Nightfall

Suddenly, the air between the Chao Mansion’s front gate and the rain-soaked carriage was rent with the lightning flashes of 14 feathered arrows. They cut through the thick sheets of raindrops, shot past Chao Xiaoshu’s body, and avoided the burly driver seated atop the carriage with an eerie grace. Instead, they whistled through the curtains of the carriage window, leaving behind 14 neat holes.

Inside, Xiao Kuyu furled his brow, leaving his sorrowful face looking even more haggard than usual. He stared at the empty space before him, and his psychic power began to fill the car. As he did so, the faint smell of lilacs began to spread through the cabin, adding to the uncanny scene.

The arrows shot into the cabin like a flash of lightning, but in the face of his venerable power, they froze in midair like something dead, as if time itself had been stopped.

The 14 arrows hung there in the deadened air, with not a single tip scratching his rustic garb. One of the static missiles floated not three inches from Xiao Kuyu’s wrinkled forehead. Two more shafts stared directly down into his eyes, and more yet were suspended silently before his hands!

The frozen arrows pattered softly to the ground, just as the rain outside. The sound was closer still to that of tender green leaves knocked to the earth by heavy rains. The sharpest points and the hardest shafts, deprived of the power of the boxwood bow and the hardy sinew string that launched them, were totally deprived of all lethality, and clattered to the ground like garbage before Xiao Kuyu’s feet.

However, tasked with the feat of stopping these 14 arrows of wooden lightning, even the revered powers of the veteran Xiao Kuyu could not help but be strained, and his psychic power over the Qi of Heaven and Earth surrounding the carriage began to show a few cracks.

For a man like Chao Xiaoshu, any flaw of the enemy in defense would be an advantage to him. He felt as if his heart had been crushed in layers of silk as the arrows flew, and now a single thread had been loosened; his abdomen and his Ocean of Qi seemingly pierced by 10,000 needles now felt a little better. His steady footsteps suddenly stopped. Giving a salient shout, and with the raindrops spattering off of his indigo robe, Chao Xiaoshu strode right past the carriage as if he were a falling leaf.

The stolid driver on the carriage seat gave a gruff murmur. The horsewhip in his hand, made of something strange and unrecognizable, suddenly snapped past. From within his rough outer clothing shone a faint, dull, yellow light, revealing what was hidden before—the man was obviously a warrior.

Beside the ancient and frail body of such a powerful world-striding Psyche Master, there must be a guardian nearby of great physical power. Even Ning Que could realize this, so Chao Xiaoshu caught on at once.

The whip cracked, and the wind and rain beat against Chao Xiaoshu’s indigo robe, which had now been soaked through and fluttered loudly in the gale. His body had become a falling leaf, gently drifting through the storm. He held out the first two fingers of his left hand, thrusting like a knife in the empty air toward the body of this driver. Suddenly, through the streams of wildly windblown raindrops, shot an array of white lines.

The driver gave another grunt, and wheeled the whip back through the air to strike at Chao Xiaoshu’s outstretched fingers. The driver was preparing the whip around when he doubled over in extreme pain, clutching his stomach.

He stared down to find a common podao, buried deep in his stomach!

Ning Que had been running madly through the rain, shooting arrows as he moved. He was clearly aware that the elderly master in the carriage and the coachman above it were both cultivators, but this did not slow his pace in the slightest. Instead, he rushed to reach the carriage just a step later than Chao Xiaoshu, rolled underneath the two horses, and avoiding the burly coachman’s gaze, dropped his arrows to pull out the podao.

He squatted beneath the horse’s belly, and gripping the hilt of his podao in his right hand, reached up behind the horses’ tails and gave a jagged thrust upwards from beneath the carriage seat. His sinister blow skillfully avoided any armor his target might have been wearing, and pierced deep into his gut!

However, a simple thrust to the stomach would not be fatal in itself. Ning Que gave a dispassionate twist of the wrist, twisting the podao back and forth, and turning the coachman’s intestines and organs to a soupy mush.

The coachman watched the endlessly turning podao in his stomach, and his face drained of color in fear and despair. A deep “ho-ho” caught in his throat, and he felt that this sharp piece of metal that must have been soaking in the freezing rain for some time now was suddenly burning hot.

Ning Que was not in the mood to enjoy the grisly face of his dying opponent. With his palm on the seat of the carriage, he gracefully somersaulted through the air, past the body of the coachman, closely following the figure of Chao Xiaoshu into the mysterious cabin.

The curtains lifted desolately; cold spring rain passed through.

Chao Xiaoshu’s face was pale, his eyes as bright as the moon. His frantically waving hand struck Xiao Kuyu’s cane.

Xiao Kuyu’s expression suddenly changed, as he concentrated all of the psyche power in his body, and was overcome with the desire to kill, exterminate, this stubborn little Jianghu thug.

Ning Que dove between Chao Xiaoshu’s knees, and with a deep grunt suddenly kneeled forward, the sharp tip of his podao in his hand forcefully piercing through Xiao Kuyu’s foot.

Xiao Kuyu howled like a dying wild animal. Because of the shooting pain in his foot, his meditations had been interrupted once more, but his ancient hands, like the branches of a dead tree, had opened like a fan and prepared to crash down on the attacker!

The expressionless Chao Xiaoshu crashed hard into the old man’s arms, dissipating all of the psyche power that his opponent had concentrated and breaking off his attack, and with a backhanded flash pulled out a snow-bright dagger, savagely stabbing into his adversary’s neck!

Pow!

One cut.

Two cuts.

Three cuts.

14 cuts.

Chao Xiaoshu kneeled before Xiao Kuyu’s frail, thin body. His left hand had a death grip on Xiao Kuyu’s right shoulder, his right hand tight around his razor-sharp dagger, stabbing again and again. His face was without a trace of expression as blood spattered his robe, leaving behind inexplicable flowery stains of red.

Only when there was nothing left of the old man’s neck but a thin layer of flesh, when even Haotian master could not resurrect himself, did Chao Xiaoshu still his dagger’s thrusts and slowly stand in the cramped cabin.

…

…

The carriage in the alley had not moved and had stayed silent in the majestic spring rains. From the initial massacre to the tragic battle in the Chao Mansion, or in this thrilling hail of arrows and dagger to cut down a Psyche Master in the alley, the plump young man in the other carriage had stayed motionless through it all, just quietly watching his own lotus-like outstretched fingers.

In the world of cultivators, there were several given rules held to be inviolable. For example, a Psyche Master of one realm could wipe out any Sword Master or Talisman Master of the same realm, as at the entrance of the Northern Mountain Road the elderly master Lv Qingchen steadily eliminated the disciples of the academy. However, the results of this evening’s battle had been rather unexpected.

“Both are superior grade warriors at the Seethrough State, yet a Great Sword Master somehow managed to kill a great Psyche Master. It’s all very puzzling, but yet this Chao Xiaoshu is really quite impressive. In a battle between cultivators, it was he that managed to spill all that magnificent blood.”

He may have been young, but he was already a Minister of Offerings in the prince’s court. In his heart he silently admired and envied the strength and vigor of Chao Xiaoshu, but yet his eyes were impassive. He had at first been unwilling to get involved, but he believed that the moment he did, it would not matter how strong Chao Xiaoshu or his unseen companion were—they would both be dead at his hand.

Because he was… the Heavenly Chosen, the Invincible Wang Jinglue.

“Let’s go. Let me write the final chapter in this legend of a dark night in Chang’an.”

Wang Jinglue spoke with the slightest smile as he gently rubbed his smooth and tender fingers together. His words were full of the firmest confidence, with a hint of excitement. He always got quite excited just before killing a true warrior.

The carriage did not move, and no one answered his orders. Wang Jinglue gave a slight frown, leaving fine and rarely-seen wrinkles on his wide forehead. He narrowed his eyes. He felt out the fluctuations in the Primordial Qi surrounding the car, but felt nothing out of the ordinary, and yet he did not notice that someone in the alley was watching.

Inside and outside the carriage was dead silence. Only the rushing rain stirred the darkness. This young man, who called himself an Invincible Young Warrior compared with those below Heavenly Chosen of the Realm, was suddenly shot through with a strong sense of approbation, and yet felt that this fear was without cause. He sat quietly in the carriage, remaining silently for a long time and listening to the rain outside the car. Then he suddenly stuck his hand out to open the heavy curtain at the front of the cabin.

The corner of the curtain raised just a hair, and this corner suddenly flapped open and drifted five feet outside before fluttering to the ground.

Wang Jinglue squinted through the rain at this drenched, distant scrap of cloth. Making a delicate movement with his right hand, the curtain once again swung out, and another piece was cleanly severed into the street, reducing the curtain to another wet rag in the street.

There seemed to be an invisible blade just outside the carriage.

He had felt none of the fluctuations in psyche power that would have accompanied a cultivator. Only in the brief instants that the cloth had been cut had there been the slightest changes in the Primordial Qi between the heaven and earth. If he had not been one of the greatest young warriors in the great Tang Empire, even that slight vibration of Qi of Heaven and Earth would have been impossible to detect.

Thinking of one possibility, Wang Jinglue’s face began to pale slightly.

After a moment, his pride was finally defeated by his fear of the unknown. Giving an unhappy grunt, he stretched out his 10 fat fingers like 10 overnourished white lilies. Powerful vibration instantly shot through the carriage and into the surroundings, blasting open the doors and remaining curtains. This was followed by a clear silence that seemed to sweep from the carriage outward.

But in the next moment, he was extremely embarrassed to find that his body had been frozen, as if he had become a stone in the rain.

The entire alley had become another world. He tried a gesture that would free himself, but this caused great turmoil in the Qi of Heaven and Earth. The rain puddles on the blue flagstones began to tremble violently, jumping into the air and falling back down erratically, like the mad dance the people of Great River Kingdom performed at their annual Spring Festival sacrifice.

The air above the alley had become the magical workshop of Master Haotian. All of the raindrops that had fallen that evening had become an unstoppable hail of razor-sharp knives!

Countless raindrops had become countless tiny knives. As they fell from the night sky into the carriage into the alley, they cut the wooden board of the cabin, breaking it to pieces. They fell on the driver’s seat and turned it to sawdust. They fell on the two yoked horses, and before they could even make a whinny of protest, the two beasts were turned to ground meat!

Ten thousand spring raindrops fell into the alley, and everything surrounding the carriage began to be crushed and disintegrated. The strangest thing of all was that the rain that was falling into the carriage seemed to be a gentle spring rain truly. As it struck Wang Jinglue’s pale cheek, it left a warm dampness rather than traces of blood.

Wang Jinglue sat in the rain looking extremely pathetic, surrounded by the pitiful and shredded remains of his carriage, while his clothes had long since soaked through. A few damp hairs stuck to his forehead, too weak to stand. He stared rather distraughtly at the raindrops falling from the night sky. His body began to tremble uncontrollably, and he did not know if it was from cold or from panic.

He stared with some difficulty into the four alleys surrounding him in the desolate night. He stared at the dancing raindrops in the alleys, and saw that the four alleys combined with the rainwater to faintly form a “井”, the character for a water well. His pale lips trembling slightly, he began to mutter quietly to himself.

“A Well Talisman?”

Rainwater was dripping down from his sopping hair, Wang Jinglue desperately shook his head, furiously searching for any trace of an enemy in the evening storm. All of his usual pride and confidence had long turned to desperation and fear. He suddenly began to cough violently, bent over at the waist, and began to lash out with his bare hands at the raindrops around him, crying like a bullied child.

“Impossible! How could a Divine Talisman Master such as this exist!”

“Who drew this Talisman?”