The first shot Cynthia fired was an ordinary bullet intended to break his guard; the subsequent shots were mixed with ghost-vanquishing bullets.
"Holy shit..." Naimu'er truly hadn't expected his junior schoolmate to open fire without the slightest hesitation.
Slipping behind a tree with a quick dart of his body, he drew his own pistol and shouted, "Don't move!"
"You're courting death!" the knight barked fiercely, his body darting in a flash.
Yet out of Cynthia's three shots, two still struck him, one of which was a ghost-vanquishing bullet.
His movement technique remained unaffected, however, and he sprang forward.
In the dim night, a streak of snow-bright blade light slashed toward Cynthia with blinding speed.
In Naimu'er's eyes, the knight's reflexes were astonishingly fast, and his strike ruthlessly decisive.
He had wanted to fire in support of his fellow junior schoolmate, but he was accustomed to using his right hand, and his right arm was currently injured.
His left hand was far less practiced, and in a fight that tested one's reflexes so sharply, he could hardly accomplish much with it.
Cynthia, however, was fast enough. She dodged directly behind a tree as thick as a rice bowl and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Do it!"
This cry was meant to prompt Wu Youren, for she understood very well what kind of reservations weighed on the Jin youth's mind.
In Liang, martial artists of knight rank and above not only enjoyed substantial privileges, but were also strictly protected by the law.
She dared to shoot because she was a student of Red Pine, out on an academy mission, defending academy property.
Even if Keli never returned, she had the Mirage Sea League to back her up; she had no fear of lacking a place to seek justice.
Wu Youren, on the other hand, was from Jin and already faced prejudice. Striking a Liang knight as an inferior against a superior would have unpredictable consequences.
Only if she gave the order could she shoulder the responsibility on his behalf.
Before Wu Youren could react, however, the knight's blade flashed and sheared straight through the tree shielding her.
Yet the moment he severed the trunk, a faint cracking pop came from the tree.
In the next instant, a thick cloud of white mist billowed into the air, accompanied by an acrid, pungent smell.
"Close your eyes!" Cynthia shouted to Naimu'er as she darted backward at an angle.
She had already told him to clear out of the danger zone earlier, but even that wasn't entirely safe.
"Quicklime!" Fortunately, Naimu'er was experienced enough to recognize it immediately. Seeing the cloud, he scrambled away into the distance. "Holy shit!"
His reaction was understandable. In Liang, fighting with quicklime was not unheard of, but it was strictly the realm of street thugs.
Even in the history of national warfare, there was virtually no precedent for using lime in large-scale combat; the military used lime for entirely different purposes.
To see martial artists fighting with lime—and martial academy students at that—one could only wonder what the instructors at Red Pine would think.
Worse still, this wasn't just tossing a packet of powder; it was deployed over such a massive area...
The ripples of battle qi around the knight effectively blocked the lime from blinding his eyes, but his vision was still impaired.
He hurriedly held his breath, but it came a beat too late; a searing heat scorched down his windpipe.
"Bastards!" he roared, only to shut his mouth immediately, clamp his eyes shut, and lunge outward.
In his disoriented rush, his foot caught on something, and an object fell down in the next breath, silently engulfing him.
It was a large net!
"You really are courting death!" The knight realized at once what he was dealing with.
As an experienced martial artist who had navigated society for years, he was intimately familiar with these cheap, underhanded tricks.
Once quicklime showed up, tripwires, snare nets, poison... basically all of it was likely to follow.
He couldn't fathom how students of the venerable Red Pine Martial Academy could stoop to such disgraceful methods.
"Poison!" Just as he ground his teeth in fury, the possibility crossed his mind, and a violent shudder ran through him.
"Wait!" he blurted out. "Hear me out!"
By then, Cynthia had already arrived before the Jin youth. Extending a hand, she demanded coldly, "Give it to me!"
She was clearly irritated. She had given the order to strike; Naimu'er had an excuse with his injured hand, but why hadn't Wu Youren moved a muscle?
Wu Youren handed over a small sphere, half the size of a palm, without uttering a word.
Cynthia took it and crushed it fiercely without a second thought.
*Boom!* A deafening explosion went off, right near the knight!
As cursed luck would have it, the knight was staggering and fleeing right toward that very spot.
He took the brunt of the shockwave head-on.
Already exhausted to the limit before this, he was sent somersaulting to the ground by the blast, motionless.
Naimu'er, who had been jarred backward a couple of steps by the shockwave, called out a warning: "Careful, it might be a trick!"
The explosion was considerably powerful. Anyone caught in the center—even a knight—would end up dead or grievously wounded.
However, Wu Youren had set only a limited number of mechanisms, and explosives were scarce, placed at only a few points.
Naimu'er wasn't sure what condition the knight had arrived in, and seeing him at the edge of the blast radius, gave a timely warning.
Cynthia didn't rush to approach. Instead, she looked toward Wu Youren. "I strongly suspect this man has been mutated by Guizu aura."
The Jin youth shook his head decisively. "I won't go up and examine him. I don't have the standing for that."
The female martial artist didn't know that he had previously drawn his gun without hesitation to shoot a mutated Red Pine instructor.
At this moment, however, he would not act, nor would he draw near.
The knight gave him no unusual sensations, and... he harbored other suspicions that he hoped to confirm through this.
Cynthia had originally wanted to have him assess the knight's condition, but hearing this, she hesitated.
She then looked at Naimu'er, who shook his head repeatedly. "My biguijue is destroyed. Sorry."
Just then, the wristwatches of all three vibrated simultaneously, and a voice came over the intercom: "What's going on up the mountain?"
It turned out that some of the fleeing martial artists had spotted Naimu'er and the knight racing up the mountain one after the other.
Flocks of martial artists had been fleeing like headless flies, focused solely on breaking out of the mountain range.
Now suddenly seeing someone sprint off in a different direction, they couldn't help wondering: was there... some special trick or reason to it?
In situations like this, plenty of people were willing to blindly follow suit.
For martial artists who had fled the whole way, most were thoroughly exhausted.
Choosing to climb the mountain would burn a great deal more energy.
Yet walking away without checking left them unwilling to accept it.
There were only a few steps left to clear the mountains, but reaching the Red Pine relief party would take at least another half an hour!
At this point, many found it hard to take even a single step more, pressing on purely through gritted teeth.
Scrambling up the mountain to investigate was exhausting, but slowing down to observe was completely natural—after all, they were practically out of the mountains anyway.
There were also a few who still had some stamina left, debating whether to go up and look.
Right at that moment, a massive explosion thundered from the mountain, followed by countless small rocks tumbling down the slope.
This sudden turn of events gave everyone present quite a scare.
Several martial artists who had just begun dashing up the mountain cursed aloud as they scrambled away in frantic flight.
Yet the explosion also signaled that something was indeed happening on the mountain, prompting someone to demand an explanation over the intercom channel in exasperation.
They had drawn attention! Cynthia didn't reply; instead, she turned to Naimu'er. "Put two bullets into him to test it!"
"I'm out of ghost-vanquishing bullets!" The martial artist with his right arm in a sling waved his left hand repeatedly.
Cynthia narrowed her eyes, gritting her teeth fiercely. "Ordinary bullets can test it too!"
Hearing this, Naimu'er understood immediately: she wanted him to take the blame!
Theoretically, though, ordinary bullets really could partially test for Guizu.
Hardening his heart, Naimu'er walked forward and fired two shots straight into the knight's head.
Blood spattered alongside brain matter, a mess of crimson and white!
Trapped beneath the net, the knight kicked his legs violently twice and went limp—he had likely only been unconscious moments before.
"My left hand has terrible aim," Naimu'er said, looking toward Cynthia with genuine dismay on his face. "What do we do now?"
"That was an oversight on my part," the female martial artist said with a slight nod, signaling she would shoulder the matter alongside him. "Mainly... I had to stay on guard against him mutating into a Guizu; it wasn't convenient for me to act personally."
"Of course I understand," Naimu'er nodded. As long as the two of them bore it together, it was no big deal.
The man had earlier attempted to rob Red Pine students on an official assignment, ignored his warnings, and ruthlessly targeted Cynthia without hesitation.
Such villainy was not something the academy would tolerate either!
Then he looked at the Jin youth, his face showing clear wariness. "Why didn't... this one act?"
They both belonged to the Mirage Sea League and could easily work things out between themselves, but with an outsider present, he had to alert his junior schoolmate.
"He was the one who set the traps," Cynthia said, declining to reveal Wu Youren's identity so as not to invite unnecessary trouble. She simply stated with certainty, "We're on the same side."
Right after, however, she turned to the Jin youth. "See? Naimu'er is asking you too."
"The same reason as you," Wu Youren replied without a ripple in his voice. "I was guarding against him leaking Guizu aura!"
Cynthia fell silent at once. She had used that very excuse only moments ago.
In truth, she knew full well that based on the capabilities the Jin youth had demonstrated, he had far more right to make that claim than she did.
Hearing this, Naimu'er set his mind at ease, then recalled his lingering confusion. "Why did you open fire right off the bat?"
Cynthia asked calmly, "How many times have you even encountered the Guizu?"
"Quite a few times," Naimu'er replied, shaking his right arm in its sling. "Look at me, and my biguijue was destroyed too!"
Had anyone else asked him that, he might have taken offense, but his junior schoolmate... had the standing to ask.
After all, she was not only carrying out a patrol mission, but was still stationed here completely intact and showing no intention of pulling back.
"I didn't intend to kill him either," Cynthia replied briskly. "He's a knight. Testing him with gunfire—isn't that perfectly normal?"
It was an airtight excuse; the knight's death hadn't been caused by those three shots anyway.
Naimu'er's eyes darted thoughtfully. "Have you thought about why he refused to run just a few steps further to seek help from Red Pine's people?"
"Maybe he had a criminal record?" Cynthia replied without thinking; she didn't consider it an important question.
Chapter 58