"Seeking death!" Zhu Xiaoyao roared in fury.
Her billowing robes swelled in the wind, yet her movements remained light as a feather.
This sudden ambush had caught her completely off guard—especially since the ruthless attackers, who had just turned a galloping horse into a mist of poisonous blood, were technically under her command in the Mighty Heaven Alliance.
It felt like a slap to her face.
But there was no time to dwell on it now. Ren Guishen, responsible for overseeing the defensive patrols along the route, had somehow allowed so many enemies to slip through.
The priority was to eliminate these troublemakers first!
Zhu Xiaoyao moved with effortless grace, her strikes mirroring her agility.
Compared to the heavy-handed blows that had felled the horse earlier, her current technique was the polar opposite—soft yet deadly.
Yet when her palm shot forward, the assailant could only dodge, not daring to block.
From a distance, Wang Xiaoshi, who had retreated with Bai Choufei, silently cheered.
"To channel the power of the Gentle Palm from the wrist—no wonder she holds the position of Second Saintess in the Mighty Heaven Alliance."
In the next moment, a deceptively soft palm strike landed on the back of one attacker, followed by the sickening crunch of shattered bones.
The victim collapsed like a sack of meat without so much as a whimper.
Zhu Xiaoyao flicked her wrist, her fingers already aimed at the second foe.
The wind howled as an invisible force from her Gentle Palm split the air, striking the black-clad man square in the face before her hands even reached him.
But these were no helpless prey—especially not when they had such grand ambitions for this mission!
The leader of the black-clad men twisted his blade, its edge singing like a dragon. His swordsmanship was extraordinary from the first move.
Yet his sweeping slash, cutting through the wind, failed to land on Zhu Xiaoyao.
Like a willow branch bending in a storm, she swayed but did not break—instead, she used the momentum to pivot sharply.
A third palm strike slipped through the gaps in the blade's arc, aimed straight at the vital point of another attacker.
Another direct hit!
But Zhu Xiaoyao's expression showed no triumph.
"What are you standing around for?!"
She glanced back mid-motion and saw a fresh wave of ambushers leaping from the buildings lining the street.
The first wave had split the procession in two, and now reinforcements were charging in.
Deng Cangsheng, who should have been fighting alongside her, had reacted a beat too slow.
Before she could finish her reprimand, chaos erupted again.
The celebratory music cut off abruptly, replaced by the clash of Mighty Heaven Alliance members and black-clad assassins. Amid the confusion, one sound stood out—a sudden, sharp screech of steel.
Then, a cold blade light met Deng Cangsheng's palm strike.
Zhu Xiaoyao's eyes narrowed.
Among the attackers was another skilled swordsman—and he had chosen Deng Cangsheng as his target!
No wonder the Third Saint Lord had been slow to react.
Preemptive strikes couldn't stop that ghostly blade; only a steady counter like Deng Cangsheng's had a chance.
His "Cangsheng Thorn" technique, channeled through bare hands, unleashed its full lethal force without restraint.
Yet even so, it only managed to hold the enemy at bay.
Meanwhile, the swordsman whose subordinates Zhu Xiaoyao had just killed redirected his blade into a relentless storm, denying her any chance to intervene elsewhere.
......
"Any idea who these two are?" Wang Xiaoshi kicked up a wooden board to block a stray blade, giving a fleeing bystander a chance to escape.
Bai Choufei's cold gaze swept over the battlefield, his fingers twitching slightly. "You already know the answer."
Men of their experience recognized the fighting styles of those two swordsmen.
The real question was—why strike against the Mighty Heaven Alliance now?
Clearly, far more people in the capital wanted Guan Qi to remain insane than they'd anticipated.
Wang Xiaoshi stayed silent but reached behind his back.
Beneath his physician's satchel lay a cloth-wrapped blade.
If this chaos was the opportunity they'd been waiting for—and if Bai Choufei agreed—then it was time to act.
But before he could move, Bai Choufei uttered a single, decisive word: "Wait."
For now, they would remain spectators.
Intervening now would expose them to every faction in the capital.
Aiding the Mighty Heaven Alliance might not even secure their goals.
Besides, not all players had entered the field yet—recklessness would be foolish.
Most importantly, they needed to verify a recent rumor:
Had Guan Qi, the Saint Lord of the Mighty Heaven Alliance, truly regained his sanity—and his former power—thanks to his new bride?
Bai Choufei's sharp eyes caught the volley of arrows and darts aimed at Guan Qi even as the two swordsmen kept Zhu Xiaoyao and Deng Cangsheng occupied.
......
Amid the glint of deadly projectiles, Guan Qi's gaze remained disturbingly vacant—further proof of his fractured mind.
He also seemed oblivious to another signal:
The sudden news of a fire at Three Harmonies Tower meant the First Saint Lord, stationed there, couldn't reinforce them as planned.
Then—he moved.
A third swordsman, hidden in the crowd and about to draw his blade, never saw what happened.
One moment, he felt an icy chill in his chest.
The next, the screams around him faded into silence.
He watched, detached, as his own body exploded with impossible speed—followed by the black-clad figures around him collapsing like puppets with cut strings.
An invisible storm of energy—both blade and shield—raged outward.
At its center, only one man remained standing:
Guan Qi.
Not a single drop of blood marred his wedding robes. A faint smear of red on his cheek was the only trace of violence, swiftly wiped away.
Guan Qi spoke slowly, teeth clenched as he surveyed the frozen scene:
"I am here to wed my beloved. Why do you seek to tear us apart?"
To him, these attackers had no names, no allegiances.
They were simply enemies.
After so long apart from his wife, he would tolerate no obstacles—not even the most powerful figures in Bianjing.
Since they courted death, death they would receive.
Yet in the eerie silence following his massacre, someone dared to answer:
"Because you should have left the martial world long ago!"
"Who speaks?"
The reply came not in words, but in a blinding flash of sword light.
The longsword, its blade wreathed in swirling energy, descended through the air and landed in the grasp of a pale-faced young man in flowing robes.
Even after witnessing the pile of mangled flesh beneath Guan Qi’s feet, the momentum of his sword did not wane—instead, it surged relentlessly, climbing to new heights.
Even Guan Qi could not ignore the chilling aura emanating from the bundle behind the young man’s deathly expression—a true weapon of slaughter.
Thus, he needed no answer.
All he needed to know was that this newcomer was indeed a master of the martial world.
But so what?
The robed youth’s eyes widened in shock as Guan Qi raised his hand and countered with a technique identical to his own—the very "Momentum Sword" he had spent years mastering. Yet Guan Qi’s execution surpassed his own, both in force and intent.
He could not withstand this strike.
In that split second, he had no time to think. Instinctively, he hurled the mechanical box in his hand, realizing too late that his earlier boasts to the Prime Minister and Chief Thunder Hall Master had been premature.
Fortunately, he had come prepared.
A thousand streaks of silver light erupted from the exploding mechanism, momentarily eclipsing the brilliance of the two Momentum Swords as they shot toward Guan Qi’s face.
Wang Xiaoshi barely had time to wonder why the young man’s moves seemed so familiar before the unavoidable barrage of hidden weapons filled his vision.
Amid the silver storm, only a few cold glints held true lethality.
But when projectiles moved this fast, quantity hardly mattered.
Guan Qi was their target.
Yet with a single step, he appeared before the robed youth, as if effortlessly leaving the silver light behind.
The unfinished Momentum Sword not only shattered the youth’s initial strike but also drove straight for his forehead.
The young man’s face turned ashen in that instant.
Without hesitation, he flung the bundle from his back.
In a flash, a radiance far more dazzling than the Momentum Sword or the strange hidden weapons erupted from within, sweeping outward.
Even a martial artist as formidable as Guan Qi could not help but pause for a split second, interrupting what should have been a fatal blow.
That brief hesitation was all the robed youth needed.
Among his entourage of black-clad followers were many willing to die for him, and they seized the opening to carve an escape route.
Yet before he could vault onto the rooftops, Guan Qi had already brushed aside the futile obstacles and closed in once more.
"You—court death!"
A master like him was no longer bound by conventional weapons or techniques.
Let alone mimicking an opponent’s moves to strike their vitals.
This newcomer might have been a prodigy among the younger generation, but in Guan Qi’s presence, he was far from a threat.
But just as Guan Qi’s palm descended like a blade, the pale-faced youth looked up—and revealed a knowing, triumphant smile.
No!
Guan Qi did not know how to think, but bound by obsession and the system, he understood one thing above all: his wife’s life came first.
If the enemy could not kill him, there was only one way to halt this wedding—by killing the other bride.
He whirled around, eyes bloodshot, and saw a sight that struck him like a hammer blow.
Zhu Xiaoyao and the others were still entangled with the assailants.
He himself had been delayed by the trickster youth.
Thus, the defenses around the bridal sedan had thinned.
The guards stationed there would never suspect an elderly woman, especially one who seemed to have been knocked down by the panicking crowd, now crawling toward the sedan for shelter.
Yet this harmless-looking crone suddenly sprang into action, hurling a handful of golden and silver beads.
Aimed at the guards—and the sedan itself!
The beads scattered like shattered pearls in a storm.
And inside the sedan sat his wife, who knew no martial arts.
"Damn it!"
Among the onlookers, Bai Choufei and Wang Xiaoshi still had the strength to act, but their attention had been stolen by the robed youth’s hidden weapons.
By the time they noticed the disturbance, it was too late.
They could only watch as the beads—capable of piercing walls and shattering bones—flew straight into the sedan.
Without skin of iron or bones of steel, the person inside would have their organs torn apart in an instant!
Guan Qi abandoned all thought of killing the robed youth and raced back.
But no human lightness technique could outpace projectiles fired at point-blank range.
The old woman even lunged into the sedan after the beads, as if to ensure her kill or deliver a finishing blow.
A scream erupted from within.
Yet the moment the sound reached their ears, the crowd realized—this was not the cry of a young woman.
With a thud, before anyone could react, the old woman who had charged in to kill was flung back out—faster than she had entered.
No, not flung.
She crashed through several people like a hurled stone before slamming into the ground.
Or more accurately, she was pinned to the ground, unable to rise.
No one knew what had happened inside the sedan. They could only see—
In that fleeting moment, two arrows, one black and one white, now protruded from her shoulders.
The agony of their piercing strike left her vision blurred as she weakly gazed at the arrow shafts. One was engraved with the character "Love," the other with "Man."
Meanwhile, the scene inside replayed in her mind with terrifying clarity.
The sedan did not hold a bride. Instead, seated within was a slender, elegant man.
He sat there like a lone plum blossom, proud and unyielding, blooming in the cramped space—yet unmistakably a poisonous plum.
Love.
Man.
The Love-Man Arrows!
The fallen crone finally gasped out two words: "Wuqing…"
Wuqing, Chief Constable of the Six Gates.
In the capital, under the Emperor’s gaze, no faction upheld order more fiercely than the Six Gates.
Among its Four Great Constables, all trained by the Zhuge Divine Marquis, the eldest was Wuqing.
He should have had no ties to the Mystic Sky Alliance, no reason to be here—yet he had come, taking the bride’s place.
Rumors spoke of a modified sedan Wuqing used to accommodate his crippled legs. This must be it, now draped in bridal red.
Who could have guessed that the greatest wild card today would not be the assassination attempt, but this?
Even the robed youth, who had narrowly escaped Guan Qi’s grasp, paled and demanded sharply, "Chief Constable Wuqing, this matter does not concern you. Why interfere?"
Today’s operation was a joint effort by the Chief Thunder Hall Master, the Prime Minister, and Young Marquis Fang—meant to prevent Guan Qi from regaining his sanity and destabilizing the capital. Either Guan Qi died, or his mysterious bride did. What business did the Six Gates have here?
Even without seeing inside the sedan chair, he knew that with Wuqing’s appearance, today’s affairs would not end peacefully.
Damn it! Who was the one who called him here?
Why had he come?
Inside the sedan chair, hidden from view, the figure tugged at the corner of their lips. It was hard to describe the tangled emotions they had felt when first receiving this request.
As the representative of the Six Gates, they would never show their unease to outsiders.
A cold, clear voice rang out from the sedan.
“I am a constable. You are killing and causing chaos, disrupting the peace of Bianjing. Of course it concerns me.”
The words, firm and resolute, cut sharply through the now-silent scene.
The robed young man clenched his fingers.
What a perfect excuse.
Had they not all been seasoned figures in Bianjing’s underworld, they might have suspected the Six Gates had introduced some new regulation about maintaining wedding procession order.
But since it was Wuqing who had spoken, they had no choice but to treat it as an unbreakable law.
“We—”
Let’s go.
Just as the robed young man was about to call for retreat, the sedan chair carrying Chief Constable Wuqing suddenly lifted and swiftly moved back, blocking the path of some in the group.
Yet this was not Wuqing’s doing—the moment his words had fallen, Guan Qi had lunged forward, striking the sedan with the same palm force he had held back earlier.
Wuqing retreated swiftly, but the sheer force of the blow shattered the sedan’s curtain, revealing the face within—now devoid of its earlier emptiness.
“You’re here—”
Guan Qi’s brows furrowed in anger as he demanded:
“Then where is my wife?”
Guan Qi cared nothing for officials or outlaws. All he wanted to know was—where had Shi Qingruo gone?
Wuqing: “…”
That… was an even harder question to answer.
---
Not far away, on the second floor of a tavern, two figures sat facing each other.
Behind the woman in bridal robes stood an aloof young man in black, holding a slender, unsheathed sword. His cold expression bore a trace of exasperation, faintly mirroring Wuqing’s own.
Opposite her sat a sickly man.
The man in apricot-colored robes bore the pallor of illness, yet what drew attention first was not the flush from his recent coughing fit, but his eyes—bright as cold flames.
“Meeting the Tower Master Su in person is no easy feat,” Shi Qingruo remarked, raising her teacup with a faint smile.
Just like Bai Choufei and Wang Xiaoshi—despite their formidable martial skills, even after all this time in the capital, they had never encountered the famed leader of the Golden Wind and Fine Rain Tower.
Such was the way of Bianjing’s martial world.
Su Mengzhen withdrew his attention from the commotion outside and replied coolly:
“Coming from someone who sent a thief to fetch a constable, had Chief Constable Wuqing take her place in the bridal sedan, and had Constable Lengxue escort her to this… safe location—those words sound even more unbelievable.”
