Chapter 78: Rage Banked Within, Return to the Peak

The captains carried the two men up the low slope.

Such a huge commotion — the deputy generals were probably already rushing over too, but it ended too fast... so fast it was almost dizzying.

Sure enough.

They had just reached the top when they saw Hong Lei and Zhao Kanglin arriving with several dozen men in a noisy crowd.

"What happened?" Hong Lei's eyelid twitched.

"There was a big deal... but now there isn't anymore."

Wang Meng really couldn't explain it clearly to the deputy general in a few words, so he could only carry the person while walking up.

A few captains chattered excitedly — sword qi, black blade...

It took Hong Lei a long while to sort out what had happened.

His expression was somewhat complicated.

Actually, when he saw the heavily wounded Dai Bing, he had already roughly guessed some of it.

He just couldn't quite figure it out.

He had clearly instructed Shen Yi to keep an eye on her.

How had the other man managed to watch over someone until they ended up like this... and besides, tied up together with her was someone wearing an enforcer's robe.

An enforcer of Qingfeng Mountain was no pushover.

Even if he himself went up against one, it would be hard to come out well.

"Deputy General, how do we deal with them?" Wang Meng set the people down on the ground.

Hearing this, Zhao Kanglin said coldly, "These are troubled times — no need to follow protocol and waste manpower to guard them. This one nearly got a colleague killed; since she's a traitor, execute her along with him!"

Hong Lei frowned and glanced at him, then turned back and asked, "Was Shen Yi hurt?"

Wang Meng opened his mouth: "Uh... probably not, my lord Shen looked very relaxed."

He thought it over carefully for a moment, then nodded with certainty.

"Nonsense!" Zhao Kanglin scoffed.

One against two — how could it possibly be as simple as these early-realm martial artists made it sound?

Hong Lei couldn't be bothered with him. He looked at the three cloud patterns on Dai Bing's sleeve — how many demons and monsters would one have to kill, how many common folk saved, to earn those?

Besides, Shen Yi had been able to wound the two of them like this; one more slash wouldn't have been hard, yet he left them a breath and had them tied up and sent over here — perhaps there was another meaning to it.

He sighed and said in a low voice, "They're already half beaten to death — what's the point of guarding them? Keep them. If they're lucky enough to survive, we'll take them back to Zhen Mo Si for judgment."

Hearing this, Dai Bing, barely alive on the ground with a dim expression, glanced sideways toward her senior brother and swallowed the bloody sweetness in her mouth.

The two exchanged a look, a complicated bitterness showing at the corners of their lips.

It was clearly that youth who had personally cut off their escape, yet for now they could keep their lives — and they still had to thank him for striking hard enough.

"Stubborn as a mule, clinging to those pathetic rules — you'll never earn any great merit in your life."

Zhao Kanglin's face showed contempt. The higher-ups said to hold the line, and Hong Lei really didn't move a muscle.

If it was going to be like this, why bother calling these people over in the first place.

Seeing them completely ignore his words, Zhao Kanglin gave a cold snort: "Where's the man surnamed Shen? With such a big incident, why hasn't he come to report?"

Wang Meng and the captains had long endured him and instinctively wanted to talk back.

But then they saw Shen Yi walking slowly up from the foot of the low slope.

Judging by his look, not only was he uninjured, he didn't even seem like someone who had just been in a fight.

Taking in this scene, Zhao Kanglin's face twitched, and a flash of wariness crossed his eyes... what those captains said was actually true.

Thinking of this, he silently turned his back.

Hong Lei laughed with feeling and cupped his fist: "Brother Shen, fine skills."

Truly a young talent — it made an old hand like him feel rather ashamed.

Shen Yi walked to his side, paused in thought, and reminded him, "Up on the mountain, they're probably about to make their move."

"Hmm?"

Hong Lei's cupped-fist gesture stalled for a moment, and he replied instinctively, "It's just an enforcer driven to desperation — Brother Shen needn't be so cautious. General Chen..."

He only got halfway through before a look of shock crossed his broad, square face.

The sect's enforcer fleeing under cover of night meant a disagreement with those above. Rage Sword Elder was up on the cliff, yet he hadn't stopped them either.

If the entire Qingfeng Gate had already lost its unity of heart and mind...

Could it be that that old sect leader truly meant to defy the will of all under heaven?

Whether the disciples of Qingfeng Mountain chose to band together and resist Zhen Mo Si, or bowed their heads and handed over that disciple, the pressure was all at the mountaintop.

But if those above wanted to protect the person while those below wanted to flee...

Then his group, originally only responsible for holding the gorge pass, would have to face the counterattack of more than half the sect's disciples.

Thinking of this, Hong Lei clenched his teeth: "Many thanks for the warning!"

He snatched a torch from the person beside him, walked to an open spot, and, exerting the full eyesight of the Jade Liquid Realm, looked up toward the cliff top.

He saw Rage Sword Elder, who had been sitting cross-legged, had at some unknown point already risen to his feet.

He pulled the wooden hairpin from his head, and his sparse silver strands fell loose over his shoulders.

His pair of cloudy eyes held no ripples, yet strangely harbored anger — as if it weren't an emotion but something he had deliberately accumulated, a kind of foundation.

The old man looked down at the ground below, his gaze falling upon the Qingfeng Mountain enforcer.

He saw that his disciple still had a breath of life left.

He sighed softly; the anger in the depths of his eyes was only a sliver away from being full, yet it could never completely take over his gaze.

"Didn't you say you gravely wounded him?" Hong Lei roared at the person beside him.

"I... well, I did wound him anyway."

Zhao Kanglin sounded somewhat lacking in confidence; the aura radiating from Elder Furious Sword at this moment was even sharper by three parts than at his peak: "What's the rush? As long as he dares to come down, we will form the Zhen Mo Great Array. I guarantee he will come but never return."

This person might seem unreliable, but his words were not empty.

The Zhen Mo Si's Deputy Generals enjoy access to various supreme martial arts and precious medicines; facing disciples from sects, even major ones like Qingfeng Gate, their various foundations are not at all inferior, and in many aspects, they even surpass them.

Two Deputy Generals at the mid-stage of the Jade Liquid Realm guard this place, and with the assistance of dozens of Captains forming an array, capturing an aged and declining Elder Furious Sword should encounter no unexpected incidents.

What Hong Lei worried about was... looking at the old man Furious Sword's expression, unless he had gone mad with a heart-loss and sought death, or perhaps the Sword Gazing Gorge, the least suitable place for escape, had already become the breakout point for these sect disciples.

"Shen Yi, receive the order."

He turned around, drew an iron token from his waist: "Carry my verbal decree, in the name of the Commander of Sword Gazing Gorge, and summon these eight Deputy Generals here. Remember, be quick! Be careful!"

Shen Yi raised his eyes; this was only the second time he had gone out on duty. Offering an opinion was one thing, but he would not be arrogant enough to believe his judgment would be more accurate than that of such a veteran general.

A cultivation at the perfection stage of the Jade Liquid Realm was not weak, but in this situation, it could not achieve the effect of a single person settling the world, nor could it be more useful than the eight Deputy Generals combined.

He reached out to take the waist token, but another person snatched it away first.

Zhao Kanglin gritted his teeth: "I am injured; let me go."

Upon hearing this, Shen Yi's expression remained calm, while the group of Golden Eagle Captains beside him gritted their teeth and averted their gaze.

Hong Lei glared at this prodigal son with the frustration of hating iron that cannot become steel; the other party was the commander of the Zhen Mo Great Array, a trump card of the Inner Camp, and his group from the Outer Camp could not possibly master such a thing.

"Go quickly and return quickly!"

Having said that, he looked back at the high cliff; fortunately... the old man still needed some time to accumulate.

Shen Yi looked on in silence, yet the expression between his brows was not as relieved as Hong Lei's.

Under his formidable eyesight.

Behind Elder Furious Sword, far away on the high cliff, a group of disciples with weak auras slowly approached the cliff edge; some were at the Initial Realm, and there were even those whose mortal bodies had not yet reached perfection.

(End of this chapter)