Chapter 48: The strongest sword strike, accumulating power all the way, cripples the Zhao family patriarch.

The accumulated water on the official road was kicked up into a continuous white spray by horse hooves.

The bay horse's four legs had already reached their limit.

Its mane, matted by rain and sweat, clung to its neck in clumps that trembled incessantly.

Lin Chen leaned low over the horse's back, his left hand gripping the reins while his right hand never left the hilt of his blade.

Blood and Qi from his Blood Refining Realm Perfection surged and billowed through his Meridians.

He channeled a portion of his True Qi into his legs, tightening his grip on the horse's flanks even further.

The bay horse let out a hoarse, mournful cry as the frequency of its galloping hooves climbed once more!

The muddy official road receded rapidly in his field of vision.

The withered trees on both sides of the road turned into blurred gray shadows, rushing past his ears row after row.

The charging of the Void-Splitting Blade Stance had already begun the moment he left Zhang Family Village.

Saber Intent condensed bit by bit deep within his Dantian.

It was like a storm compressed to its absolute limit, waiting for an opening to be released at any moment.

With every breath that passed, that storm grew a fraction more concentrated.

Rain lashed against his face, streaming down his jaw and into his collar.

The icy sensation was instantly evaporated by the scalding blood and Qi within his body.

The bay horse crested a high slope, and the silhouette of Qingxi County town emerged from the end of the curtain of rain.

A few scattered torches glowed sparsely atop the city walls.

They flickered unsteadily in the wind and rain, like ghost fires that could be extinguished at any moment.

The massive portcullis of the South Gate had been completely lowered.

The gate's entrance was blocked tight, leaving not even a single crack.

Lin Chen yanked the reins to the left, and the bay horse turned its head and charged straight toward the front of the gate.

He was still thirty paces from the gate.

He released the reins and kicked off from the stirrups!

Harnessing the full momentum of the bay horse, he soared into the air from its back.

Losing its rider's weight, the bay horse's front hooves stumbled in a puddle, and its inertia sent it sliding off to the side.

Lin Chen twisted his torso in mid-air, pulling his right fist back to his waist.

The full blood and Qi of his Blood Refining Realm Perfection instantly flooded into his right arm!

An intense earthy yellow halo surfaced on his skin.

The halo condensed on his fist, turning into a visible cyclone of Qi.

His body became like an iron projectile launched from a catapult!

With a whistling sound that pierced the air, he smashed toward the center of the tightly closed city gate!

His fist collided with the heavy, iron-clad wooden gate.

A sound more muffled and heavy than thunder spread from the city gate.

The shockwave sent the iron lanterns on both sides of the gate passage flying and shattering.

The three ironwood gate bolts behind the door, each as thick as a bowl, snapped simultaneously!

Splintered wood and iron shavings sprayed out from the gap between the doors.

The two heavy gate doors swung inward.

They slammed against the stone walls on either side of the passage with an earth-shaking boom.

The four City Defense Battalion soldiers guarding behind the gate were knocked to the ground by the air pressure.

The spears in their hands flew out, and their iron armor scraped against the ground with a series of piercing screeches.

Lin Chen's figure charged through the middle of the shattered doors.

His boot soles struck the accumulated rain, splashing water as high as his waist.

He didn't pause upon landing; with a light tap of his toes on the ground, he sprinted at full speed along the city's main street.

Atop the city walls, several soldiers awakened by the noise poked their heads out.

They watched the black afterimage disappear into the rain, each of them too stunned to speak.

The Left Commandant rushed out of the duty room and leaned over the battlements to look down.

He saw the two gates with their shattered bolts.

He also saw the four soldiers lying on the ground, unconscious.

A lieutenant ran to his side, his face filled with horror.

"Commandant, the gate... was punched open by someone!"

The Left Commandant's lips twitched twice, and the color drained from his face bit by bit.

"That lunatic, he didn't die out there?"

The lieutenant swallowed hard, his voice trembling.

"Not only is he not dead, but I feel his pressure... is even stronger than when he left the city."

The Left Commandant gripped the edge of the battlements, his knuckles turning white from the force.

He did not give the order to intercept.

He knew in his heart that against someone who could shatter three ironwood bolts with a single punch...

No one in the entire City Defense Battalion could stop him!

The main street was completely deserted.

The rain washed the bluestone pavement until it shone, and every step of Lin Chen's boots kicked up a string of water droplets.

His speed had reached its limit.

Driven by the Divine Movement Step, the shopfronts on both sides blurred into a single line.

From the direction of the County Yamen, faint sounds of shouting and the clashing of metal drifted over.

The sounds were very weak, mostly drowned out by the wind and rain.

But Lin Chen's ears captured every single abnormal noise with absolute clarity.

A gap had been torn through the low sandbag wall in the front courtyard of the County Yamen.

Two bodies of Bailiffs lay beside the low wall, their wooden staves snapped in half and discarded in the bloody water.

Lin Chen charged through the gap, crossed the spirit screen, passed through the main hall, and sprinted along the corridor straight toward the backyard.

Several corpses in night-traveler attire were scattered on the corridor floor, their iron masks shattered, each dead in a different way.

These had been dealt with by Magistrate Pei Qingxue and Old Wang.

The front door of the back hall had been kicked wide open, its hinges skewed, with half the door hanging precariously from the frame, swinging back and forth.

The scene within the study flooded into Lin Chen's eyes the moment he crossed the threshold.

Broken bricks were everywhere.

Overturned bookshelves pinned down scattered papers.

There were two large holes in the walls, blasted through by True Qi.

Cold wind whistled through the holes, sending the documents on the floor flying in all directions.

Old Wang was slumped against a snapped pillar.

That old uniform, covered in patches and wine stains, was now soaked through with blood, looking like a dark rag.

His right arm hung at an unnatural angle by his side, his fingers bent and deformed.

His official robe was torn open at the chest by a palm strike.

The flesh beneath was caved in, leaving a palm-shaped indentation.

Blood flowed continuously from the corners of his mouth and nostrils, staining his chin and neck a dark red.

He was still breathing.

His breath was weak and intermittent, like a lamp about to go out.

Three paces away.

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's white silk robe was stained with several spots of blood.

The fabric on his left shoulder had also been sliced open.

His right palm was raised high, gray-white True Qi condensing into a dense vortex within it.

The pressure from the palm wind had already forced Magistrate Pei Qingxue back into a corner.

Magistrate Pei Qingxue's left arm had completely lost sensation, hanging limply at her side, with a ring of dark purple veins spreading around the poisoned wound.

Her right hand still gripped the hilt of her broken sword; only a three-inch-long remnant of the blade remained.

Her crimson official robe was covered in dust and bloodstains, and her loose black hair clung to her cheeks.

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's palm strike was descending toward her crown.

Lin Chen's eyes instantly turned a blood-red.

An invisible pressure erupted from him and soared toward the sky!

It was like an invisible giant hammer smashing into the air of the study.

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's descending palm strike suffered a brief stall when this pressure arrived.

A dense layer of goosebumps rose on his back, and his eyes constricted sharply.

"Stop."

By the time these words were pushed out of Lin Chen's throat, his blade was already out of its sheath.

Void-Splitting Blade Stance—the entirety of the Saber Intent he had been accumulating throughout the journey poured out instantly!

The long blade traced a white line in the air that the naked eye could not follow.

Wherever the blade passed, the air was sliced directly in half!

A silent rift extended from the tip of the blade, carving a transparent chasm through the space in the center of the study.

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's body reacted instinctively.

He hurriedly withdrew his raised right palm, and gray-white True Qi condensed into a shield before his chest.

The strike from the Void-Splitting Blade Stance collided head-on with the True Qi shield.

Upon contact, a dense network of cracks appeared on the shield.

The passive effect of Void-Splitting directly shattered thirty percent of Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's protective True Qi!

The remaining momentum of the blade stance pierced through the shield, the edge cutting into Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's chest.

The steel blade carved a deep, diagonal wound starting from the upper left of his chest.

The wound stretched from his collarbone to the middle of his sternum, the flesh rolling back to reveal glimpses of white bone fragments amidst the gore.

The residual force of the blade slashed across Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's left chest.

It cut in from below the collarbone, slicing through flesh and two ribs along the way.

Blood erupted from the wound, making a sizzling sound as it poured onto the floor tiles.

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's body was sent flying backward by the force of the strike, his spine slamming into the wooden frame of a bookshelf, causing the entire row to teeter.

Clutching the wound on his left chest, he struggled to stand up from the wreckage of the bookshelf.

The left side of his white silk robe had been dyed a deep crimson by blood.

"How could you possibly return so quickly!"

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan's voice changed pitch, his hoarseness mixed with sharp terror.

Lin Chen did not answer him.

His gaze swept toward the black figure approaching his flank in the corner of the study.

Shadow One.

The vertical crack on the iron mask had opened into a larger gap, and the blood on the bridge of the nose had already congealed into dried black clumps.

Shadow One's short blade pointed at Lin Chen's throat as he prowled along the base of the wall, his movement technique eerie and silent.

Lin Chen turned to face Shadow One, his blade tip pointing down.

"Even your master couldn't take a single strike from me."

Lin Chen gave his long blade a flick, sending the residual blood droplets flying onto the floor.

"What makes you think you can still come at me?"

Shadow One did not reply, the edge of his short blade tracing an arc of light in the darkness.

He lunged forward.

Two Death Warriors hidden in the shadows simultaneously charged from the window and behind the door frame; the three of them converged, surrounding Lin Chen in the middle.

Lin Chen took a step forward.

The first form of the Jueying Seven-Kill Blade swept out; bolstered by his Perfection Realm, the arc traced by the blade was sharper than ever before.

The death warrior charging from the left didn't even have time to raise his short blade to parry.

The blade light sliced through his waist, and his body fell, severed in two.

The death warrior on the right thrust his short blade toward Lin Chen's lower back.

Lin Chen thrust his left elbow backward, the tip of his elbow striking the side of the short blade exactly, knocking the attack off course.

Immediately following, his long blade whirled around, and the third form descended from above.

The blade edge cleaved that death warrior from his left shoulder all the way to his right ribs.

The night-traveler attire was sliced open; flesh and bone offered no resistance before the steel blade.

The two corpses hit the floor tiles one after another, blood rapidly spreading across the study floor.

Shadow One's short blade had already reached Lin Chen.

His attack angles were vicious, a triple thrust aimed at the throat, the temple, and the blade-wielding wrist.

Lin Chen held his long blade vertically before him.

The seventh form of the Jueying Seven-Kill Blade: Guard Center, Counterattack.

The back of the blade knocked away the first thrust, and the edge parried the second.

As the third thrust arrived, he reached out with his left hand and clamped onto Shadow One's wrist.

The power of Blood Refining Realm Perfection poured into his fingers.

Shadow One's wrist bones shattered between his fingers, letting out a series of crisp snaps.

The short blade fell from his hand, flipping twice in the air.

The long blade in Lin Chen's right hand followed through immediately.

The tip of the blade pierced through the crack in the vertical line of Shadow One's iron mask's left eye, penetrating the skull behind the mask and exiting through the back of his head.

Shadow One's body hung suspended on the blade for a breath, his limbs twitching twice.

A large amount of blood gushed from the crack in the iron mask, flowing down the length of the blade and dripping onto the toe of Lin Chen's boot.

Lin Chen withdrew the blade from the corpse, and Shadow One's body slumped backward.

The iron mask shattered into two halves, revealing the gaunt, expressionless face beneath.

[Slayed Shadow One, leader of the Zhao family Death Warriors, and purged the murderers plotting against a court official! Achievement Rating: Excellent! Points +800!]

[Slayed a Zhao family death warrior and purged the murderers plotting against a court official! Achievement Rating: Great! Points +500!]

[Slayed a Zhao family death warrior and purged the murderers plotting against a court official! Achievement Rating: Great! Points +500!]

[Current Points: 6000]

The study fell silent for two breaths.

Lin Chen turned around, his long blade pointing toward where Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan had just been thrown.

Only a pool of blood remained there, along with a trail of blood-red footprints extending from the wreckage of the bookshelf to the broken opening of the back window.

Old Patriarch Zhao Cangyuan was gone.

The gap left after the window frame was shattered by True Qi was large enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.

Outside the gap was the back alley of the County Yamen, which connected to the northern district where the Zhao family estate was located.

Lin Chen stared at the fading blood-red footprints, his knuckles letting out several crisp snaps as he gripped his blade hilt.

"Captain Lin."

Magistrate Pei Qingxue's weak voice came from behind him.

Lin Chen turned his head and saw Magistrate Pei Qingxue kneeling beside Old Wang.

She was using her right hand—the only one with sensation—to press against the wound on Old Wang's chest, her crimson sleeve soaked through with blood.

Old Wang's eyes were half-open, his cloudy gaze still holding a faint focus.

His lips twitched slightly.

Lin Chen reached Old Wang in three steps and knelt on one knee in the pool of blood.

He plunged his long blade into the floor tiles and reached out to check the side of Old Wang's neck.

The pulse was still there.

It was as weak as a gossamer thread, but it was still there.

Lin Chen's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Old Wang, you hold on for me."

The corner of Old Wang's mouth twitched as he forced a smile that looked worse than crying.

His voice was intermittent, squeezed out from deep within his throat.

Every word carried the sound of broken bones grinding within his chest.

"Kid, you're back."