The Path Toward Heaven

Seeing these two strange figures wrapped in gray clothes, the middle-aged man felt a bit surprised, and he used his magic Discernment to check them out.

He found the taller man was a normal person, and the Cultivation state of the woman who spoke earlier was hard to determine, but judging from her young voice, how advanced a state could she be in?

“They are probably two low-level swordsmen who won’t dare show their faces.”

A disciple of the Sect of Three said, “The city guards issued a warning this morning; I think they are who the guards wanted.”

From Jing Jiu and Zhao Layue’s reaction, the middle-aged man was sure this speculation was actually correct, and so felt relaxed, though he soon he had a murderous idea.

The practitioners couldn’t kill people freely, even in the places like Chaonan City; but, if the individuals being killed had committed evil deeds themselves, who would care about them?

The middle-aged man gave up on the idea to ask for the drug, and said to Jing Jiu and Zhao Layue with a smile, “The biggest mistake you have made today is that you didn’t give the drug to those two monks in the Precious-Tree House.”

He then instructed his disciples in a serious tone, “Kill them, but don’t damage the drug.”

…

…

A few flying swords rose skywards, soon turning toward the narrow alley as they took aim at Zhao Layue.

As those flying swords got near he, they suddenly turned into countless sword shadows, blossoming like flowers and, and it was hard to identify which of them was the real sword.

This was the sword style of the Sect of Three, called the Three Flower Sword Style, famous for its unpredictability. For a regular practitioner, he would be pierced by the sword instantly if they weren’t well prepared.

Zhao Layue waved her hand, and the Thoughtless Sword came out from her sleeve, flying around her body at such an extremely high speed that one couldn’t see the sword itself at all, only a patch of red lines.

After a few clinking sounds, the flying swords fell down to the ground, breaking into pieces, with crisp ding! ding! echoing from the ground.

The swords of the disciples of the Sect of Three had all been destroyed, their Sword Hearts had been severely damaged as well; they all collapsed onto the ground, spitting up mouthfuls of fresh blood.

The Thoughtless Sword hovered quietly in front of Zhao Layue.

She didn’t know or try to figure out which sword shadow was the real sword, so she simply hacked down all of them, real and fake alike .

Sensing the hint of domination in the red flying sword, the middle-aged man was quite shocked, his expression ashen.

He had never felt such a dominating and overpowering intent of a flying sword, not even from his Sect Master’s sword!

Were they the rumored Magic Soldiers? Who were they actually?

…

…

Zhao Layue glanced at Jing Jiu.

At this moment, the distance between them and the people of the Sect of Three was less than thirty yards.

Within this distance, a person with the State of Inherited Sword should be able to drive his sword to attack the opponent.

“I haven’t killed anybody for a long time,” said Jing Jiu.

Zhao Layue asked, “Then were you doing when we first met?”

Jing Jiu knew that she didn’t mean the time he jumped in front of her, but the time he jumped in front of Zhuo Yi.

At the time he had just cut off the head of Zhuo Yi of Bihu Peak.

During their short exchange, the middle-aged man had come to his senses and pulled out his sword, ready to flee with his flying sword.

Realizing Jing Jiu wasn’t going to wield his sword, Zhao Layue pointed her right hand upwards, shaking her head.

The Thoughtless Sword flew out to the sky.

A flash of bloody red sword light illuminated the green trees on the sides of the alley.

The middle-aged man fell down from the sky, landing heavily on the ground in the alley as his head separated from his body, a pool of fresh blood pouring out from the neck cavity and spreading out on the ground.

The bright red sword light returned again before Zhao Layue like lighting.

Chop!!! Chop!!!

After a few chopping sounds in the alley, the disciples of the Sect of Three, who had suffered from painful wounds and blood loss, were relieved of their suffering, their heads rolling off their shoulders.

Zhao Layue walked to the side of those corpses, first scanning them with her Piercing Discernment, then crouching down to search for something on the bodies.

Jing Jiu enjoyed watching the scene, thinking this young girl was doing much better than he had in his own time.

The sword fire burst forth the Thoughtless Sword and fell onto these broken corpses, turning them to ash in seconds.

Suddenly, Jing Jiu thought what those colleagues in the Green Mountains, who saw Zhao Layue as a fairy girl, would think of her when they saw the scene.

It seemed she knew what Jing Jiu was thinking, “I don’t care how others see me,” she said.

Jing Jiu didn’t continue on with the subject, instead saying, “The sword fire can’t completely eliminate the marks and traces.”

The ash of the corpses was still visible, and the practitioners in the Cultivation circle had many methods for finding clues, like blood marks on the walls; some sects were good at connecting the two worlds, and could even use their magic methods to reconstruct the initial scene, which was the specialty of the Water-Moon Nunnery.

Zhao Layue said, “I don’t care about destroying the evidence; there are so many people living in this alley, what if the scene scared the little kids passing by?”

Killing without a second thought could be regarded as cold-hearted, and yet she still hadn’t ignored these details; did it mean she loved this world?

Jing Jiu thought this behavior was how Big Brother had acted in the past. “Do you know any famous hotpot restaurant in Chaonan City?” he asked without much thinking.

For hotpot, the most famous restaurants were all in Yizhou.

The hotpot flavor in Yizhou was spicy; the hotpot flavor in the north was different from Yizhou’s, using the sesame source as the main flavor, a good example being Western Guests Restaurant in Zhaoge City.

However, for the dwellers of Chaonan City, the best hotpot restaurant was the Prosperity Restaurant.

The style used at the Prosperity Restaurant was more like the flavors used in the north, where there was no instantly dried soft meat, which Zhao Layue wasn’t quite happy about that. She only ordered seven plates of freshly sliced lamb mutton that she liked most since she was a little kid.

As usual, Jing Jiu threw in a few green vegetables in the soup, which only contained water the way he liked.

There was an unattractive mud temple on a remote street, not far from the Prosperity Restaurant.

The two monk doctors of the Fruit Formation Temple had been staying in it for a long time.

At the moment, the old monk was dazed while looking at the box in his hands.

The smell told him that the item in the box was the Sedative Icy Pills he needed most right now, without even opening the box.

The young monk felt a chill go up his spine when thinking of the sword light bringing the medicine box to the mud temple earlier. “Senior Master, should we report it to the local government?” he asked.

Shaking his head, the old monk said, “We are colleagues in Cultivation.”

Having heard what the old monk said, the young monk was a bit startled before finally regaining his senses. “Are they the Cultivation friends from the Green Mountain?” asked the young monk uncertainly.

The old monk nodded in confirmation.

Thinking of what had transpired at the Precious-Tree House and the guests in the room on the seventh floor, who could easily contribute a Xuancao Pill, the young monk commented happily, “The Chaonan City is so close to the Green Mountain, but the Sect of Three dares to be confrontational; are they not afraid to die?”

Judging from the sword light, the old monk had already figured out who sent them the drug. He couldn’t help but shake his head when he heard what the young monk had just said, thinking, You are wrong; the Green Mountain Sect always restrained themselves in confrontations.

“And what about how Liu Shisui is doing?”

Recalling the battle scene where he and the disciples of the Green Mountain Sect fought shoulder to shoulder in the Muddy River a few days ago, the young monk said sentimentally, “Though he is younger than I am, as someone with natural Dao quality, Liu acted much better than I did. He was so calm and determined when facing that big demon; it was indeed admirable.”

“The calmness comes from courage, something our Cultivation friends of the Green Mountain never lack,” said the old monk casually.

The young monk said with a worried expression, “How come he passed out in the end? I checked over and over again, and still couldn’t find where the injury came from.”

Suddenly, they heard noises outside the mud temple.

The front door of the temple was pushed open as a middle-aged man in official uniform, followed by a dozen soldiers who were trying to block the spectators from coming inside.