Zhan Long

Chapter 909 Endless Street

If given another chance, Xiao Zhan would have chosen to not plot against Li Zhiyuan. He would even refrain from sending assassins to hunt him down after his injury. That way, the Grand Master and the many Creed of Divinity acolytes who were killed would still be alive today.

But why? What drove him to hatch such an insidious plot against Li Zhiyuan?

In his perplexity, he remembered why. His son. His son loathed Li Zhiyuan. It was like a vole playing with a rat at first. All his son wanted was to destroy the Northern Steppe’s most famous wunderkind and see him suffer.

But why? His son had always been a proud sort who cared little about fame and position. What changed him? What turned him into a prodigal playboy who all of a sudden wished ill upon Li Zhiyuan? He knew his son to be better than that. Even without using the Vestal of the White Lotus Dongfang Qinghong to administer poison, the Lion was sure that his son could easily defeat Li Zhiyuan fairly in the arena.

So what drove him to such methods?

Only then did Xiao Zhan realize that something had gone wrong with his son. Five years ago, his son had transformed into a complete stranger; since then, he could only plead ignorance as to what his son had been up to. He knew for a fact that it was his son who had been working in the shadows to ensure the Priory’s rise to its current heights. There have been times when he wondered if his contributions as High Patriarch to the Priory’s cause had been completely outshined by his own son.

“P-Please! Mercy!” cried a warrior. In the prime of his years and bathed in blood, he pushed himself forward, shoving aside Xiao Zhan, and dropped to his knees. “Please! Mr. Li! I’m not one of the Priory! I’m just the Grand Master of another lowly order who’s forced to come here and show my support! Please don’t kill me! I promise I’ll be happy to serve you faithfully if you would have me!”

From the substantial aura still radiating from him, Li Mu immediately recognized him as another Class VIII warrior. Perhaps that was the sole reason why he still survived when so many others have dropped dead. But Li Mu’s bloodthirsty antics nonetheless terrified him so badly that his will to fight on had long but extinguished.

“So? Looks like you’ve picked the wrong side right from the start,” Li Mu shook his head.

The sharp coruscation of steel glinted viciously.

There was no need for the quarter.

They had their chance.

Not everyone deserved sympathy and mercy, even if they had lost everything.

“Monster! You’re a monster, Li Zhiyuan! You’ve gone mad! This is evil!” Cried another survivor of Li Mu’s first wave. The Grand Master of the Lumberjacks Guild waved his dual axes and charged. With a face twisting grotesquely with manic rage, Li Mu identified him almost immediately as one of the colluders who was involved in the hunting of the Creed of Divinity a year ago.

Another glint of steel shimmered.

One that savagely slashed at him.

Plop!

The momentum of the Grand Master of the Lumberjacks Guild allowed him to totter just a couple of more steps forward before his knees went slack and he dropped dead on the ground.

All around the scene, men and women beheld the carnage with their hearts suspended in the asphyxiating shadows of anxiety. For each and every head that fell off the shoulders, it was like a sledgehammer battering their minds and senses into oblivion.

The Grand Masters of the Hallowed Jade Sect, the Lumberjacks Guild and so many more named so big and famous that barely anyone in Rydorburg failed to recognize them. Names that collectively represented the bulk of the Northern Steppes’ might. Yet before Li Zhiyuan’s invincibility, all that titles and acclaim meant nothing. Li Zhiyuan could easily cut them down like butter.

The scene of the aftermath really was breathtakingly unbelievable.

One swish.

Then another slash.

It was a brutal execution. Every single Class VIII warrior that survived was callously put to the sword without any ounce of leniency.

But the warriors and champions that congregated to lay witness to Li Mu’s quest of vengeance today hardly stirred. Such spectacles were common to them and there was no need to feel sorry for them. They had their chance to walk away alive when Li Mu gave them ten seconds. But it was they who refused the initial gesture of mercy of their own volition. It was by their own choosing that they decided to stand side by side with the Priory. They were just paying the price of the decisions they had made.

But unlike before, too many who have died were household names. Names with great respect and prestige. The fact that so many big names were slaughtered at the same time and in the same place made this encounter too horrifying an incident for most to comprehend.

“Heh, very well… The young replace the old and the obsolete. You win today, Li Zhiyuan…” The Lion snickered weakly to himself.

At the onset of imminent death, he reminisced how he founded the Priory with his own hands. He had a band of brothers whom he could entrust his back and his life to. So many were their followers who pledged their loyalties to him. Some even willingly gave up every single penny in their pocket to see the Priory’s original incarnation rise to power. Somewhere along the way, the original following turned into a cult. That was how the Priory of the Four Seas came into being. That too was how he, a chief who never wavered from leading at the forefront, turned into the High Patriarch who sought nothing but power, wealth, and decadence.

He strained his neck to look back at the toppled gates. Over the rise of the fallen rubbles, he could see the rest of the Priory’s memberships — its many acolytes and apprentices and the fear and horror that were fraught in their panicking gazes. He felt sorry for them.

And himself too. “Is this how all warriors end?” He murmured to himself, “A pitiful death by the sword?”

“Take it, Li Zhiyuan. If it’s my head you’re after, then take it. The Priory had thrown its entire might at you to no avail and it’s clear that you’ve won. But I have only one final wish: let them go. They are of no threat to you.”

The Lion gave his last request.

“Very well.”

Li Mu answered. Without even waiting for his reply, Li Mu’s saber arced at his enemy’s head.

A glimmer of light as white as sunlight surged like a blinding deluge. The Spiritual Qi blast from Li Mu’s weapon screamed forth with every bit of the essence of a true demonstration of the Dewdrop Strike.

Where the Lion was standing, he stood no longer. The blast cut him down, rendering him into a gory burst of scarlet slime and the beautiful morning was marred by the descent of the ghoulish mist of blood that saturated the air with the putrid tang of metal.

Li Mu wiped away the blood from his saber with his tunic before he slid the weapon back into its sheath.

The terrible presence of malice and rage that pervaded the whole area finally subsided with the click of his saber fully encased inside its cover.

Li Mu turned around and left.

There was no need to continue with the slaughter of the rest of the Priory’s acolytes. He had given his word to Xiao Zhan and he meant to keep it.

…

“What? You’re tossing us out?!” Shen Jia demanded of Mr. Wei. “What is the meaning of this?! Are you trying to say that my mentor didn’t pay enough for the lodgings?!”

“As a matter of fact, it’s not that,” said Mr. Wei, one of Cloud Nine Lodge’s overseers, coldly. “But is the wish of the management that we end our relationship with you prematurely. So please pack up your things. Our men shall be happy to see you out the door.”

Shen Jia smirked with frosty derision. “This is the first time I’ve heard of a lodging house or an inn driving its customers away, Mr. Wei.” Or are you showing us the door because you believe that my mentor would lose this battle?”

Mr. Wei cracked into an imperceptible scoff. “I daresay that the outcome of such a duel remains a bone of contention. But that is not the point here. What matters here is that you and your sister need to leave this place. Quickly.”

Shen Jia was so enraged that he was going to retort, but Shen Xiaoyue immediately held him back.

Shen Jia took a deep breath. “So be it then. But I’d love to see whether you’ll still be wearing that smirk by the time my mentor comes back.”

Mr. Wei smiled thinly in response to the veiled threat. “Luck doesn’t smile in favor of you all the time, boy. You’re young… Perhaps one day in the future, you’ll understand what I mean. That reminds me. There is still some change from the deposit that your mentor paid us. Come with me to Bookkeeping, boy. You can collect it on behalf of your mentor. Let it be known that Cloud Nine Lodge is an honest establishment no matter what.”

“All right,” Shen Jia replied glumly.

He followed the overseer to the bookkeeping room where he collected the change from Li Mu’s payment with some extra as a sign of monetary compensation for the sudden eviction before he returned to his room and continued packing his things.

“Sister… The stuff that Teacher bought and those new trinkets can go to the chest… We might need a new carriage. Teacher has been spending too much lately… Sister?”

He was out in the living area of the suite, packing but his calls for his sister were left unresponded.

A dread swelled inside his gut. Shen Jia dashed into the room to find it was empty. The room was filled with Shen Xiaoyue’s personal effects, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“What the hell?!”

He rushed out of the suite and ran around the Lodge, hoping to find his sister somewhere. Yet still, Shen Xiaoyue looked as if she had vanished into thin air. That was when he spied Mr. Wei walking past with a couple of his men. Shen Jia marched up to him and yanked his arm. “Where is my sister?”

Mr. Wei peered at the boy and uttered, “When we parted, she was still in the room, packing her items.”

“She’s missing right now! That was a diversion, wasn’t it?! You led me somewhere so that your men could kidnap her, am I right?! Speak! Was this really your job?!” Shen Jia demanded furiously. He was absolutely sure that that must be what happened.

Mr. Wei merely chuckled at him. “Be careful, boy. What makes you say that we took your sister? Cloud Nine Lodge is an honest and respectable establishment. I would implore that you refrain from making such slanderous accusations.”

“That must be you, Wei! You know Madam Gao from Rose’s Allure! It must have been you who was conspiring with her to kidnap her, am I right?!”

Mr. Wei’s face went dark with anger. “You had your chance, you insolent whelp! Men! Give him a good beating and throw him out!”

…

In the meantime, Li Mu was striding along the streets, making his way back to Cloud Nine Lodge.

Everyone on the streets gave him an unusually wide berth.

By his hands, champions of Classes VII to IX were all killed like sheep driven into an abattoir in just barely two hours. The presence of death, malice and violence that was still emanating off him felt so palpably thick that no one—not even those that loved carnage and thrill—could dare to come near.

There was no one else on the streets.

A few yellowish fallen leaves on the ground, caught by a lazy breeze, traced spirals in the air before they finally landed back on the ground.

“Wait a minute. It’s still spring now with summer just barely around the corner. There’s no way there are leaves this yellow!”

Li Mu halted. A puzzled look wiped across his face.

The journey from the stronghold of the Priory to Cloud Nine Lodge should have not been more than one mile. That would make it even lesser than a thousand meters by Earth’s reckoning. Yet Li Mu was positive that he had walked at least a mile and a half. Yet all he could see ahead was nothing but more spirals of dust and a street that spanned all the way into the distance with its end nowhere in sight.

“Is this some sort of enchantment?!

“Or is this some sort of illusion of magic?”

The corner of Li Mu’s lips curled wryly.

“The reckoning has finally come after all, eh?”

“Is this a senior or an elder from Arcusstone? You can cease with your parlor tricks and show yourself,” said Li Mu calmly.

He was certain that this could only be the handiwork of Arcusstone, the biggest and strongest of all religious and militant orders in the Northern Steppes. For days Arcusstone had not made any move towards what he had done to their messenger, although it would seem that they had finally come to settle that score.

“Do you plead guilty, Li Zhiyuan?”

A deep and ancient voice resounded from all directions. For one moment it sounded like it came from the left, but the same voice came booming from the right in the next second.

“On what charges?” Li Mu demanded.

“Impudence,” the voice thundered with boiling anger. “For centuries, messengers of Arcusstone suffer no disrespect. Those who do would be visited upon with woe and destruction. So do you for what you’ve done. You might be the youngest Class X prodigy the Northern Steppes had ever seen, but you will show respect and deference to the might of Arcusstone nonetheless.”

“That’s funny. You demand for respect and deference, but by what right do you think you’ve earned it? Show me how good you are then, instead of lurking in the shadows! Or is bragging all you’re good at?”

“You’ll never survive a straightforward blow from me, you mongrel pup,” rumbled the voice. “Fall on your knees and beg for forgiveness. This is your last chance. Treasure it if you know what’s good for you, or you and that pitiful Creed of Divinity of yours shall be reduced into nothing but mere specks in the history of the Nothern Steppes.”