Great Li Martial God

Cang Yinyue, Shen Anran, and the others listened to the conversation in the tavern, all showing unusual expressions.

Taken together with everything they had heard on the road, the situation between the Three-Sect Alliance and the Great Li court was genuinely not looking optimistic.

It was quite possible that before long, an open war between the martial world and the court would officially begin, and it was easy to foresee that the four nations surrounding Great Li would not pass up an opportunity like this.

As evidence, the fact that Great Xuan had abruptly moved additional troops into Gaoyuan City was already a clear statement of the Great Xuan court’s intentions.

”Your Highness does not seem particularly worried about Great Li’s current situation?” Shen Anran’s gaze shifted toward Li Musheng, who looked completely at ease.

Li Musheng shook his head and said, ”Miss Shen, what kind of question is that? I am not the Great Li emperor. Why would I worry about any of this?”

As he said this, his gaze fell on the map spread open on the table, checking over the planned route they had marked out and calculating the time it would take to reach the Great Xuan capital.

At that moment, Cao Gaoshan beside them hesitated for a moment and then suddenly spoke, ”Your Highness, this humble servant has a small personal matter and may need to request half a day’s leave.”

At those words, Cang Yinyue and Shen Anran both looked at him with some puzzlement.

But Li Musheng waved a hand and said, ”He is on the verge of breaking into the Heaven-Human Realm. He needs half a day of closed cultivation.”At those words, Cang Yinyue and Shen Anran showed a flash of surprise, and immediately offered their congratulations to Cao Gaoshan, ”Congratulations, Master Cao.”

Cao Gaoshan rubbed the back of his head, looking a bit embarrassed, ”It is entirely thanks to Your Highness’s guidance over these past days. Without it, even if I spent ten or twenty years on my own, I doubt I could ever have reached this point.”

Li Musheng glanced at him, said nothing further, and simply told him to prepare for seclusion as soon as possible so he could push through to the new realm and they could continue on their way.

Cao Gaoshan agreed, finished his meal quickly, then requested a quiet room in the tavern to attempt his breakthrough into the Heaven-Human Realm.

The big black cat watched Cao Gaoshan walk away, its green eyes rolling. A coachman who simply traveled alongside Li Musheng could gain benefits this extraordinary.

Thinking of the opportunity it would encounter at White Emperor City on this trip, the gains it stood to receive were probably going to be even greater.

With that thought, the big black cat let out a pleased meow and immediately trotted after Cao Gaoshan, intending to see for itself whether there was anything particularly special about breaking into the Heaven-Human Realm.

But at that very moment, a burst of noise suddenly erupted from the street outside the tavern. A flash of blade light swept through, cutting clean through the tavern’s main door and splitting it in two.

This gave quite a fright to a number of the patrons in the main hall, and they immediately scrambled to their feet and backed away.

Even so, there were some martial world figures among the patrons who darkened their expressions, grabbed their blades and swords, and stalked toward the broken door with fury on their faces.

”Who dares disturb this master’s enjoyment?”

But the person had barely reached the doorway before the words were out, and then their entire body went flying backward, slamming through a row of tables and chairs and leaving them in splinters. The man crashed to the floor and coughed up several mouthfuls of blood, his eyes wide with terror.

Before long, two young people, a man and a woman, walked in through the shattered tavern entrance.

Both were dressed in black close-fitted garb, their faces radiating a cold and killing air, and each was carrying a freshly severed, blood-soaked human head.

”Those are Great Xuan bounty hunters!” someone in the tavern recognized them and cried out in alarm.

At that, the two young people swept their gaze across the main hall, and their eyes eventually settled on the table where Li Musheng’s group sat and another table in a corner of the hall.

In the wake of what had just happened, most of the other patrons in the hall had either fled or scattered. Only these two tables had remained completely unmoved throughout.

Before long, the two hunters pulled their gazes away from Li Musheng’s table and walked with their severed heads toward the table in the corner.

”I cannot exactly keep eating after this,” Li Musheng said with some exasperation, getting to his feet.

With two human heads now present in the main hall, the smell of blood was thick, and the floor was already smeared with it, making any desire to continue eating entirely unthinkable.

With that, Li Musheng prepared to go upstairs.

He had no particular interest in making trouble for the two young hunters either. Violence was a constant of life in the martial world, and looking the other way was usually the most sensible approach.

Seeing this, Shen Anran and Cang Yinyue also got up to leave, equally uninterested in getting tangled up in whatever was happening.

But they had barely risen from their seats when the two young bounty hunters, who had been heading toward the corner table, suddenly stopped in their tracks.

Then both their heads tilted simultaneously to one side and dropped to the floor. In an instant, blood came gushing from their necks, spraying in every direction, and the thick smell of it flooded the entire main hall.

What had been a perfectly ordinary tavern was now like some chamber of bloody horror.

Shen Anran and Cang Yinyue both frowned and swept their eyes around the room. Every other patron in the hall was fleeing in terror, yet they could see no sign of whoever had acted.

And so the two of them looked almost instinctively toward the lone figure sitting at the corner table.

That figure had their head lowered and was simply eating and drinking on their own, looking entirely unassuming. Even with everything that had just happened in the hall, they seemed to have noticed nothing at all, not having glanced up even once throughout.

Shen Anran and Cang Yinyue exchanged a look, then followed Li Musheng’s lead and headed upstairs, having no inclination to involve themselves further.

At the same time, the figure at the corner table finally set down their chopsticks, and cast an almost imperceptible glance at the departing Shen Anran and Cang Yinyue.

At that moment, two black-robed elders came rushing in from outside the tavern, and came immediately to stand before the person at the corner table, both clasping their hands and dropping to one knee, ”Your servant arrived too late. We await our lord’s punishment.”

At those words, the person raised a fair and composed face. Those eyes, faintly tinged with flickers of blood-red light, looked over the two elders, and he said flatly, ”Two insignificant insects. Not worth mentioning.”

As he said this, the man narrowed his eyes slightly, ”What I want to know right now is how our whereabouts were leaked. Why did the Great Xuan bounty hunters know we were here?”

At those words, the two black-robed elders exchanged a glance, but in the end both shook their heads, ”We do not know how this happened either. We only reported our movements to the Cult Master. Under normal circumstances the information should not have been leaked.”

The man said nothing, and after a moment of silence, asked, ”Is the item still here?”

”It is.”

One of the black-robed elders spoke while reaching into his own robes, saying in a low voice, ”These bounty hunters do not seem to have come for the item. They seem to have come for us.”

But in the next instant, the black-robed elder’s expression changed sharply. He withdrew his hand from his robes and found it completely empty.

”The item... where is it?”

”I was certain I put it right here...”

The elder immediately plunged his hand back into his robes and searched frantically, but came up with nothing.

The item he had described was evidently already gone.

At the sight, the man at the table stood, his eyes going ice-cold with killing intent, while the other black-robed elder quickly offered, ”Could it have fallen out while we were fighting?”

But the first elder shook his head, reaching into his robes again in disbelief and searching just as thoroughly as before, still finding nothing.

Facing the man’s glacial stare, the elder’s forehead broke out in a cold sweat, and he began frantically recalling everything that had happened before.

Eventually something seemed to come to him, and his expression shifted into one of sudden realization, ”I remember now. It was the little beggar child. That little beggar must have stolen it.”

Before they arrived at the tavern, a beggar had suddenly come crashing into them on the street.

At the time, they had been focused on dealing with the bounty hunters, and had dealt with the beggar with a casual palm that sent them flying, giving no further thought to it.

Thinking back on it now, the elder realized that what had been in his robes had most likely been taken by that beggar at the moment of collision.

”If you know where it went missing, why are you not already out there finding it?”

The man’s eyes went dark, and he swept a cold look over the two elders, ”If anything happens to that item, ten of your heads would not be enough to pay for it.”

At those words, the two black-robed elders immediately acknowledged the order without daring to hesitate for even a moment, and rushed out of the tavern as fast as they could.

Seeing them go, the man seemed to feel uneasy, glanced back in the direction Shen Anran and the others had gone, and immediately followed as well, vanishing from the main hall in the blink of an eye.

Not long after the three of them left, a slight figure dropped silently from the tavern’s rooftop, landing on the street in front of the building.

Then a little beggar, face filthy and clothes tattered and falling apart, sauntered into the tavern’s main hall with complete ease.

After what had played out just now, the main hall was essentially empty. All that remained were two headless bodies, four heads rolling on the floor, and a ground smeared with blood.

”So violent. So cruel.”

The small beggar clasped both hands behind their back, shaking their head as they picked their way across the blood-stained floor, then came to stand at the table where the man had been sitting.

The beggar looked over the food and dishes for a moment, seeming to commit the varieties to memory, then picked up the half-finished wine pot from the table.

Without bothering with a cup, they tipped it directly into their mouth and drank.

When the last of the wine was gone, the small beggar wiped the corner of their mouth, then reached into their own clothes.

But in the next instant, their expression went abruptly still, and both hands began rummaging frantically through their clothing.

”Wait. Where is my stuff?”

The small beggar pulled their collar open and practically stuck their grimy head inside, but in the end came up completely empty.

”It was right there a moment ago. How can it be gone already?”

The beggar’s face fell sharply. Pulling their head back out from their collar, they immediately seemed to realize something, and jumped to their feet, sweeping a vigilant look around the entire main hall.

But they found no one there, and sensed nothing out of the ordinary.

The small beggar furrowed their brow, scratched their head, and tried hard to recall just where the item had gone.

And then they turned around, and nearly jumped out of their skin.

A young stranger was standing right behind them at some unknown point, and that person’s hand was holding the very item the beggar had stolen, turning it over and examining it with leisurely interest.

”You... you you...”

The small beggar was thoroughly startled, pointing at Li Musheng, unable to get a full sentence out.

And in the very next moment, without pausing for even an instant, the beggar spun around and bolted.

It was obvious that the small beggar understood that someone who could appear behind them without a sound was not someone they could afford to tangle with. Running first was the only way to keep their life.

In an instant, the beggar was gone from the spot, splitting into more than ten afterimages as they burst out of the tavern and vanished in every direction, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

About half a pot of tea’s worth of time later, a blurred figure wove in utter silence through the pedestrians on the street, with no one around them noticing in the slightest.

At last, the small beggar’s form materialized in a deserted back alley. Their grimy face was bright red, and they were breathing hard.

They poked their head out from the alley and looked back the way they had come, and seeing nothing unusual, no one in pursuit, they let out a long, heavy breath and simply slumped to the ground.

That escape had taken everything they had, and they needed to rest properly.

”Where did that person even come from? Absolutely terrifying.”

The small beggar muttered through clenched teeth. Then they raised their head, and every expression on their face froze solid.

”You...”

The small beggar’s eyes widened slowly, staring at Li Musheng standing before them, unable to form a single word.

And very quickly, a feeling of helpless dread rose within them.

The person had clearly set their eyes on them, and more to the point, they had run with everything they had and the person had still caught up.

That meant there was no escaping this person’s grasp. They were completely at the other’s mercy.

And in the next moment, there was a sudden thud.

The small beggar dropped to their knees before Li Musheng without any warning, grabbed his feet with both hands, and began crying and wailing, ”Please have mercy, my lord. I know I was wrong. I will never do it again.”

”Please do not kill me. I can wash clothes, cook meals, I will do anything...”

The small beggar cried and shouted as they clung to Li Musheng’s feet like a stray dog, their voice pitifully wretched, looking thoroughly miserable.

Li Musheng looked down at them, his eyelid giving a small twitch, and asked, ”Tell me what you did wrong.”

At those words, the beggar’s wailing came to an abrupt halt.

”Hmm? What did I do wrong?”

Something stirred in the small beggar’s mind.

They did not know the person standing over them, had not stolen anything from them, and the person did not seem to know the group the beggar had stolen from either.

Unless...

This person was one of those self-righteous ”heroes” from the martial world who went around sticking their noses into other people’s business and fancied themselves dispensers of justice.

Curse it. Of all the people she hated most in her life, that kind was at the very top of the list.

With that thought, the small beggar immediately resumed their crying at full force, wailing, ”I should never have stolen anything. I am guilty. I repent...”

”Please take pity on me, my lord. I have an eighty-year-old mother to support and hungry children at home. I was truly desperate and out of options when I committed this terrible, terrible act...”

”This was the first time I have ever done anything like this. I swear I will never do it again...”