Chapter 465: Exchanging for the Head of Liehuo Fawang

When Cheng Feng arrived at the Commandery of Pacification again, he had a newly received mission document tucked inside his robe.

The document had been issued three days ago, and its content was simple—head to Qingshipo, sixty miles west of the city, to investigate the tracks of a band of roaming mountain bandits; if any were slain, merit would be recorded by the head. The mission rank was low, and the reward was pitifully small, totaling only twenty points of merit, but it was written above that it was suspected to be related to the Red Lotus Sect.

No one in the Commandery of Pacification was willing to take such a thankless job, yet Cheng Feng took the initiative to accept it, which greatly surprised the old clerk who distributed the missions, causing him to take two extra looks at him.

Cheng Feng did not offer much explanation. He needed a mission document as a cover. The head of Liehuo Fawang could not just appear out of thin air; there had to be a reasonable and logical origin for it.

Accept a mission to patrol outside the city, go out for two days, and when returning, "coincidentally" run into the severely wounded Liehuo Fawang.

After all, it was Wang Ji who had wounded him; one had to be strategic about scavenging for spoils. There was merit to be had here at the Commandery of Pacification, and there was also a reward of three hundred thousand taels from the government!

On the evening of the day he accepted the mission, Cheng Feng left the city. No one knew where he went, and no one knew what he did.

The only thing known was that in the deep of night two days later, he returned alone to the duty room of the Commandery of Pacification, his clothes torn in several places, a strip of cloth soaked through with blood wrapped around his left arm, and an unmaskable exhaustion on his face.

Lao Liu Tou, who was on night duty in the room, was startled to see him in this state and asked what had happened, but he only said, "Ran into a tough nut," and fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

This sleep lasted for a full day and night.

By the morning of the fourth day, Cheng Feng finally climbed out of bed, changed into a clean martial arts uniform, tucked the bundle wrapped tightly in oil paper and black cloth under his arm, and went straight to the Gongxunge.

The hour was still early, and the dew on the old locust tree in the courtyard of the Gongxunge had not yet dried. The duty-bound strongman had just opened the door and was using a feather duster to dust the counter when he saw Cheng Feng enter and habitually greeted him: "Brother Cheng, why so early today—"

Before he could finish his sentence, he smelled that scent first.

The smell of blood. It was very faint, sealed tightly by the oil paper and lime, but that fishy, sweet aura still leaked out in wisps from the gaps in the bundle, piercing into his nose like a thin needle.

The duty-bound strongman's feather duster stopped in mid-air, his gaze falling on that bundle, and the corners of his mouth twitched: "What kind of thing are you carrying in your arms?"

Cheng Feng placed the bundle on the counter and peeled back the oil paper and black cloth layer by layer. His movements were not fast; with every layer he peeled back, the smell of blood grew a fraction stronger, and by the time the last layer of black cloth was lifted, the duty-bound strongman had frozen in place.

A head was placed on the counter.

The eyes were wide with rage, the hair and beard were all red, and a cinnabar mole between the brows was as crimson as blood; the wound at the severed neck was smooth and clean, as if it had been severed in one strike by some extremely sharp weapon.

The most horrifying thing was the expression frozen on that face—astonishment, anger, and unwillingness, all mixed together, as if even in death, he could not figure out how he had died.

The duty-bound strongman stared at the head for a full five breaths, then suddenly took a step back, his lower back hitting the counter with a dull thud. He couldn't care about the pain and shouted at the top of his lungs: "Lao Zhang! Lao Li! You two come over here!"

This shout summoned two colleagues who were eating breakfast in the Rear Courtyard of the Gongxunge. The two ran in holding their porridge bowls, and upon seeing the thing on the counter, they nearly dropped them.

One of them, who was slightly older—the same one who was present last time when Cheng Feng exchanged for the "Iron Bone Golden Body"—put down his porridge bowl, leaned in to examine it carefully for a moment, and his expression changed drastically: "Liehuo Fawang Hu Shen?!"

"What?" Another small flag officer heard this and squeezed over, flipping the head back and forth to look at it several times, then opened the bounty book to compare it with the portrait, his voice changing pitch, "Cinnabar mole between the brows, red beard, flame birthmark on the back of the neck... it really is him! One of the Four Great Dharma Kings of the Red Lotus Sect, the Liehuo Fawang of the Gang Qi Realm Initial Stage!"

The courtyard suddenly went quiet.

The three of them turned their heads in unison to look at Cheng Feng, their gazes full of disbelief.

The Hundred-Household Officer spoke first, his voice kept very low, as if afraid of startling something: "Cheng Feng, what mission did you accept these past few days?"

"Qingshipo patrol." Cheng Feng took the mission document out from his robe, spread it on the counter, and pointed to the date above, "Accepted three days ago, in black and white."

The Hundred-Household Officer scanned the document, then looked up at Cheng Feng—a cultivation of the Organ Refining Initial Stage, having accepted a patrol mission worth twenty points of merit, only to bring back the head of a Gang Qi Realm Initial Stage expert worth five thousand points of merit.

This account did not add up no matter how one calculated it.

"Patrol mission, ran into Liehuo Fawang?" The Hundred-Household Officer's gaze sharpened, "Cheng Feng, don't tell me that you, a Organ Refining Initial Stage, single-handedly hacked a Gang Qi Realm Martial Artist to death."

This was the sentence Cheng Feng was waiting for.

The expression on his face did not change, and he even carried a certain natural composure: "Of course I couldn't kill him in his prime by myself, but when I encountered him, he was already severely wounded."

Cheng Feng reached out and gently pried open the jaw of the head in the bundle, revealing the shattered teeth and swollen, purple tongue root inside his mouth,

and then pointed to the whites of the head's eyes—they were covered in fine, dense blood spots, as if the capillaries had been torn from the inside by some force.

Thank goodness the Space Ring could still preserve freshness,

at least when Cheng Feng processed it with lime, it could still be seen as roughly fresh.

"When I found him in an abandoned hunter's cabin on the north side of Qingshipo, he was already in this state." Cheng Feng's voice was not high, but it was steady, "Blood seeping from the seven orifices, eyeballs covered in blood spots, the breath he exhaled carried a fishy stench, and he was barely breathing."

He paused and looked at the Hundred-Household Officer: "With injuries like these, even if he is of the Gang Qi Realm, how much combat power could he have left?"

The Hundred-Household Officer was silent for a moment, and Lao Zhang beside him asked on his behalf: "Even so, a Gang Qi Realm Martial Artist can release Gang Qi, and he could have taken you down in one move."

"That is why this fight was very dangerous." Cheng Feng said, untying the cloth strip wrapped around his left arm.

"It is true that his injuries flared up, but his desperate counterattack was also real." Cheng Feng pointed to his left arm, his tone as calm as if he were talking about someone else's business,

"He only managed half a move; if he hadn't suddenly coughed up a large mouthful of minced flesh halfway through, and his Gang Qi technique hadn't been fully released, I should be lying in the wilderness of Qingshipo feeding wild dogs right now."

"Half a move." The Hundred-Household Officer savored this number, "A Organ Refining Initial Stage held on for half a move under a Gang Qi Realm expert and even brought the head back. Cheng Feng, I have to say, even if the opponent only had one-tenth of his combat power left, it was not entirely by luck that you survived."