The black-clad figure on the roof slowly stood straight, looking down at Cao Zhengchun with cold, indifferent eyes.
“Eunuch Cao, someone paid for your life. Don’t hold a grudge against us on the road to the Yellow Springs.”
Cao Zhengchun’s smile widened slightly.
He had spent forty years in the palace; there was no scene he hadn't witnessed. Three assassins in the Abyss-Facing Realm were not enough to make him lose his composure.
He secretly circulated his internal energy, the aura of the Wind-Riding Realm slowly spreading out, causing the curtain of rain around him to warp slightly.
“Paid for my life? I have offended many people in these sixty years. For the three of you in the Abyss-Facing Realm to join forces to corner me, I imagine the price was quite—”
Before he could finish, his entire body jolted. He looked down abruptly at his chest.
A pitch-black blade tip had pierced through his left breast!
Cao Zhengchun’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.
He turned his head stiffly and saw his sedan bearer.
The thin, withered, and utterly unremarkable old bearer who had kept his head down the entire journey was now standing less than three chi behind him.
The bearer held a long, narrow black-bladed dagger, the entire blade buried deep into Cao Zhengchun’s back!
Only the hilt remained visible.
“Fourth, thank you for your hard work,” the figure on the roof said flatly.
The old bearer released the hilt and took three steps back.
His hunched back slowly straightened, and the humility and cowardice on his weathered face vanished in an instant. In their place were eyes as cold and indifferent as the man on the roof.
“To kill a Wind-Riding Realm Grandmaster, one must naturally be fully prepared. I have been following you since the day you left the capital. I was waiting for this exact moment.”
Cao Zhengchun looked down at the blade tip protruding from his chest, his expression shifting from disbelief to twisted, violent rage.
He had lived for over sixty years, defeated countless rivals in the palace, and survived numerous assassinations, only to fall at the hands of his own sedan bearer.
“A fine scheme... so you received the mission to kill me the moment I left the capital?
“Just who paid for my life?”
At those words, the black-clad figure on the roof slowly stood tall.
Rainwater flowed from the edge of his bamboo hat like a curtain, but the eyes revealed beneath remained cold, without a single ripple of emotion.
“The Ghost Gate Chamber accepts contracts based only on the price, not the employer. We do not know the employer’s identity. Even if we did, we could not say. That is the rule of assassins.”
Cao Zhengchun’s hand clutching his chest trembled slightly. Blood gushed from between his fingers, staining his dark purple python robe until it turned almost black.
His complexion paled at a visible rate, and the dark blue tint on his lips resurfaced, even deeper than it had been at the academy.
But he was not dead yet.
The vitality of a Wind-Riding Realm Grandmaster was far superior to that of an ordinary martial artist.
Though the blade had pierced his heart and lungs, it had failed to kill him on the spot.
He secretly gathered his remaining internal energy, attempting to seal the meridians around his heart while forcibly suppressing the cold, strange energy entrenched in his body.
A twisted grin suddenly spread across his face.
“You don’t know? You can’t say? Then I shall beat it out of you!”
Before his voice faded, a burst of violent, wild energy erupted from Cao Zhengchun’s body!
The rain within ten zhang was blasted upward by this force, exploding into a white mist in the night sky!
The muddy ground beneath his feet cracked inch by inch, with wisps of purple-black true qi surging from the fissures!
He did not hesitate to burn his own meridians, pushing his Wind-Riding Realm internal energy to its absolute limit.
He no longer cared.
This strike was the culmination of his life’s cultivation.
He would blast these three, along with that traitorous bearer, into dust!
The Crimson Lotus Whip in his hand let out a sharp hiss. The barbs on the whip stood on end, and the purple light flared brilliantly!
The whip’s shadow carved a massive arc through the air, tearing through the atmosphere and creating a piercing sonic boom wherever it passed!
The four assassins of the Ghost Gate Chamber all changed color simultaneously.
The black-clad man on the roof barked, “Form the formation!”
The three figures retreated at the same time, using strange footwork in the rain to open up distance.
The old bearer also flipped back several zhang, not daring to face this strike head-on.
But Cao Zhengchun’s whip was too fast.
The purple arc was about to overtake the four, pulling them into the whip’s shadow...
However, in that very instant, Cao Zhengchun’s entire body suddenly stiffened.
His movements froze mid-air as if his meridians were being gripped by an invisible hand.
The purple light on the Crimson Lotus Whip abruptly extinguished, and the whip itself went limp, hanging down uselessly.
His eyes bulged, and his expression of rage turned into one of horrific disbelief.
The cold, strange energy entrenched near his heart had suddenly exploded the moment he fully exerted his internal energy.
It didn’t seep in bit by bit; instead, like a long-dormant venomous snake, it struck with a vicious bite at the moment the prey was most vulnerable!
The cold but not wicked black qi surged through his meridians like wildfire. Everywhere it passed, his meridians froze inch by inch, shattering his half-gathered internal energy into fragments.
Cao Zhengchun let out a shrill, agonized scream as he plummeted from the air, crashing heavily into the muddy official road.
His body convulsed violently in the mud and water. Large amounts of black blood poured from his mouth, and his well-maintained face twisted into an inhuman mask.
“This... what is this...”
He sprawled on the ground, his fingers digging deep into the mud. Three of his fingernails were torn off, yet he felt no pain.
The condition inside his body was far more terrifying than any external wound.
His internal energy was out of control, his meridians were severed, and even breathing felt like swallowing knives.
“That brat... it was that brat...”
His voice was broken and staggered; his pupils began to lose focus.
He never could have imagined that the true killing move of Chen Zui’s spear was not the moment the tip pierced his shoulder.
Instead, it was that spear intent dormant within his body, silently eroding his meridians, waiting only for the moment he exerted his full power to strike.
What Cao Zhengchun did not know was that during the battle before the academy, Chen Zui had fused the two vastly different spear intents of the Thirteen Ghost Shadow Spears and the Wind and Snow Night Return Spear into his Second Rank Mountain-Viewing Realm internal energy.
Though this spear intent was thin, it was extremely difficult to extract because it was a harmony of Yin and Yang, neither purely one nor the other.
When Cao Zhengchun was circulating his energy in the sedan to suppress the poison, he thought he had brought it under control.
But he didn't realize that the spear intent had already become entangled with his own internal energy. The more he suppressed it, the deeper it sank into his meridians.
And when he finally burned his meridians to unleash his life's power, the spear intent was completely detonated at that very moment.
The old bearer stepped forward, looking down at Cao Zhengchun as he twitched in the mud.
There was no pity in those cold eyes, only a calm assessment.
“It seems that back at the academy, someone else did most of our work for us.”
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