"BOOM! BOOM! CRACK!"
The cacophony of splintering wood, shattering stone, miserable shrieks, and furious roars blended together, forming a symphony of absolute destruction. The Wind and Cloud Inn, a two-story wooden edifice already weathered by the passage of time, completely collapsed like a fragile paper toy beneath Tran Kien's full-powered strike to its central load-bearing pillar. Dust, wood splinters, and shattered roof tiles sprayed wildly into the air, mingling with the torrential white rain to paint a scene of utmost chaos.
Right after using his fleshly body—tempered to the hardness of iron and steel—to smash through the rotting wooden wall of the kitchen, Tran Kien shot out like a hunting leopard. He didn't even glance back. His breathing was cold and rapid, yet his eyes were incomparably clear and awake. He knew the inn's collapse would only stall them for a fleeting moment. He had but a few breaths of time to escape this lethal trap.
The torrential downpour lashed against his face with a stinging burn, blurring his vision. The official public road had now transformed into a muddy, viscous river.
"Over there! Don't let him escape!"
A thunderous roar echoed from ahead. Dozens of black-clad men from the Black Dragon Stronghold, who had been blockading the main entrance, reacted with blistering speed. Like a pack of famished wolves, they drew their weapons and surged forward from both flanks, intending to form a pincer movement and sever his path.
Tran Kien displayed no panic. He had anticipated this. Instead of charging straight ahead, he abruptly veered sideways, darting directly toward the dense forest bordering the road!
SWISH! SWISH!
Two pitch-black arrows, carrying razor-sharp gales, tore out from the mob of black-clad men, aiming dead-center for his back.
A sensation of mortal peril pricked the back of his neck. In that split second, Tran Kien didn't even need his eyes. He channeled his Primordial Chaos Qi into his legs. His forward-rushing body suddenly executed a miraculous sideways slide across the slick mud, as graceful as a leaf skimming across the surface of a pond.
The two arrows grazed past him by a hair's breadth, burying themselves deep into an adjacent tree trunk, their fletchings still violently quivering.
Within that fleeting instant, Tran Kien plunged into the forest's edge. His small frame rapidly melted into the pitch-black shadows of the dense canopy, vanishing entirely from the sight of the black-clad mob.
"Pursue! He fled into the woods! We absolutely cannot lose his trail!" the squad leader of the Black Dragon Stronghold bellowed.
But right at that moment, from within the ruins of the inn, a grey phantom violently blasted through the shattered timber and soared out. It was Shadow Sparrow!
The assassin looked exceptionally disheveled. His grey cloak was torn to shreds, his body sporting several wounds from the collapsing debris, yet the killing intent radiating from him had grown even more vicious and maddened. He had been dealt a miserable hand by a mere brat at the Qi Condensation Realm, nearly buried alive. This humiliation far surpassed the failure of his mission.
"SCRAM!" Shadow Sparrow let out a hoarse roar.
Without sparing a single glance for the Black Dragon Stronghold men, his figure morphed into a phantom once more, shooting straight into the forest in the exact direction Tran Kien had vanished. His speed vastly outstripped the black-clad mob. To him, slaughtering Tran Kien to wash away this disgrace was now far more paramount than the Fire Crow Wood.
Within the forest, the torrential rain had slightly weakened, but it was still enough to wash away all tracks and muffle all sound. Tran Kien moved as nimbly as an ape, leaping from branch to branch. He didn't run blindly. As he moved, he listened and mapped the terrain. He knew the mob of the Black Dragon Stronghold wasn't terrifying. The true terror was that assassin of the Shadowless Pavilion with his ghostly movement techniques. He was the lethal threat.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before he sensed a frigid, needle-sharp killing intent firmly locking onto his back, the distance between them shrinking by the second.
I can't keep running like this, Tran Kien thought to himself, his mind racing at lightning speed. His movement technique specializes in speed and assassination. In a footrace through a dense forest, I am not his match. I have to find a way to shake him off, or... kill him!
A bold, borderline insane thought flashed through his mind. To slay a professional assassin with a cultivation base higher than his own sounded like the ravings of a madman. Yet, in this dire situation, it was his one and only path to survival.
He abruptly changed directions, no longer delving deeper into the forest. Instead, he bolted toward a sheer, towering cliff face he had caught a glimpse of earlier.
Behind him, Shadow Sparrow saw his prey suddenly dart toward the cliff. Beneath his hood, a vicious sneer curled on his lips. Out of paths to run? Seeking your own dead end. Good, saves me the effort of hunting you down.
He accelerated, the distance between the two now less than twenty zhang.
Tran Kien arrived at the base of the cliff. Before him was a vertical wall of stone, slick with rainwater, devoid of any handholds. Behind him was an approaching assassin. It appeared he had been forced into an absolute dead end.
Yet, Tran Kien showed no signs of despair. He abruptly dug his heels in, spinning around to face the incoming Shadow Sparrow.
"Not running anymore?" Shadow Sparrow also came to a halt, standing atop a tree branch some ten zhang away, his voice dripping with mockery. "Realized you couldn't escape, so you decided to stand still and accept your death?"
Tran Kien gave no reply. He merely silently drew the long saber from his back. Amidst the downpour, the blade reflected a faint, icy gleam.
"With nothing but that Mortal Weapon?" Shadow Sparrow sneered. "What do you think you can possibly do to me?"
He wasn't in a rush to attack. He preferred to savor his prey's despair before striking the fatal blow.
But what he failed to see was Tran Kien's left hand, concealed behind his back, silently withdrawing an object.
It was the fragment of the Solar Essence Guardian.
Tran Kien closed his eyes. He circulated every last drop of Primordial Chaos Qi within his body—not for defense, nor for attack. He poured it entirely into the piece of metal in his left hand.
HUM...
An aura—utterly luminous, righteous, ancient, and majestic—suddenly erupted from Tran Kien's body. This aura was not overbearing, yet it possessed a supreme dignity that forced all living things to bow. It was like the radiance of the celestial sun, capable of dispelling all darkness, the absolute bane of all evil demons and Yin-poisonous entities.
Shadow Sparrow, a cultivator who practiced a Yin-cold assassination cultivation method, felt as if his very soul was being roasted by an invisible flame the moment he faced this aura. The killing intent radiating from him was suppressed to the absolute limit, and the flow of spiritual energy within his meridians grew sluggish and stagnant.
"This... what kind of aura is this?!" he roared in sheer terror. This was absolutely not the spiritual energy of a Qi Condensation Realm cultivator!
Tran Kien's eyes snapped open. Within his pitch-black pupils, it was as if a miniature sun was blazing. He gave Shadow Sparrow no more time to think.
Pushing all his explosive strength into his legs, his figure rocketed upwards. But he didn't charge at Shadow Sparrow. He viciously stomped against the cliff face, borrowing the repulsive force to launch himself backward. From high above, he plummeted downward like a meteor, gripping his saber with both hands. Funneling the entirety of his bodily strength and Primordial Chaos Qi, he hacked down.
A saber strike carrying the luminous, righteous momentum of "Guardianship." A saber strike containing his absolute will to survive!
Shadow Sparrow was horrified. He wanted to evade, but under the absolute suppression of the Solar Essence aura, his ghostly movement technique had become staggeringly slow. He could only hastily raise his pitch-black dagger to block.
CLANG!!!
An earth-shattering crash of metal reverberated throughout the forest.
The pitch-black dagger, a mid-grade magical artifact, completely unable to withstand that berserk strength and the absolute elemental suppression, snapped cleanly in half!
Tran Kien's saber, having shattered the dagger, continued its downward cleavage, carving a deep, horrifying gash from Shadow Sparrow's left shoulder all the way down to his right chest.
"AHHH!!!"
Shadow Sparrow let out a bloodcurdling scream of unprecedented misery. Like a kite with its string cut, he was blasted backward, smashing violently into several trees before crumpling into the mud.
Upon landing, Tran Kien was forced back several steps, his chest heaving, his Qi and blood roiling chaotically. That single strike had nearly drained the entirety of his Primordial Chaos Qi. But he had succeeded.
He didn't pause. He knew that for an assassin, as long as they possessed a single breath, they remained a lethal threat. He raised his saber, intent on ending his opponent once and for all.
But exactly at that moment, from the depths of the woods, dozens of dark figures from the Black Dragon Stronghold caught up.
"Over there! Kill him!"
Tran Kien gritted his teeth. He no longer had the strength to contend with so many enemies. He cast a fleeting glance at Shadow Sparrow, who was lying at death's door in a pool of blood, and then, without a single shred of hesitation, turned around. Drawing upon the very last reserves of his stamina, he plunged deep into the heart of the forest.
The battle at the deep-woods inn had finally drawn to a close. But a brand-new blood debt, forged between him and two orthodox-defying factions, had been officially cemented.