The night was dark, and fierce winds howled as thick clouds veiled the moon.
Deep within Blackwind Stronghold lay the core storehouse district.
Its defenses were at least ten times tighter than those around the outer perimeter they had infiltrated before.
On the towering stronghold walls, guards stood five paces apart, with sentries posted every ten.
Countless blazing torches illuminated the entire area as brightly as day. Even a mosquito flying past would have been spotted immediately.
This was where General Lin Zhenxiong kept his true trump card.
For the rebellion he was planning during the Mid-Autumn banquet, he had nearly emptied years of accumulated wealth.
His most elite heavy ballistae, high-grade refined steel, and the purest black powder were all secretly stockpiled here.
As long as they took this place, General Lin Zhenxiong’s grand rebellion would have its throat crushed before it even began.
In a concealed thicket outside the stronghold walls, Su Yaoyao crouched low like a black cat lying in wait beneath the night sky.
She poked half her little head out and carefully observed the patrol patterns through the gaps in the blades of grass.
[Three patrol teams. The gap during their overlapping shift changes is only five seconds.]
Su Yaoyao silently calculated the route they would use to infiltrate the stronghold.
She turned around and looked at Su Jin, who was crouching behind her with a black burlap sack over his head.
Though the sack was thick, the Barbie-pink glow radiating from Su Jin stubbornly seeped through its holes, giving off a strange, hazy light.
He looked like a shoddy lantern leaking light in the middle of the night.
“Big Brother, when they change shifts, follow my footsteps,” Su Yaoyao whispered, her tone extremely serious as she cautioned him. “And don’t try to show off. Looking like this, the moment you expose yourself, the two of us will be turned into sieves.”
Those words made Su Jin’s face, hidden beneath the sack, turn completely black.
What did she mean, don’t try to show off?
He was the Crown Prince of Dayuan, the Eastern Palace’s God of Death, the Living Yama himself!
It was true that tonight he had been forced to wear this tattered burlap sack that reeked of moldy sweet potatoes, and that his entire body was glowing an accursed pink.
But the pride of a supreme assassin ran in his bones. He would not allow himself to be looked down upon by an eight-year-old girl!
“Shut up.”
Su Jin’s voice came muffled through the sack, cold and aloof despite the gritted teeth behind it.
“Stealth and assassination are my domain. I’m the ancestor of this art.”
“A mere wall and a few soldiers are hardly worth making such a fuss over.”
Su Jin drew a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the chaotic qi surging through his body.
He would prove it with his actions!
Even with a burlap sack over his head, even while glowing from head to toe, he was still the peerless God of Death, standing above all others!
Just as the two patrol teams passed each other on the wall, creating a brief blind spot—
“Watch this.”
Su Jin shouted in a low voice and suddenly thrust off with both legs.
He unleashed the finest lightness skill in Dayuan—Snow-Treading Without a Trace.
His body shot silently into the air like an arrow loosed from a bow.
His form was light and graceful, his movements smooth and dashing, like a night owl spreading its wings beneath the darkness as he flew straight toward the three-zhang-high wall.
Under normal circumstances, this move would have been a flawless infiltration straight out of an assassin’s handbook.
Silent and soundless—not even a leaf would stir.
Unfortunately, Su Jin had overlooked one fatal detail.
He was a glowing object now.
Thus, when he used his peerless lightness skill and streaked through the open air with nothing to conceal him, the pink glow previously hidden by the thicket and burlap sack was exposed.
It carved a dazzling pink trail across the night sky!
Like a pink shooting star!
The guards on the wall had been yawning a moment earlier.
Suddenly, their vision blurred, and the entire night sky seemed to be dyed a fantastical Barbie pink.
“What the hell is that?!”
One guard rubbed his eyes and pointed at the unidentified flying object in the sky—a man with a burlap sack over his head and pink light radiating from his body. His jaw nearly hit the ground.
“A pink sky lantern? Or did a wild boar from the mountains gain human form?”
Another guard was equally dumbfounded. It never occurred to him that this could be an assassin.
After all, what assassin would fly through the sky glowing so brightly, as if terrified no one would notice him?
It was unbelievably brazen!
Midair, Su Jin heard the guards shouting below. His face, hidden beneath the sack, flushed so red it felt as though blood might drip from it.
He wished he could find a crack in the ground and crawl into it immediately!
In his eagerness to recover his dignity, he had put a little too much force into that leap.
With a soft slap, Su Jin landed steadily in an open space in front of the storehouse, still maintaining the perfect crouching stance of an assassin.
But the moment his feet touched the ground, the pink glow around him not only failed to fade—it became even more dazzling as his qi circulated!
Within a radius of ten zhang, he alone illuminated everything.
At this point, if the guards pretended not to see him, they truly would have to be blind.
“Enemy attack! There’s an assassin!”
“Sound the alarm! A glowing burlap-sack monster has broken in!”
Their shrill cries tore through the night at Blackwind Stronghold.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The piercing alarm bells rang wildly, like notes from a song of doom, echoing throughout the valley.
Hidden in the grass, Su Yaoyao slapped a hand against her forehead in agony.
[I knew it! I knew Unlucky Brother couldn’t be relied on!]
[I told you to sneak in, and you went and turned yourself into a flare! Is this what you call stealth? This is a full-blown pink-red-carpet entrance!]
Su Yaoyao was about to lose her mind. Her useless teammate had taken the difficulty from easy mode straight to hell mode.
Su Jin, standing in front of the storehouse, panicked as well.
He had never expected his proudest lightness skill to turn into a public humiliation act because of that damned glow.
“Damn it!”
Su Jin cursed under his breath and drew the dagger from his waist, preparing to carve a bloody path out before the guards could arrive in force.
But he had forgotten one crucial detail.
That burlap sack with two eyeholes was still over his head!
When a person was under extreme stress, their movements inevitably became larger.
Su Jin abruptly turned around, and the sack shifted from the momentum.
The two holes that had originally allowed him to see slid around to the sides of his ears.
His vision plunged into absolute darkness!
“Damn!”
Su Jin’s heart lurched. He could no longer see a thing.
For a supreme assassin, losing his vision was a fatal battlefield taboo.
He tried to take a step backward so he could readjust the sack.
That single step—
Click.
A faint, bone-chilling sound of a mechanism activating rang out clearly beneath Su Jin’s foot.
Su Yaoyao had just climbed over the stronghold wall. When she heard the sound, her heart clenched.
[It’s over! That unlucky idiot stepped on a chain trap!]
The next moment—
The entire open space in front of the storehouse came alive.
Click-click-click-click-click.
The sound of gears turning rose from the walls and the ground all around them.
The stone slabs beneath their feet suddenly sank, revealing a dense array of razor-sharp steel spikes.
Dozens of concealed ballista ports opened simultaneously in the surrounding walls.
Under the moonlight, countless heavy bolts gleamed with a ghostly blue poison. They were already drawn taut, their arrowheads aimed at the sack-covered figure glowing pink in the center of the clearing!
The infiltration was officially over!
At the instant life and death hung in the balance—
Boom!
The enormously heavy iron-plated door of the core storehouse was pushed open from within.
An icy, murderous aura—ten times colder than the winter wind—surged out of the storehouse like a raging tide.
Inside the gates, there was no mountain of refined iron or gunpowder.
Instead, dozens of top-tier assassins stood in neat rows, clad in blood-red combat gear and wearing Asura masks!
They were the final trump card General Lin Zhenxiong had secretly raised at enormous expense.
The Blood Drip Squad No. 2!
They were even more ruthless and deranged than the peripheral members outside whom Su Yaoyao had won over with generous benefits and full social security. They were also far less capable of human feeling.
These were true death soldiers, obeying only the command to kill.
Dozens of steel blades, coated with deadly poison that could kill with a single touch of blood, were drawn in the darkness, producing a chilling rasp.
Killing intent closed in around Su Yaoyao and Su Jin, sealing off every possible escape route.
The leader of the assassins stepped out from the crowd.
He held a burning torch aloft, its dancing flames illuminating the hideous Asura mask covering his face.
He looked at the strange figure in the center of the clearing, whose head was covered by a sack and whose entire body radiated a pink glow. Then he glanced at the little girl beside him.
A hoarse, cruel laugh rumbled from his throat.
“Heaven had a path, yet you refused to take it. Hell had no door, yet you barged right in.”
The leader raised the torch high, then swung it down sharply. His voice was a death knell from the deepest depths of hell.
“Chop them into pieces! Leave no one alive!”
