like you is destined for a glorious future. Is it truly necessary to risk your life in a battle with no grudge, no profit, no reason?” Qing Yi urged gently.

“You’re awfully talkative, old man!” A flicker of impatience crossed Osirion’s face.

“Only in the narrow gap between life and death can the purest sword art be forged.”

“And sword art—to me—is equal to life, even above it.”

“A drowning man clings to grass to survive—sword art is my grass. Without it, I am nothing but a soulless shell.” He spoke plainly of his beliefs, absurd to ordinary minds.

Clang!

Osirion firmly pointed his sword’s tip at the assassin’s head, and an astonishing sword intent erupted from his body.

Even Xia Mingyu standing behind him felt his spine chill and his hairs stand on end from the sword intent.

Qing Yi, facing it directly, finally realized this mortal duel could no longer be avoided.

He silently clenched his sword, staring at the man brimming with battle lust, and a surge of rage rose within him.

He had grown up in cold, sunless underground chambers, enduring countless brutal trainings, often tortured until he wanted to slit his own throat.

Yet despite it all, for the sake of his dream, he had stubbornly survived—and after hundreds of missions teetering on the edge of death, he had finally won back his face, his family.

And now this capable young man, who possessed everything Qing Yi had suffered for years to obtain, cared nothing for it—willing to stake his life and fortune on a duel over some abstract notion of sword art.

Thinking of this, the assassin’s fury swelled in his chest, culminating in a single, searing question.

“What do you think life is?!”

Qing Yi slowly forced the words through his gritted teeth.

Upon hearing this, both Osirion and Xia Mingyu froze in surprise—they had never expected such words to come from an assassin’s mouth.

Could an assassin, drenched in the blood of the innocent, truly understand the value of life?

Boom!

The next instant, with a piercing sonic boom, Qing Yi vanished from his spot, launching forward like an arrow released from a bow, sword aimed at both of them.

Osirion, snapping back to awareness, laughed aloud in exhilaration, swinging his blade forward with absolute murderous intent—a strike as swift as wind and thunder!

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The two figures crossed on the wall at terrifying speed, their blades clashing like the symphony of an opera house—deafening, furious, relentless.

With his current eyesight, Xia Mingyu could not discern any detail of the battle—only fleeting afterimages, as if they were teleporting.

“These two are terrifyingly strong!”

Xia Mingyu marveled inwardly and quietly retreated to the edge of the wall.

He touched the Watchful Eye in his pocket, hesitated, then abandoned the idea of channeling magic into it.

This battle had surpassed the New Moon tier—calling Kalen now would only add more casualties without changing the outcome.

As for slipping away with the Exchange Spell during their fight, Xia Mingyu weighed the risks and rejected it—the Faceless One’s speed meant he’d catch him in seconds.

Better to stay here—at least the powerful sword madman would protect him.

“I must grow stronger, quickly!”

Feeling his precarious existence, Xia Mingyu resolved within himself.

He realized external power was but a mirage—only his own strength could keep him standing.

If he possessed power like Tamerlan, even a hundred assassins would fall to a single sword slash.

“Hahaha, exhilarating!”

Feeling the near-misses as blades grazed his skull, Osirion’s face flushed red as if he’d drunk several flasks of liquor, radiating uncontainable joy.

“Old man, you’re annoyingly talkative—but your sword art is clean, sharp, and precise!” Osirion remarked, gazing at the assassin hidden beneath his black robe and mask.

In the battle just now, he had felt the depth of the man’s sword art—every strike was accurate, ruthless, without a single wasted motion or hesitation.

He was certain only someone who had survived countless life-or-death duels could forge such extreme sword art.

And this—this was his finest whetstone… or his ticket to the netherworld.

Watching the ecstatic man before him, Qing Yi felt genuine trouble.

In the fierce clash just now, he had unleashed his full sword skill—and still, he had failed to sever the young man’s head.

Though only in his early twenties, his sword skill was no weaker than Qing Yi’s own, and his techniques were wild, unpredictable, defying pattern or counter.

This was not sword art any ordinary man could learn—it was the kind only a true genius could wield instinctively.

Continuing this fight would surely cost him his life. Should he retreat?

If he fled now, vanished into a neighboring country, even Lord Lamont would never find him.

But those family members…

“Harvey, remember to come home on time—I’ve prepared a surprise for you!”

“Dad, don’t forget to bring me a gift when you return!”

“Brother, don’t say that—you should tell Father, ‘Travel safely!’”

Recalling his wife and children’s parting words and blessings, Qing Yi’s gaze hardened.

Even if this love was false, even if the ones he truly loved had been murdered by his own hand, he wanted to drown in this illusion of happiness until he fell into hell.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

A tidal surge of emerald magic erupted from the assassin, his green beast-eyes glowing like a wolf’s in the dark.

“So you’re finally using your ability? Your eyes— you’re a Demon Hunter, aren’t you?”

“A Crescent Moon-tier Demon Hunter—someone who’s undergone full-blood replacement and can even wield demonic powers. I’m looking forward to it!”

Seeing this, Osirion’s eyes gleamed with excitement as he channeled magic into the space ring on his hand.

Swish!

A green portal opened; Osirion thrust his left hand inside and drew forth a longsword engraved with cloud patterns.

Wind’s Fury, Cloud’s Shatter—these were his two swords.

The world knew him as a sword madman, but few knew he specialized in dual-sword style—most opponents never lived long enough to force him to draw his second blade.

“Osirion. That’s my name.”

The young man took a stance with both swords in hand, shedding his earlier laziness, his voice now sharp and solemn.

He respected the sword art forged through countless battles in this man—even if he was an assassin, he would honor the knight’s ritual of naming himself before a duel to the death.

Qing Yi fell silent. Normally, he would have ignored the knightly formality and attacked immediately—but if this might be his final moment, perhaps indulging it once was acceptable.

“Harvey,” Qing Yi whispered.

The next instant, he activated the ability he had gained upon ascending to the Crescent Moon tier years ago.

“Shadow Strike.”

As his magic erupted, Qing Yi’s form blurred, like moonlight on water rippling under a breeze.

Then his body seemed sliced by invisible threads, rapidly reassembling into five identical clones around him.

Each clone matched him perfectly—in attire, in the fold of his robe, even in the exact angle of his sword grip.

“This is the unique innate ability of the Shadow Wolf!” Osirion’s eyes burned with heat.

The Shadow Wolf differs from the ordinary Black Abyss Wolf; even among all wolf-type beasts, it belongs to the upper tier.

As long as it survives battles to adulthood, it almost always receives the world’s naming and becomes a Named Beast.

Its greatest strength lies in its innate ability—Shadow Strike—which creates shadow clones nearly equal to its own power to attack together; aside from consuming immense magic, it is truly a top-tier ability.

“Heh, if I don’t go all out now, I’ll really die here.”

Having reached this conclusion, Osirion unleashed all his magic into his blades, instantly covering both longswords with brilliant azure light.

“Merciful wind, be one with my sword!” he cried out.

Shhh shhh shhh.

In an instant, the air within hundreds of meters around him transformed into countless streams of wind, all converging upon the blades Jing Feng and Sui Yun.

Xia Mingyu, standing at the edge of the wall, could no longer breathe.

In the span of a single sentence, the opponent had created a vacuum zone.

What an immense blessing!

Swish, swish, swish.

Sensing the threat, the five assassin forms simultaneously charged toward Osirion with their swords.

Their afterimages dazzled the eye; sharp blade glimmers wove into an impenetrable net, aiming to kill Osirion.

“Cicada’s Lament,” murmured the green-haired youth as he swung his right sword.

In the next moment, accompanied by a piercing shriek like shattering cicada wings, the air, compressed to its extreme, erupted into a massive blade of energy that slashed toward the attackers at the speed of tearing wind.

Boom!

With a sound like shattering glass, the five figures disintegrated instantly upon contact with the blade energy, slowly dissolving.

The residual force of the blade energy sheared through the towering battlements on the wall; had the wall been lower than the castle, the entire Foxfire Castle might have been destroyed!

Yet as he watched this, Osirion suddenly realized something.

He spun around—and saw the assassin, who had slipped past him unnoticed, now charging toward Xia Mingyu at the wall’s edge, sword raised.

The five previous figures had all been clones; the assassin’s true body had long since slipped away from battle.

“Watch out!”

Osirion shouted as he swung his left sword.

Again came the piercing shriek of shattering cicada wings—a second terrifying blade of energy roared toward the assassin.

At the sound, Xia Mingyu immediately activated his Exchange Magic.

Clang!

Just as the black longsword was about to sever his head, he vanished from his spot, leaving behind only a single, romantically blooming red rose.

Qing Yi, staring at the suddenly vanished Sage and the red rose sprouting from the ground, even as a battle-hardened assassin, froze for a moment.

But the blade energy arrived.

Clang!

With the sound of flesh tearing, the assassin was split cleanly from head to toe, his ruined body collapsing into a pool of blood.

Feeling the searing pain throughout his body, Qing Yi finally realized—he was dying.

Memories from his past flashed before him like a spinning lantern, mostly revolting things, except…

“Harvey, by the gods, you’re finally back!”

His wife, tears streaming with joy, embraced the husband who had been missing for so long.

The man, bewildered, felt the warmth of her body and the dampness of her tears soaking his chest; after a moment’s hesitation, he embraced her back.

He longed so desperately for a home!

He longed so desperately to be loved.

Even if it was all fake.

“I’m sorry,” Qing Yi whispered as his consciousness faded.

In the capital, inside a manor.

“Mother, look at the lavender I picked!”

Two children excitedly showed their mother the fruits of their day’s labor.

“Good, good, you’re both such good children. Your father will praise you when he returns.”

The woman gently stroked their heads, then smiled contentedly at the large bundle of lavender on the table.

The whole family would make him his favorite lavender cake and cookies together—so when he returned, he’d be filled with surprise and joy.

“I can’t wait,” the woman murmured.

Qing Yi hated lavender.

(End of Chapter)