Wan Lihan looked down at Shu Fan's lifeless, bleeding body. His blank eyes didn't flicker with grief, but his mind instantly switched into a cold, hyper-focused state of survival calculation. He crouched low, his gaze rapidly scanning the footprints in the mud and the surrounding stone walls.There was nothing of value to steal from Shu Fan, Lihan calculated flatly. Those two boasting rogue cultivators from the plaza must have baited him here, thinking a trial token carrier carried hidden gold. They killed him for nothing.Suddenly, the whistling of displaced air sliced through the fog.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Two cloaked figures descended from the higher ridges, their movements aggressive. Both of them were established fighters at the 6th Layer of the 15-Layer Qi Cleansing Realm. Instead of panicking, Lihan threw his weight backward, dodging a lethal cross-slash from an incoming blade.
Knowing that fighting a two-on-one battle in an enclosed rock crevice was tactically disadvantageous, Lihan immediately spun on his heel and sprinted directly toward the dense, thick trees of the nearby mountain forest.
"Don't let the kid run! Cut his legs!"
one of the rogues bellowed, pursuing him on foot.Lihan led them deep into the labyrinth of oak trees, using the dense wood trunks to break their line of sight. The moment they entered a small clearing, the traps sprung. One rogue charged Lihan head-on, while the second killer scaled a low branch, rapidly firing a barrage of green-tipped poison darts down from the tree canopy.Lihan utilized his perfect footwork, twisting his torso to let the darts thud harmlessly into the bark behind him.
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His gaze locked onto the frontline fighter.
"So... you guys are the ones who killed Shu Fan."The rogue sneered, unleashing a heavy physical strike."What about it?! He was a pathetic peasant who didn't carry a single treasure! A waste of our blade! You're next, boy!"
Lihan didn't reply. His two years of swinging his bladethousands of times against the wood had forged his physical body into pure iron. He ducked beneath the man's guard, channeled a heavy surge of his 4th Layer Qi into his palms, and violently drove his hilt upward. The sheer, kinetic impact sent the rogue flying backward into the brush.Before the tree archer could reload his blowpipe, Lihan leaped onto a low root, grabbed a heavy, broken oak branch, and hurled it physically like a spear.
The blunt impact caught the sniper directly in the chest, violently knocking him off the high branch. He crashed heavily onto the forest floor, his breath completely stolen.The frontline rogue scrambled to his feet, drawing a long, jagged spear and thrusting it furiously toward Lihan’s throat. Lihan smoothly sidestepped the metal tip, his hand gripping the wooden shaft of the spear.
Using his superior, dense physical strength, he violently jerked the weapon forward, threw the rogue off balance, and cleanly ran his own iron blade through the man's chest.
Turning back to the fallen sniper, Lihan stepped forward and executed a swift, cold-blooded counter-strike, silencing the forest once again.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Lihan dropped to his knees, his greedy eyes scanning the corpses. He ruthlessly stripped the spatial pouches off their waists, dumping the contents onto the mossy ground.Inside the first pouch, his fingers caught the hilt of a gleaming, well-balanced mid-grade sword and a small glass vial containing three dark poison pills.
Tearing open the second pouch, he uncovered a leather wrist-strap holding 13 poison darts and a compact, brass poison-maker kit filled with toxic herb grinders.Lihan pocketed the entire hoard into his black robes, his face returning to its expressionless mask. He had lost a traveling companion, but his secret toolkit was growing more lethal by the hour