Chapter 422: The Guardian

The two men supporting the legless elderly man exchanged a look, and both could see the wild relief in the other's eyes.

The blind man killed people the way one might mow grass, without so much as a blink, and they had been certain they would die.

And yet the blind man had not killed them, and had even let them go. The two of them felt as though they had been granted a pardon from the brink of death, and nodded their heads rapidly in agreement without hesitation.

Without another word, the two of them, paying no mind to whatever the legless elderly man had to say about it, hoisted him up and ran for their lives.

The blind man returned to his seat in the guesthouse hall. Li Musheng, Cang Yinyue, and the others had already secured their rooms and gone upstairs to rest.

Only Ah Xiu and the large black cat remained, apparently intending to keep watching the show unfold.

The blind man's sightless, hollow eyes drifted toward the spot where Li Musheng had been sitting before, then he fell silent once more, seemingly waiting quietly for Young Master Jinchuan to arrive.

Ah Xiu's expression turned thoughtful. The blind man had killed this many of the Yellow Spring Tribe's people with a single move, and the blue-robed young master had appeared to be of no small standing.

This meant the commotion he had caused was growing larger and larger, and there was no way the Yellow Spring Tribe would let this go. What came next would be the true life-or-death struggle the blind man was about to face.

"I hope you can hold out a little longer."

Ah Xiu gave the blind man a long look. She did not particularly want him to die too quickly, and in fact hoped he had enough strength to turn this entire place upside down, since that would only work in her favor.

But Ah Xiu also understood this was almost certainly never going to happen. Though the blind man's strength had genuinely surprised her, she did not believe he could single-handedly stand against the entire Yellow Spring Tribe.

With that thought, Ah Xiu turned her eyes toward the upper floor of the guesthouse.

What she found somewhat unexpected was that Li Musheng, who had appeared bold and capable, had completely kept himself out of all of this and had gone upstairs to sleep, with no intention whatsoever of getting involved.

"Looks like he actually took my warning to heart. He has at least some self-awareness, then."

Ah Xiu gave a slight nod. Clinging to life and fearing death was simply human nature, and for Li Musheng's group to know when to step back was naturally the wise choice.

At this point, Ah Xiu turned to look at the large black cat crouched on its stool, then furrowed her fine brows slightly, "But... what's going on with this big cat?"

She had naturally come to understand, over the course of their journey, that this large black cat was no ordinary animal, possessing strength that not even most martial world fighters could match.

Even so, with Li Musheng and the others gone and only this large cat remaining, it was now quite conspicuous on its own.

The large black cat, seeming to sense Ah Xiu's gaze, glanced over at her sideways.

It naturally had no idea what was going through Ah Xiu's mind, but earlier she had been talking up the Yellow Spring Tribe's might as though it were the greatest power under heaven, which left the large black cat thinking this girl had a fairly limited view of things.

Even so, since the girl had stayed in the hall with it to watch the show, that made her something of a kindred spirit in the cat's view, and it had no particular intention of looking down on her.

Soon enough, the large black cat turned its eyes back forward, glanced once more at the blind man not far away, and yawned widely, looking rather bored.

Seeing this, Ah Xiu narrowed her eyes slightly, but she felt no need to converse with a cat, and simply settled into silence to wait.

Meanwhile, up in his room, Li Musheng was diligently studying his martial arts when a steady stream of transmitted words from the blind man down in the hall kept reaching his ears.

"There is something about you, sir, that I can't quite put into words..."

"Though I've been blind since childhood, my perceptive senses far exceed those of ordinary people. Anyone who comes within three zhang of me, I can sense everything about them clearly. But you, sir, are the one exception I cannot see through at all."

"This has never happened to me before..."

Listening to the blind man's endless string of transmitted thoughts, Li Musheng's brow creased, and he sealed off all transmissions, having no patience to engage with the man's questions.

Down in the hall, the blind man, having transmitted at length without receiving any response from Li Musheng, let out a quiet sigh and ran his hand along the bamboo staff in his grip, muttering to himself, "My master once said that any great fortune or great calamity is preceded by some sign. I have never encountered anyone like this before, and now I have. I'm afraid this is no good omen."

Even so, the blind man showed no intention of leaving, and simply continued sitting and waiting.

Before long, Ah Xiu's eyelid suddenly twitched, and she instinctively looked toward the entrance of the hall.

At that very moment, she could clearly sense more than a dozen Heaven-Human experts' auras drawing closer from a distance. In the blink of an eye, they had surrounded the entire guesthouse and sealed it under an overwhelming aura.

"Return my son's life to me."

A thunderous roar shook the air, a yellow gust of wind suddenly rising. A brilliant streak of blade light came crashing down from above, slicing clean through the guesthouse's door frame and striking directly toward the blind man seated in the hall.

The blind man, gripping his bamboo staff, tilted his head slightly. The blade light, seemingly powerful enough to split the entire guesthouse in two, was narrowly avoided, and he caught it neatly between two fingers.

In the next instant, the blind man gave his fingers a light tremble, and the blade light shattered instantly, dissolving into scattering streaks of light.

Then the blind man's figure vanished from where he sat in an instant, reappearing on the street outside the guesthouse.

The once bustling street was now completely empty. Above the guesthouse, more than a dozen Heaven-Human experts hovered in the air, radiating undisguised and overwhelming martial pressure, which had sent the merchants and common people of the surrounding streets fleeing in panic, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the area.

The blind man raised his pale, sightless eyes toward the sky. There, hovering in the air, stood a middle-aged man past fifty, tall and imposing.

The middle-aged man was one of the Yellow Spring Tribe's Nine Yellow Spring Guardians, and the blue-robed young master whose body now lay on the street outside the guesthouse was his own son.

At this moment, the middle-aged man looked down at his son's body, his eyes practically splitting with fury, his crescent-moon blade in hand erupting with a savage, devouring radiance.

"Where is Young Master Jinchuan?"

The blind man asked slowly, standing on the empty street leaning on his bamboo staff, his expression unchanged as he faced the host of Heaven-Human experts from the Yellow Spring Tribe hovering above.

At those words, the middle-aged man tore his gaze sharply away from his son's body and turned to look at the blind man.

In an instant, a chillingly murderous intent enveloped the blind man completely, a single glance carrying what felt like hundreds upon hundreds of substantial blades slicing down at once.

Anyone with insufficient martial cultivation would likely have been sliced apart by that gaze alone.

But the blind man, facing the middle-aged man's lethal stare, remained completely unmoved and entirely unharmed.

The middle-aged man's killing intent surged through the air, yet he remained cautious. He suddenly called out to the assembled Yellow Spring Tribe experts around him, "All of you, strike together with me. Kill him, and avenge my son."