Nightfall

It was a cold rainy night at Spring Breeze Pavilion and the alley outside Chao Mansion.

That middle-aged fat man stood beside the carriage, bending over in the rain, and said in a low voice, “Chao Xiaoshu is indeed a cultivator, whose state seems to be good. Now the situation becomes a little tricky…”

The person inside the carriage coughed twice and indifferently said, “Don’t worry. Are the two persons that the Ministry of Revenue had hired in the mansion? Even if those two can’t stop that guy from the Jianghu world, it’s never too late for us to do it… As for those people in Jianghu world, we don’t need to care about their deaths. Even in the dark gutters of Chang’an, there are also some rats dying every day.”

Several hundred brave men from the Jianghu world in Chang’an flooded over from every side. Though seen as rats in a dark gutter by Supermundane Experts, they exploded an extremely amazing fighting strength and bloodiness at that moment of life and death.

But Spring Breeze Pavilion Old Chao was a cultivator, and they were just ordinary people of the Jianghu world. The gap between the two side’s fighting strength was like that between an eagle and an ant. That shadow of sword pierced in and through a leg with a spray of blood, then revolving around a neck to chop off a very big head, and cutting the fingers of a man with an axe in his hands, which caused the man waving the axe to fall in the rain. Before that shadow of sword alternately appearing and disappearing, the strongest fighting strength was not even worth a single stroke and those brave men’s bloodiness would always hopelessly break down when their companions kept falling.

Chao Xiaoshu calmly went forward, whose indigo robe had long been soaked by the rain. But like each time Ning Que had seen him, no one would think that this number one man in Chang’an at night was having a hard time. As he walked in the rain, he was as natural as the spring rain, whose aura emitting from his body was like the spring rain moistening the earth, making people feel no way or no desire to resist.

The mobs from the western city and southern city of Chang’an saw the middle-aged man coming towards them in the rain, as if seeing a refined and cultured demon nod to them and raise its demonic claws to squeeze them into pieces calmly. With full horror in the hearts, they could no longer suppress their inner fear and finally scattered after hearing somebody yell out.

Those people, Lord Meng of Southern City, Junjie of Western City, and the Old Cat, had already quietly slipped away. Around the broken Spring Breeze Pavilion corpses were being constantly washed by the rain and the heavily injured men groaning, except one single standing person. Between heaven and earth, there was only peacefulness—if people ignored those corpses and wounded men in the rain, the smell of blood that the falling rainwater could not rinse, and one smashed corner of Spring Breeze Pavilion.

Ning Que silently followed behind Chao Xiaoshu and walked forward. He tightly held onto his hilt with both hands, putting the sharp blade drenched in the rain before his chest, and he had not used it once from beginning to end. The one-sided massacre ended just like that, but he did not relax himself or feel embarrassed, for he knew that the real battle had yet to come. If you had the chance to follow a cultivator to fight, then you would own an extremely high opportunity to meet one, or even several, cultivators from the opposite side.

With one step and two, Chao Xiaoshu walked to the front door of his own mansion’s courtyard. He did not have his sword in his sheath, for that sword was passing the nightly rain where no one knew. He stretched out his empty hands to lightly push, making the hinge of the door that had been soaked by the rain give out a bit of strange groaning sound.

The courtyard’s door was pushed open and dozens of elite troops of the Tang in dark raincoats carried crossbows to greet him with unswervingly cold expressions. On the Rain-enjoying Building’s wooden floor behind the rain curtain, the middle-aged man in starry white robes slightly frowned, with the short sword at his side lowly beeping. The sadhu wearing a bamboo hat slowly raised his head, with the prayer beads in his hands slightly stiffening. The two horse carriages far away in the alley remained calm as before, but the coughing sound from one of them disappeared.

It was still tranquil, with a light wind sound rustling among the tree leaves and roof pillars. And the sound of pattering rain lightly echoed between the courtyard and the small pond. Looking at each other, no one chose to be the first to attack.

Silence may be very long or very short. Chao Xiaoshu’s gaze crossed the troops carrying crossbows, falling onto the sadhu and the swordsman in the pavilion, and calmly said, “This is my house. Please get out.”

“No one will leave,” the swordsman in starry white robes calmly responded.

Chao Xiaoshu saw the short sword lightly shaking with a craving whistling at that person’s side. As if coming up with a thought, he suddenly spoke up to ask, “Is it you that killed my little brother in the rain a few days ago?”

The robed swordsman leaned slightly forward, indicating that he was exactly that person.

With his lips slightly turned up, Chao Xiaoshu looked at him and said, “Then today you’ll be the first to die.”

It kept raining, following the tiles and eaves of the Rain-enjoying Building to flow down like a water curtain. The copper bowl in front of that sadhu kept receiving the rainwater, gradually accumulating to overflow out just at that moment finally.

Chao Xiaoshu attacked.

He raised his right arm, facing the heavy rain curtain and those elite troops of the Tang tightly grasping crossbows to wait, and pointed towards that robed swordsman in the Rain-enjoying Building from a distance.

With one movement of pointing out, in the rainy night suddenly echoed a shrill cry. That thin sword, hidden from beginning to end in the nightly spring rain scene, finally revealed itself like a flash of lightning, piercing forward from the Rain-enjoying Building!

With his pupils shrunk, the robed swordsman tightened and shot the middle finger of his right hand hanging at his side. Then the short sword at his side, already readily coming out, jolted out with a clear whisper and transformed into a clear light, guarding in front of him.

Chao Xiaoshu had said that today he was the first person to die, indeed having pointed at him through the rain curtain. But Chao Xiaoshu’s sword’s first attack objective wasn’t him but that sadhu beside!

Although that sadhu was silent throughout the process, he was constantly alert of watching around for nearby movements and sounds. If the Qi of Heaven and Earth had some slight fluctuations, he knew that Chao Xiaoshu was already about to act. Though not knowing that he was the target of the sword attack, out of a Buddha disciple’s instinct, he used his palm to beat a board beside him severely. With the shaking of smoke and dust in the wooden board, the copper bowl in the front of the wooden stairs seemed to be kicked by someone and suddenly flew up, causing a countless spattering of water to splash in the sky.

The gray shadow of sword cleaved through the air to move forward, penetrating through the water splashes, as sparkling and translucent as glazed tiles, but was blocked by the copper bowl. The high-speed, sharp, and thin sword viciously collided with the thick and clumsy copper bowl, giving out a clear and loud sound that nearly made people’s eardrums split!

The sadhu’s face outside his bamboo rain hat was kind of dark, and at that moment became extremely pale, for he obviously suffered some losses. And at that time, the robed swordsman moved his eyebrows and flicked his wrist at a fast speed, making his index finger and middle finger combine together as a sword to point towards Chao Xiaoshu standing in the front of the mansion. The short sword that had flown in a half circle around his body abruptly changed its orbit to become a single cyan light, stabbing straight for Chao Xiaoshu’s face. Just then, Chao Xiaoshu’s flying sword was directly colliding with the sadhu’s copper bowl, so how could Old Chao defend himself?

Ning Que, tightly gripping his long hilt and silently standing behind Chao Xiaoshu, moved his body rapidly to dodge to the left. Just when he was about to dodge away from Chao Xiaoshu’s body, he forced his steps to a halt, not out of fear of the robed swordsman’s weapon or that cyan-light short sword, but out of finding no need for himself to act now.

After crashing into the sadhu’s copper bowl, Chao Xiaoshu’s flying sword did not break through that copper bowl but still did not fall to the ground. Through borrowing the fierce strike’s strength, the unknown cracks as well as streaks on the thin, cyan-steel sword abruptly enlarged and separated from the sword, fantastically transforming into five thin sword blades in the sky, and quickly flew to shoot out!

Something could be born from nothing; one into two, two into three, and three into five.

Chao Xiaoshu’s sword transformed into five sword blades.

…