Chapter 56: A Peerless Master

The assassin's face was covered by a lead-colored mask, and the white-haired killer at his temples immediately sensed something was wrong.

At this moment, he was already far from the area where Yue Qianfeng had sealed his inner energy.

He tightened his grip on his weapon, and a blood-colored aura rose from his body.

A technique modeled after a Dharma Aspect transformed into a blood-colored, ferocious wild wolf that pressed its paws beside him, its gaze coldly sweeping the surroundings, and said: "Good, what a fine zither-sound movement-phenomenon. I did not expect that there would actually be a master hidden here."

"Those with profound inner skill can kill with a plucked leaf or a tossed flower."

"Those the Daoists call the supreme of the Primordial Spirit can also kill with zither music—string-sound like a sword, cleaving mountains and parting seas in the span of a single tune. But I do not know, which Mr. has come today?! This one is untalented, but is willing to learn from you."

As he spoke, he paced back and forth, vast energy circulating within his body, his gaze icy as it swept the surroundings, his eyes sharp and wary.

His right foot came to a halt beside a massive boulder; the wind blew past, and the tree branches swayed slightly.

The zither music suddenly stirred.

The trees on the left side shook violently, and the branches fell flat.

Leaves drifted down, landing beside the boulder. The assassin erupted in an instant, his speed surging like lightning. The boulder was shattered by the impact, and beside the stone three pale-yellow spring flowers were trampled into mud in a flash, and the assassin instantly charged toward the direction the zither music had come from.

He raised his hand to parry, and the sword's cry was shrill and piercing.

As though he had struck a blade.

He followed through with a slash, and the sword-light born of baleful aura tore at the sky—only to be cut off in an instant.

The blood-colored Greedy Wolf blade-light melted in midair, the cut surface smooth and even. That stream of qi-blades stirred up by the zither music did not cease. This, one of Chen State's few renowned assassins, felt a sting on his cheek, and fresh blood already welled up, his gaze icy yet burning with killing intent.

He had a long enough career, for an assassin.

That meant he had already faced every manner of opponent.

Naturally included among them were these so-called reclusive masters who were neither martial nor Daoist, neither Confucian nor Buddhist.

"Found you."

He stepped on the void, the air trembling, his body drawing closer and closer through the air.

Compared with martial artists of the first rank like Xue Daoyong and Yue Qianfeng, he was inferior.

But compared with those who cultivated zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting, he was extremely strong!

His foundation also belonged to one of the Hundred Schools, but what he excelled at was concealing his form and killing intent, then erupting to ambush and slay his opponent. He knew that these four arts—zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting—if cultivated to an extremely high level and paired with the power of the Primordial Spirit, could produce all manner of wondrous effects.

But such masters also had a weakness.

Close combat!

Within a three-foot radius, a martial artist feared nothing.

The man wielded his blade in a frenzy of hacking slashes, splitting apart the ceaseless stream of qi-blades. The bursting remnants of qi cleaved apart the surrounding trees, boulders, and earth, leaving utter devastation. He charged out for several li—and then his eyes lit up.

At last he saw the figure of a woman. The woman sat upon a bluestone. The assassin's blood and qi surged, and he directly employed a forbidden technique.

His speed surged once more, ignoring the many qi-blades that came to slay him.

That woman raised the zither in her hand to block a slash.

The assassin held his blade in his right hand, and pressed his left hand hard against the back of the blade.

His killing intent erupted once more.

"You've lost!!!"

Blood-light sprayed in all directions.

A head flew up, then fell to the ground.

The headless assassin, as though he had cut himself down with his own blade, had used his own sword to sever his own neck.

He stood there holding his blade, and staggered.

The head fell to the ground, still wearing a smile. The leaves he had just seen finally drifted down, landing upon his body. Then his frame collapsed heavily, kneeling beside the massive boulder—beside the stone that should have been shattered—where the pale-yellow flowers beside the stone were stained red by fresh blood.

The wind stirred the leaves, and the sound of the leaves was as melodious as zither music.

One tune had not yet ended, and already it had concluded in peace.

All around were the marks of blades and swords. In his perception, the trees and earth that had been shattered were still as whole as before, and upon his weapon was stained his own fresh blood. From beginning to end, he had never stepped out of that clearing wrapped by the mountain forest.

The zither music lingered, drifting farther and farther away, until at last it vanished.

The first movement of a zither piece had ended.

The seventy-third assassin of Chen State's Southern Court.

Died by his own hand.

……………………

Li Guanyi plunged into the encirclement of five men, his body ducking low to evade the crisscrossing sword-light. His foot stamped the ground, his torso twisting as he erupted with force, and the hilt of his blade slammed heavily into one man's abdomen, twisting his face. Then Li Guanyi followed through with a slash, forcing several men back.

The blade's edge was domineering.

The five assassins had originally believed that, by their own strength, they were surely above this youth.

But only when they truly faced battle did they discover that, having lost the entry-state techniques they took pride in and being unable to employ their many subtle moves, they were actually somewhat unaccustomed to such Bai Ren combat. Their bodies had already been tempered by inner energy, surpassing this youth—and this too was a point of their confidence.

But now they found it was not so.

The strength of fierce tigers and great elephants is greater than a man's, yet they are no match for humans.

Strength alone cannot wholly decide victory or defeat.

That heavy blade swept horizontally with the moves of the Pojun Eight Slashes, raising up a ring of blade-wind that forced back the crowd's weapons, then leapt like a butterfly. Though it was a heavy blade, it moved as light and agile as a curved saber. His foot stepped forth, and the blade's edge had already, like the wind, kissed an assassin's throat—fresh blood sprayed out.

The entry-state martial artist who could cleave blade-light staggered backward, clutching his throat.

He immediately used inner qi to seal his meridians, then drew out silver needles to lock down the killing intent at his neck—miraculously preserving his life, but his killing intent had greatly diminished, making it hard to exert force. If he erupted with power again, fresh blood would likely gush out in an instant, and he would die outright.

He suddenly recalled the first words his teacher had taught him.

Wu Gong is the skill of defeating the enemy with the least exertion of force.

It is the way of the weak overcoming the strong.

Li Guanyi gripped his blade, and his muscles loosened and relaxed.

"The first one."

Break the formation, blunt their edge!

To bolster our might — from *The Art of War: Facing the Battle*.

Li Guanyi tossed the military strategy Xue Shen had taught him out of his mind.

He did not know why, at this moment, that one sentence had surfaced in his mind and made him choose the strategy of immediately going all-out to cut down one man first.

He stood there, and in that single instant, the remaining four assassins did not dare approach. That natural sense of command over the battlefield, tempered through a hundred thousand bitter fights and countless brushes with life and death, gave those assassins an illusion.

As if they were not facing a mere youth, the one standing before them, in that fleeting moment—

Was a famed general who had crawled back from the battlefield, having passed through countless life-and-death trials.

Assassins skilled at concealing their killing intent were exposed beneath the sunlight.

Facing head-on a famed general who feared nothing under heaven.

A fear without reason welled up within them. The leader drove the emotion away and hissed in a low voice: "Move, form up. Even if he truly is a born general, he cannot kill all five of us without paying a price."

They surged forward with agile footwork to kill, and though Li Guanyi had instantly crippled one opponent's fighting ability, he was immediately plunged into a bitter struggle. When the strength each side could bring to bear was roughly equal, numbers truly did make a difference.

The enemy changed their strategy, no longer advancing with the careless contempt of the start, but pairing off in twos. Relying on lightness skills superior to Li Guanyi's, they struck once and then swiftly withdrew. It was effective — Li Guanyi only had combat footwork, while movement skills and short-burst attacks were precisely the assassins' forte.

Gradually, wounds appeared one after another on Li Guanyi's body, fresh blood staining his blue shirt.

But for some unknown reason—

Perhaps because of the entering-realm killing intent that had been suppressed back within him, or perhaps because of the stellar force that had been continuously merging into his body over this period, wherever he had been struck, the stagnant aura dispersed, and from the wounded places, the hidden stellar force that had not yet been absorbed surged forth once more.

Li Guanyi did not feel pain, only a numb, itching sensation at the wounds. Combined with that feeling of killing intent stagnating within his body, it gave him an instinctive urge to destroy something.

The assassins felt slightly steadier in their hearts, and once again darted forward with lightness skill.

The youth, who had seemed sluggish until now, suddenly erupted.

That heavy saber was swung in a full, vicious arc. The timing was so exquisitely seized that it was as if the assassin had willingly offered his own waist to the blade. Two opposing forces converged on that three-hundred-refined heavy saber, and in an instant the edge bisected the assassin at the waist.

A trace of astonishment lingered in the assassin's eyes, and his final thought was only—

"He saw through our rhythm of attack?"

How could that be?!

The youth swept back with a backhand strike to drive off the incoming enemies, wiped the blood from his body, and slightly raised his brow.

Smiling just as Xue Shen had, he said: "The second one."

Xue Shen would use the words "second tally" and "third tally" to disrupt Li Guanyi's mindset, and now he found himself speaking the same way instinctively.

The bisected assassin crawled on the ground, wailing in agony.

The youth reversed his blade and drove it through the man's throat.

One hand resting on the saber's hilt, his gaze fixed on the enemy, he met them with stillness. Perhaps because he had seen too many opponents in the Mystical Realm, Li Guanyi found the corresponding master for this style of killing — it came from a branch of a branch of the Mohist school, fallen from the Knight-Mohist tradition into a pure assassin's path.

Li Guanyi had dealt with their patriarch before — the assassin who had once tried to kill Xue Shen.

All variations return to the same origin.

And while the remaining three assassins seemed frozen in terror, Li Guanyi's wrist flicked, and the heavy saber, spinning, was suddenly hurled out. To throw away one's weapon at this moment stunned everyone. The next instant, the leader's scalp suddenly prickled, and he cried: "The spear! He's going to take the spear!!!"

The training Li Guanyi had received from Xue Shen once more proved its worth. He seized the abandoned spear in an instant; with only a flick of his wrist, the spearhead swept out a broad arc of light. The moment the youth gripped a long weapon, his heart eased.

This thing is far easier to use than a saber.

No wonder the court had to ban it.

He charged forward with the spear, sweeping out a forest of cold menace. Instinctively imitating Xue Shan's moves, he swept horizontally to force the enemy back, then twisted his body, and the spear traced an arc upward before crashing down like a blade. This strike consumed tremendous strength, yet Li Guanyi felt an exhilarating release.

One assassin was hammered down onto his knees.

Li Guanyi twisted the spear's tail, and the spear thrust forward like a drill, piercing through the man's throat.

Then, gripping the spear's end with both hands, he suddenly tensed his body.

The spear shaft had elasticity, and the spearhead tore open half of that man's neck. As the assassin fell, the attack had already enveloped the other two within its range, driving them back. The lower and upper limits of a long weapon were absurdly high, and in a situation where internal force could not be brought to bear, it was invincible in close combat.

A blur of afterimages flashed before Li Guanyi's eyes. He instinctively struck out to block the blur, but failed to stop it completely. His shoulder jolted as a crossbow bolt, spinning, bored into his shoulder. Because he had instinctively employed 【Canglang Guard】, the bolt failed to pierce through and only embedded itself in the flesh.

The assassin whose throat had been cut yet still clung to life wore a frozen expression.

Li Guanyi reached up, seized the bolt, and snapped off the exposed tail end.

He tossed the bolt's shaft to the ground and swept his gaze across.

An awe-inspiring presence erupted of its own accord.

The leader's heart turned cold, and he cursed inwardly.

"What kind of thirteen-year-old is this!"

"The court has ruined me!"

Roughly the time it takes to burn a stick of incense later, the slaughter here finally fell silent.

Li Guanyi's hands were slick with blood, and he gasped for breath.

All five assassins around him had fallen.

The first he had cut down at the throat in a headlong charge; the second was bisected; the third was speared to death; the fourth he had found an opening to kill; the fifth wore soft armor and was the last to die — after Li Guanyi's spear was broken, he had crashed straight into the man's embrace and driven his aunt's short sword into his heart.

Only the first one, whose throat had been cut, remained alive by some unknown method.

It was also he who had just fired that crossbow bolt.

Li Guanyi broke his hands and feet, intending to interrogate him for the information he wanted.

Li Guanyi exhaled a breath. Bai Hu and Chi Long lay quietly dormant. His body was covered in many wounds. He reached out and snapped the second and third crossbows on his person. The spear was already broken, and crossbow bolts were hard to defend against — apart from the one that had just lodged in his shoulder.

One bolt had also struck his leg, and another his abdomen.

One could only say, the Iron-Ridge Third Prince's Canglang Guard was truly formidable.

It could even block this.

It should have been a moment of agony, yet the Formation-Breaking Melody circulated at tremendous speed. When Li Guanyi breathed, the air he exhaled carried a searing sensation. After the battle ended and his spirit relaxed, that feeling of internal energy wildly circulating and stagnating within him surged up. Li Guanyi instead lost his strength and sat down at once, his meridians aching and swollen.

He couldn't suppress it any longer.

His vital energy began to gather once more—he was about to break through.

No, he had to hold it in; there was still that survivor, he needed to ask about what happened ten years ago.

At that moment, a familiar figure appeared in the youth's line of sight. Yaoguang, wearing a hood, walked out, half-knelt and crouched before Li Guanyi, placing the hand crossbow in her hand on the ground. Her silver hair at this instant somehow put Li Guanyi at ease.

Yaoguang gripped his palm, her voice calm as flowing water: "This heart is without stain, this body has known a hundred battles."

"You are about to enter the Mystical Realm."

"Please forgive me for not striking out for you just now."

"Do not worry. The life-star of the one who left earlier has already dimmed."

Li Guanyi forced himself to stay conscious and pointed at the assassin whose hands and feet he had broken, saying: "Survivor…"

Yaoguang nodded quietly.

She put away the hand crossbow she had already loaded. Just now, if Li Guanyi had failed to win, the Star-Piercing Bolts unique to the Eastern Lands Star-Gazing School would have shot out in an instant. Her voice was calm as she held the youth's palm, a gentle force suppressing the rampaging meridians within Li Guanyi, and she said:

"Within the Mystical Realm, there are formations that can draw upon the vital energy of Heaven and Earth and the power of the stars."

"I am here. You may set your mind at ease."

Li Guanyi closed his eyes and fainted from exhaustion.

Yaoguang, wearing her hood, stood up, wanting to drag Li Guanyi back.

Looking at the wounds on the youth's body, she decided to carry him on her back, but that way Li Guanyi's feet would drag on the ground and leave marks. The marks could be concealed, but if he woke up like that his feet would hurt.

Yaoguang's expression calm, she tried to compare her height, and realized that if she carried Li Guanyi on her back, not only would his feet drag on the ground, even his calves would be hard to avoid.

In the end, she gave up.

She bent down slightly, one hand supporting the crook of the youth's knee, the other cradling his neck, and lifted him up in a princess carry, swiftly bringing Li Guanyi back to the Mystical Realm. Li Guanyi's body was solidly built; as Yaoguang carried him, her body leaned forward, and Bai Xi's face, fair as if not a thing of this world, flushed red from the exertion.

Her expression calm and unruffled, she bent over, braced her knees, and panted heavily several times.

Then, after thinking for a moment, she turned back.

She took the wooden stick used for skewering steamed buns.

She hooked the assassin's clothes with it, threw him into the stream, and dragged him back.

The assassin's back of his head knocked against the pebbles—clack, clack, clack.

Finally, Yaoguang trotted back out, and using the methods of the Star-Gazing School, concealed the aura and traces at this place.

And so tranquility was restored here.

In less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, when Xue Daoyong and General Yue Qianfeng came streaking over like madmen.

The two men's expressions were ashen, and in their eyes—

This place had only left behind corpses strewn across the ground.

The warhorse the youth had ridden into battle, dead.

The bloodstained Ink Saber thrust upside-down into the ground, and the broken Rainbow Bow.