The central plaza of Thousand Flower City used to be the most popular place in the whole city. There would be crowds of people going here and there. Aside from the teleportation, there were many attractions such as fancy shops and famous restaurants. It housed the city-wide administrative building as well as the headquarters for the House of Paradise and the Zhou Clan. If one were to say that the central plaza could be deserted and almost devoid of life, people would have assumed he was an idiot and chased him out of the city.
Yet, that was the current condition of the central plaza. Hundreds of dead bodies were scattered about. A faint purple fog remained on the ground, occasionally drifting with the wind. The two people that remained standing were in sharply differing positions.
Peng Lingxi was balanced on top of one of the stone pillars that supported the teleportation array. Herbal Master Tu Jing looked up at her from a short distance away. His face was now contorted and hideous from whatever medicine he took. His body was covered in wounds and his clothes were in tatters. Still, he gave off great waves of spiritual energy that occasionally rose and fell, a telling sign of the instability within his body and spiritual sea.
Peng Lingxi looked from Tu Jing's ugly figure to her sword. After several hundred exchanges, the ordinary steel blade had turned into a jagged piece of waste metal. She put it in her spatial bag and retrieved a fresh sword. Chen Wentian had asked her if she wanted a better weapon but she had refused. She was used to it already.
"Tu Jing, how much longer can you keep struggling like this? You'll die soon. Was it worth it?" Peng Lingxi asked casually as if they were old friends catching up on gossip. "You can join all the people you killed."
"Haha, death…" Tu Jing coughed and his spiritual aura wavered, "People like you sure know how to speak of death so casually. How many people have you killed? You sit comfortably behind an immortal master. Even after your master died, you found another so quickly that it makes other people's heads spin."
"Hmph, I don't need to be lectured by an evil cultivator like you."
"We're evil? Hahaha! Maybe… The Nine Poison Gorge certainly has killed a lot of people. So has the Tower of Swords and so has Ten Thousand Flower Valley. But you're good and righteous and we're evil. Sure, sure… that's why immortal sects like yours tried to wipe us out?"
"…"
"Hahaha," Tu Jing seemed energized, "Think about it, the sword is a weapon for killing. My poison is also a weapon for killing. Why is yours better than mine? What makes your sword righteous and my poison damned? Truth be told, what is right and what is wrong is only determined by strength. Those with power speak the loudest and others must listen. Or else, those without power can only do what they have to do to survive as the dregs of society."
Peng Lingxi also laughed but her voice carried no mirth, only cold sword intent, "Sure, sure. I will let you lecture me about your life's struggles. After all, your life is about to end."
"Oh, my life is about to end? That may or may not be true. But, yours certainly is about to."
"!!" Peng Lingxi suddenly sensed something was wrong.
She glanced around her but found nothing out of the ordinary. However, in the next instant, she sensed the arrival of several strong spiritual signatures from above. Looking up, five people descended from the sky using kites. They were not powered by runic inscriptions. They were made of simple materials like wood and paper, making them hard to detect.
The five people abandoned their gliding kits at about a height of twenty or thirty meters. They dropped down and lightly landed around Peng Lingxi. Each person among the five wore a similar uniform of form-fitting black garbs. Their faces were hidden by white masks that bore artistic white skulls.
"White Face Clan!" Peng Lingxi muttered under her breath.
The White Face Clan was an evil cultivation sect similar to the Nine Poison Gorge. They specialized in assassinations. It was said that there was no job they wouldn't take as long as the price was high enough. Many disciples of immortal clans had fallen to them over the years. The Tower of Swords even made three separate attempts to wipe them out but failed to finish the job each time, leading to the organization coming back time after time.
"Hoh, isn't this the Lonely Hero Peng Xiling. When did you become a woman?" A masked assassin taunted.
"Idiot! She was always a woman. I knew from the beginning." Another masked face said.
"Horse shit!"
The five argued like children for a little while, not caring about the situation, as if Peng Lingxi was as good as dead.
They had good reason to be confident. The five assassins were all experts. Four of them were at the Lesser Realm of Spiritual Growth while one of them was actually at the Lesser Realm of Spiritual Formation, one realm higher than the rest.
"Enough chit-chat, time to chop off this girl's head and get paid." The strongest one growled like a beast.
"Yes, big brother!"
"Hahaha, let's go!"
All five brandished an array of strange weapons and leaped at their prey.
---
Unfortunately, Peng Lingxi wasn't the only disciple that was ambushed. Across Thousand Flower City, Wu Qianyu and Zhou Ziyun also came under attack at around the same time.
While Wu Qianyu was charging through a sea of bandits, four familiar faces emerged from the crowd and surrounded her. They were known as the Four Devils of Ping Nan Province. They were an infamous group of villains in the southern province of Ping Nan. No crime was off limits and they often liked to torture their victims to death.
Wu Qianyu had raided their hideout in the past. She slayed their disciples and supporters. However, the four managed to escape in the end. Now, they were back for revenge and each of them had somehow managed to reach the Lesser Realm of Spiritual Growth.
To the west, Zhou Ziyun was beset by a group of six sword cultivators. They were the survivors of the Mount Xiong Sect. They had somehow survived the purge of their sect which had been ordered by Chen Wentian and carried out by the other three sword sects that made up the former Four Greats. Among these survivors, all of them were at the upper levels of the Spirit Initiate Realm and one of them was even at the Lesser Realm of Spiritual Growth.
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