With her knight broadsword drawn from behind her shoulder, Shen Yixiu had no intention of wasting time here, worried as she was about the situation back at the square.
She dropped all pretense.
*This means Han Qingyu and the others saw right through my goals long ago,* Zhu Jiaming thought. *They knew all along that I was scheming to collect Bones of Eternal Life, and they even anticipated my true combat capability.*
Why would one person gauge another's true combat power in advance?
The answer was simple: to be ready to cut him down at any moment.
Of course, the premise was that Zhu Jiaming's scheme had included Han Qingyu and the others' lives from the very beginning.
*If we stay in touch after this, it'll be hard to fish in troubled waters. And on top of that, these Bones of Eternal Life on me...*
They were quite far from Qu Family Village now.
A one-on-one confrontation with no help for either side.
Zhu Jiaming kept a calm look in his eyes as he looked at Shen Yixiu, but the grip on his saber tightened.
After about five seconds, his hand relaxed.
He couldn't beat her. Not only was he injured, but even if he hadn't been, despite both being top-tier, Zhu Jiaming figured there was a high probability he still couldn't defeat this iron-clad chit of a girl.
Because none of these people were normal. Under standard appraisal, if you felt a draw was possible... you might as well just surrender.
*My life is reserved for achieving great things.*
With that thought, Zhu Jiaming smiled and said, "Rusty Sister, you're putting it far too harshly. Even if I harbored a few little schemes, it never reached the point of turning on our own people."
"Is that so," Shen Yixiu said, nodding.
Yet she didn't budge. Her knight broadsword pointed diagonally toward the ground as a surging wave of source energy gathered continuously.
It grew so intense that across the small patch of ground where they stood, though no wind blew from afar, a breeze stirred up right around them.
Rusty Sister made it blatantly obvious that she had no intention of dragging this out.
Zhu Jiaming hesitated no longer. Reaching into his shirt, he pulled out three bones and displayed them on his open palm for Shen Yixiu to see. His heart was bleeding, yet his face remained completely composed.
*I'll just treat him like a piggy bank. He already has three anyway, which makes six in total. I'm just storing them there for now. Sooner or later, I'll take them all back together,* Zhu Jiaming consoled himself.
Shen Yixiu walked forward with sword in hand, collected the three Bones of Eternal Life, and then asked in a polite tone, "I'm heading back to help Qingzi and the others now. Are you coming?"
Zhu Jiaming tilted his head and glanced at the tip of the broadsword hovering not far behind his back. "Of course. It's my bounden duty."
"Then let's go. Run."
"All right," Zhu Jiaming said. "Charge! Kill..."
Before the two of them had run very far, a sharp *bang* echoed through the night.
Then followed a relentless series of shots: *Bang, bang, bang...*
"The fighting's started! Fast, let's go help!" Rusty Sister urged anxiously.
"No, wait, the gunfire is getting closer! They're running—they're heading right toward us!" Zhu Jiaming stopped in his tracks, nearly getting run through from behind by Rusty Sister's sword.
...
Han Qingyu and the other two were indeed running.
Back at the square, Han Qingyu had already suffered significant injuries. Wen Jifei's source-energy dead iron bullets were precious, with only two left.
Two, not three.
Because for Wen Jifei, firing a fourth round was gambling with his life. If the gun backfired and the dead iron of the receiver blew apart, rolling an F face-up meant certain death. Even with another face, in most cases he would be severely wounded if not killed outright.
Meanwhile, the enemy was numerous. Qu Zongyan was formidable, and Qu Zongxing was already in a state where he would die even if left alone—going to hack him down would only risk being dragged down with him.
Therefore, they had zero reason to risk their lives. Winning a fight here brought no great harvest, while losing meant death for all of them. Hacking away under those terms simply wasn't Han Qingyu's style.
Judging that Pang Jinghe had likely led their Azure comrades a fair distance away by now, Han Qingyu reached out across the distance and telekinetically retrieved the pack from the stone steps, preventing the blue starlight column sword from being exposed.
That miraculous display stunned the hidden clansmen into another collective stupor... and taking advantage of the moment, the three spun on their heels and ran for all they were worth.
A full-tilt sprint.
Just how fast was a full-speed sprint for top-tier and above?
Fast enough that Han Qingyu and Wu Xu each held one of Wen Jifei's ankles as they ran, leaving Wen Jifei's upper body suspended horizontally in midair. Floating prone in the air, it looked as if he were shooting from a prone position.
Firing ordinary bullets, Wen Jifei kept shooting to intimidate the more than a thousand pursuers behind them.
Of course, none of the bullets could hit anything.
However, because of the darkness, the enemy in their chaos couldn't tell whether he hit anyone or whether anyone on their side had died. Whenever someone stumbled and cried out in pain, they assumed another person had been killed.
As a result, with every gunshot, almost everyone ducked down to take cover, only straightening up to rejoice that they weren't the one who had died.
"Qingzi, match your speed with Wu Xu! Careful not to rip me in half!"
Wen Jifei's panicked plea drifted in the wind.
Shoot, shoot, shoot. Naturally, the muzzle was pointed back toward the pursuing enemies, but at the exact moment of each trigger pull, he snapped his wrist, sending bullets veering off toward the flank...
Clutching the battleblade Han Qingyu had lent him, Pang Jinghe was running along the flank with the Azure soldiers, bearing the weight of his mission.
They were climbing a slope.
At one point, Pang Jinghe faintly heard the whistle of a bullet behind him. His mind went blank for a second before he realized in the chaos that only one person here was using a gun. *We're doomed! That bastard Plague-Chicken Fei missed! It's all over, I'm going to die!*
*These damn bullets can kill even a super!*
And so, with his back turned, channeling the strongest source energy surge he could muster for defense, Pang Jinghe took what he thought was his final look at the world.
*Thud.* The bullet struck him in the back.
"Huh? I don't seem to be dead." Pang Jinghe turned around and caught the falling bullet right in his hand, freezing in place... The bullet was a bit hot, and slightly dented.
*When it hit Qu Zongxing, it punched right through.*
*When it hit me, it dented.*
His train of logic progressed step by step until arriving at an obvious conclusion:
*Holy crap... could it be that I'm actually ridiculously strong?!*
Forty years old, having cultivated for thirty years, Pang Jinghe had never once fought anyone in his entire life. He had no idea what degree of fusion or any of that crap even meant...
It was only at this moment that he finally realized the true explosive power forced out of him by a life-or-death crisis might actually be beyond super!
"Comrade Pang, what's wrong?" Up on the slope, Lin Qiangqiang stopped and looked back, asking nervously.
Pang Jinghe kept his head down, staring at the bullet in his palm. "Nothing," he said calmly.
"Then keep running!"
"All right."
At the same time as their exchange, the foreigners up on the hillside broke into a clamor of chatter.
The main body of hidden clansmen from Qu Family Village hadn't pursued them; they were all chasing after Han Qingyu's trio.
However, the two burly men who had originally guarded the village outskirts happened to flank around and cut them off. They were the very two who had tried to extort them at the crossroads earlier alongside the moustachioed man.
"Get ready, break through!" The Azure soldiers instinctively began forming up.
*Whoosh!* Pang Jinghe's silhouette dashed from rear to front, sweeping through the crowd. The Azure battleblade in his hand sliced horizontally in a half-circle from back-right to front-left.
*Aiya, I acted on impulse...*
Regretting it too late, Pang Jinghe completed the slash.
*Crack!* Blade snapped, man dead.
One burly man remained frozen in a parrying stance, his chest slashed open as blood sprayed wildly.
His confidence swelling in an instant, Pang Jinghe pivoted on his left foot and spun around with another slash.
*Crack!* Blade snapped, man dead. The second burly man collapsed.
Instant kills!
Pang Jinghe stood there, looking down at the two corpses on the ground, then down at the blade in his hands. *Like chopping melons and slicing vegetables. Like slicing vegetables! An expert. This is what it feels like to be an expert.*
A flurry of astonished discussion broke out behind him.
"They're saying you're amazing! To shatter weapons like that, you must be several tiers above them, right?" Lin Qiangqiang translated.
"Hardly," Pang Jinghe replied modestly with a calm demeanor.
His gaze drifted back toward the village.
*So... should I go back and hack Qu Zongyan to death now?*
Chapter 392