ed to when the Shadow attacked to when Fan Xian escaped the combined power and left the temple, only a blink of time had passed. The Shadow’s ruthless attack had not stopped, but Fan Xian did not allow this attack to enter again the boundaries of the combined power. He forcefully went against the flow and swept out with the Shadow in tow.

It was only now that the Ascetic Monks sitting cross-legged in the rain discovered that the situation had changed. The palms of the Ascetic Monks in the center of the combined power drooped. They were unable to continue channeling forward. They still passively accepted the power being poured into them by their brothers. Their bodies trembled in the rain.

After being stabbed through the neck by the Shadow, pierced through the brain by Fan Xian’s crossbow bolt, and poisoned, this Ascetic Monk was, without a doubt, dead. He could not be more dead.

The rain had grown heavy and chaotic, striking randomly against the bodies of these Ascetic Monks. They silently looked at their colleague’s body and bowed silently. They then quickly escaped the Qing Temple, chasing in the direction of the two shadows who had almost disappeared into the streets in the distance.

Who knows if they would reflect a little? If the will of the Temple was really the Will of Heaven, then why were they unable to kill Fan Xian even though they had put in such effort and had even been willing to sacrifice themselves for humanity?

In the autumn rain, Fan Xian and the Shadow were like two gray shadows. Through the rains, under the eaves, in the darkening day, they moved quickly through the lonely streets. Not long after they left the Qing Temple, Fan Xian could feel the clear aura already catching up to them from behind.

The Jingdou’s Qing Temple was 3 li out. Usually, it was a quiet place. There weren’t even many pedestrians who passed by. There were no private residences that could be used. Since it was a rainy day, there were even fewer people taking shelter from the rain on the streets. This brought great inconveniences to the escaping Fan Xian and Shadow.

Fan Xian’s pale face was covered in rain. He turned his head and glanced at the middle-aged man beside him but did not see any expression on his face. Fan Xian knew that he had, in the end, underestimate the fanatics who were willing to die for a just cause. He had also underestimated the mystic strength that had continued in this land for a thousand years.

In the past, perhaps Master Ku He and the Northern Qi’s Tianyi Dao had stolen all their glory. Perhaps the Ascetic Monks of the Qing Temple were not particularly remarkable and only liked to preach in isolated places. Or, perhaps the High Priest and Second Priest of the Qing Temple did not give one a sense of being powerful. Thus, Fan Xian had never given much consideration to the Qing Temple.

However, they had now proved to be a very powerful enemy. Fan Xian even began to suspect that the knife formation the Tiger Guards practiced to defeat powerful martial artists of the ninth-level may come from the Qing Temple’s wondrous combined attack.

If Fan Xian was in peak condition, he would not be so wretched. Particularly when it came to escaping, he and the Shadow, the foremost assassin in the world, would think nothing of the Ascetic Monks giving chase behind them. If things were as normal, perhaps he and the Shadow would cover their tracks and turn around to carry out a terrifying ambush on the stubborn Ascetic Monks.

However, they could not do so now. That thousand-li charge, the sorrow in his heart, the drain on his strength, and heavy injuries he sustained at Zhengyang Gate and on the execution field had made it so Fan Xian’s condition was as bad as it could be. Particularly after he had resisted the combined power of the Ascetic Monks earlier, he no longer had the strength to fight.

By his side, the Shadow’s expression was cold. Everything seemed normal. After many years of cooperation and closeness, Fan Xian could clearly see that the injuries on the Shadow’s body were serious, perhaps even more so than his. Fan Xian knew why this was. The Shadow had only been injured once, but that injury was from Sigu Jian.

...

...

Fan Xian could clearly guess what reaction the Shadow had to learning about Chen Pingping’s death. He had been in Dongyi, yet he had returned to Jingdou at almost the same time as Wang Qinian. The return speed of this top assassin was even faster than Wang Qinian’s. It might have been even faster than Fan Xian’s.

With such traveling, the Shadow’s injury had presumably grown worse. Fan Xian turned his head to glance at the Shadow but did not say anything.

“Split up ahead,” the Shadow said in a raspy voice with a strange tone. It looked like this assassin also knew that their situation could not be worse. They had to separate to draw away the pursuit.

Fan Xian nodded. He knew if they separated now, they would meet again soon. At the intersection, the Shadow swooped into a small alley. Perhaps in a moment, he would become a wretched merchant hiding from the rain under the leaves.

Before he left, he said something that made Fan Xian’s heart sink and his mouth grow bitter.

“Whenever you are going to kill him, call for me.”

Because of the blow these words had on his state of mind, it made Fan Xian run a bit further than he had planned. The Ascetic Monks behind him slowly reduced the distance between them. Fan Xian was not worried. He went through a small alley and came to the intersection of Dongchuan Road. He went in through the front entrance of Danbo Bookstore. When he came out the back, he had become an umbrella-holding scholar.

He came to the gates of the Imperial College and saw the hundreds and thousands of umbrellas, as well as the clean and bright faces of the students of the Imperial College beneath them.