The man with the green face and red eyes was standing extremely close to the eldest brother of the Sun Family as he spoke.
His breath, a nauseating stench, washed over the man's face.
His eyes rolled back. In his overwhelming terror, he lost control of his bladder and wet his pants with a gush.
The man holding him immediately looked disgusted.
He pressed his left hand on the back of the man's head and slammed it against the stone wall next to the doorframe.
BANG!
Brains splattered as he died a swift, clean death.
"Dad!!"
The boy cried out in alarm, his legs turning to jelly. Unable to stand, he collapsed onto the ground with a thud.
Elder Sun staggered backward, screaming desperately:
"Mur… murder! Someone's been murdered!!!"
He was also hoping to startle Zhou Qingmei awake.
They had seen the great heroes of the Jianghu before. In their view, while such people were often hopelessly naive, they usually possessed a chivalrous heart.
Faced with a scene like this, they would surely intervene.
Meanwhile, the two men from outside had already stepped into the courtyard.
After Elder Sun let out that shout, his vision blurred for an instant. When it cleared, the two men who had just stepped into the courtyard were suddenly standing right before him.
Overcome by terror, he gasped, his eyes rolled back, his toes pointed, and he simply dropped dead from fright.
The two intruders had planned to deal with them separately, one for each.
But they hadn't expected the old man to be so frail, to just up and die like that.
The hand that had been reaching for Elder Sun could only be withdrawn in disappointment.
The other man, meanwhile, casually lifted the boy.
Everything happened in a flash. Before the boy could even react, he was dangling in mid-air, held up by his head.
The man spoke in a sinister tone:
"Zhou Qingmei, as a True Disciple of Zhuji Pavilion, do you only have the guts to hide in the house and watch the show?
"If you don't come out, I'll crush this little brat to death!"
Fang Shuwen and Zhou Qingmei were indeed watching the show, and rather enjoying it, at that.
No one in the Sun Family was a good person. This could be considered their just deserts.
But they hadn't expected to be dragged into it.
She and Fang Shuwen exchanged a look. Fang Shuwen raised an eyebrow.
"Can you tell where these two are from?"
Zhou Qingmei shook her head.
The Jianghu was full of strange people and strange events.
But individuals as bizarre as these two were rare.
Given their distinctive appearances and methods, it made no sense that she hadn't heard of them.
But Zhou Qingmei had never heard of two such people.
Fang Shuwen nodded, pushed open the window, and slipped right out.
Zhou Qingmei followed close behind.
Once on her feet, she looked up at the two men.
"You were looking for me?"
The two men's gazes merely swept over Zhou Qingmei before settling on Fang Shuwen.
Their blood-red eyes held a flicker of shock and uncertainty.
Just as Fang Shuwen was getting impatient, one of them spoke:
"No, that's impossible."
"Yeah, he's so young. How could it be?"
'Could we have guessed wrong?'
'But it seems there are no other experts around Zhou Qingmei besides him?'
'Could it have been a passing master who did it?'
"Should we ask?"
"Let's ask!"
The two spoke back and forth, one sentence after another, completely disregarding Fang Shuwen and Zhou Qingmei.
At this, they both turned to Zhou Qingmei.
"Who helped you kill Granny Hei?"
Granny Hei!?
Zhou Qingmei instantly knew they were talking about the woman in the forest, the one who had been digging her own grave in the pouring rain.
It was an incident Zhou Qingmei was unlikely to forget for many years.
After all, she had seen plenty of people digging graves for others, but seeing someone dig their own was truly a rarity.
'So that woman was called Granny Hei?'
'These two… they're from the Black Death Sect as well?'
Though Zhou Qingmei had suspected it the moment they called her out, she still found it somewhat hard to believe.
She and Fang Shuwen had spent such a long time deep in the remote mountains.
They had only just emerged, and the Black Death Sect had already tracked them down?
'How on earth did they find me?'
She suddenly said to Fang Shuwen:
"Smell me."
Fang Shuwen took a step back, a look of utter rejection on his face.
"I've protected you this whole way. Why are you trying to harm me now?"
Zhou Qingmei flushed.
"I suspect that black-robed person from that night left some kind of hidden mark on me. Otherwise, how could they have followed us all this way?"
"A hidden mark… doesn't necessarily have to be on your body, right?"
Fang Shuwen quietly looked up.
"It could also be… hanging in the sky."
"The sky?"
Zhou Qingmei looked up instinctively, just as an eagle's cry suddenly echoed across the sky.
She had heard this sound many times in recent days.
She had dismissed it as a mountain hawk or some other bird of prey. But now that she and Fang Shuwen had left the mountains, the hawk was still there?
"Are you saying we're being watched by that thing?"
"Should we ask?"
"Let's ask!"
The two of them also spoke back and forth, completely ignoring the man holding the child hostage.
"That beast in the sky, is it your eyes and ears?"
This kind of behavior was naturally infuriating.
The man holding the child held the boy's head out at arm's length, his five fingers silently tightening their grip.
"If you don't tell me who killed Granny Hei, I'll kill this little bastard."
Overwhelmed by pain and fear, the child let out a series of piercing screams.
Tears and snot streamed down his face.
"Sir! Miss! Save me!!"
The man holding him said with a vicious grin:
"Did you hear that? He's asking you to save him."
"Yes, yes, we hear him. He's so loud."
Fang Shuwen waved his hand and said:
"Why don't you just get it over with and kill him?"
"?"
The man was stunned for a moment, exchanged a glance with his companion, and thought to himself, 'Could we have gotten the wrong people?'
'This person is so ruthless. How could he be from one of the Renowned and Righteous Sects? Could he be… one of us?'
The other man decided to press the issue. He raised a hand and snapped the child's arm.
A bloodcurdling scream echoed far into the night.
The man shouted angrily:
"Still not talking?"
Fang Shuwen rolled his eyes and suddenly took a step. A gust of wind preceded him, followed by a large, slapping palm.
The face of the man opposite him grew even darker, almost black, and the blood-red of his eyes became so intense it seemed ready to drip.
He let out an angry roar of his own, flipping his palm and thrusting it forward.
When the two palms met, it was like a boulder crashing into an iron mountain, producing a deafening BOOM.
But in the next instant, the green-faced, red-eyed man was sent flying backward.
Fang Shuwen glanced at his own palm with some surprise. 'This guy is tougher than I expected.'
But he immediately took another stride. Before the man could even hit the ground, Fang Shuwen had him by the throat. In a flash, he was back at Zhou Qingmei's side, glaring at the other assailant as he spoke coldly:
"Speak. That thing in the sky, is it your eyes and ears?
"If you don't talk, I'll crush him to death!!"