Chapter 279: Chapter 156: Slaying the Eighteen Bandits
The night was thick and dark. Only the road, paved with compacted yellow mud and stone, offered a faint glimmer of light.
An ordinary person would need a torch or a lantern to navigate in such conditions.
However, for Martial Artists who cultivated the Martial Dao, once their bodies were strengthened to a certain point, their sensory Perception Ability was far greater than that of an ordinary person.
Chen Cheng and Shen Qingyao could see the road clearly without needing torches.
The two of them sped along the mountain path, their steps as swift as the wind, even slightly faster than a galloping horse.
Chen Cheng and Shen Qingyao had accomplished a great deal at the Cold Crow Village Black Market, but it had taken them less than an hour.
It was just after nine in the evening, and with the Black Market not closing for another two or three hours, very few people were heading back to the city.
They sprinted the whole way without encountering a single soul, save for a few figures in black who had emerged from the Cold Crow Village Black Market and were tailing them from a distance.
However, those men clearly couldn’t match their pace and were soon left far behind.
Chen Cheng disliked traveling by night, especially when he knew they were being followed. He remained silent, carefully observing his surroundings the entire way.
Although Shen Qingyao was the young lady of a great family who typically remained within the walls of her estate and lacked real-world experience, she was still aware of the dangers of the Jianghu.
Outside Linji City, even with her strength at Small Success in the Bone Forging Realm, she dared not be careless and knew she had to proceed with caution.
She wasn’t accustomed to traveling at night at first, but she adapted quickly.
In terms of physical enhancement, a Bone Forging Realm Martial Artist was naturally extremely powerful, and their senses were several times sharper than those of a Muscle Strengthening Realm Martial Artist.
This was especially true for her, as she had already touched the threshold of a Realm and could sense the Power of Heaven and Earth Origin. Even in the pitch-black night, she could still clearly perceive everything within a radius of dozens of feet.
For her, traveling at night was almost no different from traveling during the day; she was barely any slower.
At first, she thought to accommodate Chen Cheng, a mere Small Success in Muscle Strengthening Realm Martial Artist. She deliberately slowed down, waited for him to catch up, and then gradually increased her pace.
However, she quickly discovered an astonishing fact: no matter how fast she went, Chen Cheng could always keep up.
Furthermore, his Perception Ability of his surroundings also seemed to be extremely keen.
After they had run for some time, Shen Qingyao stopped holding back and broke into an all-out sprint, yet Chen Cheng still kept pace.
This shocked her to her core. After all, she herself had progressed from the Muscle Strengthening Realm, so she knew full well the gap between it and the Bone Forging Realm.
When she had been at Small Success in the Muscle Strengthening Realm, she could never have moved at Chen Cheng’s speed in such darkness.
She couldn’t have done it even at Muscle Strengthening Realm Perfection.
’What kind of monster is this guy?’ Shen Qingyao finally couldn’t hold back any longer and asked, "Brother Chen, are you really just a Muscle Strengthening Realm Martial Artist?"
"I am," Chen Cheng replied calmly.
Shen Qingyao fell silent. As if holding back her frustration, she flared her Qi Blood Power and suddenly accelerated, quickly leaving Chen Cheng far behind.
Chen Cheng picked up his pace as well, but he couldn’t catch her.
Only then did Shen Qingyao breathe a sigh of relief. She slowed down again to travel alongside Chen Cheng.
’Good. At least he’s not faster than me.’ Shen Qingyao thought with a touch of smugness, refocusing her attention on the road ahead.
Chen Cheng saw it all and could only shake his head. ’This young lady of the Shen Family isn’t just intensely curious,’ he thought, ’she’s fiercely competitive, too!’
Truthfully, if he were alone, he could have gone even faster. He was only holding back so as not to completely dumbfound Shen Qingyao.
Lost in their own thoughts, the two traveled on in silence. Before long, they were near the Three Forks River, not far from the main road.
"HOO... COO... COO..."
"HOO... COO... COO..."
...
Suddenly, from the woods on a hill not far up the road, came a series of hoarse, strange bird calls.
They had heard plenty of such calls from a distance along the way. It seemed to be some kind of nocturnal bird, so they thought nothing of it.
Shen Qingyao paid it no mind and continued forward, but Chen Cheng suddenly darted ahead and tugged on her sleeve.
Ever vigilant, Shen Qingyao stopped at once, carefully observing and extending her senses.
She saw that the stretch of road next to the hill was quite open, with no cover on any side. It wasn’t a suitable place for bandits to lay an ambush.
The woods on the hill were dark and quiet, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary there either.
If anything was abnormal, it was only the hoarse, strange bird calls.
’What’s the difference between these calls and the others?’ Shen Qingyao suddenly frowned as it dawned on her.
The calls were indeed almost identical to the others she had heard on the road. The difference was that the other calls had been random and chaotic.
But the calls from the woods on the hill seemed to have a certain rhythm. To be precise, it was as if they were being used to send a signal, to communicate with accomplices.
Using bird calls to communicate on a pitch-black night was an exceptionally stealthy method—the work of bandits preparing an ambush.
Just then, the calls sounded again, this time with a different rhythm.
Neither of them understood the bandits’ code, so they had no way of knowing what it meant.
"Are there any Shen Family members nearby to provide backup?" Chen Cheng asked.
Shen Qingyao said, "My second uncle is at a manor in the Three Forks River area tonight."
"Then we fight!" Chen Cheng said, drawing the Long Saber from his waist. "Fire a Whistling Arrow to summon them."
"Right." Shen Qingyao was just as decisive, raising her hand and firing a Whistling Arrow into the sky.
