The Assassin

"So, uh, if you let go of her right now and turn yourself in to the yamen, it'll still count as a voluntary surrender." Lu Yang walked back into the room and gave the would-be murderer a sincere piece of advice. This was obviously the room of the woman next door. An assassin had climbed in through the window aiming to take her life, only to be walked in on by Lu Yang. "You're dead too!" The dagger-wielding man in black saw Lu Yang return. A cold glint flashed in his eyes, but in the next instant, Lu Yang pinned him flat against the floor. "Figured you wouldn't surrender." Lu Yang held the man down with a single hand, his tone placid. The man in black wore a look of utter disbelief. He had been subdued before he could even register Lu Yang's movement. "F-Foundation Establishment?!" He was an assassin at the ninth level of Qi Refinement, yet he had been overpowered in an instant. The other party could only be a senior cultivator of the Foundation Establishment stage! Things had come to this; suicide was his only option! Lu Yang hoisted the man's head up and snapped off two of his front teeth, which contained lethal poison. Then he scooped up a rag from the floor and shoved it into the man's mouth to keep him from biting his tongue off. After that, he tapped several acupoints on the man's body, sealing his meridians and leaving him powerless to move. The masked assassin sank into despair. Who on earth was this uninvited guest? Was he a bodyguard hired by the target? Why was he so intimately familiar with the whole suicide prevention drill? Still, the intruder hadn't noticed that the dagger was coated in a slow-acting poison. Before it flared up, nobody could tell; but once it did, even the gods couldn't save the victim. The target had already been nicked, so she didn't have long to live. Besides, even if he did notice, it wouldn't help. The poison was exceedingly rare, and even the assassin himself carried no antidote. Lu Yang produced a medicinal pill from his identity jade pendant and handed it to the shaken woman. "You've been poisoned. His dagger was coated in Blue Ghost Soul-Entangling Poison. It takes effect after three days, calling the blue ghost to claim your life on the spot. It's not particularly rare, and my Detoxification Pill will clear it right up." This was the kind of poison Pill Cauldron Peak had gotten bored of playing with ages ago. "Huh? Oh, thank you." The woman numbly swallowed the Detoxification Pill. A cool, soothing sensation spread through her, calming her considerably. Once she caught her breath, she looked at Lu Yang with gratitude. "Many thanks, benefactor. My name is—" "Stop. Don't tell me your name, where you're from, who you are, or why an assassin came after you. I'm just a guest staying next door, and I know nothing. I can see you have some cultivation, and I've already crippled the assassin's cultivation, so you can drag him to the yamen yourself." Lu Yang smoothly cut off her introduction. Having roamed the world for so long relying purely on stirring up trouble, he could tell at a glance that this was a mess bound to have countless complications tied to it. "Haha, Old Lu, I heard a racket coming from your side and knew you'd have your hands full too!" Meng Jingzhou's hearty laughter rang out from behind him. Meng Jingzhou stepped into the room, and his smile froze. The situation in the room was plainly obvious; one look was enough to see what had taken place. *Why is it this bastard playing the hero saving the damsel again?!* "Miss, what kind of trouble did you run into that someone's trying to assassinate you?" Just as Lu Yang was about to stop him, the woman introduced herself: "My name is Fu Ling, and I come from Xuan City next door. My family is in the textile business, and I came here to expand our trade. "Ever since I was little, I showed a remarkable mind for commerce. My father thought of handing the entire family business over to me many times, but my stepmother kept blocking it. "My stepmother believes the family business should be inherited by her son, so she has made things difficult for me at every turn. Fortunately, I managed to resolve each of those obstacles one by one. "This assassin must have been sent by my stepmother. Thanks to this gentleman's intervention, I was able to escape this calamity." Lu Yang shook his head gently. "This assassin probably wasn't sent by your stepmother." Fu Ling was astonished, bewilderment flickering in her eyes. "Why do you say that, sir?" "Since you came here to expand the family business, your stepmother would at least wait until the trade routes in this city were established before getting rid of you. Killing you this early would be no different from throwing away the venture here." Fu Ling considered this carefully. Indeed, that was a real possibility. "Could it be because I went to the black market?" "How so?" "You might not know this, sir, but there is a black market not far from here. I took a stroll through it tonight, saw a twenty-year-old lingzhi that looked quite fine, and bought it. Is it possible I picked up an overlooked treasure, and what I bought wasn't ordinary lingzhi at all, but something else?" "Why don't you bring it out and let me have a look?" Indebted to him for saving her life, Fu Ling trusted that Lu Yang bore no ill intent and retrieved the lingzhi she had purchased from the black market. The lingzhi was about the size of a palm, dark red in color, with rings of patterns adorning its cap. "Miss, you got half of it right. This thing is a lingzhi, but not an ordinary one. It's a three-hundred-year-old lightning tribulation lingzhi that was struck by lightning. Because it survived a major tribulation, its appearance differs greatly from a normal three-hundred-year-old specimen. "Looks like you had good luck, Miss." As a friend of the Little Medicine Kings, Lu Yang had learned a good deal about botanical lore from them. "However, that still isn't the reason you were targeted for assassination." "Why is that?" Confusion once again filled Fu Ling's eyes. "This assassin had poison hidden in his teeth, which clearly makes him a professional, not someone driven by momentary greed. He climbed in through the window strictly to take your life." Fu Ling pondered for a moment, then added, "I have a childhood friend who holds feelings for me. He is exceptionally talented, and a female disciple from a sect took a liking to him, but he turned her down. His reasoning was that while she was wonderful, had he not met me first, he might have fallen for her. "It's possible that female disciple hired an assassin to take me out." Lu Yang fell into thought. That actually sounded plausible, and he couldn't spot any immediate flaws in the theory. "Which sect is that female disciple from?" The assassin was writhing on the ground. With his mouth stuffed full of cloth by Lu Yang, he hadn't been able to utter a word. Having listened to Fu Ling and Lu Yang analyze the situation for so long, he finally managed to spit out the rag. "Uh, excuse me, could you hear me out for a second?" All three of them looked down at the assassin together. Shrinking slightly under their stares, the assassin nonetheless spoke up: "Miss Fu Ling, is it? My apologies, but it seems I went after the wrong person. My target is in the room across the hall. Her name is Kong Que." Fu Ling: "..." Lu Yang: "..." Hearing the assassin's words, Meng Jingzhou looked as though a mystery had just been unraveled, and a look of sudden realization dawned on his face. "So that's it!" Lu Yang was surprised. "What did you figure out?" "I ran into a marauder cultivator in my room. He was hiding very well, but I caught him anyway. After I subdued him, he confessed that he had come to steal a lingzhi." Just then, Shi Chan came walking over. "Amitabha. This humble monk was just going to look for you two senior brothers in your rooms. Why are you both here?" "What happened?" "It is like this: in the hallway, I ran into a woman staying here named Kong Que. She said she was being stalked by an assassin, and seeing that this humble monk possessed cultivation, she asked me to protect her. This humble monk wanted to ask what your thoughts are, senior brothers."