Chapter 96 The Wang family issues a kill order; a great battle is imminent!

Three days later, just after the Hour of the Tiger.

The courtyard gate was smashed open from the outside, the iron bolt clattering against the wall bricks, emitting a piercing metallic clang.

When Han Shan rushed out from the gatehouse,

Sun Qi was already half-kneeling inside the threshold, his left knee supporting him on the ground, his right hand tightly clutching the edge of the doorframe, his fingers distorted from the force.

A bloodstain trailed across his left cheek, extending from his cheekbone to his jaw.

A three-inch-long gash had been sliced into the shoulder of his uniform by a Sharp Weapon, the flesh was turned out, and dark red blood soaked through the fabric.

Han Shan grabbed and supported him, dragging him into the courtyard by his armpits.

"Hundred-Household!"

Han Shan's shout exploded in the early morning courtyard, the echo hitting the four walls and bouncing back.

The door to the duty room was pulled open from the inside, the candlelight flickering, and Lin Chen's figure appeared in the doorway, his hand already resting on the mouth of the black abyss's sheath.

When Sun Qi was brought to the door of the duty room, his knees buckled, and his whole body began to sink toward the ground; he only avoided collapsing because Han Shan supported him against a corridor pillar.

He lifted his head, his lips pale from blood loss, his voice broken and fragmented.

"The three secret outposts in the east of the city... were all wiped out tonight."

Lin Chen stood in the doorway, his fingers unmoving on the scabbard.

"Explain clearly."

Sun Qi swallowed hard, the sound scraping painfully against the ears in the quiet corridor.

"The tea house waiter was gagged and dragged away through the back door around the hour of the rat. My men found him in a trash heap at the end of an alley before dawn."

His voice grew lower as he spoke, as if a ball of cotton were stuck in his throat.

"Bleeding from all seven orifices, no external injuries, his Meridians were shattered by Internal Energy."

Lin Chen's thumb paused on the ray-skin of the scabbard.

Sun Qi swallowed again.

"The innkeeper fell from a second-floor window, hitting the back of his head on a stone slab, and died on the spot. The window latches were intact; the scene was made to look like an accidental fall."

Zhao Gang had stood in the courtyard at some point, draped in an outer robe, his hands clenched in his sleeves, half the color drained from his face.

Sun Qi's voice dropped to its lowest point.

"The third was a street vendor; the person is gone, the stall is gone, as if they never existed."

The corridor remained silent for three breaths.

Zhou Tie walked quickly from the middle courtyard, his iron spear held upright against his shoulder, his gaze sweeping from the bloodstain on Sun Qi's face to the blade wound on his shoulder.

"How were you injured?"

Sun Qi leaned the back of his head against the pillar, his eyes bloodshot.

"I was targeted while making my rounds. In the second hidden alley south of Chongan Lane, two masked men, their cultivation at least Early Stage Tongmai Realm."

He reached into his robe with his right hand and pulled out a broken dagger blade, holding the spine of the blade with his fingertips, and held the piece of broken iron before Lin Chen.

"It grazed my face during the fight. I parried with my blade, and half the opponent's dagger broke off in my clothes."

Zhou Tie took the broken blade and turned it over, his thumb brushing against the break.

"A narrow-bladed dagger, excellently forged, of the same origin as the blade wounds on Wu Si."

Sun Qi's mouth twitched.

"I escaped by using the terrain. That alley connects to the back wall of a residence with a dog hole at the base. As I crawled through, I heard them chase for two steps and then stop."

He took a breath, withdrew his hand from his robe, and rested his clenched fist on his knee.

"They weren't trying to kill me; they were trying to silence me. The three secret outposts were uprooted, and the timing of the attacks was all within fifteen minutes of the hour of the rat."

His fist tightened on his knee.

"Hundred-Household, they know where the secret outposts are."

In the duty room, Shen Yue approached with a medicine box, knelt beside Sun Qi, and wiped the blood from his face with a wet cloth, revealing a half-inch-long wound.

The wound wasn't deep, but the cut was extremely narrow and the surface smooth.

Lin Chen crouched and looked for a few moments, his finger hovering near the wound for a moment before withdrawing.

He stood up and turned to walk into the duty room.

He took the distribution map of the secret outposts in the eastern city area from a drawer and spread it out on the desk.

Seven red dots were marked on the map, representing all the outposts established by the Intelligence Group over the past half month.

He took a brush and drew a circle around each of the three destroyed points.

The three points were located on three parallel streets and alleys in the east of the city, from south to north, with almost equal spacing.

Zhou Tie walked to the desk, glanced down at the three circles, and tightened his grip on the spear shaft.

"It wasn't random removal."

Lin Chen set the brush back on the inkstone.

"Cutting from the southern end to the northern end, three parallel lines with even spacing, severing our vision in the east of the city from start to finish in one stroke."

His finger tapped each of the remaining four red dots.

"The remaining points haven't been touched yet, but since the opponent knows the locations of these three, the other four may not be safe either."

Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

Qian Xiaoliu ran back from outside, mud splattering from the soles of his boots all the way, and skidded to a halt at the door of the duty room.

"Hundred-Household, I have confirmed two things."

He bent over, gasping for air, and handed in a slip of paper he was holding.

"First, the remaining four secret outposts are currently safe, but two of them know something has happened and are clamoring to withdraw, saying if they don't, they'll be the next to die."

Lin Chen took the paper and glanced at it.

"The second thing."

Qian Xiaoliu's voice lowered, his eyes darting around outside the door before pulling back.

"In the entire East Courtyard, only three people know the locations of all the secret outposts: you, Sun Qi, and me."

He held up three fingers and waved them.

"Even Zhou Tie doesn't fully know the specific distribution of every point."

Zhou Tie stood by the desk, his brow furrowing slightly, but he did not deny it.

Qian Xiaoliu's Adam's apple bobbed.

"There are only two possibilities for the source of the leak: either the outposts exposed themselves, or someone is watching us and traced the locations back."

Lin Chen's fingers tapped silently on the desk surface.

"Has there been any pattern to your and Sun Qi's movements over the past half month?"

A flash of frustration crossed Qian Xiaoliu's face.

"There's no fixed route, but the frequency of visiting the points is about once every two days, and each trip takes about four hours from departure to return."

Lin Chen's finger stopped.

Once every two days, a four-hour window—that was enough for an experienced tracker to master the movement patterns and then follow the trail to find the outposts.

He looked up at Zhou Tie.

Zhou Tie nodded and turned to walk out of the duty room.

Fifteen minutes later, the patrol routes within the courtyard were completely disrupted.

The four fixed guard posts were increased to six, and the shift change times were changed from hourly to random.

He Jian led his twelve personal guards from the Governors Mansion out through the side gate of the East Courtyard, resetting a circle of secret sentries in the three alleys surrounding the courtyard walls.

When daylight illuminated the courtyard, Instructor Qi Boyuan had already been standing on the training ground for half an hour.

Three Patrol Teams lined up at the courtyard gate, the clatter of armor plates carrying far through the morning mist.

Lin Chen stood in front of the formation and laid down a new iron rule.

"From today on, no field personnel are allowed to act separately, leave the team, or enter the eastern city area to perform tasks alone."

Zhao Gang stood at the head of the second team; his lips moved, but he swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue.

The three Patrol Teams left one after another, the sound of their boots on the stone slabs heavy and dense.

But the number of people in each group had increased from five to eight, the blades at their waists felt heavier, and their pace was thirty percent tighter than usual.

The area of the entire prefectural city they could cover was actively shrunk by a third; the eastern city area was like a line had been drawn, and all the streets and alleys east of that line temporarily became a blind spot.

At noon, the patrols returned.

Zhao Gang slammed his blade onto the weapon rack and stood in the middle of the courtyard, the veins in his neck bulging.

"How cowardly! We get hit and have to hide our heads! Are the hundred of us just going to cower in the courtyard and wait?"

Instructor Qi Boyuan walked over from the training ground.

He carried a wooden spear on his shoulder, his pace unstopping as he passed Zhao Gang.

"Hiding your head is to gather strength."

Zhao Gang turned his head and glared at him.

Instructor Qi Boyuan had already taken three steps, his voice drifting back from ahead.

"Have you ever seen a tiger that doesn't crouch before pouncing on its prey?"

Zhao Gang's mouth hung open, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides; he muttered a string of indistinct curses and finally kicked the upright of the weapon rack, making the wood hum.

At the Hour of the Monkey in the afternoon, Shen Yue returned from the Governors Mansion.

When she walked into the duty room, the soles of her boots were covered with yellow dust from the official road, and she held a lacquer-sealed bamboo tube in her hand.

"Cheng Ji confirmed it; Third Young Master Wang Chengye did indeed head toward Qingyun Ridge."

She placed the bamboo tube on the desk, her fingers tapping on the bamboo segments.

"The outer scouts of the Governors Mansion caught the trail of Third Young Master Wang Chengye's party thirty miles outside the city; the direction is certain."

Lin Chen peeled away the lacquer seal, pulled out the slip of paper, and unfolded it.

Shen Yue's voice continued.

"But the scouts dare not go deep into Qingyun Ridge."

She paused for a beat.

"Someone has placed a Restriction at the mountain pass; anyone with a cultivation below the Ningdan Realm will trigger an alarm if they enter."

Lin Chen's fingers holding the paper tightened slightly.

Those below the Ningdan Realm couldn't enter the range of the Restriction, so the Governors Mansion's scouts were blocked outside.

They only knew Third Young Master Wang Chengye had gone in, but they didn't know how many people were inside, let alone when they would come out.

A complete black hole.

He folded the paper and pressed it under a paperweight, his finger tracing a long oval over the mouth of the scabbard.

"What did the Governor say?"

Shen Yue's lips pursed slightly.

"Cheng Ji said the Lord knows and wants you to make your own judgment."

Lin Chen didn't respond; he moved his hand away from the scabbard and placed it on the desk, his fingers interlaced.

Night fell.

Lin Chen did something no one expected.

He found Instructor Qi Boyuan and invited the old man up from the stone table in the backyard.

"Old Qi, I need you to hold a class in the large room in the backyard tonight."

Instructor Qi Boyuan's hand holding the wooden spear stopped.

"Teach what?"

Lin Chen's voice was kept extremely low in the night.

"Counter-assassination."

Instructor Qi Boyuan's eyes shifted, a faint light flickering in their cloudy depths.

"You think they'll come?"

Lin Chen looked into his eyes.

"It's not a thought; it's a certainty."

Instructor Qi Boyuan's mouth pulled down slightly as he lifted the wooden spear from his lap and prodded it against the ground, the tip grinding against the stone slab with a low, rasping sound.

"Fine."

He stood up, his white hair swaying in the moonlight.

"Call everyone who is at the Tongmai Realm or above."

When the door to the large room in the backyard closed, seventeen people were squeezed inside.

Instructor Qi Boyuan stood in the center of the room, holding not a wooden spear but a short stick made of a sharpened charcoal pen.

He tapped the short stick on the ground, drawing a line on the bluestone slab.

"There are three most common routes for an assassin to approach a target."

The tip of the stick slid across the ground, drawing three curved lines converging on the same point from different directions.

"The first: hugging the wall, moving through visual blind spots, and entering attack range from your flank or rear."

He pointed the stick at the corner of the first line.

"The second: coming from above, scaling walls and moving across rooftops, exploiting your habit of not looking up."

The stick moved to the second line.

"The third is the hardest to guard against: disguising as a companion or an unrelated person, and getting close when you've let your guard down."

He Jian knelt in the front row; the bandage on his left arm had been removed, leaving a half-foot-long new scar that looked pinkish-white in the lamplight.

"How do we guard against the third type?"

Instructor Qi Boyuan glanced at him.

"You can't."

The room was silent for two breaths.

Instructor Qi Boyuan lifted the stick from the ground and held it horizontally across his chest.

"So what I'm going to teach you today isn't how to guard against it, but how to survive the first breath after being targeted by an assassination."

His voice was as dry as dross, each word sounding as if it were bursting from a crack in a stone.

"An assassin's first strike usually aims for three places: the throat, the heart from behind, or the kidneys."

He pointed the stick at the corresponding positions on his own body.

"After being hit by the first strike, ninety percent of people reflexively shrink toward the wound, clutching it and hunching over, exposing their back."

He hunched his body forward, making a gesture of clutching his waist.

"On the battlefield, this movement is called 'seeking death'."

He suddenly straightened his body and swung the stick backward.

"The correct reaction is, no matter where you are hit, to spring away in the opposite direction within the first breath, while simultaneously swinging your weapon behind you—not seeking to injure, but only to create distance."

His gaze swept across the seventeen faces, not missing a single one.

"Only by surviving the first breath do you have the right to talk about counterattacking."

The class lasted until the Hour of the Ox. Instructor Qi Boyuan propped the stick on the ground and gave one last look around.

"Remember, only the living can take revenge."

The seventeen people filed out of the large room in the backyard, the sound of their boots on the stone slabs much heavier than when they had entered.

Zhou Tie did not return to his room.

He went to a corner of the training ground, picked up his iron spear, and began to thrust with the tip pointing forward.

Thrust after thrust, into the night.

The spear tip traced afterimages in the moonlight, each thrust fiercer than the last.

When his right wrist grew tired, he switched to his left; when his left grew tired, he switched back.

An image flashed repeatedly before his eyes.

Wu Si lying in a ditch, face down, with three blade wounds on his back, the deepest one slicing from his left shoulder to his waist.

The spear tip paused in the air, then thrust out violently.

The hour of the rat.

That ethereal blue light rose punctually from the edge of his vision.

**[Summary of today's official duties: Encountered targeted elimination of the intelligence network, urgently adjusted defensive deployments, contracted patrol range to preserve the team, organized Counter-assassination training to improve response capabilities.]**

**[Duty Assessment: Good.]**

**[Today's Basic Patrol Points: 40 points.]**

**[Extra Merit Reward: 200 points.]**

**[Current System Accumulated Total Points: 5310 points.]**

The basic points had dropped again.

The patrol range had shrunk by a third, and the points had shrunk accordingly.

Lin Chen closed the panel and sat cross-legged to regulate his breathing, guiding his True Qi to converge toward the core of his Dantian.

That dark-gold True Qi core rotated slowly in his Dantian; the sense of power brought by each rotation through his Meridians was a layer thicker than yesterday, and the density of the core was still increasing.

The quantitative change was approaching the critical point of qualitative change.

But he was in no hurry.

Hurrying was useless.

He closed his eyes, his breathing slowed, and his heartbeat was steady and powerful, one beat at a time.

The Hour of the Tiger.

An extremely faint whistle came from outside the window of the duty room.

Short and sharp, it sounded only once before cutting off.

That was the signal from He Jian's secret sentries on the perimeter of the East Courtyard.

One blast represented a suspicious target approaching.

Lin Chen's eyes snapped open.

His right hand silently gripped the black abyss by his pillow, his fingers clenching the ray-skin texture; the blade remained motionless in its sheath.

He listened for five breaths.

There was no second blast.

No follow-up.

The whistle sounded once and then stopped, meaning the suspicious target had sensed the presence of the secret sentry and proactively retreated.

Zhou Tie's footsteps quickly approached from the direction of the middle courtyard and stopped outside the door of the duty room.

"Did you hear it?"

Lin Chen's voice came from inside the room, very soft.

"I heard it."

Zhou Tie's hand gripped the spear shaft, his knuckles protruding one by one.

"Should we pursue?"

Lin Chen looked at the night through the broken window of the duty room, his fingers slowly loosening from the hilt of the blade.

"No pursuit."

He moved his hand away from the black abyss and leaned back against the headboard, his breathing steady.

"The opponent is here to scout the path; chasing them would play right into their hands."

Zhou Tie stood outside the door for three breaths, his iron spear thudding against the stone slab with a muffled sound, before he turned and left.

Silence returned to the duty room once more.

Lin Chen did not close his eyes again.

The night outside was darker than usual; the moon was swallowed by thick clouds, and not even a sliver of light could leak through.

The outline of the mountain ridges to the northeast outside the city was completely merged into the darkness, and nothing could be seen.

But he knew.

In that darkness, something was moving toward the city.