Meanwhile, in another meditation room, Li Wu was tossing and turning on a rock-hard wooden bed.
He simply could not fall asleep.
In the months he had traveled the martial world with Chen Zui, he had long grown accustomed to turning in together.
“That monk called Brother Chen to his meditation room in the dead of night and still hasn't let him go. What on earth are they talking about?”
The more Li Wu thought about it, the more suspicious he felt. Could that old monk be trying to trick his brother into shaving his head and becoming a monk?
He knew what kind of person Brother Chen was. He usually seemed not to care about anything, but if someone repeatedly urged and cajoled him, he might actually waver.
That would never do!
At that thought, Li Wu scrambled out of bed, grabbed his coat to throw over his shoulders, and rushed out the door.
He pushed open the door and was about to charge toward Yuanzhen's meditation room when he suddenly halted.
At that moment, the sharp sound of weapons slicing through the air echoed from the neighboring courtyard.
Driven by curiosity, Li Wu crouched down and crept over to the base of the neighboring courtyard wall.
He poked his head up to take a look, and his pupils shrank instantly.
Cold light crisscrossed in the courtyard as five masked men in black swarmed the young Jiang family girl, launching relentless attacks in turns.
The attendants she had brought were already lying dead in pools of blood.
With her back against a withered tree, Jiang Lai twirled her twin blades into a frenzy of flashing silver light, but she was clearly at the end of her rope.
Her breathing was rapid and frantic, her braids were mostly undone, several of her silver bells had been sliced off, and her left sleeve was ripped open in a long slit, blood faintly seeping out.
Li Wu truly held no fond feelings for Jiang Lai.
That phrase she uttered earlier during the day—“a mere Candlelight Realm”—was still ringing loudly in his ears.
Yet looking at the corpses strewn across the ground and that figure still gritting her teeth to hold on, his hand was already gripping the hilt of his sword at his waist.
One thing was separate from another.
He, Li Wu, might bicker and throw tantrums with people, but he could never squat beneath a wall and watch a woman get ambushed and slaughtered by a gang of masked men without lifting a finger.
He took a deep breath, vaulted over the wall, and landed in the courtyard.
Hearing the noise, Jiang Lai caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. Seeing it was him, she froze for a moment.
Then, forcing a fierce expression onto her pale little face, she parried an incoming blade with one of hers and turned to yell at him.
“What are you doing here?! Even I, an Inquiry Realm, can't handle these thieves, so what are you, a mere Candlelight Realm, rushing in to add to the mess for?! Get lost already!”
Li Wu drew his sword, assumed what he believed to be a dashing opening stance, and grinned.
“What, are you afraid that after yours truly plays the hero and saves the beauty, you'll secretly fall for me and want to pledge yourself to me? And then you're worried that Prince Xiao won't let it go? Don't worry, yours truly doesn't like unripened little girls like you.”
“Disgusting! Since you're eager to die, I won't stop you!”
Though they were still trading barbs, their situation worsened dramatically in an instant.
The masked men in black originally didn't take Li Wu seriously at all.
An ant of the Candlelight Realm could be wiped out with a wave of a hand.
However, their target was Jiang Lai, and there was no room for error.
The leader signaled with a look, and all five men in black unleashed their true offensive simultaneously.
Three men in black at the Inquiry Realm pressed a head-on attack, their blade light interweaving like a net that tightly locked Jiang Lai in place.
Meanwhile, two Mountain-Viewing Realm experts lurked on both sides like venomous snakes, sealing off all her escape routes.
Their coordination was terrifyingly seamless—clearly not desperate thugs thrown together on the fly, but meticulously trained assassins.
Jiang Lai's short blades were executed with exquisite skill, but she was a noble lady after all; sparring with the enshrined retainers of her clan was a completely different beast from a life-or-death struggle.
Her blade techniques emphasized measured advances and retreats, touching upon mastery without lethal intent, whereas every move from these men in black aimed straight for vital spots, each slash infused with the ruthless intent to split a person in two.
Before ten exchanges had passed, a man in black slammed the spine of his blade brutally against her twin blades, splitting the skin between her thumbs and index fingers. The short blade in her left hand flew from her grip, landing on the bluestone paving with a sharp clatter.
She stumbled backward until her back struck the withered tree. She had nowhere left to retreat.
Seeing this, Li Wu tried to charge forward.
Yet as a mere Candlelight Realm, he could not even approach the lethal array formed by Inquiry Realm and Mountain-Viewing Realm martial artists.
The moment he thrust his sword, a fierce gust of palm wind sent him and his sword tumbling back. His back slammed heavily against the courtyard wall, making him see stars as a metallic burst of blood filled his mouth.
He struggled to push up his upper body, only for a horrifying scene that terrified him to his core to unfold right before his eyes!
The leader of the men in black had already breached Jiang Lai's defense. The scimitar in his hand traced a frigid arc of light, driving straight for her throat.
Just as the blade was a hair's breadth from Jiang Lai's neck, a gray shadow crashed into the battlefield like a shooting star.
Yuanzhen raised his left palm vertically before his chest while hooking the five fingers of his right hand into a claw. Without dodging or evading, he caught the scimitar bare-handed with sheer brute force.
Buddhist true qi burst from his palm, and the blade let out a screeching metallic wail before being crushed into pieces by Yuanzhen's flesh and blood hand!
“Who dares commit such atrocities in Guang'en Temple?!”
Yuanzhen's face was dark as still water, his monastic robes fluttering without any wind, as shattered fragments of the blade rustled down through his fingers.
The five men in black were forced back half a step by this sudden turn of events.
The leader's eyes shifted slightly, and he then said coldly:
“Master Yuanzhen, we act under orders to take only this Jiang family girl's life. This has nothing to do with Guang'en Temple. If you are wise, hand her over, and we will by no means trouble the monks of this temple. But if you insist on interfering, do not blame us for being merciless.”
Yuanzhen casually tossed the shattered blade pieces onto the ground and pressed his palms together once more. His voice was not loud, yet every word rang like iron.
“Amitābha. In the nearly one hundred years since Guang'en Temple was founded, we have never handed over a single innocent person. If you benefactors wish to commit murder, you must step over this poor monk's body.”
At those words, the leader spoke no further. With a broad wave of his arm, the five shadow-like figures burst forward at once!
The instant they clashed, Yuanzhen was slightly taken aback.
He was startled not by the strength of these ruffians, but by the transformations within his own body!
He had never imagined that a mere few words from Benefactor Chen, whom he had invited, would unravel the bottleneck that had trapped him for five years!
Now, those key points that had usually been blocked and stagnant opened up one by one, his true qi circulating fluidly through his eight extraordinary channels.
As he struck out with a palm, his true qi surged like a flood bursting a dam, its power over thirty percent greater than in days past!
Buddhist Vajra Palm, Skanda Pestle, Prajñā Finger...
These moves he was accustomed to employing day in and day out now whipped up fierce gales with every execution; wherever the palm wind swept, the branches of the withered trees in the courtyard shuddered violently.
The five men in black had initially felt contempt.
Although Monk Yuanzhen of Guang'en Temple had some renown, he was merely at the late-stage Mountain-Viewing Realm.
Among the five of them, three were in the Inquiry Realm and two in the Mountain-Viewing Realm.
If they joined forces, how could they fail to bring down a middle-aged monk?
Yet after exchanging barely ten moves, all of their expressions changed drastically.
This monk's cultivation was far deeper than what the intelligence reported.
After a quick clash, far from falling into a disadvantage, he fought with ever-growing vigor, pinning all five of them firmly within a tiny space!
Yuanzhen was even more shocked in his own heart.
He discovered that the bottleneck that had trapped him for five years was now shattering inch by inch.
At this moment, his true qi resembled a flood whose riverbed had been cleared, circulating faster and faster, swirling with increasing urgency.
This feeling of sudden, complete illumination was something he had never experienced in his decades of cultivation!
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