This token was Sect Master Wang's personal keepsake. Whoever held it could temporarily issue orders to any disciple below the rank of Elder, and this fatty was one of Sect Master Wang's closest confidants—rumored to be a rather close cousin of his. So whenever Sect Master Wang had a verbal message or an order to deliver, it was always through this person.
Not long ago, the Sect Master had hastily granted this fatty the token and sent him here to formally summon Elder Li to the mountain for a meeting. But after delivering the message, the fatty felt that climbing down from Sunset Peak and then immediately heading all the way back up would be too exhausting. Relying on his favored status, he insisted on staying at the Li residence for a rest before returning to the peak.
Elder Li, left with no choice, reluctantly agreed to let him stay. He himself, however, dared not delay and hurried off to Sunset Peak with Zhang Xiuer and several other disciples.
Before long, a major upheaval occurred up on the mountain. This fatty was the most cowardly of men, and naturally he had no desire to go back alone.
As for the people in the courtyard, they were the families of Seven Mysteries Sect members who lived nearby. Most of them knew no martial arts whatsoever, so the moment the commotion started, they panicked and had no idea what to do.
Fortunately, Ma Rong had his wits about him. He quickly asked the more than twenty men left behind by Li Feiyu for help, gathering everyone together and keeping them in one place to prevent them from scattering in the darkness and running into danger.
Because this area was rather remote—houses built into a mountain hollow—although they could hear alarm calls and the sounds of battle, the people here had no idea what was actually happening outside.
After Ma Rong finished organizing everything, he was about to send someone out to gather intelligence. The completely martial-arts-ignorant fatty chose this moment to reappear. Not only did he stop the reconnaissance effort, but he also used the Sect Master's token to seize command of these Outer Blade Hall disciples from Ma Rong, and then proceeded to hole up inside, doing absolutely nothing—like the fool who covers his ears while stealing.
Ma Rong understood all too well how critical it was to assess the enemy's situation. He argued with the fatty several times, but each time the man—who feared death above all else—used the Sect Master's token to shut him down. He wouldn't even allow Ma Rong to go scout personally, apparently treating him as yet another bodyguard for his own survival.
So Ma Rong paced the main hall like an ant on a hot skillet, going around and around in circles, utterly unable to do anything about this ignorant fool. In the Seven Mysteries Sect, disobeying a superior's orders or acting on one's own initiative was a grave offense—at best, one's martial arts would be crippled and the offender expelled from the sect; at worst, it meant death by the executioner's blade. So even though Ma Rong knew that something earth-shattering was happening outside and the sect was likely at a life-or-death turning point, he was powerless to move.
Just when Ma Rong wished he could slap this so-called superior dead with a single palm strike, Han Li and Li Feiyu had no idea what was happening here and were rushing toward the location at full speed.
Along the way, they encountered traces of the enemy and avoided them whenever possible, hiding their tracks as best they could. It wasn't until they were little more than a li from Elder Li's residence that they ran head-on into a group of men in blue robes and could no longer conceal themselves. At last, they made their first direct contact with the enemy.
Now, more than a dozen blue-robed men wielding steel sabers had surrounded them from all directions, trapping them in the center.
Judging from the way they walked, the majority of these men—those with a single white stripe embroidered on their sleeves—had the weakest martial skills. Two of them, each with two white stripes on their sleeves, were significantly better. But the strongest of them all was the one with three white stripes and a scar across his face. He was clearly the leader of this group.
The scar-faced leader was carefully sizing up the people his men had surrounded. He felt somewhat puzzled.
Small wonder. Among them, Li Feiyu was disheveled and dirty, his clothes tattered—he looked like a kitchen hand from the mountain. Han Li had dull eyes and tanned skin, resembling a common farmer who wouldn't know the first thing about martial arts. The only one who exuded any real pressure was the towering figure of Qu Hun, wearing a bamboo hat, his body splattered with blood.
Standing together, these three disparate figures—even this seasoned, self-proclaimed veteran of the jianghyang—found it baffling.
He shot his men a warning glance, then called out in a loud voice: "No matter who you people are, the Seven Mysteries Sect is finished! Surrender now, and we'll spare your lives!"
Han Li smiled slightly and turned to Li Feiyu. "Who's taking them? You or Qu Hun?"
Li Feiyu's eyes flashed with a vicious gleam. "Judging by their uniforms, these are low-level disciples of Duanshui Gate. The Wild Wolf Gang's been chasing me around for ages—let me vent my anger on these guys first! Besides, their weapons happen to suit me."
Before the words had even left his mouth, he shot out like a rainbow and in an instant closed the distance to the nearest blue-robed man.
The man was startled and barely had time to raise his steel saber when he suddenly felt his hand go light—the blade was already in his enemy's grip. He scrambled backward in panic, but it was too late. A white flash flickered before his eyes, and his head parted company with his body.
Li Feiyu's series of movements was clean, decisive, and swift as lightning. Before the remaining Duanshui Gate disciples could even react, he had already seized a saber and killed a man.
The faces of the survivors began to change dramatically, especially the scar-faced leader. His martial skill far surpassed the others', and so the weight that settled on his heart was the heaviest of all. He knew with crystal clarity that he had encountered a formidable master—one that none of them could possibly contend with. Without a moment's hesitation, he issued his command:
"Everyone retreat! Each man for himself! Send the signal—call for the experts to reinforce us!"
His words jolted the other blue-robed men. With a sudden roar, they shifted from their encirclement into a scattering rout, fleeing in every direction. Some of them reached into their chests as they ran, clearly fumbling for their so-called signal flares.
One blue-robed man with two white stripes ran the fastest. In a few leaps, he had already covered several zhang of distance.
A secret thrill of joy surged through him—he thought his escape was assured—when he suddenly felt a chill at the back of his neck. The tip of a sword, half an inch long, burst through from his throat and then vanished without a trace. He stared in horror, wanting to scream, but his entire body felt as though it had been drained, going limp and powerless. Then, with wide-open eyes, he watched his own body slowly topple backward and collapse onto the grass, never to move again.
Only then did he realize that someone had pierced clean through his throat from behind.
This blue-robed man harbored a fierce sense of injustice. He had clearly been so far ahead—how could he have died so quickly?
With great effort, he twisted his head to one side and at last witnessed his final sight: a dark shadow, appearing and disappearing unpredictably, materialized behind the blue-robed man who had been fleeing the farthest. After a single ethereal sword thrust, the shadow swayed slightly and vanished again, only to reappear behind another sect brother. The same white flash flickered past, and only then did the body of the previous victim—the one pierced through the throat—finally collapse onto the grass like his own, blood gushing freely from the wound in his neck.
Having witnessed all of this, the dying blue-robed man smiled peacefully and accepted death, for he knew he would not be alone for long. Soon, many others would come down to keep him company. That ghost-like shadow would not let a single one of them escape.