Chapter 195: Kill

The Cripple’s shriek first alerted Lin Qi and his group nearby. Lin Qi had a bulky build like a great bear, yet when his agility kicked in, he was like a fierce tiger plunging through tall grass, moving with extreme lightness and grace. His body soared upward, soft as cotton. He tapped the guardrail of the watchtower lightly with his right hand, using that tiny bit of force to glide down onto the roof below.

Leaning forward, Lin Qi left two solid footprints three inches deep in the snow, footprints that held their shape without collapsing. Like a tiger spotting prey and exploding into motion, he shot away swift as lightning. With several swift movements across rooftops, he reached a tall building next to the Hunchback’s private residence and ducked behind the rooftop chimney.

This series of actions from Lin Qi was quick and nimble. Having boosted his Combat Qi to the Earth Rank High Stage, his movement skills were many times better than before. He was still pleased with his speed when a low breathing sound came from behind him. Startled, he turned to see Long Cheng right behind him.

Moreover, on the rooftop behind him, only Lin Qi’s own footprints were visible. Long Cheng hadn’t left a single trace.

Lin Qi drew a sharp breath and couldn’t help shaking his head. After all, Celestial Knights existed on a different plane; the gap between him and Long Cheng was simply too vast.

Seeming to read Lin Qi’s thoughts, Long Cheng smiled and patted his shoulder. “Western Combat Qi and Eastern Primordial Qi arrive at similar destinations but through different paths. Western Combat Qi is fierce, massive, and potent in bursts; Eastern Primordial Qi is dense, intertwined, and incredibly resilient. Each has its own strengths, no need for envy.”

Glancing back at Lin Qi’s footprints on the roof, Long Cheng nodded appreciatively. “Much better than I expected. Are you practicing a family inherited Cultivation Technique? It seems a strange art blending features of both Eastern and Western energy cultivation; far superior to what I imagined. Any other Western Knight charging about like that would have collapsed the roof long ago.”

Lin Qi instantly felt calm. Both East and West cultivated vital energies, yet with their own distinct marvels. This was something Blackbeard had told him since childhood.

Being the most powerful cultivators present, they arrived here early. Yulian and Vic, still behind them, were climbing roofs using ropes, grappling hooks, and would take at least a quarter of an hour to reach the spot. Hiding behind the chimney, the two focused their gaze on the Hunchback’s private residence over a hundred meters away.

Lin Qi drew another sharp breath. It was brutal. Utterly brutal.

The Hunchback’s private home housed hundreds: his family members, his enforcers under his command, clerks from his shops, plus servants and maids. But all of them were arranged with perfect neatness in the courtyard, ordered into a precise square formation.

Everyone’s heads had been chopped off at shoulder height. Neatly stacked on the ground were the blood-oozing torsos. Their severed heads were stacked inside the main gate, formed into a neat Pyramid. At the pinnacle of this ghastly Pyramid sat the Hunchback’s head.

These bodies, these heads, these nightmare-inducing things were arranged with such precise order. A sense of rhythmic beauty emerged from the brutality. What kind of evil, what kind of venomous person could do such a thing?

Lin Qi’s head swam with dizziness. He could imagine the killers capturing every single person inside the Hunchback’s residence, one after another, pulling them from their rooms without making a sound, and killing them like plucking chickens. Then, with a perverse sense of aesthetics, they stacked the heads behind the gate and arranged the bodies neatly in the courtyard. These meticulously ordered bodies and heads were so horrifically eerie, it felt like countless Wraiths writhed and screamed silently around them.

Darkness suddenly flooded Lin Qi’s vision. He couldn’t withstand this cruel impact and nearly collapsed.

Long Cheng pressed his finger sharply against the philtrum point below Lin Qi’s nose. A piercing thread of cold energy stabbed into Lin Qi’s body. He shuddered, snapping out of the dark vertigo. Giving Long Cheng a grateful look, he silently activated his Mysterious Tiger Force. A faint warmth spread through his body, countering the Mental Shock inflicted by the grim scene.

He had seen killings, seen dead bodies, even killed people himself. But his killings were done in hot blood, in furious passion. It was like wildly hacking cabbage, with gore flying and a surge of adrenaline – the spirit of a true man on the battlefield. At those times, Lin Qi’s heart swelled, his blood burned hotly, so no strange feelings arose.

But the bodies here, these people who were murdered, these meticulously arranged corpses – such precision, such coldness, such utter lack of mercy… It was as if he were witnessing a group of Demons from Hell, treating murder as an immensely enjoyable art form. This cold, cruel viciousness exceeded what Lin Qi could currently endure, which was why he almost fainted.

“It was Jiang Yong’s work,” Long Cheng suddenly sighed softly.

“Only those castrated scoundrels kill with such methods. I saw the Eunuchs of the Secret Cabinet’s Internal Investigation Bureau work a case. They killed just like this. Orderly killing, meticulous killing, silent killing. Those gutless bastards treat slaughter like embroidery.”

“Damn them!” Lin Qi slammed his fist against the chimney in fury.

Truly damned! To kill with such cold-blooded numbness… Were Jiang Yong and his underlings still even human?

A patch of darkness floated closer from the distance: thick, clinging darkness carried four figures mere meters off the ground, speeding towards them. Lin Qi, who had considered moving closer to the Hunchback’s gate for a look, recoiled behind the chimney. He pulled a strip of black cloth from his sleeve and tied it over his face. Seeing this, Long Cheng seemed to understand. He also pulled out a silk scarf to mask his face, squeezed two small blue crystals onto his eyeballs as goggles, and pulled a golden blond wig over his head.

The darkness halted before the Hunchback’s residence. The viscous blackness dispersed, resolving into fifty black-armored warriors.

Lin Qi’s pupils contracted; he’d never seen anything so strange. The warriors had seemed like black mist drifting through the air, yet here they solidified! Their armor was unbelievably deep and mysterious, seeming to ripple with points of starlight. The strangely styled armor looked profoundly exquisite, like artwork crafted by a master.

Elham and the others glanced at the pile of heads behind the gate, their faces changing instantly.

Tolin shouted in a low voice, “Elham! This affair has nothing to do with us! We should hurry…”

Before he could finish, Tolin instinctively jerked his head sideways. A thin stream of blood sprayed from his face. He screamed, clutching his left eye. A needle as fine as an ox hair grazed his eyeball, piercing straight through it, spraying out blood and thick, gel-like fluid. The agony almost caused Tolin to faint on the spot.

“Ai, and just who was sneaking around watching your servant’s affairs?” sneered a harsh, quacking voice. “How strange to find outsiders like you!”

Accompanied by the grating, duck-like laugh, Jiang Yong swaggered out of a nearby alley, flanked by eighteen grey-robed eunuchs. The one responsible for the throwing needle, the same who had killed several Copper Helmets earlier, stood beside him. The needle had been meant to pierce Tolin’s brow, but a miraculously timed jerk of Tolin’s head had diverted it slightly, sparing his life but destroying the eye.

“Bastards! Gods! Descend your boundless frost! Punish these damned sinners!” Tolin howled, his eye ruined. He grabbed his Magic Wand and snapped the white crystal embedded in its handle. A freezing current over one meter thick blasted from the wand, shrieking through the air toward Jiang Yong’s group.

Jiang Yong sneered dismissively and waved a hand. “Subdue them. Alive. Your servant wants to see just who has such a death-defying courage to provoke him. Tch, even if that courtyard holds nothing of value to your servant anymore, is it trash like you entitled to take a peek?”

One of the eunuchs behind Jiang Yong stepped forward swiftly. He bit his right index finger and rapidly sketched a glowing bloody rune in the air.

There came a sudden POP, like an overblown pig’s bladder bursting. Along with a drawn-out hiss, a blinding light abruptly flared in the sky. Everyone instinctively looked up just as a red meteor the size of a human head pierced the clouds. Trailing a long tail of crimson flame, it plummeted straight toward Tolin.

Tolin screeched in terror. Raising his wand, the thick, cold air transformed into an Ice Dragon coiling upward. The construct met the plummeting Meteor with tremendous force.

Boom! Blazing light! The chimneys where Lin Qi and Long Cheng hid were shattered by the shockwave into debris. Windows shattered all along the buildings within hundreds of meters, glass spraying in all directions. Inside the buildings, the agonized cries of people cut by flying shards began.

The freezing blast and the heat of the Meteor canceled each other out in a violent collision. The meteor exploded violently with the force of a detonation, nearly blasting away half the street.

Tolin crashed to the ground, spattering blood. Elham and his companions tumbled and fell. Apart from Ye Jiu, the strongest of the Knights of the Night, all the Knights were thrown rolling across the ground by the blast. As the thunderous echoes faded and the dust cloud swirled, Lin Qi suddenly vaulted clear of the shattered chimney stacks. A low growl rumbled in his throat as he swung a heavy, strangely shimmering broad-axe in a brutal downward arc.

“Private vendetta! Brotherhood settling a score! Outsiders clear off!”

Lin Qi roared in thieves’ cant. The axe head descended until it was mere feet from Elham’s skull. Amid the chaos, all the Knights, save Ye Jiu, were still rolling helplessly. Ye Jiu himself was transfixed, Jiang Yong’s chilling sword aura locking onto him directly. Jiang Yong held a flexible blade coldly pointed at him, the blade’s intent was suffocatingly killing him. He dared not move.

Elham raised his left hand in a useless, futile gesture of defense against Lin Qi’s onslaught.

A dreadful shriek tore from Elham. His blocking left arm was hacked clean off by Lin Qi’s axe. Blood sprayed wildly as the heavy axe blade tore deep into Elham’s chest, shattering his ribs, plunging through his body, and nearly splitting his spine clean in two.

With agonized roars, Tolin, Yan and An threw themselves desperately toward Lin Qi.

But Lin Qi, with his free left hand, already had a small dagger drawn. He slashed coldly across Elham’s throat.

Elham’s head flew from his shoulders. A jet of blood burst forth, spurting nearly eight meters through the air before raining down.