Where is Our Agreement to be Each Other’s Arch-Rivals?

Su Yang’s first reaction was: “How were you able to find this place? How did you know I was here?”

Lan Wu replied, “Lan Hall is responsible for intelligence work. This subordinate is required to know all trends of the Jianghu people in Meizhu Town. It’s just that……those who are aware that you’re here aren’t just this subordinate. Wujiangmen and Eluo Ghost Tent will soon learn that you are in Meizhu Town.” 

Gu Feidi frowned first before Su Yang could react. He asked: “Wujiangmen and Eluo Ghost Tent?”

Lan Wu threw a glimpse at Gu Feidi but didn’t respond to him. He raised his head to look up at Su Yang: “Young Saint, the Jianghu is undergoing unceasing waves of turmoil. Once Wujiangmen and Eluo Ghost Tent realise that you’re here, I fear they will come and inconvenience you for fabricating the Sword Sage Legacy. Why don’t you follow this subordinate and go somewhere else to stay, so that we may better protect you.”

Su Yang didn’t want to be separated from Gu Feidi and immediately declined without a second thought: “I’m alright here. They are all from Lesser Jade House, why wouldn’t they be able to protect me? Don’t worry.”

Lan Wu was speechless for a moment and then advised: “Young Saint, you… it’s inappropriate for you to be fraternising with Tengyun Pavilion’s Young Pavilion Master day and night. There are many in the Sect who are dissatisfied with this and they have entreated the Sect Leader to bring you back to the Sect.”

“How is it inappropriate for me to be together with him?” Su Yang frowned. “He’d already followed me back to our headquarters. Sect Leader has met with him and hasn’t said that there’s anything inappropriate.”

Lan Wu glanced at Gu Feidi again: ” Currently, Tengyun Pavilion has assembled all the forces of the Martial Arts circles and plans to annihilate our Sect. The circumstances now are different than they were.”

Gu Feidi raised his eyebrows: “I’ve rebelled against Tengyun Pavilion. You mean to say that although you’re from Lan Hall——who’s responsible for intelligence work——, you aren’t aware of this matter?”

Lan Wu laughed scornfully and said: “It’s precisely owing to the fact that you’ve rebelled, once everyone in Tengyun Pavilion finds out that you’ve showed up here, they’ll definitely come to look for you. Young Saint will be at risk of being captured by Tengyun Pavilion if he’s together with you. That’s why we want Young Saint to go back.”

Gu Feidi smiled: “But earlier you said that you feared Wujiangmen and Ghost Tent would come to trouble him using the excuse of the Sword Sage Legacy?”

Lan Wu: “Circumstances at the moment are chaotic and Young Saint’s situation dangerous. Regardless of the reason, he shouldn’t be involved with your Tengyun Pavilion!”

Gu Feidi still felt that this matter was fishy. He narrowed his eyes and met Su Yang’s gaze, “Since you don’t trust me, why do you dare to come alone and persuade him to leave with you. Aren’t you afraid that we will collude and kill you here?”

Lan Wu remained silent.

The room was extremely quiet for a while. There was only the wine jug beside Lan Wu’s hand which exuded an indistinct aroma of wine. The scent lingered in the room and it smelled like vintage wine.

After a long time, Lan Wu raised his eyes to look at Gu Feidi. A strange smile slowly curled up from the corners of his mouth.

All of a sudden, he raised his wrist and the crossbow within his sleeve made a clear ‘click’ sound. An arrow shot out—not at Gu Feidi. Instead it was whizzed directly at Su Yang’s face!

Gu Feidi’s gaze focused and he raised his hand to draw out his sword to block the arrow, but he didn’t know why his arm abruptly weakened and he wasn’t able to do so.

Luckily, Su Yang had a sense of uneasiness when Lan Wu raised his hand, so he used his Prized Flower Steps and avoided the arrow.

The arrow scraped past the hair near his ear and struck the window ledge forcefully. Only then did Su Yang discern a muted but irritating smell from the body of the arrow——the arrow had been soaked in poison!

Flames of fury burst from his eyes. He drew out his thin sword from his waist, ruthlessly drove it into Lan Wu’s chest and immediately nailed him against the wall without any loss of momentum.

Lan Wu spat out a mouthful of blood and fell unconscious, slumping his head onto Su Yang’s thin sword.

Su Yang also didn’t bother to check if Lan Wu was actually dead. He hurriedly turned around and held Gu Feidi’s hand anxiously, “Did it graze you?”

Gu Feidi shook his head and strained to withstand the giddiness in his head. He clenched his fists, looked at Su Yang and said, “The wine jug is the problem, handle that first…”

Su Yang’s body harbored Half Withered Red and he didn’t detect any abnormalities. He only reacted after hearing Gu Feidi’s words. Gu Feidi, Chi Tong and Luo Yin weren’t able to act in time because they’d already been poisoned.

He instantly picked up the jug, flung open the window with his palm and hurled it out. Then he used his palm air currents to dispel the faintly discernible strange wine aroma that lingered in the room.

After that, he leaned over to hold Gu Feidi’s palm and manoeuvred Half Withered Red to help him quell the poisonous gas he’d inhaled.

Gu Feidi patted the back of his hand, “No matter, I can slowly resolve this poison myself. Don’t misuse your internal strength…”

Su Yang obstinately assisted him to dispel all the residual poison in his body and said in a low voice: “I’m fine. It’s just that I didn’t expect that he was here to kill me… Tsk, I shouldn’t trust the integrity of those from the Devil Sect! They no longer regard me as the Young Saint just because I ran with you!”

Gu Feidi kept quiet and it wasn’t clear what he was pondering about.

Su Yang thought he wasn’t very energetic due to being poisoned, so he didn’t disturb him. Instead, he helped Chi Tong and Luo Yin expel the poison. When he saw that none of their lives had been jeopardised, he let out a sigh of relief.

“There must be an ulterior motive for those from the Devil Sect to come and assassinate you.” Gu Feidi said, “We should search his body to see if there are any leads…”

Su Yang felt it was justified and nodded.

Gu Feidi turned and was about to go ahead when he was stopped by Su Yang again.

“You don’t move, I’ll go search him.” He said, “That guy’s wine jar and crossbow arrow were poisoned. We don’t know if his body has poisonous powder or something… it’ll be safer if I do it.”

After speaking, he began to move over and examine Lan Wu, who was still nailed against the wall by the thin sword, but was stopped by a voice from the door.

“Don’t approach!” Luo Yu shouted in a deep voice, “He’s not dead yet——Ah Yue, get him!”

In the span of these two short sentences, Lan Wu, who was originally hanging motionless on the wall, sprang up violently in an instant. He backhandedly pulled out the thin sword, seized the chance to raise up a handful of fine powder and turned to flee out the window.

Qin Jianyue’s martial arts was truly enigmatic. He used his palm air current to disperse away all the airborne powder and swiftly pinned Lan Wu to the ground. He immediately unhinged his lower jaw and extracted a poison-filled molar from his mouth and removed another two packets of poison powder from his person…as well as Qianfeng Villa‘s wooden token.

Lan Wu’s jaw had been unhinged and he was unable to speak. When he noticed that the Qianfeng Villa’s wooden token had been found, he abruptly began to laugh noisily while fixing Su Yang with a funny look, as if he was awaiting his reaction.

Everyone there was stunned to see the Qianfeng Villa’s wooden token.

Instantly, everyone’s gaze focused on Gu Feidi and Su Yang.

Gu Feidi looked at Su Yang and firmly: “……No matter what, Tengyun Pavilion and Qianfeng Villa would never plant spies within the Devil Sect, let alone assassinate you using such methods.”

Su Yang, Gu Feidi and Xu Yunzhan had a pretty good relationship and naturally they knew the manner in which Tengyun Pavilion and Qianfeng Villa dealt with matters. He smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not so easily provoked. However, we still need to interrogate Lan Wu properly to ascertain which sect he’s spying for.”

Hearing that, Qin Jianyue laughed, lifted Lan Wu and raised his eyebrows: “Then I’ll bring him downstairs to question him… If you don’t trust me, would you like to come and watch?” 

Su Yang immediately recalled the ancient style interrogations that he’d seen on television and hastily shook his head: “Go ahead and question him. I trust you!”

Qin Jianyue caught his expression and laughed out loud again. He carried Lan Wu, who no longer had any strength to resist, and leapt out from the window.

Peace was restored within the room.

Luo Yu looked around at all the young people in the room and he sighed softly: “All of you! At any rate you’re all the elites of the Jianghu’s younger generation. How could you be so incautious? You were on the verge of falling victim just now… Lan Wu’s arrival was so fishy that not even one of you reacted promptly?”

Everyone was unable to refute when faced with this question. They could only look at each other and droop their heads while being admonished.

After a moment’s silence, Su Yang said: “I was too naive with those from the Devil Sect…Previously, when I’d completed my Lesser Jade House discipleship, I’d met Lan Wu before and had been attended to by him, so I thought he was on our side…”

Luo Yu eyed him and gave a sarcastic laugh: “The older you get, the more you regress. I don’t know how you managed to grow up with your temperament in a place like the Devil Sect.”

Su Yang flattened his mouth and had nothing to add.

Gu Feidi reached to hook Su Yang’s little finger and stroked it consolingly.

Seeing that he was still downcast, Gu Feidi gave a light cough and said, “Elder, don’t blame him. Although he’s from the Devil Sect, he was close to his subordinates…… It’s just that none of us noticed that there was a problem with the wine jug that Lan Wu had brought. Initially, I merely assumed that he’d come to coerce shixiong to follow him back for the sake of sowing discord between shixiong and I…” 

As a result, Luo Yu gave Gu Feidi another dressing down: “You aren’t being vigilant enough! You ought to have detected the peculiarities the instant you inhaled the poisonous gas. I’ve no idea what’s going on in that head of yours! In those days when he was younger, Gu Ruohai handled matters reliably. Why haven’t you learnt any of that?”

Gu Feidi lowered his eyelashes. “It was my carelessness. In the future……I’ll surely bear in mind Elder’s guidance.” 

Once the few youngsters had asserted that they would be cautious in the future, Luo Yu nodded and changed the subject: “Just now I went with Ah Yue angle for information. We learned that currently, Leader Gu is commanding Tengyun Pavilion’s troops and has reached the border of the Wasteland. At the moment, they should be west of Qingwu County. If we leave early tomorrow morning, we’ll be able to meet up with them in the Wasteland two days later.”

He turned to Gu Feidi: “Ah Yue and I will leave signals for the both of you. You bring Su Yang along and follow behind us from a distance. Try your best to conceal your tracks and don’t be discovered by Tengyun Pavilion…” 

As he spoke, Qin Jianyue pushed in the door and entered the room. Lan Wu was nowhere to be seen.

Luo Yu turned his head to look at him, saw him frown and asked: “Why so fast? What did he reveal?”

Qin Jianyue shook his head: “He’s only a low-level chess piece. I didn’t manage to get anything useful from the questioning. But based on his performance, I have a presumption……At the moment, there may be elders within the Devil Sect attempting to mutiny and seize power. Except, there’s no conclusive proof yet.

Luo Yu mulled: “Internal unrest within the Devil Sect? I wonder if this has anything to do with Gu Ruohai’s current plans for annihilation……unless both of them have met in secret, if not……”

Upon hearing this, Gu Feidi and Su Yang looked at each other. Gu Feidi said: “Elder, the Devil Sect Leader once asked me to hand over a letter to my father, inviting him to attend the ‘previous appointment this year’……perhaps they have really met up with each other.”

Luo Yu was stunned after hearing that, “Is that indeed true?”

Gu Feidi and Su Yang nodded at the same time.

Qin Jianyue rubbed his chin and his eyes narrowed: “……I can more or less understand the purpose of this annihilation, but why did he make it so complicated? With his methods and skills, isn’t subduing a few troublemaking elders as simple as flipping them between his hands?”

He turned to look at Luo Yu. Luo Yu frowned and shook his head: “Perhaps they have other plans. I can’t speculate for the time being.”

They were unable to rationalise their suppositions and both became silent for a while.

Su Yang spotted the blood stains that had been left behind on the wall, then eyed Qin Jianyue, whose clothes didn’t seem to have the slightest smidgen of dirt on them. He wanted to say something, then stopped.

Gu Feidi saw Su Yang’s apprehension, patted him on the back to reassure him and asked Qin Jianyue on his behalf: “Elder, how did you handle that Lan Wu? Was there any reaction from the Devil Sect’s inn in Meizhu Town?”

Qin Jianyue threw a glance at Su Yang and smiled: “I won’t mention Lan Wu’s whereabouts. I’ve just had a look at the inn. The door is locked and there is no one inside. It’s possible that before Lan Wu came to the assassinate, he’d already arranged for his subordinates to evacuate that place.”

Seeing that Su Yang still had some worries, he added: “Don’t be nervous, I’ll take the night watch. You bunch of youngsters have a good rest. We’re setting off early tomorrow morning. You all have to follow Ah Yu to the Wasteland. The next part of the journey will be even more arduous. You may even encounter assassins and battles, so you must be thoroughly prepared.”

Having experienced that unforeseen event, the youngsters didn’t have much interest in continuing their chat.

Luo Yu and Qin Jianyue took the initiative to swap to the blood-stained guest room and drove the juniors to the other two rooms. Everyone respectively went to rest.