Chương 39: Please Stay Safe, You Two!

The night wind tore against Xiao Xuan's face, whipping his hair as his horse's hooves hammered the uneven earth. He snapped the reins, urging the beast faster as it dashed along the moonlit path. He hoped Commander Su Ming was not the traitor. While they had never bonded, he had come to respect the man's honorable persona. After all, the commander had stood up to defend him during the Clan Screening.

If that had truly been a facade, then as a transmigrator who had read and translated over a hundred web novels, he felt it was entirely his own fault for failing to spot the treachery. Su Ming had broken all the classic rules followed by petty novel antagonists. Following the screening, the commander had never sought him out or caused him trouble. That was precisely why he had dropped his suspicion against the commander.

Besides, what could Su Ming possibly gain from kidnapping Su Luoyao and plunging the clan into chaos? Then again, ideological villains were always far more formidable than greedy ones. Wei Tu had quietly mentioned during the screening that Su Ming deeply admired Su Luoyang before her sudden marriage. That alone could explain everything. He might also be colluding with the First Elder. After all, it was Su Zhongyong who had appointed him to escort the second consignment.

The First Elder already held the Jade Command Token, and Luoyang was walking into danger. Should I skip the hut and ride directly to the Tang House for help?

"Argh! Faster! Run faster!" Xiao Xuan yelled into the dark, snapping the reins against the horse's flank. No, that wouldn't help right now. Everything was still speculation. The culprits had deliberately kept them second-guessing their identities and true agenda. This could be no different. The main family was already scattered and now, he was forced to doubt his remaining allies too. At this moment, he couldn't afford to abandon a helping hand out of suspicion.

His rough plan was still the right move: to first scout the hut and ensure Su Luoyang's safety, while unmasking the real mastermind in the process. Wei Tu's contingency made far more sense this way. Once the true culprit was confirmed, seeking aid from the Tang House would actually be viable. Luoyang! Luoyao! Please stay safe, you two! …

"I won't hold back just because you are a girl," the masked Qi Ling (Qi Lord) growled. Boom! A terrifying wave of Qi erupted from the bulky man's core, rolling over the dirt path like a tidal wave. The ambient air turned suffocating and dense. Opposite him, Su Luoyang stood unmoved. Her sharp eyes traced the bandit's posture, coldly analyzing every shift in his balance. A radiant aura of pale blue light flared around her silhouette, cloaking her slender form.

The surrounding temperature plummeted, crystallizing the moist night air into dancing motes of frost. The masked bandit roared, lunging forward with explosive momentum. The ground beneath his heavy boots caved in as he tore across the clearing in a split second. Pulling back his right shoulder, he condensed a dense mass of Qi around his fist and drove a straight punch toward Su Luoyang's chest. The force compressed the air ahead of the blow, setting off a deafening sonic boom. Su Luoyang did not flinch.

With the fluid grace of falling snow, she rotated her torso by a fraction of an inch. The bandit's fist whistled past her shoulder, grazing only empty air and trailing silk. In one continuous motion, her slender palm drifted upward. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Her hand was coated in a shell of frost Qi. Stepping smoothly inside his guard, she struck straight at his exposed ribs. Mid-flight, the bandit's eyes tracked her palm, widening in shock.

Robbed of footing to alter his forward momentum, he could not evade. Bang! The bandit's chest armor buckled inward, the impact rippling through his torso. Frost instantly surged across the damaged plating, biting through the metal. The concussive force hurled him across the clearing, sending him crashing hard into the tree line he had just emerged from. The masked man grunted in agony. He violently flared his aura, shattering the encroaching frost and blowing away the crushed timber around him.

Staggering back to his feet, a vicious fury burned behind the iron slits of his mask.

"Bitch!" he snarled. Abandoning all stance and structure, he charged back into the fray with recklessness. He threw sweeping hooks and crushing hammerfists in fury, every blow whistling through the air as his heavy boots tore deep ruts into the dirt and kicked up clouds of grit. Su Luoyang drifted through the onslaught like a phantom. As his wild swing swept inward, she leaped lightly into the air, her body rotating horizontally as she planted her heel squarely against the side of his masked jaw. Crack!

The bandit's head snapped to the side as he groaned under the impact. Instead of collapsing, the brute snarled like a rabid beast, lunging forward with outstretched arms in an attempt to drag her out of the air and crush her under his weight. Mid-air, Su Luoyang channeled her Qi downward, flipping cleanly over his grasping arms. She touched down lightly on the tips of her toes, landing on the dirt without making a sound. The bandit stomped his boot into the earth. Boom!

A violent shockwave tore through the terrain, launching a jagged wall of upturned earth and shattered stone straight toward her. The brute charged right behind it, using the flying debris as cover like a battering ram. Su Luoyang's eyes narrowed. Raising both hands, she swept her wide sleeves in a sharp arc. Swish! A crescent blade of condensed icy Qi sliced through the flying boulders, cleaving them in two.

The shattered halves crumbled into gravel on either side of her, exposing the charging bandit barely three feet away, his fist raised high for a crushing downward smash. Su Luoyang crossed her forearms in an instant, erecting a solid wall of icy Qi before her. CLANG! The bandit slammed into the barrier. The earth gave way beneath Su Luoyang's boots, and the hem of her pristine robes snapped violently in the resulting shockwave. Yet she did not yield a single inch.

Drawing energy directly from her core, Su Luoyang twisted her wrists and thrust her palms outward, releasing the stored momentum. The sudden repelling force blasted the hulking brute twenty paces backward, his heavy heels carving two deep trenches into the soil before he skidded to a halt. Neither fighter held a clear advantage. The bandit's ragged gasps rattled through the slits of his mask, his knuckles bruised and bleeding.

Su Luoyang stood upright, her chest rising and falling in a controlled rhythm, though beads of perspiration traced her pale temple. The masked bandit summoned a massive black-iron broadsword from his storage ring. The heavy blade hummed with turbulent maroon Qi as he rested the flat of it against his shoulder, glaring at her with venomous intent. With a fluid motion, Su Luoyang drew a refined longsword from her ring as well.

The polished steel shimmered like ancient glacial ice beneath the pale moonlight, humming softly as she covered the blade with her icy Qi. She leveled the tip directly at the bandit's throat. … Far to the south, Xiao Xuan finally reined in his mount near the border boundary. The towering, ancient canopies of the southern forest completely choked out the pale moonlight. He brought the exhausted horse to a halt beneath the shadow of an old tree and slid quietly from the saddle.

Taking a slow breath, he secured the reins around the trunk. He stepped cautiously into the dense undergrowth, carefully parting the low-hanging brush. He kept his gaze pinned to the forest floor, stepping lightly around dry twigs and brittle foliage to mask any sound of his approach. Ahead, a dilapidated wooden structure came into view. The southern hut stood desolate within a small, overgrown clearing, its warped timber dark with rot from years of humidity and rain. Not a whisper of sound came from within.

There was no light either, and the lone wooden door at the front was firmly shut. Xiao Xuan circled quietly around the perimeter. Reaching the side and rear walls, he attempted to peer inside, but every window had been sealed from within by dark cloth.

"You shouldn't have come here!" a cold voice suddenly echoed from right behind him, shattering the quiet of the night. Xiao Xuan froze. Every hair along his arms and the nape of his neck stood on end. He recognized that voice.