Restaurant.
Inside a private room on the second floor, by the latticed window.
Gu Xi and Jun Qi leaned there, admiring the splendid sight of lanterns blooming along the riverbank.
After a long while, perhaps tired from watching, Gu Xi withdrew her gaze and looked directly below the restaurant.
Her eyes fell on a sugar figurine held by a little boy downstairs.
Jun Qi’s expression was gentle, his slender finger pointing toward the sugar figurine. “Your Highness wants to eat it?”
Gu Xi curved her lips and nodded.
Jun Qi stood up. “Your Highness is in poor health. Please wait here for a moment. I’ll go buy it for you, alright?”
Gu Xi tugged at Jun Qi’s sleeve, her eyes shining like stars. “Young Master Qi, you’re so kind.”
The gentle breeze outside the window stirred her dark hair, brushing over the back of Jun Qi’s hand and slipping into his palm.
Jun Qi’s lowered gaze instantly darkened, but on the surface, the smile on his face was still bathed in a soft radiance.
After Jun Qi left.
Gu Xi leaned against the window, sipping tea.
Suddenly.
The door was pushed open.
Gu Xi looked up and met the leering, scarred face of a man…
On the street.
After buying the sugar figurine, Jun Qi headed back.
As if sensing movement behind him, he narrowed his eyes and deliberately took a secluded alley, turning into a dead-end with no way out.
Then, his cold, sinister gaze fixed on a spot not far away.
“Come out. You’ve been following me for so long—what do you want?”
Abruptly.
A chilling wind rustled, and a blade shot toward Jun Qi’s neck.
The masked man, an accomplice of the scarred man, rolled his eyes maliciously. “You’ll find out when you meet the King of Hell.”
Just as the blade edge came within millimeters of his neck.
Jun Qi suddenly turned.
His hand, infused with powerful Internal Energy, struck the masked man’s blade.
The blade snapped in two with a loud clang, falling to the ground with a resonant hum.
“How is this possible?”
The masked man took a step back, his eyes wide with disbelief. “You have Internal Energy?”
Without his blade, his eyes filled with vicious killing intent as he lunged at Jun Qi barehanded.
But Jun Qi dodged, lifting his eyelids slightly. Moving swiftly, a blur of motion swept past, stirring a chilling wind as he struck the masked man’s abdomen with a palm strike.
The masked man spat blood and crashed to the ground.
Jun Qi walked toward him step by step, his entire body exuding a dark, oppressive ferocity. His eyes, deep as a cold pool, were icy and frosty—a stark contrast to the gentle demeanor the masked man had seen by the river.
He planted a foot on the masked man’s back.
A gleaming dagger pressed against the masked man’s face. “Speak! Who sent you?”
As Jun Qi’s foot pressed down harder, as if to crush the masked man’s internal organs, more and more blood spilled from the man’s lips.
Writhing in pain, he cried out in terror, “I’ll talk… I’ll talk… Our target is that girl, not… not you…”
“Our target?”
Instantly, likely realizing something, Jun Qi’s voice brimmed with violent killing intent, his pupils turning crimson. He stomped directly on the back of the masked man’s neck. “You dare lay hands on what belongs to me?”
His aura had never been so dark and terrifying. His fists clenched tightly, veins bulging.
With a sickening crack, accompanied by the masked man’s piercing scream, the sound of shattering bones echoed.
Blood flowed across the ground, staining the alley crimson.
The masked man breathed his last.
Jun Qi kicked him aside and narrowed his eyes as he headed toward the tavern.
……
Tavern, second floor.
Jun Qi pushed open the door.
The private room was completely empty, with no trace of Gu Xi by the window.
Jun Qi grabbed the collar of a nearby waiter delivering dishes, his entire body radiating a chilling killing intent. “Where is the person who was in this room?”
“I… I don’t know…” the waiter stammered in fear.
The waiter was shoved aside, staggering several steps back, but Jun Qi had already vanished from the tavern using qinggong.
A quarter of an hour later.
At the end of the main street in the capital, a dilapidated temple.
The unconscious Gu Xi had been brought here by the scar-faced man.
On a straw mat, the scar-faced man rubbed his hands lecherously, eyeing Gu Xi on the ground as he approached step by step.
Just as he was about to undo the belt of Gu Xi’s outer robe.
Gu Xi suddenly opened her eyes. A silver needle was pinched between her fingers, and she swiftly stabbed it into one of the scar-faced man’s acupoints.
The scar-faced man instantly lost all strength and collapsed to the ground.
Gu Xi stood up.
She curled her lips, looking down disdainfully at the scar-faced man on the ground. “You have quite the nerve.”
The weakened scar-faced man trembled uncontrollably, his muscles twitching. “You? How is this possible? Didn’t you fall for my knockout drug at the tavern?”
“Knockout drug?” Gu Xi pointed at herself. “Such a childish trick, and you used it on me?”
She unhurriedly crouched down, taking out another silver needle. In the dim light of the dilapidated temple, the needle gleamed eerily, casting a chilling reflection on the scar-faced man’s face.
“Since we’ve come all this way, it would be a shame to just go back.”
“You seem to like this temple quite a bit, so let this be your final resting place. How does that sound?”
Her smile was bright, her voice exceptionally gentle, but to the scar-faced man, it sounded utterly terrifying.
The sound of the silver needle piercing flesh echoed as Gu Xi slowly inserted it into the scar-faced man’s fatal acupoint.
“Ah!” the scar-faced man let out a painful scream.
And outside the temple, Jun Qi arrived at that very moment…