Chapter 418: The Blind Man

The Yellow Spring Market was unlike the small town from before. This was one of the largest settlements in the entire Western Desert, with a large population and lively, bustling streets.

The roads, paved with stone slabs and packed earth, teemed with a steady flow of people and camel caravans loaded with spices, cloth, furs, and all manner of goods, the air filled with the calls of merchants hawking their wares in unfamiliar foreign dialects.

The young girl led Li Musheng's group on camelback through the crowded streets and alleys. The shops and houses on either side were mostly flat-roofed earthen buildings, but their doors and walls were painted in vivid colors, giving the place a distinctive character all its own.

The group came to a stop at a guesthouse, tied their camels to the wooden rail outside, and went inside to the bustling establishment.

The young girl called over a server and ordered a table of food and a jar of strong liquor, then casually removed the cloth covering her face and said with the air of someone perfectly at ease, "The customs and ways of the Western Desert are quite different from those of the five great dynasties. If you have time to spare, you might want to wander around the Yellow Spring Market and broaden your experience a little."

As she said this, the young girl broke the clay seal on the jar of liquor, poured herself a large bowl, and downed it in one satisfied gulp.

Li Musheng glanced at the young girl as she wiped the liquor from her lips and said, "Xiu'er, you're not very old, but I had no idea you were such a heavy drinker."

"That actually reminds me of a girl I met once. She was getting on in years, but she'd practiced some special technique and turned herself into a child, going around pretending to be young."

The young girl called herself Ah Xiu, and Li Musheng had taken to calling her Xiu'er with mischievous regularity.

The young girl's instincts told her something was a little off about that, but since she did not know the reference, she had no choice but to let Li Musheng go on calling her that.

"This young lady is exactly eleven years old, no false advertising, no tricks."

Ah Xiu poured herself another full bowl of strong liquor and looked at Li Musheng with narrowed eyes, "But I'm a little curious about that technique you mentioned. Have you actually practiced it yourself?"

As Ah Xiu saw it, if a technique like the one Li Musheng described truly existed, then he might well be some ancient monster who had transformed himself into his current youthful appearance.

That would explain perfectly well how he could possess strength formidable enough to give even her pause.

But Li Musheng did not answer Ah Xiu's question. Instead, his gaze shifted and settled on a particular spot in the guesthouse's main hall.

Ah Xiu drained the bowl of strong liquor she had just poured, hissing through her teeth at the harsh burn going down, then with a slight frown followed Li Musheng's line of sight.

In the corner of the crowded hall, nearly every table occupied, sat a man alone, his head bowed, hair hanging loose, drinking by himself, his presence strangely out of place against the noisy, lively atmosphere around him.

"What, is something wrong with that person?"

A flicker of suspicion crossed Ah Xiu's eyes. At those words, Cao Gaoshan and Cang Yinyue instinctively followed her gaze toward the same spot.

The large black cat, gnawing on a lamb leg, also lifted its round green eyes. Anyone who got a second glance from Li Musheng deserved a closer look.

At that moment, the man in the corner of the hall seemed to sense the attention from Ah Xiu's direction. The wine cup raised to his lips stopped, and he slowly turned his head.

In that instant, everyone caught sight of his pair of eyes, completely white with no pupils, and his face, even more unsettling, covered in dense, jagged scars that made one's scalp crawl just looking at it.

The large black cat dropped the lamb leg from its mouth onto the table and let out an involuntary meow, clearly startled by the sight and somewhat put off its appetite.

Cao Gaoshan and the others maintained their composure and withdrew their gazes without any obvious reaction.

The man was clearly blind. Even so, though he presumably could not see them, there was a faint, unsettling sense that he was somehow watching them anyway, like a thorn at the back of the neck.

"That man's killing aura is rather heavy."

At this, Li Musheng said this lightly and paid the man no further attention.

Ah Xiu, however, kept her brows furrowed and her eyes fixed on the blind man, who appeared at first glance to be nothing more than an ordinary disfigured man, yet something about him set off a quiet alarm of danger within her.

What Ah Xiu did not know was that, to Li Musheng's eyes, while the blind man's own strength was fairly ordinary, the hidden killing intent and murderous aura buried within him were something he had never encountered in his entire life, even surpassing the Assassination Saint of the Hidden Kill Pavilion he had met back in the Great Li imperial capital.

This meant that the man had not only emerged from a sea of corpses and blood, but had reached an extraordinarily high level of mastery in the way of killing itself.

"That person could very well be an assassin from the Hidden Kill Pavilion."

Seeing the blind man calmly turn his head away as though nothing had happened, Ah Xiu turned to Li Musheng and offered the guess in a low voice.

At those words, Li Musheng did not particularly agree with Ah Xiu's speculation. Though he was soon to inherit the position of the next Pavilion Master of the Hidden Kill Pavilion, he genuinely was not very familiar with the organization.

Even so, since the topic had come up, Li Musheng followed along and asked, "Xiu'er, you seem fairly knowledgeable. How much do you know about the Hidden Kill Pavilion?"

At those words, Ah Xiu continued pouring herself another drink while shaking her head, "The Hidden Kill Pavilion is a notorious assassin organization known throughout the entire martial world. You all come from the five great dynasties, so you should have at least some idea of it."

As she said this, Ah Xiu stole another glance at the blind man in the distant corner, "Even so, although the Hidden Kill Pavilion's headquarters is in White Emperor City, it is not actually the dominant power that rules the city."

At those words, Li Musheng and the others all went briefly blank.

By all reasonable assumption, an assassin organization as feared throughout the martial world as the Hidden Kill Pavilion, even if it could not claim the top spot among the Western Desert's six great powers, should at the very least have been the undisputed ruler of White Emperor City.

But Ah Xiu's words ran entirely contrary to that expectation. Li Musheng gave her a suspicious look and raised an eyebrow, "The Hidden Kill Pavilion really doesn't have that much standing? Then tell us, what is the greatest power in White Emperor City?"

At those words, Ah Xiu swept Li Musheng's group with an equally suspicious look, not understanding why they were reacting so strongly.

But by now she had already had a few drinks too many, and with her small face flushed red, she downed the bowl of liquor in front of her in one go, then explained with a hiccup, "You don't even know that? Of course it's the White Tiger Divine Hall that rules White Emperor City."

"The Hidden Kill Pavilion is genuinely formidable as a renowned assassin organization throughout the martial world, but in White Emperor City it still has to bow before the White Tiger Divine Hall."

At those words, Cao Gaoshan furrowed his brow, somewhat puzzled, "The Hidden Kill Pavilion has countless assassins, and not just one Assassination Saint at its helm. Even the courts of all five kingdoms are wary of it. What kind of power could the White Tiger Divine Hall possibly have to stand above it?"

Cang Yinyue and the others turned to look at Ah Xiu as well, Cao Gaoshan's question clearly reflecting their own confusion as well.

After all, the Western Desert was separated from Great Li by the entirety of Great Xuan, an enormous distance, and they genuinely knew very little about conditions in the Western Desert. The name White Tiger Divine Hall was something they were hearing for the very first time.