Chapter 151: Bald Vulture

The midnight winds sweeping through Crimson Vale carried a biting chill, rustling the heavy leaves of the old trees bordering Lu Feng’s estate. The compound was enveloped in an eerie, profound silence. The regular patrols of the estate guards had been subtly redirected to the outer perimeters, leaving the central courtyard bathed in undisturbed, pale moonlight.

Lu Feng stood on the stone steps of the main hall, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. His breathing was slow and in perfect sync with the circulation of his internal Qi.

He had been waiting out in the cold air for over an hour, calculating the variables of his upcoming meeting with Lin Laifu and the fast-approaching Grand Mercantile Auction. Yet, a fraction of his mind remained anchored to the dark city beyond his walls, waiting for his shadow to return.

The silence of the courtyard was abruptly broken by a distinct, rhythmic sound echoing from the other side of the heavy iron gates.

Skrr... Skrrr...

It was a strange, heavy sound, like a massive sack of wet grain being unceremoniously hauled over uneven cobblestones.

Lu Feng’s eyebrows arched slightly. He didn’t need to alert the guards to open the gate. Song Heng quickly appeared and within seconds, the gate was unlatched and pulled open revealing the figure responsible for the noise.

Stepping through the threshold was Ye Chenxue. She looked as pristine and ethereal as a moonlit deity, her dark robes entirely unblemished, not a single hair out of place. Her expression was completely tranquil, a picture of absolute serenity.

However, trailing on the ground behind her was a completely different story.

Her slender, porcelain hand was clamped in an iron grip around the thick leather collar of a massive, heavily tattooed bald man. The man was completely unresponsive, a dead weight of solid muscle and bone that she was casually dragging across the rough ground.

Lu Feng’s gaze drifted from Ye Chenxue’s calm face down to the unconscious man. Because she had been hauling him by the collar of his vest, the man’s heavy boots and legs had been dragging behind him, but his head had unfortunately been bouncing and scraping against the unforgiving stone roads for heavens knew how long.

The bald man’s face, which had once presumably held a fierce and intimidating visage, was now a swollen, bruised, and lacerated mess. Dirt, gravel, and dried blood caked his cheeks, and a massive purple lump had formed over his left eye, completely distorting his features.

Lu Feng blinked slowly, a mixture of mild amusement and genuine disbelief washing over him. He looked up at Ye Chenxue, gesturing vaguely toward the battered lump of flesh on his pristine courtyard tiles.

"Chenxue," Lu Feng began, his tone perfectly even, "please tell me you did not drag this man through the streets of Crimson Vale all the way from the lower districts like this."

Ye Chenxue stopped, releasing her grip on the man’s collar. The heavy cultivator’s head hit the courtyard stones with a dull, hollow smack.

She offered Lu Feng a faint, acknowledging nod. "He is exceptionally heavy, and throwing him over my shoulder would have drawn unnecessary attention and stained my robes with his blood," she replied matter-of-factly.

Catching the lingering look of concern on Lu Feng’s face, she added, "You do not need to be worried about exposure. I took extra, meticulous measures to stick to the high rooftops and shadowed alleyways. I successfully evaded every single squad of city guards we could have possibly encountered and made sure his blood didn’t leave a trial behind."

Lu Feng let out a long, heavy sigh, shaking his head slowly as he looked down at the captive. He actually felt a fleeting, genuine pang of pity for the bald cultivator. To be beaten into a coma, have his meridians frozen solid, and then be dragged like a stubborn mule across miles of jagged city cobblestones—it was a deeply humiliating fate for any martial artist.

"Well," Lu Feng murmured, stepping down the stairs to inspect the captive’s tattooed scalp. "At least he is alive. Let us hope his brain isn’t too scrambled from the journey; I need him lucid enough to answer my questions."

He knelt briefly, pressing two fingers against the man’s thick neck to check his pulse. The heartbeat was slow, heavily suppressed by the residual Ice Qi Ye Chenxue had injected into his meridian pathways, but it was steady.

"Bring him," Lu Feng instructed, turning toward the hidden side entrance of the estate that led down into the underground storage cellars. "I have a feeling I know who can identify our new guest."

Ye Chenxue silently obliged, picking the massive man back up by his collar and resuming her slow, scraping drag across the tiles.

They descended into the environment of the estate’s holding area with its weak lighting. The air here was starkly different from the fresh night breeze outside.

Earlier, Lu Feng had instructed Bai Bao to separate the two captured Iron Fang operatives into different holding cells to prevent them from communicating, corroborating their stories, or plotting an escape.

The estate’s cellar, originally designed to hold massive vats of wine and winter provisions, had been hastily but effectively converted into a makeshift dungeon. Heavy iron rings had immediately been hammered deep into the load-bearing stone pillars, and the oak doors were reinforced.

Lu Feng pushed open the heavy wooden door to the first holding room.

Inside, chained securely to a stone pillar, was the first Iron Fang scout. The man looked utterly miserable. His clothes were ragged, his cultivation was completely sealed, and the lingering, phantom pain of the searing hot iron rods Lu Feng had previously used during his initial ’persuasion’ session still made him twitch involuntarily at every sudden sound.

When the door creaked open, the prisoner flinched violently, raising his bound hands to shield his face from the lantern light.

"P-Please! I told you everything!" the Iron Fang operative stammered frantically, his eyes darting between Lu Feng’s calm smile and the terrifying, cold presence of Ye Chenxue standing behind him. "I swear on my Dao heart, I didn’t hold anything back! Don’t bring the hot irons back!"

"Relax," Lu Feng said smoothly, his voice carrying a soothing but dangerous cadence. "I am not here to punish you. In fact, if you prove yourself useful right now, you might even earn yourself a clean cup of water and an extra blanket for the night."

The prisoner swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his bruised throat. "A-Anything. What do you want?"

Lu Feng stepped aside, motioning for Ye Chenxue to bring their new prize forward. With a casual flick of her wrist, she tossed the massive, unconscious bald man into the center of the cell. The heavy body rolled twice before coming to a stop directly under the flickering light of the wall-mounted oil lantern.

"Take a very close look at this man," Lu Feng commanded, his eyes narrowing as he watched the prisoner’s reaction. "I want to know who he is, who he works for, and whether he takes orders from your Iron Fang masters."

The Iron Fang scout leaned forward, squinting through his swollen eyes to inspect the bruised and battered face of the unconscious giant.

At first, the excessive swelling and the dirt caked onto the man’s features made him unrecognizable. But as the prisoner’s gaze drifted upward, taking in the intricate, dark beast-motif tattoos winding across the man’s bald scalp and thick neck, a spark of sudden, intense recognition flashed in his eyes.

The prisoner gasped, instinctively pulling himself backward against his stone pillar until his iron chains rattled loudly.

"You... you captured him?" the operative whispered in sheer disbelief, looking at Ye Chenxue as if she were an otherworldly monster. "That... that is the Bald Vulture."

"Bald Vulture," Lu Feng repeated, testing the weight of the name on his tongue. It sounded incredibly cliché, yet exactly like the kind of moniker a street-level tyrant would adopt. "Elaborate."

Ready to cooperate with Lu Feng in any way possible to avoid being introduced to the glowing hot rods again, the prisoner began talking rapidly.

"He’s a rogue cultivator," the operative explained, his voice trembling slightly as he stared at the unconscious giant. "A small-time mercenary and assassin for hire operating mainly in the lower and middle borders of Crimson Vale. He specializes in a brutal heavy-body refinement art. They call him the Bald Vulture because he is a scavenger of the worst kind—he takes on elimination and tracking bounties from black-market brokers, and he has a strict, psychotic reputation. He always leaves his victims completely dead, picking their corpses absolutely clean of any valuables before dumping them somewhere hard to find.."

Lu Feng absorbed the information quietly. "A mercenary with a penchant for lethal force. I assume he works for whoever pays the highest gold. Are you absolutely certain he is not affiliated with the Iron Fang Gang?"

"No! Absolutely not!" the prisoner shook his head vehemently. "The Iron Fang Gang demands absolute loyalty. We don’t hire wild dogs like him. In fact, we’ve crossed paths with the Vulture before. He’s territorial and unpredictable. There have been several instances where he was hired by rival merchant houses or smaller gangs to disrupt our supply lines. We’ve been on opposing sides of the blade more than once but since he hasn’t caused any major issues for us, the higher ups decided not to make a move on him."

"I see," Lu Feng murmured, a calculating gleam flashing in his dark eyes.

To ensure the prisoner wasn’t feeding him a convenient lie to protect a hidden asset, Lu Feng signaled Ye Chenxue. They left the first cell, dragging the Bald Vulture down the damp corridor to the second holding room.

The process was repeated. The second Iron Fang prisoner, equally terrified of Lu Feng and haunted by the memory of Bai Bao’s torture methods, immediately corroborated the story. He identified the tattoos without hesitation, confirming that the Bald Vulture was an independent, highly dangerous rogue mercenary who had no love or affiliation with the Iron Fang Gang.

With the intelligence verified, the puzzle pieces began to shift in Lu Feng’s mind.

If this man wasn’t working for Iron Fang, then a completely different, deeply hidden faction or figure in Crimson Vale had taken a sudden, intense interest in his estate. Someone with enough wealth and caution to hire a notoriously lethal independent mercenary just to monitor his front gates. The stakes surrounding his presence in the city were escalating much faster than he had anticipated.

"Fascinating," Lu Feng whispered to himself.

He turned his back on the trembling Iron Fang prisoner. "Bring him upstairs to my personal quarters," Lu Feng instructed Ye Chenxue. "The cellar is too damp for a proper conversation, and I want complete privacy for what comes next."

Ye Chenxue nodded. Grabbing the Vulture by his collar once more, she began the arduous process of dragging the massive body back up the stone steps, leaving the two Iron Fang prisoners shivering in the dark, utterly terrified of the calm young master and his monstrous female guard.

A few minutes later, inside the warm confines of Lu Feng’s personal room, the stage was set.

The door was firmly locked and bolted. The windows were shut tight, and a minor sound-dampening array had been activated to ensure that no screams or sounds of violence would leak out into the night and disturb the resting servants.

In the center of the spacious room sat a heavy, high-backed chair crafted from solid ironwood. Slumped in the chair was the Bald Vulture. He was securely bound by thick chains of forged spirit-steel, coiled multiple times around his massive chest, waist, and ankles, locking him entirely in place.

Lu Feng stood a few feet away, casually wiping his hands with a warm, damp cloth. He took a seat on the edge of his own desk, crossing his legs as he looked upon the captive.

Standing immediately to the Vulture’s right was Ye Chenxue. She had rolled up the dark silk sleeve of her right arm, her icy blue eyes fixed intently on the bruised, unconscious face of the mercenary. The ambient temperature in the room had dropped several degrees, a testament to her perfectly restrained but ever-present killing intent.

Lu Feng tossed the damp cloth onto his desk and leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees.

He looked at Ye Chenxue and offered a curt, anticipating nod.

"Wake him up."

Ye Chenxue didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. She drew back her slender right hand, channeling a precise, concentrated burst of dense Qi directly into her palm. She calculated the exact amount of kinetic force required to deliver maximum, blinding agony without actually shattering the man’s skull or tearing the skin off his cheekbones.

With a motion so fast it broke the sound barrier inside the room, she swung her hand forward.

CRACK!

She delivered the most resounding, thunderous slap imaginable. The sheer concussive force of the impact echoed off the walls of the room like a crack of a whip.