Chapter Eighty-Four: Talk Later, Strike First

Under Fang Mu’s threats and promises, the beggar told everything without leaving out a single detail.

“Tiger Leap Gorge?”

The map had been passed down through the Duan family’s ancestors, mainly as a precaution. In truth, every generation remembered that location, and even went there personally to search.

Everyone dreamed of striking it rich; the Duans were no exception. Yet every search had ended in failure.

Just as the beggar had said, the final mark on the map was Tiger Leap Gorge, north of Eastwind County.

“Take the beggar back to the relay office first,” Fang Mu said after a moment’s thought. “Then we’ll head for Tiger Leap Gorge.”

The two of them brought the beggar to the relay office. Commissioner Wu had already left, and only a stranger remained there: an old man.

The old man was very respectful toward both of them, especially toward Fang Mu.

After all, this was someone the commissioner valued highly. Even if he was not a member of the Celestial Watch, the old man could not behave recklessly.

The Celestial Watch oversaw all the bizarre and unnatural happenings throughout Ancient Yue, and could be said to wield immense power over the nation. Anyone praised by the commissioner was surely no ordinary man. The old man was merely the person in charge of the relay office and did not wish to embarrass the commissioner.

After Fang Mu settled the beggar, he and Yan Xian set out for Tiger Leap Gorge.

...

Tiger Leap Gorge lay north of Eastwind County. “Gorge” here meant a ravine: cliffs on both sides, and in the middle a tremendous cleft in the earth.

The cleft was extremely deep, dark and ominous. At times there would be the sound of wind from within; on rainy days, a damp, dripping chill would even rise from the crack.

Because the terrain was so perilous, few ever lingered there.

Following the beggar’s directions, Fang Mu found Tiger Leap Gorge.

The two advanced along the way, and all the while it was peaceful; nothing happened. They reached one of the cliffs beside Tiger Leap Gorge without incident.

The cliff was strewn with jagged rocks, and the path was rough and uneven. Had the two of them not possessed extraordinary strength, they would have had to tread with extreme caution.

At the edge of the cliff was a massive fissure, from which Tiger Leap Gorge took its name.

Fang Mu’s gaze shifted to the opposite side, where he saw a figure.

A middle-aged woman in coarse cloth was kneeling on the far cliff, cradling a middle-aged man in her arms.

The man’s eyes were closed, resting quietly against her breast.

All around them lay more than a dozen corpses, scattered haphazardly. Fang Mu recognized several of them as the merchants he had encountered when he first arrived in Eastwind County.

The woman’s identity was already plain to see: it was Wu Li, who should have been locked in a prison cell.

“You really did find us in the end,” Wu Li said calmly, brushing her hand across the face in her arms. “All these years, I endured humiliation and bent myself low. At last, I have succeeded.”

Rolling black mist surged up from the corpses on the ground and merged into the body of the middle-aged man in her arms.

The moment the black mist entered him, the man opened his eyes.

A vicious, tyrannical aura moved in his gaze.

He looked at Wu Li. In that savagery there flickered a trace of tenderness, yet he did not move, as though he could not.

“He is the son of the former leader of the Five Gods Sect, and my husband. Back then, when the Celestial Watch surrounded and annihilated them, he was gravely wounded and dying,” Wu Li said softly. “You must be very curious how I saved my husband...”

“No, I’m not curious.”

Amid Wu Li’s startled gaze, Fang Mu drew the butcher’s knife from his waist. “I only know that if you die and he dies, then everything is settled. Whoever should get rich can get rich, and there’ll be no trouble left behind.”

A blade of dazzling brilliance, wrapped in fiery true energy, split the air. Fang Mu leaped from the cliff’s edge, soaring high into the sky.

The golden body art flared, and a sheath of golden light enveloped him.

Curiosity? It did not exist.

He did not care what schemes or plots she had. Now that the mastermind had finally been found, all that remained was to beat them to death.

Wu Li froze. Seeing Fang Mu shrouded in golden light, she reacted by shoving her husband into the gorge.

“With my blood, the gate of death... open!”

A ribbon of black energy rose from Wu Li’s body and fell into the gorge together with the middle-aged man.

The corpses lying on the ground turned to ash and likewise drifted into the abyss.

It all happened too fast. Fang Mu had not expected Wu Li to do something like this.

The brilliant blade light crashed down like a tidal wave, yet Wu Li did not resist, allowing it to wash over her.

Streaks of blood burst open across her body. A smile remained on her face.

“I no longer have any strange power. I can’t beat you, but I have succeeded.”

Blood poured from the裂 wounds, and in the blink of an eye Wu Li had become a heap of minced flesh.

It seemed long, but in truth it had taken only a few breaths.

Yan Xian, standing across the gorge, looked at the man holding the white cat and could not help but shiver.

An ordinary person, faced with this, might have asked why. But this man would not, because once the mastermind was known, he would simply kill them.

Yan Xian increasingly felt that challenging Fang Mu to a duel in the general store and surviving with his life had already counted as a stroke of luck.

Of course, as a saber wielder, if you could not be killed, then you had to dare to challenge.

Fang Mu withdrew the butcher’s knife, looked at the field of shattered corpses, then looked toward Yan Xian on the opposite side.

There were no strange beings, and no corpses of those harmed by them.

Yan Xian leaped across from the far cliff. When he saw the scattered fragments of flesh all over the ground, he said awkwardly, “Brother Fang’s blade technique is truly direct and decisive.”

Fang Mu glanced at the deep valley below the cliff, and his brows slowly drew together.

He was not some all-knowing sage. He had truly not anticipated that Wu Li would make such a move; all he had intended was to kill the two of them.

With the cliff lying between them, when Wu Li shoved the middle-aged man over the edge, Fang Mu happened to be in midair, leaving him no time to stop it at all.

The gorge below was pitch-black, with only the howl of wind within; nothing could be seen clearly.

Yan Xian made a strange gesture toward the corpses on the ground, and a drop of blood flew out from among them.

The blood evaporated in midair and vanished without a trace.

“So that’s how it is,” Yan Xian murmured, withdrawing his hand.

Fang Mu frowned. “You found something?”

Yan Xian nodded. “I analyzed the blood just now and found that this woman’s blood was extremely withered, completely unlike someone of her actual age. I remember that the Five Gods Sect had a secret art that could transfer one’s strange power to another person.”

“You mean Wu Li used herself and the Five Gods Sect members to save her husband?” Fang Mu glanced at the abyss-like gorge.

Yan Xian said with certainty, “After the strange power was transferred, Wu Li would naturally suffer backlash, causing her blood and qi to wither. What I can’t understand is why she threw her husband in as well... Brother Fang, what are you doing?”

While Yan Xian was speaking, Fang Mu had already reached the cliff edge.

Yan Xian was startled. Fang Mu looked as though something was wrong.

Fang Mu turned back and asked, “If we killed his wife, do you think he would let us go?”

Yan Xian shook his head.

“Then that settles it,” Fang Mu said lightly. “Jump down, find him, and cut him down.”