Chapter 416: 390 Extermination

The cloaked person turned his head, saw his own palm already burning fiercely like a fireball, and could not help but be terrified.

His first reaction at this moment was naturally to throw away the axe that had already burned into a mass, and his second reaction was to circulate his Gang Qi!

His Gang Qi was extremely thick; under full circulation, it burst out from the inside out, instantly diluting the flames.

Gang Qi and flames were originally forces of the same level and could naturally repel each other; the idea of using Gang Qi to extinguish the flames was feasible.

But those flames were like oil on water; although water is heavier than oil and can disperse the oil layer, the oil droplets on the surface stubbornly floated on the water, impossible to wash away.

Using Gang Qi to flush out fire was like using water to extinguish an oil pan—it was useful, but not that useful. If there were a hundred times more water than oil, like a flood washing the oil away, it could mostly be extinguished, but the cloaked person simply did not have such thick Gang Qi.

Seeing that the Gang Qi only provided temporary protection, the flames clung on like maggots on bone, burning in clusters here and there within the Gang Qi, impossible to shake off, and the next moment they would transfer back to his skin; the cloaked person became increasingly panicked.

People of the Jianghu all say they are not afraid of death, but when death is imminent, how many are truly unafraid?

Water!

Seeing the flames, the first thing he thought of was water, and the cloaked person was no exception; he immediately thought of the pool of water in the courtyard. He could not care about the thin woman who was close at hand and teetering, tore off his obviously flammable cloak, revealed a fat, old face, and rushed toward the pool.

Qin Jiujiu remained half-kneeling there like a statue; although she was pressing her wound and had no weapons, she still maintained a posture ready to counterattack at any time. Only after the cloaked person left did she begin to stop the bleeding, tear off her clothes to bandage the wound, and then stagger to her feet to search for the place where Beigong Qi had fallen.

The cloaked person rushed to the edge of the pool and could not help but be greatly shocked.

He saw that the pool, which was usually a zhang deep, had its water level drop by five or six chi, and it was still constantly dropping; in the middle of the pool, a mass of flames was burning fiercely.

Fire in water should be a miracle, a beautiful sight, but now only endless terror remained.

Because inside the flames, there was a corpse.

It was a charred corpse being burned, and it was about to be burned to bone.

The flames wrapping the corpse bloomed in the pool like a red lotus, and not a single drop of water could obscure its color.

Seeing this scene, a chill rushed straight to the cloaked person's crown, and a thought flashed through his mind: Is this my end?!

Immediately after, he thought of the woman whose arm he had cut off, and suddenly understood:

Could that arm be the source of the fire? Did that woman use him to cut off her arm just to survive by severing the limb, and then incidentally plot against him?

Damn bitch!

At this moment he had only two thoughts: Can I only abandon an arm?

And then the second thought: I want to kill that bitch!

Reason told him he should execute the first one first—the sooner the decision, the safer—but the anger in his chest made him roar and turn to rush toward the woman.

Just at the moment he turned—

"Pfft!"

A sword pierced out from his body and stabbed into his heart.

What?

The world spun for the cloaked person, and he fell to the ground with a thud, only then reacting: someone was ambushing!

In a daze, he felt only realization, not shock: in a place like this, in a jar for raising Gu, wasn't it normal to be ambushed?

It was just that in the past, he had Gang Qi to protect his body and was very alert, so he would never be easily ambushed. Today was special; his protective Gang Qi was used to counteract the flames, and he had lost his composure, so he was ambushed.

Dying due to his own negligence was reasonable enough.

He didn't even want to know who had ambushed him; in any case, it couldn't be that bitch, she didn't have that ability. His own Internal Energy was still there, and ordinary blades could hardly hurt him; it required a hunter with focused Spirit, complete strength, and careful planning to hunt him.

However, at the very last moment, he still saw the shadow of the hunter.

A very young person was pulling the sword out of his body, shouting with a ferocious expression: "It's you, you killed our Hall Master!"

"Who is your Hall Master?"

The cloaked person hadn't asked the question before he fell into eternal darkness.

After he died, his Gang Qi dissipated, and the flames immediately rolled back, swallowing him.

He was dead too, but no one was left to report the count for the others, so he died in extreme silence.

Yue Lai pulled out his sword; because he had aimed accurately and pulled it out in time, he was not affected by the flames and retreated unscathed. He took a few steps back, as if he had exhausted his strength, squatted on the ground leaning on his sword, gasping for air, and then laughed loudly, shouting: "Hall Master, I have avenged you!"

"That cloaked person is Mi Hufa, right? How did he get here?"

Dozens of steps behind were Black Widow and the others who had followed Yue Lai from behind. At the time, seeing the firelight in the corridor, everyone was still observing the situation, and Yue Lai was the first to rush out the window. By the time everyone followed after the mechanism paused, Yue Lai had already killed the cloaked person with an ambush.

Although they were far away, Xu Siyao also recognized the identity of the cloaked person and was very surprised—except for the few candidates, whether it was Protectors or villa servants, they should all have been blocked outside the villa; how could he be here, reporting counts and killing people?

Black Widow chuckled: "Who can say? There really are outside moves. A dignified Protector wearing a cloak in the courtyard shouting and playing addition and subtraction within ten to create an atmosphere for us—he really has a childlike heart."

She looked curiously at Xu Siyao and said: "Didn't Yue Lai say you killed Cha Feiyan? How did it become Mi Hufa who killed him?"

Xu Siyao said unhappily: "I didn't kill him; I wanted to, but I didn't have the chance to act. This kid probably saw the Hall Master killed and was stimulated, going insane? Biting whoever he sees. It's not even certain who killed Cha Feiyan. Who knows if he rushed out to kill because he saw the murderer clearly, or if he was just taking the opportunity to vent?"

Black Widow was thoughtful and said: "Xiao Tang, do you think he killed him?"

Tang Zhao had been staring at Yue Lai's back and suddenly said: "Very strong."

Black Widow was startled, then looked at Yue Lai, frowning: "You mean..."

Tang Zhao extended two fingers—it was these fingers that had caught Yue Lai's sword—and said: "That sword strike he used to ambush and kill was truly strong. If it had come at me, these two fingers of mine wouldn't have been able to catch it, not even with Gang Qi."

Xu Siyao's expression changed slightly. When Yue Lai had slashed at her earlier, although she was in a sorry state, she wasn't entirely defenseless. If Tang Zhao said Yue Lai possessed even higher skills, wouldn't that mean she had been crushed by a young person again?

However, she hadn't died just now, after all.

Why?

Xu Siyao pondered in her heart. Over there, Yu Sichen had already said: "Hey, how do we extinguish the fire? This thing kills on contact, spreads endlessly, and burns bigger and bigger. Won't it swallow the villa in a while? Can we run out first? If this Jingzhe Villa is scorched by the fire after we run out, the foundation will be ruined. By then, whoever becomes the master of Jingzhe Villa will find it pointless."

Xu Siyao said: "No need to worry about that; this fire is mostly set by their own Jingzhe Villa. Are they afraid of burning their own villa?"

Yu Sichen said: "No way, Mi Hufa was burned to death, and he had no way to extinguish the fire. Could it really be that he dug his own grave? This flame is evil; I don't know which wicked bastard set it..."

Tang Zhao coughed lightly and said: "Don't worry about it. This fire only burns people. As long as you don't touch it, it will stop on its own once the remains inside are burned up."

Xu Siyao and Yu Sichen looked at him at the same time, both stunned. Yu Sichen pointed at him and said: "You... could it be you..."

Tang Zhao coughed lightly and said: "This is my Vermilion Bird fire. But I didn't kill anyone; it was just a counterattack. We were in the room just now. I had set a mechanism in my room earlier; whoever entered and acted would immediately trigger the flames. Actually, when I saw the flames, I only knew someone had triggered the mechanism; I didn't know who it was."

As a Talisman Sword Master, Tang Zhao was proficient in Rune Formulas and had various materials and Lihuo Dharma Artifacts, so it was very easy to set up a counter-killing mechanism, and Lihuo itself was extremely lethal and precisely controlled. Now, Zhou Chengzhi, who held the Lihuo Sword, could even precisely set fires in a large forest without igniting a single tree. And once caught in the trap, unless one was at the Sword Guest level with corresponding Sword Art to counteract it, or the Gang Qi had reached the Heavenly Gang level to suppress the Lihuo when the disaster was still small, there would be no survival.

Tang Zhao had placed a Talisman Puppet in his own room, added with a Rune Formula to ignite fire; it was meant as a precaution. If no one triggered it, Tang Zhao would naturally clean it up in the morning.

He had not expected it to be triggered, and that it would personally pull back the curtain on this night of madness.

Now, looking at the flames that had gradually extinguished in the pool, Tang Zhao did not even know who had died there.

"Judging by the Exclusion, the one who died should be Jin Fusheng, right? Or perhaps that friend he brought along, the one called Zhang Wenjian?"

Black Widow scanned the scene while speaking.

There were ten people in total, five pairs; currently, the only pairs still alive and intact were Tang Zhao and Black Widow, and Xu Siyao and Yu Sichen, totaling four people. Yue Lai said that Cha Feiyan was dead, leaving only him. Beigong Qi had just been struck flying by Mi Hufa and was lying there with her condition unknown; Qin Jiujiu had already gone over to treat her with her only remaining arm. Seven people were gathered here. Only two were missing.

"Perhaps both of them died."

Tang Zhao looked toward the room that had originally belonged to him.

The firelight there had already faintly extinguished, but it had been burning continuously until not long ago.

"If it were only Jin Fusheng, the fire in the room should have gone out once he left. But it didn't; it burned for a long time, so there should have been another person inside. That person must have been the one to strike first, so they bore the brunt of it and died before they could rush out. Jin Fusheng was further away and had the strength to escape, but he died halfway."

Relying on water to extinguish the Separation Fire was impossible; Jin Fusheng lacked the ability to put out the fire and had only a dead end ahead of him.

Even Qin Jiujiu, who had been infected by the Separation Fire, would have met the same fate had she not been decisive enough to sever her own arm with the help of Mi Hufa.

From this perspective, Qin Jiujiu could be considered innocent, yet she had indeed harbored murderous intent, which was why she had been infected by the Separation Fire.

The Separation Fire looked like an evil flame, but it was an evil that could punish evil; it used wickedness as fuel, yet it recoiled in the face of kindness or calmness.

Black Widow gave a light laugh and said, "Oh, by this calculation, Sister Xu, there are only the two of us left to compete, aren't there?"