Chapter 330: The Fight of Love and Thread
Lu Maoxian had no idea who had crept into his room and attacked him. He was just about to open his mouth and shout for help when the Tang saber turned its blade and gave him another slash.
Ever since the Pocket Dwelling had changed its temper, it had developed a very strange habit. Whatever place Li Banfeng pictured in his mind, he would find himself there the moment he stepped out the door.
It was a terrible nuisance. This time, however, Li Banfeng actually managed to make good use of this troublesome little habit.
Before stepping out, he had stared and stared at Lu Maoxian's bedroom. He had looked at every corner, every furnishing, every last shadow in the room until the whole place was packed inside his head. Then he opened the door and stepped through. And sure enough, there he was, standing inside Lu Maoxian's bedroom.
A Homebound Cultivator who had just left his home was very easily overlooked. And since Lu Maoxian was weak, the Tang Saber easily slashed and injured him.
Lu Maoxian cried out, "To attack without declaring war is utterly un..."
Li Banfeng appeared before him and sliced open his throat.
He would have liked nothing better than to drag Lu Maoxian back into the Portable Residence and question him slowly. Unfortunately, he could not get back in. The key was still in Blackstone City.
And so Lu Maoxian, the Grand Old Master of the Lu family and quite a fearsome figure in his day, clutched his throat, twitched and struggled for a few moments, and died right there in his own bedroom.
What a pity. Not for Lu Maoxian, of course. The real pity was the good meal that his Wifey could have gotten.
Li Banfeng did not stay. This was Lu Maoxian's estate, and he had to leave at once.
He had come carrying a whole pile of enchanted artifacts, expecting a proper, bloody, tooth-and-nail sort of fight. As it turned out, Lu Maoxian had already been badly wounded and could barely fight back.
Everyone in the house had been sent away, which made leaving very easy.
Yet one little question still pricked at Li Banfeng's mind. What exactly had Lu Maoxian been trying to keep me there for?
After leaving the estate, Li Banfeng headed back to Freewind Wharf. From what he could guess, Lu Maoxian had held him back because someone wanted Ma Wu dead.
When Li Banfeng reached the area near Freewind Wharf, he stopped.
It was a little past eight at night. The gas lanterns at the entrance of the Freewind Wharf were shining bright, people were coming and going, and business was bubbling away nicely.
To the east of Freewind Wharf stood White Poplar Teahouse. At this hour, the teahouse should have been just as bright, just as noisy, and just as full of customers spending money they probably should have kept in their pockets. However, the teahouse was closed.
Freewind Wharf was still open for business, which proved that nothing had happened to Ma Wu.
Of course, a closed teahouse was not exactly a shocking thing. Perhaps they were cleaning or renovating the place. But after everything that had happened today, Li Banfeng could not help thinking of another possibility.
Someone had booked out the whole teahouse and was using it to watch Freewind Wharf.
They tried to keep me at Blackstone Slope. At the same time, Ma Wu is being watched. So who's the real target?
Li Banfeng asked the Glove, "Who do you think it is?"
The Glove panted for a while before saying, "WHO? NOT ME! YOU NEED EVIDENCE TO CATCH A THIEF!"
"Why are you panting like that?"
"Am I panting? Maybe I moved too fast just now!"
"Asking you is a waste of breath. I might as well ask them."
Li Banfeng approached the teahouse without making a sound. Then he took out the music box and wound it up.
***
At Lu Chunying's home, Lu Maoxian's daughter, Lu Dongchun, and his son, Lu Dongtang, had already stormed into the living room with a pack of assassins behind them.
Lu Chunying was not there. Instead, there was only one person sitting on the sofa.
It was Duan Shaoxia, Lu Dongliang's wife.
Now what in the world was she doing here?
This whole nasty business was supposed to be blamed on her. If she was sitting right in front of them, alive and breathing and ruining everything, what were they supposed to pin the blame on her?
Lu Dongtang froze.
Lu Dongchun, on the other hand, did not hesitate. She gave the order to kill at once.
Kill her!
Afterward, they could say the two branches of the family had fallen into a bloody feud, and that Duan Shaoxia and Lu Chunying had both died in the fighting. It made sense!
As far as Lu Dongtang knew, Duan Shaoxia was a Bleater and killing her wouldn't be hard.
Duan Shaoxia slowly lifted her head and looked around at each of them. There was a faint shimmer of tears in her eyes.
For one brief moment, almost everyone hesitated. The assassins suddenly felt, for no very sensible reason, that they should not hurt this poor woman.
Lu Dongchun felt no such nonsense. With a flick of her hand, she sent a dozen sewing needles flying straight at Duan Shaoxia.
Duan Shaoxia did not dodge. She remained seated on the sofa, her face pale with fear and grievance, yet held together by a stubborn bit of courage that looked as if it might crack at any moment.
The sewing needles never reached her.
Two flower vases came crashing down from the staircase on the second floor. They landed before Duan Shaoxia like a pair of loyal guards and blocked every single needle.
The vases shattered. Porcelain shards burst across the hall, and several men charging at the front were cut by the flying pieces.
It's Zuo Wugang! He's hiding behind the railing on the second floor, Lu Dongtang thought. He stared at the scene, unable to make sense of it. The Madam is the bait on the first floor, while the Support Hook is fighting from the second? What sort of arrangement is this?
More vases came crashing down one after another, and the assassins were forced to retreat.
Lu Dongchun did not back away.
A shard of porcelain struck her face and seemed to lodge itself in her flesh. She plucked it out calmly. A wound now hung across her cheek, but not a single drop of blood came out, and there was not the slightest trace of pain on her delicate face.
Lu Dongtang leaped up to the second floor to deal with Zuo Wugang.
Lu Dongchun continued attacking Duan Shaoxia.
Duan Shaoxia pulled out a pistol and gripped the handle with both hands. She aimed it at Lu Dongchun, trembling so badly that the barrel wobbled in the air. From the look on her face, she wanted to pull the trigger, yet did not quite have the courage.
To anyone watching, she seemed like a pitiful woman driven into a corner and making one final attempt to fight back.
The assassins hesitated again. They could not decide whether they really should attack Duan Shaoxia.
Lu Dongchun did not hesitate, and she certainly was not afraid of bullets.
After Duan Shaoxia fired, however, Lu Dongchun regretted her decision.
What came out of Duan Shaoxia's pistol was not a bullet. It was oil.
The weapon was shaped like a pistol, but it worked more like a squirt gun. With one pull of the trigger, it spat out a thick splash of oil.
Oil was terribly rare in Puluo Province because it was terribly difficult to store.
The oil actually made Lu Dongchun terrified. She reached for her clothes, desperate to tear them off, but Duan Shaoxia, with tears still shining in her eyes, snatched up a candlestick and hurled it at her.
It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. A helpless woman fighting for her life would throw whatever she could get her hands on.
Lu Dongchun's clothes were soaked with oil. The moment the candlestick struck her, they caught fire.
Catching fire was not the end of the world. Lu Dongchun had ways to deal with it.
She tore off her outer robe, but the oil had already seeped into the shirt beneath it, and that was still burning.
She stripped off the outermost shirt, only to find that the oil had seeped into the second shirt as well. That one was burning too.
One after another, Lu Dongchun took off more than a dozen shirts before the flames finally went out.
Oil should not have soaked through that quickly. Even if some special ingredient had been mixed into it, it still should not have spread through Lu Dongchun's clothes at such a dreadful speed.
Lu Dongchun looked at Duan Shaoxia with an expressionless face. "You are a cultivator. This is your ability."
With tears still in her eyes, Duan Shaoxia shook her head again and again.
She was only a weak woman. How could a weak woman like her possibly have any abilities?
Up on the second floor, Lu Chunying was hiding and watching the whole dreadful scene. She leaned closer to Xiao Yeci and lowered her voice. "Mom, what level of cultivation does she have?"
Xiao Yeci looked completely lost. She shook her head as well. Madam Duan was very strange today and Xiao Yeci could not understand her at all.
Meanwhile, the second floor had turned into a proper little battlefield. Lu Dongtang had brought a crowd of men with him, and they were now fighting Zuo Wugang and the other support hooks in a furious mess of fists, blades, crashing furniture, and very bad decisions.
The situation on the first floor was much simpler.
Lu Dongchun was fighting Duan Shaoxia one-on-one, and not a single one of the assassins stepped forward to help. In fact, when Duan Shaoxia used her ability, even Lu Dongjun could not quite bring himself to strike her.
However, Lu Dongchun could do it and she was quite vicious. Her sleeves and lapels stretched and shrank in the strangest, nastiest ways. Several times, they nearly coiled around Duan Shaoxia's neck and strangled her on the spot.
Duan Shaoxia barely managed to hold on. She clutched a pair of scissors, eyes squeezed shut, stabbing and slashing as if she had lost all sense. Yet every wild little thrust went straight for a vital point.
By now, Lu Dongchun was covered in wounds, but none of them slowed her down. Blades, fists, kicks, and cuts all seemed useless against her.
Before long, she forced Duan Shaoxia into a corner.
There was only a little oil left in the pistol. With tears streaming down her face, Duan Shaoxia fired it. She missed.
Lu Dongchun had fallen for Duan Shaoxia's trick once before. She was not about to be fooled a second time.
Duan Shaoxia was trembling all over, and there was nowhere left for her to run.
Lu Dongchun removed one of her garments. It rose into the air as if it had a wicked little life of its own, then flew straight toward Duan Shaoxia and dropped over her head.
"Ah!" Duan Shaoxia cried out.
She flailed her arms with all her might, looking every bit like a helpless woman making one last, useless struggle.
Two silk threads shot out from the garment and landed in Lu Dongchun's hands. Lu Dongchun pulled hard, ready to tighten the cloth around Duan Shaoxia's head.
If she managed to pull it tight, Duan Shaoxia's head would be crushed into pulp.
Riiip!
The garment tore apart. Duan Shaoxia broke free!
Lu Dongchun's face remained expressionless, but her eyes opened very wide.
She was shocked. Her garment should not have torn so easily.
As the shredded cloth fluttered in the air, Lu Dongchun saw several tiny black holes in it.
Her pupils shrank. She quickly lowered her head and looked at the clothes on her own body.
Then she retreated several steps in a flash, reacting as if she had caught fire all over again.
To Lu Dongchun, the current situation was even more dangerous than fire.
Tiny black holes had appeared all over her clothes, and something was wriggling inside them.
Clothgnawers!
Clothgnawers were a kind of tiny cloth-eating insect. The garment had torn because these clothgnawers had eaten through it.
Lu Dongchun hurriedly stripped off several more layers, but it did no good. The little beasts had already burrowed deep.
Where had the clothgnawers come from? It was all because of Lu Yuanxin. Lu Yuanxin was a level-three Entomic Cultivator, and he was hiding on the second floor, controlling the swarm.
From the moment he saw Lu Dongchun, he had been calling every clothgnawers nearby. These bugs ate quickly, but they did not move quickly. That was why Duan Shaoxia had kept fighting Lu Dongchun. She had not been trying to win. She had been luring Lu Dongchun closer to the bugs.
Now, with Lu Yuanxin urging them on, the clothgnawers were chewing through Lu Dongchun's clothes like a pack of starving little demons.
Lu Dongchun held out for a short while, then leaped through the window and fled.
To anyone else, a few holes on the clothes might have seemed silly. To Lu Dongchun, they were fatal.
Once Lu Dongchun fled, Lu Dongtang began to panic.
According to their original plan, Lu Dongchun was supposed to handle every unexpected situation in the fight. She should have defeated Duan Shaoxia and it should have been an easy win, but she failed. Now that she had suddenly ran off, Lu Dongtang and Zuo Wugang were left locked in a brutal head-on fight.
And a head-on fight was exactly what Zuo Wugang liked best. It meant he did not have to think and make decisions.
Lu Dongtang and Zuo Wugang were about equal in cultivation, but Zuo Wugang had spent his whole life rolling along the edge of a blade. Zhen Jincheng and Cao Zhida had also earned their names through real fighting. When it came to experience, they had the upper hand.
The fight fell into a stalemate, and with every exchange, Lu Dongtang found himself fighting harder and suffering more.
On the first floor, Duan Shaoxia wept at the assassins. "How could you? How dare you?"
The assassins stood there in a fog of confusion. Then they saw Duan Shaoxia's gaze suddenly sharpen, as if a shadow had flashed past her eyes.
A shadow had indeed flashed past.
Duan Shaoxia saw it, but most of the assassins did not. The moment the shadow vanished, the hall erupted with a series of wet, awful sounds. Several assassins burst apart, their bodies exploding into chunks of mangled flesh and blood.
It was the ability of Passing Flowers on Horseback.
Li Banfeng had arrived.
After dealing with the pack of small fry at White Poplar Teahouse, Li Banfeng wrung the truth out of them. He first sent word to Ma Wu and told him to gather reinforcements, then rushed straight to Lu Chunying's house.
He went quickly up to the second floor and brought Xiao Yeci and Lu Chunying into the bedroom. Then he led them to the window.
Xiao Yeci's face lit up with surprise. "Benefactor, you came. My daughter and I owe you far too much."
Li Banfeng raised a hand, telling them to keep quiet.
His eyes remained fixed on the scene outside the window, and he had already prepared the ability of Severing Paths to Forge a Way.
However, there was still a chance that things would go wrong. A very high chance.
It wouldn't be difficult to handle these assassins. The troublesome part was the other people who had already arrived outside the courtyard.
Where had they come from?
***
The assassins on the first floor stared at the shattered corpses on the ground and went white with fear.
Some of them had seen the level-five Wanderlust Cultivator ability before. They knew this was Passing Flowers on Horseback.
A level-five Wanderlust Cultivator ability consumed a dreadful amount of strength. If the enemy dared to use it so freely, then his cultivation had to be far above theirs.
Upon encountering such a situation, the assassins no longer wanted to fight. One after another, they rushed out of the house.
They managed to get out of the building, but they did not manage to get out of the courtyard.
Zhang Xiuling, the sect master of Hundred Flowers Sect, had already arrived with her people and surrounded the estate.
She gave a simple order. Anyone who came out of the building was to be killed without exception.
The assassins who fled the building did not get far. Zhang Xiuling cleaned them up so thoroughly that not a single one escaped.
Then Zhang Xiuling called from the entrance, "Sister, I am here! Should I come in now? Say something!"
Duan Shaoxia cried back, "Sister, come quickly! These beasts are trying to kill me!"
Li Banfeng frowned. So Zhang Xiuling came for Duan Shaoxia.
Zhang Xiuling led her people into the estate, and the sight of them nearly scared the soul out of Lu Dongtang. The situation had already turned against him. Now even their numbers were against him.
Lu Dongtang wanted to run. Running, however, was no longer such a simple thing.
Zuo Wugang seized the chance and kicked him to the floor. Then he planted a foot on Lu Dongtang and pinned him down.
The remaining assassins stopped fighting at once. Not one of them dared to move.
Duan Shaoxia called out, "Chunying, come out. I have something to say to you."
Zuo Wugang froze.
The room was full of people from the Hundred Flowers Sect now, yet he had no idea when Madam Duan had formed ties with them.
Xiao Yeci wrapped both arms around Lu Chunying. "Nan'nan, you cannot go out."
Lu Chunying looked at Li Banfeng.
Li Banfeng asked, "Do you dare?"
Lu Chunying was silent for a long while. Then she lifted her head. "If I fight, I only have to fight this once. If I run, I will spend the rest of my life running. Since Big Bro Qi is here, I dare."
Li Banfeng lowered the brim of his hat. "Then go."
Author's Note:
PS: Back at Lu Maoxian's home, Lu Dongtang had humiliated and shamed Lu Yuanxin.
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