Chapter 420: The Hunter

Ah Xiu said nothing for a moment, then gave Li Musheng a long look, "You don't understand how formidable the Yellow Spring Tribe truly is. Among them, the Five Holy Lords have martial cultivation that runs unfathomably deep. This man has no idea what he's gotten himself into, daring to provoke them right here in the Yellow Spring Market. It's certain death for him."

At those words, Li Musheng raised an eyebrow slightly, "Why are you telling me this?"

Ah Xiu's brow creased. She swept her eyes over Cang Yinyue and the others, finding that all of them remained perfectly composed, not a trace of worry on their faces either.

The large black cat in particular was gnawing on its lamb leg while occasionally glancing over toward the blind man, the very picture of someone settling in to enjoy a show.

Seeing this, Ah Xiu gave a cold laugh, "I've said all I'm going to. Good advice is wasted on someone determined to die."

Cang Yinyue and Shen Anran exchanged a glance and offered a well-meaning reminder, "Miss Xiu, if real danger arises, please remember not to leave my lord's side."

Throughout this journey, Ah Xiu had genuinely served as a dedicated and capable guide, and had helped them a great deal. Without her, they would not have reached the Yellow Spring Market this smoothly.

So naturally, they had no wish to see anything happen to her.

Ah Xiu neither agreed nor disagreed. It was undeniable that Li Musheng's ability to kill without a trace left her wary.

But that did not mean she believed he could stand against the Yellow Spring Tribe, one of the six dominant powers of the Western Desert.

The only reason she had asked Li Musheng to guarantee her safety was the thought that he might prove useful when she went to retrieve that item.

"Since he's so arrogant, let him stay here and draw the Yellow Spring Tribe's attention. That would actually help me out a little."

With that thought, Ah Xiu decided not to waste any more energy on Li Musheng, and instead turned her attention to the blind man not far away.

When he had killed those men a moment ago, even she had not been able to see clearly how he moved. And the faint trace of killing intent she had sensed from him at the time had left her with an inexplicable chill.

"Do you have a grudge against this Young Master Jinchuan?"

Seeing that the Yellow Spring Tribe's people had not yet arrived, Ah Xiu thought it over and asked the blind man.

At this point, sitting beside Li Musheng, Ah Xiu felt that between the two of them, their combined strength gave her no reason to fear the man.

The blind man slowly turned his head at her question, his pale, sightless eyes seeming to take measure of Ah Xiu and the people seated beside her.

"No grudge. But I'm here to take his life."

The blind man's hoarse voice spoke as though discussing something entirely unremarkable.

At those words, the two men seated beside him showed unusual expressions. Though both were still shaken from their earlier fright, with their lives entirely in the blind man's hands and a deep terror of him, the way they now looked at him was almost as though they were looking at a dead man.

Ah Xiu studied the blind man's lifeless, white eyes with a thoughtful expression.

Then she voiced the suspicion in her mind, "Are you an assassin? From the Hidden Kill Pavilion, perhaps?"

The blind man gave a slow shake of his head, his pale eyes lingering on Li Musheng for a moment, "I'm just a blind, disfigured man. Someone paid for his life, I took the money, and so naturally I came here."

At those words, understanding dawned on Ah Xiu's face, "So you're a bounty hunter."

"But I'm curious. How much gold and silver could the person possibly have offered, to make you come here and kill someone?"

As Ah Xiu reasoned it, for the blind man to take the life of one of the Five Holy Lords' sons here on the Yellow Spring Tribe's own territory was practically a suicide mission.

For someone to risk that much danger, the client must have offered a price beyond imagining.

Only something like that could move someone like the blind man, who seemed the type to value money over his own life.

Faced with Ah Xiu's rather presumptuous question, the blind man remained perfectly calm, as though it did not bother him at all. He simply shook his head, "I happen to enjoy killing people. I've killed plenty of names off the bounty boards of the martial world. As for money, I honestly don't think much of it. However much someone wants to give, that's entirely up to them."

The blind man's words clearly caught Ah Xiu and Cao Gaoshan's group off guard.

Li Musheng glanced at the man. He had heard of the profession of bounty hunters before. Just days earlier, in Great Xuan, he had met Bai Xiaotang, who had been a third-rank bounty hunter.

But a bounty hunter as strange and independently minded as this blind man was something he had never come across before.

And from what the man had just said, this blind man clearly had quite a unique personality.

A bounty hunter who didn't care for gold and silver was something of an oddity. If it had been someone like the money-obsessed large black cat, it probably wouldn't have rested until it had bled the client dry.

As for the blind man's love of killing, Li Musheng had no doubt about that whatsoever. After all, if he hadn't killed enough people, he wouldn't have achieved this level of mastery in the way of killing.

At this point, Ah Xiu seemed to develop a certain interest in the blind man as well.

Even so, she made no move to approach him, observing him from across several tables instead, and said, "Given your strength, you're probably at minimum a first-rank bounty hunter. Did you really not inquire about what kind of power the Yellow Spring Tribe actually is before coming to the Yellow Spring Market?"

At those words, the blind man's scarred face showed no flicker of emotion. He simply withdrew his gaze and turned his head away.

He gently stroked the bamboo staff in his hand and said evenly, "Just killing someone. Why should I bother with trivial things like that?"

Just then, the sound of horses galloping suddenly rose from the street outside the guesthouse. A group of burly men, heads wrapped in red cloth and carrying weapons, came pouring through the entrance.

The men swept the hall with their eyes, then immediately surrounded the only two occupied tables in the room.

Before long, the man who had run off earlier respectfully escorted three figures slowly inside.

"I hear someone killed our Yellow Spring Tribe people here. Let's see who this person thinks they are."

One of the three, a young man in blue robes, spoke up. His eyes immediately landed on the two men seated beside the blind man and the two corpses on the floor.

At the same time, a woman in red and an elderly man accompanying the young master also noticed the scene immediately.

The woman in red frowned deeply, her eyes fixed on the heavily scarred blind man with both disgust and killing intent.

The elderly man studied the blind man carefully, as though trying to see through him.

"Who is Young Master Jinchuan?"

The blind man paid no attention to the newly arrived group, and instead turned to ask the man who had left earlier.

Though he could not see, he was able to locate the man's exact position with precision.

This startled the man, who immediately hid behind the three newcomers, "Young Master Jinchuan didn't come."