Chapter 45: Soldiers and Bandits Unite, Coming to Exact Revenge

From over a hundred paces away, a dense crowd surged toward this direction, led by more than a dozen horsemen, followed by a throng of people on foot.

Most of these individuals wore the uniforms of Wu State county soldiers, while a small minority donned various miscellaneous outfits.

Those in miscellaneous clothing mostly wielded sabers and swords, whereas the county soldiers predominantly carried long spears, sabers, and shields, with a few archers mixed in, though not many.

Only the leader at the very front wore a heart-protecting mirror armor, casually holding a twelve-foot-long spear upside down in one hand while riding a white horse, lending him somewhat the air of a military commander.

"Young Master, you should have just let me kill them earlier," Qiutong said, sounding slightly aggrieved.

Qiutong possessed sharp eyesight and instantly spotted members of the Clear Water Stronghold among the crowd whom they had just released.

Lou Chong had originally intended to return, bury the corpse of the Fourth Chieftain and the others, and then come back to seek revenge.

However, he had not gone far before running straight into Bear Rucheng, the First Chieftain of Clear Water Stronghold, and Yu Jing, the county magistrate of Bizun, leading a large troop of men.

Yu Jing wanted to capture the members of the Li clan, and Bear Rucheng wanted the same. Now, adding the task of avenging his fourth brother was simply a matter of convenience.

The only thing that felt somewhat tricky was those few young men and women, who might well turn out to be descendants of some prominent military family.

Yet, since they were not in the city, and were merely greenhorns lacking the most basic survival common sense when traveling, killing them meant they were simply dead. In any case, even if someone pursued the matter later, they possessed the righteous banner of hunting down fugitives from Songjing.

"We were about to eat, and too many dead bodies would ruin Chrysanthemum's appetite," Lu Wu shifted the blame onto Chrysanthemum, offering a forced defense for himself as he stood up and walked outside.

——I show mercy for once in a blue moon, and this is how I get my face slapped.

"Young Master, I don't care about the smell of blood at all," Chrysanthemum declared, refusing to take the blame.

The five maidservants were also skilled at killing. It had been nauseating the first time, but after killing and killing more, they grew used to it. Unless corpses were rotting with a stench filling the skies, a few dead bodies would never ruin her appetite.

Lu Wu's expression darkened, though with his back turned to the others, no one saw it.

With the sound of trotting hooves, Black Deity came jogging over, leading several warhorses.

Just as Lu Wu stepped out of the tavern, Black Deity arrived right at the entrance.

Lu Wu drifted up in a single fluid motion and mounted Black Deity. The horse turned around and galloped toward the crowd.

"Hold your fire, capture him alive—First Brother, it was his female guard who killed the Second Brother's son and the Fourth Brother. We must take this fellow alive, or else that female guard of his is completely invulnerable to blades and spears, with external martial arts perfected to the peak. Once she goes mad, she will be extremely difficult to deal with!"

Seeing Lu Wu riding toward them alone, Lou Chong shouted in a hurry, terrified that someone on his side might be blind and accidentally shoot this self-delivered hostage to death with an arrow.

To fight for their lives against that female guard whose strength-training was perfected to the peak, even with their numerical superiority, Lou Chong still felt his heart falter.

That woman had used her bare fists to shatter the Fourth Brother's Thunder-Shattering Slash. Describing that level of bodily toughness as invulnerable to blades and spears was putting it mildly; if she stood there and let people hack at her, probably very few here could even scratch her.

Moreover, judging by her build, that woman clearly lacked nothing in the strength department. In a real fight, they'd better hope they weren't swatted away like children by her fists—while these Jianghu folks rarely encountered martial artists of the military school, they were all martial artists at heart, and the basics remained universal.

"Magistrate Yu, my Third Brother has suffered a loss, and his suggestion carries some reason. I ask that you exercise caution as well." Bear Rucheng, the First Chieftain of Clear Water Stronghold, was a fierce man with a face full of thick whiskers. At this moment, however, the wrinkles on his face squeezed together into the shape of a flower as he offered his sincere advice.

Since a figure of authority had stepped forward, even water bandits like those from Clear Water Stronghold were compelled to assist in capturing the Li family members.

"I see. Chieftain Bear, go and subdue this fellow—be careful, and take plenty of men to help," Yu Jing nodded, waving a hand to signal his subordinates to pull back and reveal the men of Clear Water Stronghold.

Bear Rucheng froze for a moment and quickly said, "Magistrate Yu, I am not skilled at mounted combat."

This Yu Jing had always prided himself on leading from the front; why had his temperament suddenly changed?

"Then fight on foot. Chieftain Bear possesses formidable martial arts and is a renowned fifth-grade expert, and the elite of Clear Water Stronghold are all right here. The lot of you can just go together," Yu Jing said.

You must be joking. Yu Jing was not blind.

The long halberd in the opponent's hand was as thick as a duck egg and of astonishing length, particularly the crescent blade at the tip which looked to be forged from profound iron—even if it weren't profound iron, a halberd of this scale would weigh well over a hundred catties.

This Chieftain Bear's every word and phrase was egging him on to step forward and fight to the death; did Yu Jing look like a fool to him? A mounted commander capable of wielding such a heavy weapon was bound to be a handful.

"Magistrate Yu, this is Physician Fang's order!" Seeing the black horse getting closer and closer, Bear Rucheng grew anxious.

"Indeed, so I am leaving this initial merit to you," Yu Jing said, holding his spear in one hand and pulling back the reins to let his warhorse back up a few steps.

The black horse drew closer and closer. The man wearing the golden crown held his halberd upside down, completely devoid of the tension of an impending battle, looking instead as though he were merely out for a casual stroll.

"Launch hidden weapons, shoot him off his horse first!" Bear Rucheng could no longer afford to argue with Yu Jing—the halberd-wielding man was almost upon them.

Seven or eight flying daggers flashed through the air.

Lu Wu merely raised his halberd with his right hand, flicked his wrist, and casually spun the weapon ninety degrees to point forward.

The crescent blade deflected three flying daggers during the spin, the halberd tip parried two more, and the shaft blocked yet another—the final two flying daggers whizzed past his body.

Those two flying daggers had never been aimed at him; their sole purpose was to restrict Lu Wu's evasive space.

Bear Rucheng was alarmed and hurriedly leaped down from his horse.

A Jianghu expert unskilled in mounted combat who remained on horseback found his evasive space entirely restricted, allowing him to display at most half of his full martial prowess.

Yet at the very moment he was about to land, the black horse ridden by the golden-crowned knight across from him suddenly accelerated without the slightest warning, and the halberd was already before him.

This move was truly unexpected.

If facing a normal Jianghu expert, Bear Rucheng would have guarded against the opponent seizing the moment to charge forward aggressively, but a horse? Who could have anticipated that a horse possessed such sudden charging capability?

Bear Rucheng roared fiercely, gripping his saber with both hands and executing a full-force downward slash, aiming squarely at the point where the halberd's edge was most lethal.

The point of greatest strength was precisely the point of weakest flexibility.

As long as he could deflect this halberd by a mere thirty percent, combined with his own momentum to dodge away, he would be temporarily safe.

——Though that halberd looked terrifying, the golden-crowned knight had wielded it with a single hand as though it were a straw, so its actual weight surely could not be as heavy as it appeared.

Furthermore, gripping his saber with both hands and channeling his inner breath to assist in unleashing his 'Water-Parting Saber' technique with all his might, even in the worst-case scenario, he could surely knock the halberd off course by a fraction—right?

The heavy saber, weighing five catties, struck the halberd.

The halberd remained rock-steady. The saber flew from his grip high into the air. The webbed spaces between the thumbs and forefingers of Chieftain Bear Rucheng burst open, and he could only watch helplessly as the halberd pierced through his chest, hoisting him effortlessly into the air.

The final thought running through the mind of Bear Rucheng, First Chieftain of Clear Water Stronghold, turned out to be: 'This halberd really was that heavy after all.'