81: Chapter 81 Death and Demise: The Assassin Organization!

Chen Ran didn't reply; he pointed at the food box.

"Eat. Once you've eaten well, you can be on your way."

The aroma of wine and meat wafted through the cold, damp air.

Li Luo looked at the bowl of rice, his eyes a mix of unwillingness and violence.

"I was chosen by the Dark Guards when I was thirteen, and I started killing for the Imperial Court at sixteen," Li Luo said, as if talking to himself.

"Twenty years. How many dirty, unseen jobs have I done for them?"

He looked up, staring straight at Chen Ran's calm face, his voice suddenly rising:

"Those masters sitting in high halls, when they needed me, they called me a good blade.

When they didn't need me, they just made up some crime to deal with me!"

The chains rattled with his struggle.

"They wrongly accused me, and they shouldn't have just sent those few people to hunt me down. I killed them in return and hid in the city, concealing my identity for decades, but what was the result..."

Li Luo slumped back, his eyes lost in reminiscence.

"Why?"

"I just wanted to survive. What did I do wrong?!"

Li Luo's questioning echoed in the empty corridor like the roar of a trapped beast.

He stared intently at Chen Ran, trying to find sympathy or fear on the young jailer's face.

There was nothing.

Chen Ran stood outside the door, his expression like a dry well.

He looked at Li Luo with a flat gaze.

"Surviving is not wrong," Chen Ran finally spoke, his tone calm. "But you chose the wrong path yourself."

As his voice fell, Chen Ran reached out and turned the mechanism on the prison door.

Click.

The heavy refined steel door swung open.

The moment the door opened, light pierced through the curtain and entered his field of vision.

Li Luo looked behind Chen Ran; the empty corridor held only this one jailer.

At this moment, the violence in his eyes reached its peak.

He couldn't die yet. As long as he killed this jailer and grabbed his keys, he could escape the Celestial Prison.

Yes, that's right! As long as he killed this kid in front of him, he had a chance to escape!

Boom!

The dying Li Luo suddenly exploded into action.

This was a strike he had long planned.

It was also the final strike of his life.

He pushed his Glazed Golden Body Art to its limit.

He completely ignored the refined steel chains piercing his shoulder blades; having his cultivation sealed might work on ordinary Martial Artists.

But in front of a true external-training expert, even without the aid of Internal Energy or True Qi, one could split stones and crack the earth with just their Physical Body.

Accompanied by the teeth-grinding sound of tearing flesh, dark red blood gushed out, but his withered muscles rapidly expanded at the same time.

A golden metallic texture emerged from beneath his skin.

The thick chains were pulled taut.

Leveraging the explosive power gained from this extreme self-mutilation, Li Luo, like a red-eyed ancient savage bear, lunged at Chen Ran.

"Come join me in death!"

He threw a punch.

This punch nearly squeezed out all the blood and Qi of his fifth-grade external-training expert status.

The wind of the fist howled.

The air was compressed by the immense force, emitting a series of muffled sonic booms.

The entire refined steel cell seemed to tremble under the might of this punch.

The distance was too close.

There was nowhere to retreat.

Chen Ran didn't intend to retreat either.

He stood quietly in place, facing the heavy fist that could split mountains and crack stones, and slowly raised his right hand.

His five fingers spread open.

Bang!

The loud sound of physical bodies colliding exploded violently in the cramped space.

It was like two extremely hard pieces of marble slamming together; the sound was dull, yet it made one's eardrums ache.

There was no storm of True Qi clashing.

There were no flashy Move dissections.

There was only the absolute crushing power.

Li Luo's dark golden fist was steadily gripped by Chen Ran's single hand.

At the point of contact, Li Luo's momentum came to an abrupt halt.

He felt as if his fist had smashed into an ancient iron mountain.

The opponent's palm was like iron pincers cast from refined steel, locking onto his knuckles, motionless.

A sense of despairing weightiness washed over him, but what shocked him even more was that a faint golden light appeared on the young man before him.

He was naturally no stranger to this effect; it was the characteristic of the Glazed Golden Body Art in operation.

How could this person also know this Cultivation Technique?

Li Luo's face was full of horror, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

He had never imagined that the person before him had hidden such cultivation.

Unless this jailer was a person from within the organization?!

"You..." Li Luo had just opened his mouth, but the sound stuck in his throat.

Chen Ran brought his left hand together.

His index and middle fingers, like a drawn sword, pointed forward.

Pfft!

One finger precisely tapped Li Luo's Adam's apple.

The sound of bone breaking was crisp.

The hard laryngeal bone was as fragile as rotten wood under this finger, shattering on the spot.

Li Luo's ability to speak was completely destroyed.

He could only open his mouth, emitting a wheezing "ho ho" sound.

The violence in his eyes receded like a tide, replaced by endless terror.

Chen Ran withdrew his left hand.

Li Luo's expanded muscles rapidly atrophied, the dark gold faded, and his whole body slumped down like a pile of mud.

He wasn't dead yet.

Chen Ran had left him with one breath to hand over.

"Time to go."

Chen Ran grabbed Li Luo's neck with a backhand grip and dragged him forward like a dead dog.

Accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh, the refined steel chains were snapped by force.

He dragged the mud-like Li Luo out of the cell.

Outside the Celestial Prison.

The noon sun was scorching.

The executioner had been waiting for a long time with a team of men.

Chen Ran walked to the handover point and threw the limp Li Luo onto the ground.

"The person has been brought."

The executioner glanced at the prisoner on the ground.

His throat was shattered, covered in blood, breathing more out than in, and he looked like he was about to die.

The executioner frowned.

However, he didn't ask further.

For death-row prisoners in the Celestial Prison, being half-dead upon exit was the norm.

As long as there was one breath left, it was enough to drag him to the execution ground.

"Take him away." The executioner waved his hand.

Two armored soldiers stepped forward and tossed Li Luo onto the prison cart like a sack of broken rags.

The prison cart slowly started and moved toward the Noon Gate.

Chen Ran stood in the shadows in front of the Celestial Prison, his hands tucked into his sleeves, watching the prison cart drive away.

Half an hour later.

Noon, the third quarter.

In Chen Ran's mind, the long-silent heavenly book of prison suppression erupted with a burst of golden light.

The heavy pages flipped.

They stopped at the page recording Li Luo's life.

The text on the page burned, turning into specks of golden light.

[Detected that prisoner Li Luo has died.]

[Participation: High (personally suppressed his counterattack).]

[Settlement complete]

[Obtained reward: 5 years of cultivation]

[Obtained reward: Insight and experience of "Glazed Golden Body Art"]

Boom!

An extremely pure and heavy surge of True Qi exploded out of thin air within Chen Ran's Dantian.

The True Qi roared and surged through his wide Meridians like a dam breaking.

Five years of cultivation!

For an ordinary person, this would require over 1,800 days of relentless, day-and-night hard training.

Chen Ran only spent a quarter of an hour waiting.

Adding these five years, his total cultivation reached 145 years.

Chen Ran felt the endless power within his body and exhaled a breath of stale air.

At the same time, a large number of memory scenes regarding the "Glazed Golden Body Art" flooded into his mind.

In the memories, he had been trained in external-training secret arts since he was young, and most of his time was spent either Cultivating or on the way to Cultivate.

Like a robot, he repeated the actions.

And there were many others like him in that organization.

Soon, he was ordered to carry out missions: assassinating officials, secret looting, arson, and slander...

As time passed, the number of people in the organization went from hundreds at the beginning to only a few dozen.

This was evidently a massive assassin organization, specializing in handling dirty, unseen business for the Great Wei.

"No wonder Li Luo was hunted down." Chen Ran broke free from the memories and whispered slowly.

The end of the memories showed Li Luo executing a mission, accidentally finding a page of a ledger. Although he didn't read the contents of the ledger and turned it in, the higher-ups still chose to liquidate him.

This showed the madness of the internal organization—killing a fifth-grade expert just like that.

"Flower Rain Pavilion..."

Chen Ran raised his eyes and moved his body; his skin and muscles emitted a sound like popping beans.

Warm currents of air wove through his flesh and blood.

On the surface of his skin, a faint metallic luster flashed.

Although his Realm remained at Minor Achievement, the foundation of this top-tier external-training technique had been completely solidified.

His Physical Body's defensive power had been raised to another level.

Li Luo belonged to the Flower Rain Pavilion organization, corresponding to a Copper Flower Assassin.

Above this, there were even more formidable Gold Flower and Silver Flower Assassins.

Chen Ran looked at the scenery outside the window and murmured to himself:

"I wonder if the top assassins of the Flower Rain Pavilion can compare to Martial Artists of the Upper Three Realms, and just how much of a position they hold within the Imperial Court?"