At the hour of Xu, the sky was completely dark.
People of Changping County shut their doors and stayed inside.
Only the Jiefan Guards and the Secret Intelligence Bureau moved about with torches, horses’ hooves thudding across the packed-earth streets, the shouts of pursuit and the blast of copper whistles ringing out one after another.
The innkeeper at Fulai Inn ran the opposite way from the granary.
He seemed to know where the Lu family might hide, and wanted to buy them time.
He ran until he heard the whooshing sound behind him and realized Xuan She had arrived.
Only then did he bite through the poison sac in his mouth.
Spitting a mouthful of saliva at Xuan She, he cursed, “Eunuch faction!”
Then he sank slowly to the ground, his breath gone.
Xuan She’s body was wrapped in a black cloak.
He stepped to the innkeeper, bent and looked down. “A death operative with poison hidden in his mouth? Whose man is this? Strange.”
As he spoke, a rider galloped up and hurriedly reported, “Sir, our colleagues over by the inn were poisoned. We lay in ambush around but didn’t hear their cries. From the traces, they crawled out of the well — there’s a secret chamber at the bottom.”