A gust of wind stirred in the narrow alley.
In Lu Qian’s mind, the spiritual light of his soul flickered and floated about.
Wisps of light rippled like water waves, sketching and shading an endless, illusory scene.
Suddenly, the image of the Three-eyed Divine Man scroll blazed brightly, appearing vividly in his mind.
In the Divine Man’s hand, a divine dragon formed from the wind twisted and thrashed violently, opening its mouth in a silent roar.
The void trembled wildly.
Near the dragon’s head, the empty space twisted into a massive vortex.
Countless wind shadows of various shapes and colors danced and tangled within the whirlpool, as if ready to tear a huge hole open in the heavens and earth.
The cold wind howled through the alley.
Amidst the gale, transparent gusts of wind with only the faintest, slightest hint of pale blue silently swept by.
Xiong Dingtian and the others had yet to recover from the shock of their senior brother being slain in a single strike by Lu Qian.
Yet from the necks of those burly men—each standing eight or nine feet tall—thin streams of blood sprayed out.
They had all been evenly sliced by the wind blades.
Lu Qian tossed down a heavy sack of rough cloth and then, his towering figure rising with the wind, he took flight.
Under Xiong Dingtian’s horrified gaze, a hazy whirlwind coiled around Lu Qian.
His movements were as swift and ghost-like as a phantom, and in an instant, he darted back and forth through the alley.
Two nights ago, when Xiong Dingtian had fought Lu Qian, he’d already experienced Lu Qian’s frustratingly swift footwork.
But that night, he’d only felt helpless.
Now, Lu Qian’s speed plunged Xiong Dingtian into despair.
So fast, it was maddeningly fast.
Even when Xiong Dingtian turned his head or blinked, he couldn’t keep up.
Compared to that night, Lu Qian’s speed had more than tripled!
The Jingtao Hand on Lu Qian’s palm flickered with a faint, eerie blue light.
For each of the hefty men who had just been struck in the neck, Lu Qian now dealt a heavy palm strike to their heads.
The powerful attack, capable of piercing heavy armor, shattered the skulls of those men, masking the fact that they had been slain by the wind blades.
Pools of blood splattered the ground, covering the thin blood trails that had seeped from their sliced necks and erasing all traces of Lu Qian’s earlier moves.
The spiritual light in Lu Qian’s mind dimmed.
Feeling a bit dizzy, Lu Qian took a deep breath.
His steps faltered slightly as he landed in front of Xiong Dingtian.
In his sixteen years of life, having possessed the visualization scroll for six years, and practicing cultivation until now, this was the first time Lu Qian truly used the power brought by the visualization scroll to slay enemies.
The spirit energy consumption was heavy.
But it was well worth it.
The very first man to strike was emitting an aura more powerful than Bai Lang’s.
This guy must have cultivation beyond the Jingjing Realm, and his skillset was strangely powerful and fierce.
With just martial cultivation, Lu Qian definitely wasn’t his match.
Yet, by harnessing the spirit energy drawn from the visualization scroll, commanding the flowing winds, condensing the wind into blades—using the speed and sharpness of the wind blades—Lu Qian wiped out these imposing enemies in a single strike.
But this was the limit.
If Xiong Dingtian had brought a few more men, Lu Qian’s spirit energy might not have lasted.
He’d have no choice but to flee with Ah Hu.
Glancing back at the burly figure of Ah Hu sprawled by the wall, muttering curses as he got back up, Lu Qian’s face turned a little grim.
With such a big guy tagging along, Lu Qian wasn’t sure if he could still run!
Cold sweat streamed down Xiong Dingtian’s forehead.
His eyes bulged out, staring fixedly at Lu Qian.
“You, you, you…” Xiong Dingtian croaked, “Impossible! How could you… be… so… so…”
Xiong Dingtian couldn’t understand.
Two nights ago, in an alley in Sijiang District, Lu Qian had been so pressed by him that he could only flee by relying on his swift footwork.
How could Lu Qian have such a profound strength now?
From several paces away, killing enemies through the void with unpredictable means?
Releasing Yuan Gang (Primal Energy) to break the void and slay enemies is a technique only martial cultivators at the Jingjing Realm can perform.
Lu Qian was only at the Tuomai Stage.
From Lu Qian’s aura, Xiong Dingtian could sense his true strength.
And even if Lu Qian was truly at the Jingjing Realm—three of Xiong Dingtian’s senior brothers had reached Jingjing Realm, while the others were fully perfected at Tuomai Stage.
Especially the first hefty man, his martial cultivation was on par with perfect Jingjing Realm, his body forged by secret arts and pills into something like diamond-hard steel.
An ordinary Jingjing Realm warrior couldn’t have harmed Xiong Dingtian’s senior brother at all!
Just like an ordinary Tuomai Stage warrior, like Lu Qian that night—using a spear to stab repeatedly—couldn’t even scratch Xiong Dingtian’s so-called “oil skin”.
That’s how things should have been!
“You!” Xiong Dingtian snarled at Lu Qian, “You can’t kill me! My uncle he…”
Lu Qian raised his right hand and with a ‘smack’, shattered half of Xiong Dingtian’s torso into pieces.
The power of the Jingtao Hand was fierce and unyielding, its latent force extremely strong.
The power penetrated Xiong Dingtian’s body into his wheelchair, and the two wooden wheels were driven by the force, digging into the stone street three inches deep with a crack.
“I didn’t kill you the night before because I was slacking off…”
“Today, I kill you because you came looking for death…”
“Especially, the night before, I didn’t kill you because I was a bit shy, I admit I was a little afraid. Killing you would bring a lot of trouble. Back then, my small body couldn’t handle such big trouble.”
“But today? It’s different!”
Lu Qian flicked his fingers at the blood-red Great Guarding Gecko tattoo on his chest, grinning.
Today was different.
Lu Qian had already grabbed onto one of the greatest powerhouses in the Daxin Martial Court.
He was now practically a close courtier of the Emperor in the Imperial Heart, backed by the eunuch faction—a force notorious if not respected.
Killing a mere Xiong Dingtian…
Lu Qian no longer feared it!
Turning around, he picked up the heavy rough cloth sack he’d dropped earlier and gave it a gentle shake.
Inside came the crisp sound of metal clinking.
Ah Hu had already approached the bodies of the slain bulky men and was deftly rummaging through their waist pouches.
He pulled out an old cloth bag from somewhere.
Surprisingly, these men’s pouches contained quite a lot of valuables—small gold bars, tiny silver ingots, strings of copper coins.
With a big grin, Ah Hu stuffed them all into the cloth sack.
“Brother Qian, these guys sure had tough hands—real hustlers—and good profits too.”
“Over twenty taels of gold, thirty-plus taels of silver, over two thousand copper coins… heh!”
Lu Qian frowned, walked to the first slain man, rifled through his belt pouch, then stood up disappointed, shaking his head.
“No honor among thieves. How come you weren’t carrying a single tome of your martial arts manual?”
Looking at Ah Hu who was still grinning widely, Lu Qian muttered, “Ah Hu’s a bit slow. He can’t learn Canghai Strength techniques—not that I’m stingy or afraid of breaking clan rules, he just can’t learn them!”
“These toughened, hard-hitting training methods suit him best.”
“But the toughening methods I could find are too low class. After years of training, he still gets knocked out with a single punch. This won’t do. I have to come up with a plan.”
Lu Qian instinctively looked northeast.
That was the direction of the Imperial City.
The Secret History Bureau in the Palace supposedly collected myriad ancient secret texts and archives.
Surely there were some top-notch hardening techniques in there?
How could he please the Emperor to issue an edict allowing him to explore the Secret History Bureau and pick out some useful treasures?
“Hmm… would burning down the Bai family estate count as a great merit?”
“Maybe I should torch it again tonight, burn down their front courtyard too?”
“Or better yet, do something more proactive and gain some real merit…”
A faint sound of footsteps drifted from the north side of the alley.
A group of men wearing gray, dusty short shirts, with faces as pale and ashen as the dead, walked slowly toward them.
Ah Hu, who was searching the bodies, suddenly became alert and pounced next to Lu Qian.
“Brother Qian, these guys don’t seem right. Their bodies are dead lifeless, like corpses… tsk, and they smell so strongly of earth and blood—have they been living underground for ages?”
As a wild man from far northern Daizhou, Ah Hu possessed natural beast-like instincts, with senses sharper than ordinary people.
He kept twitching his nose, eyeing the dozen or so strange men with a hostile glare.
Suddenly!
Just as the men took a few more steps down the alley from the north, a faint noise came from the top of the courtyard wall on Lu Qian’s left.
He quickly looked up, his gaze catching two ridiculously long legs.
A girl with long, loose hair, towering over eight feet tall with a stunningly slender figure and breathtaking beauty, sat atop the wall.
Despite the freezing winter, she wore only a flowing pink gauze dress, bare feet visible.
She bent her head, observing the alley below.
“Ah, looks like there really are dead.”
“Heh, handsome guy, are these people here to cause trouble for you?”
“Heehee, you better be careful now. You’re quite good-looking. It would be such a pity if they killed you.”
The girl’s smile bloomed like flowers, her expression lively and radiant as she tossed Lu Qian a barrage of coquettish glances.
Lu Qian regarded her soberly.
Is this girl from the Bai family?
The Bai household really hid a tall, big girl like this?
That courtyard wall was four or five zhang high.
How could an ordinary person climb it so effortlessly?
Besides, the faint noise just now—if not for Lu Qian’s keen ears, he might not have noticed she had already climbed onto the wall above him.
But right now, she wasn’t the problem.
They were.
Lu Qian handed the rough sack to Ah Hu and looked grimly at those dozen ashen-faced men.
“What are you doing here?”
Lu Qian wiped the guard gecko tattoo on his chest and used an official tone.
“This is Youlouzi Street. Two spots affiliated with our Sect have gone bad in your hands.”
“Although passing on to the Ghost Mother is the utmost honor, our lifetime pursuits are simple… People die, no matter. But you ruined two businesses we ran for many years, cut off a source of our income—you must die.”
Lu Qian’s eyes glinted coldly as he looked at the gray men and sneered.
“So, you’re from the Ghost Mother Sect? You came looking for me, and that response was pretty quick. You’re over two hundred li away from Youlouzi Street.”
The men sneered in unison.
They each raised a razor-sharp pickaxe and roared as they charged at Lu Qian and Ah Hu.
Crunch, crunch!
On the wall, the girl smiled sweetly, cracking sunflower seeds.
The discarded shells fluttered down like snowflakes.
“Handsome guy, be careful! These tomb-robbing Ghost Mother Sect members have pickaxes poisoned with corpse venom. One wrong move and you’ll be in deep trouble.”
(End of Chapter)