As the castle lord of Hian was still passionately analyzing the complex political landscape, a dark shadow silently glided past the window. An owl swooped down to perch upon the windowsill without making even the slightest sound. Yet, with the extreme hearing and sharpness of a supreme Shinobi, Kirito immediately detected it from the very moment it swept through the wind.
Recognizing instantly that this was the specially trained owl his master frequently used to transmit secret messages, Kirito strode over quickly. He expertly unfastened the small letter scroll tightly bound to the bird’s leg, then released it to fly away.
Kirito hastily unfolded the letter to read, while the curious castle lord also craned his neck to peek over.
The razor-sharp handwriting on the paper read briefly: "Proceed immediately to the capital; if you do not grasp the information, ask the castle lord where you currently work."
Reading this, Kirito’s brows knitted tightly together. He never expected that his eccentric old master would personally intervene, dragging him into this immensely dangerous muddy water.
The castle lord of Hian watched his expression and burst into hearty, refreshing laughter:
"Hahaha! It seems no matter how much you wish to refuse, this time you’ll still have to obediently pick up your sword and hit the road."
Kirito let out a helpless sigh, then muttered: "There’s truly no reasoning with that old man."
Noticing the youth’s somewhat pensive expression, the castle lord began to tease, his tone half-joking and half-serious:
"If on this trip you happen to lose your life in the capital, I will surely set up a memorial tablet honoring you as the most outstanding and talented Shinobi."
Kirito reached out to stroke his chin, his sharp eyes analyzing: "It seems the situation over there must be severely lacking in personnel, to the extent that the old master had to go through the trouble of calling even me back to rally. Right now it’s nearly one in the morning, surely a massive upheaval is taking place in the capital, nothing good at all to drive matters to this stage."
The castle lord nodded in agreement, turning entirely serious: "Naturally. According to the original plan, after successfully assassinating the empress’s six-year-old son to undermine the opponent’s morale, hardly anyone would have thought we’d continue deploying Shinobis to ruthlessly assassinate the empress herself right during that sensitive moment."
"That was an extremely unexpected surprise strike," the castle lord analyzed further, "but judging by the current state of affairs, perhaps that surprise strike completely failed, causing the factions to fall into a counter-offensive trap and plunge into a critical situation forcing them to call for urgent reinforcements."
He looked at Kirito with a pensive gaze: "Yet think about it, a single empress independently fighting off as many as five major factions at once, and even counter-attacking to the point where they struggle to call in backup — that’s enough to understand this empress’s might is by no means ordinary."
"Perhaps the empress will temporarily become the most dangerous common enemy all factions must face immediately ahead. This trouble looks like it will drag on for a long time..."
The castle lord suddenly pointed straight at Kirito, demanding loudly:
"Tell me, how confident are you in your own strength?"
Kirito shrugged very naturally, the corners of his lips curving into an arrogant smirk:
"Who knows, but up until now, I have never known fear toward anyone in this world."
The castle lord raised an eyebrow, wearing a look as if he had anticipated the answer, and slowly added:
"Even the old master who bore and taught you?"
Hearing that, Kirito merely offered a faint smile without answering, then turned and walked away.
The master was the person who taught him all survival skills and ninjutsu, a fact that was undeniably true. Yet, when a person has comprehended and reached a certain threshold of martial arts, rigidly following beaten paths is no longer enough; one is forced to know how to innovate and break through all old limits. Furthermore, with the mindset and soul of someone who has experienced modern civilization, Kirito understood that evolutionary law better than anyone.
Precisely because of that, deep down in his heart, he felt no fear; on the contrary, he harbored an intense yearning — the longing to one day officially clash face-to-face and match skills with that authoritative old master.
Whoosh!
In just the blink of an eye, Kirito’s figure blurred, lunging out of the window frame to blend into the pitch-black night like a true ghost.
As a supreme Shinobi possessing advanced movement secret techniques, Kirito’s speed was so fast it far exceeded ordinary imagination. Through his peerless lightness skill, even though the distance from the southern district to the capital was inherently vast, converted into modern time-calculation methods, it took him a mere thirty-plus minutes to cover that stretch.
Before long, the ancient city walls of the capital loomed majestically right before his eyes. Kirito lunged like a weightless ghost, his fingertips gripping tightly onto the vertical stone surface as though coated with adhesive glue. With just a few graceful and decisive motions, he successfully scaled the top of the wall without causing the slightest sound.
Inside the inner city, the scene unfolding was exceedingly chaotic and bloody. The clanging sounds of metal crashing echoed shrilly across the streets. Right at the street corner ahead, two black Shinobi figures were engaging in an extremely intense battle, their bodies flickering into and out of view, continuously leaping and chasing one another across rooftops and walls.
To avoid being dragged into meaningless skirmishes early on, Kirito cleverly disguised himself as a corpse lying motionlessly at the street corner. Waiting for the enemy group to glide past, he blinked wide-eyed and resumed his movement.
Gliding through a dark alleyway, Kirito spotted a few citizens trembling as they hid. Yet, the cold-blooded nature of an assassin left him entirely unconcerned and disinclined to stop, coldly brushing past them as if they were invisible.
Kirito sneaked rapidly into an abandoned house to orient his path. Yet, his vigilance saved his life by a hair’s breadth. Suddenly from the pitch-dark ceiling beams, a Shinobi unexpectedly lunged down to launch a fatal sneak attack from behind.
With sharp reflexes honed through countless brushes with death, Kirito did not panic at all. He whipped his body around flawlessly, following up with an immensely powerful elbow strike crashing straight into the opponent’s face. The forceful blow caused the unfamiliar Shinobi to spit blood and fall backward onto the floor. Giving the opponent no chance to retaliate, Kirito drew the sword tucked at his waist, decisively plunging it straight through the enemy’s chest to extinguish his life on the spot.
"This is getting increasingly troublesome and annoying..." Kirito muttered softly, then drew his sword, wiped away the bloodstains, and resumed moving.
Clang! Crash!
The sounds of weapons clashing rang out in rapid succession. The deeper he penetrated into the center of the capital, the more squads of Shinobis belonging to different factions Kirito collided with as they frantically hacked at each other amidst the streets.
A sharp kunai suddenly tore through the wind flying in from a blind spot; Kirito swung his hand with his sword to bat it away forcefully. In the end, he could no longer avoid being swept into the chaotic vortex of battle.
Realizing the surroundings were entirely packed with enemies blocking his path, Kirito sprang high into the air, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a massive, fiercely burning flame toward the crowd below to carve out some breathing room.
Yet right at that moment, from within the smoke and fire, a poisoned kunai suddenly hurtled forward at lightning speed, embedding itself squarely into the center of Kirito’s chest. The strong impact caused him to lose momentum, take a critical hit, and plunge headfirst toward the ground like a kite with a snapped string.
Kirito lay motionless in a pool of blood, utterly still.
A good while later, when the surrounding assassins had moved on to another area to continue battling, Kirito slowly opened his eyes. He reached into his inner chest garment, retrieving a small leather pouch filled with special fake blood used to disguise and fool enemy vision.
Having received urgent orders summoning him here, it meant his core mission was precisely to find a way to assassinate at all costs the empress holding out inside the palace. Consequently, Kirito could not afford to waste another single second, forced to accelerate forward at all costs. Dawn was beginning to break; if he let the morning light emerge before completing his objective, everything would turn extremely bad and intensely troublesome.