Walking through the pitch-black forest, Han Li kept his senses sharp and wide open. The mountain path, barely visible to an ordinary person's eyes, was as clear as daylight to him.
His caution wasn't born of fear of wild beasts lurking in the woods—it had become an ingrained instinct.
After all, ever since the Seven Mysteries Sect had relocated to the Cai Xia Mountain range, the sparse population of animals large and small had been gradually swept clean from the forests. Forget ferocious predators—even the various venomous snakes of the wilderness had mostly ended up in the stomachs of the sect's numerous disciples.
This habit of remaining ever vigilant, keeping his ears and eyes sharp in unfamiliar surroundings, was not something he had been born with. Rather, after his harrowing escape from Doctor Mo, he had carefully considered matters and deliberately cultivated it as a second nature. This good habit would spare him from all manner of accidents in future operations, reducing danger to the absolute minimum.
The mountain wind seemed to be picking up, howling in wave after wave, sending chills down one's spine.
From a distance, Han Li could feel that he was nearing the edge of the forest.
He let out a quiet breath. Trudging alone through the impenetrable darkness of the woods had weighed heavily on his mind.
Han Li quickened his pace, his strides growing longer than before, as though he wanted to leave this stretch of forest as soon as possible.
Suddenly, a fierce gust of mountain wind blew straight into his face.
After the gust passed, Han Li abruptly halted in his tracks. Something felt off. He furrowed his brow, tilted his head to one side, and listened intently.
Moments later, his expression grew increasingly solemn. Faint footsteps reached his ears—though the owner of those steps moved lightly and was still far off, two people were definitely heading straight toward him, and drawing ever closer.
With a swift, silent flick of his body, Han Li slipped like a cat into the dense undergrowth beside the path, nimble and utterly noiseless.
Behind a massive tree roughly a dozen zhang from the trail, he came to a stop. He curled his entire body into a tight ball and concealed himself behind the trunk. From the front of the tree, not a sliver of his figure could be seen.
Having found his hiding spot, Han Li felt somewhat reassured.
It wasn't that he was being overly paranoid. It was simply that in such a remote place, at such a dark and windy hour, two people showing up here was deeply out of the ordinary. Nine times out of ten, they were up to something shady.
He had no desire to stumble upon someone's secret and wind up marked for assassination, hunted down and silenced.
Still, if he could listen in on other people's little secrets without any risk to himself, Han Li was more than happy to do so. He was no stiff-necked hypocrite—opportunities like this that practically walked through his door were not to be turned away.
"...down the mountain...arranged...time...people...gang leader..."
Snippets of hushed speech drifted over from the distance, broken and intermittent. The wind on the mountainside was strong, scattering most of the words, but a few fragments managed to reach Han Li's ears.
Han Li was stunned. He hadn't expected to actually overhear something this important. In all the land stretching hundreds of li around, there was only one person who could be called "gang leader"—Jia Tianlong, the "Golden Wolf," leader of the Wild Wolf Gang and one of the Seven Mysteries Sect's most dangerous enemies. Hearing his name mentioned here was deeply intriguing.
In the minds of the Seven Mysteries Sect disciples, Jia Tianlong was an out-and-out bloodthirsty demon. According to rumor, he was burly and broad, with a blue-green face and fangs, savage beyond measure—eating raw human flesh and drinking living blood three times a day, an existence barely human, terrifying enough to frighten many of the sect's younger disciples witless.
But according to Li Feiyu, the reality was quite different. Jia Tianlong was neither tall nor frightening—he was actually thin and rather handsome, not even past thirty. The exact opposite of the rumors. However, his ruthless propensity to kill at the slightest provocation was every bit as real and terrifying as the legends claimed. Otherwise, with his unimposing appearance, how could he possibly keep the bandit-born members of his gang in line?
Han Li dredged up his memories of Jia Tianlong and drew a sharp breath, hurriedly curling his body even tighter and slowing his breathing to a shallow crawl.
"...this time...steal...list...target...take action..."
More whispered fragments drifted over, somewhat clearer than before. The two were now closer to Han Li's position.
Han Li dared not breathe loudly. He knew that if he were discovered, death was the only outcome. These two were certainly spies sent by the Wild Wolf Gang, and they would absolutely not let a third person live to learn their secret.
"...the plan...must not...miss...quickly..."
Gradually, the two speakers' voices grew even lower, as though they had reached the crux of the matter.
A short while later, the voices picked up again briefly, but then faded beyond all hearing. Only the whooshing of wind passed by his ears—they had already walked past the stretch of trail in front of Han Li and were receding into the distance.
For some time, Han Li remained prone behind the tree, not daring to move a muscle. Only after using the Eternal Spring Technique to confirm that no other person existed within several dozen zhang did he slowly rise to his feet.
This time, he had narrowly escaped with his life. Fortunately, he had detected the two spies ahead of time, or else he would have walked straight into them. Given their identity, he would certainly have been silenced, and what was worse, given his current abilities, there would have been absolutely zero hope of escape.
Han Li stood where he was, lightly rubbing his chin with his fingertips and gazing in the direction the two had disappeared, a contemplative look on his face.
Judging from their incomplete conversation, it seemed that they were planning to take some kind of action against the Seven Mysteries Sect in the near future, and this action was closely tied to some kind of list.
What surprised Han Li even more was that even without having seen the two people's exact figures or faces, he had recognized one of their voices.
Though he had only interacted with the person once or twice, thanks to his extraordinary memory—far beyond that of an ordinary person—he had managed to connect one of the speakers with a certain unremarkable steward from the main kitchen on the mountain.
The man who had once sold him a rabbit, whom Han Li remembered as a penny-pinching sort with a mustache and a thoroughly mercantile air—being a spy planted by the Wild Wolf Gang—that truly tested the limits of Han Li's nerves.
But when he thought about it again, it wasn't entirely that surprising. Only someone with that kind of identity could travel between the mountain and the town on a regular basis without drawing suspicion while passing along messages.