Great Li Martial God

For a moment, everything inside and outside the carriage went silent.

Hu Rui’an’s expression shifted through a succession of changes. Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong looked bewildered and at a loss.

In this moment, all three of them were filled with questions they could not answer.

They simply could not work it out. If Li Musheng had not acted, on what basis had the ghost in the Tianjin Guards branch office killed so many people before, yet specifically spared the three of them?

Could it really have been something that delayed it?

At this point, Li Musheng looked at Hu Rui’an, who had clearly become anxious and worried all over again, and rubbed his chin, saying, ”The way I see it, that ghost is probably a ghost with self-awareness. It knows a figure of my caliber is present, and so it did not dare show itself.”

After all, from Li Musheng’s perspective, unless the ghost was truly an actual ghost, one palm from him would have flattened it without a second thought.

Hearing this, Hu Rui’an thought about it, and his eyes lit up.

But before he could speak, Wu Shang outside the carriage said with relief, ”His Highness speaks very reasonably. Other than the ghost fearing His Highness and not daring to act, I honestly cannot think of any more plausible explanation.”

Cheng Zhong beside him nodded in wholehearted agreement. Inside the carriage, Shen Anran and Murong Xiaoya were bewildered, and hurriedly asked the others what on earth they had been talking about.So Hu Rui’an gave a rough explanation of the whole affair from beginning to end.

Hearing this, Shen Anran immediately had a look of sudden comprehension on her face, finally understanding why her great-uncle had been so determined to compete with her for a position earlier.

Murong Xiaoya, on the other hand, seemed somewhat frightened by the matter of the ghost, and immediately shrank her neck down without daring to ask or say anything further.

And just at this moment, Hu Rui’an suddenly let out another sigh and said, ”Even so, I am still somewhat worried. They say there has never been a thief who defends for a thousand days. There is only a thief who waits for a thousand days.”

”The ghost may not have dared to act today because of Your Highness’s presence. But we cannot be at Your Highness’s side forever. If Your Highness is not around, I do not know whether the ghost will still come after us.”

The moment those words fell, Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong, whose faces had just relaxed into pleased expressions, immediately went blank.

Both turned their heads back with expressions that could only be described as gently aggrieved. It had to be said that Hu Rui’an had a gift for killing the mood.

The two of them had barely had a moment to feel relieved about the ghost situation before having a bucket of cold water thrown over their heads.

At this point, Li Musheng raised an eyebrow. What Hu Rui’an said was not without basis. Even so, he quickly waved a hand and said, ”Do not worry about it. You will not be staying in this city much longer before setting out again. Can the ghost really chase you all the way to Falling God Peak?”

Hearing this, Hu Rui’an’s expression brightened with a moment of contemplation, saying, ”That does seem to be the case. The haunting is clearly closely tied to the Tianjin Guards branch office, and the ghost has stayed within the building throughout without ever leaving. Once we leave the provincial city, it will most likely not follow.”

”And while we are in the city, as long as we stay close to Your Highness, the ghost will almost certainly not dare act. When you put it that way, there is no need to worry too much about the matter.”

Outside the carriage, Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong exchanged a look, and the tension they had been carrying loosened considerably once again.

Even so, the rapid rise and fall of their emotions had left both of them feeling thoroughly worn out.

They immediately resolved to stop listening, afraid that Hu Rui’an would come out with another ”however” at any moment and land another blow on them.

The carriage continued forward. About half an incense stick’s worth of time later, the sky had grown dark, and their group was drawing closer and closer to the Murong estate.

Cao Gaoshan, riding ahead, raised his head and looked out. In the direction of the Murong estate, he could dimly make out a sky lit up with soaring flames, standing out with striking vividness against the dusk.

On the empty main street, the carriage wheels rolled steadily forward. After they turned a corner, a sharp, acrid smell of blood mingled with burning smoke and ash hit them in the face on the night wind.

Looking out, the entire stretch of road before them had its paving stones shattered and overturned, exposing the dark earth beneath, and the shops and buildings on either side were half collapsed.

Cao Gaoshan’s expression grew serious at once, and he guided the carriage forward carefully over the uneven ground. Scattered bodies could be seen lying at the roadside from time to time.

In the end, the group came to a stop before a vast expanse of rubble. The carriage had barely come to a halt before Murong Xiaoya’s figure had already scrambled out in a panic and was running toward the ruins ahead.

Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong jumped down, looking at the scene before them with expressions of stunned disbelief. Then Hu Rui’an and the others also stepped out of the carriage.

In the dim light of dusk, half-scorched shreds of clothing drifted down through the air trailing embers. The towering gate walls that had once stood so imposing were reduced to broken bricks and shattered tiles.

Hu Rui’an’s expression was grave. He was silent for a moment, then turned to look at Li Musheng beside him and said, ”The Murong family has been defeated.”

Li Musheng said nothing. His eyes reflected the firelight from the ruins, and he gave a slight shake of his head, then stepped directly over the threshold that had been broken into several pieces and walked into the ruins of the Murong estate.

Seeing this, Shen Anran immediately followed. Hu Rui’an swept a slow gaze around the surroundings.

From the burning piles of rubble not far away came the dying screams of horses. Dozens of armored soldiers were frozen in the posture of mid-swing, their bloodied hands still hanging from the gaps between shields, their bodies gradually carbonizing in the flames.

Hu Rui’an and Wu Shang and the others exchanged looks, all of them silent, and followed into the ruins.

As they pressed deeper in, the scenes around them grew increasingly harrowing.

Floating corpses drifted like leaves along the waterside corridors. The body of a martial world expert hung from an iron hook at the corner of an eave, still dripping blood. Corpses floated in the murky pond water.

Poisonous smoke lingered above some of the ruins, thick and unmoving, shrouding a mass of blue-black and purple-tinged armored bodies that were visibly dissolving into a slick of putrefaction before their eyes.

And these bodies, without exception, all belonged to either the Murong family or the four major families.

Moving along the path, Hu Rui’an and the others found almost no survivors. In barely half a day, what had been Sheng Province’s foremost martial world family was unrecognizable. A rough count of the dead on both sides ran into the thousands.

Before long, the group came to a stop before a courtyard gate belonging to one of the Murong family’s ancestral halls, which proved to be the only structure they had encountered in their entire journey through the ruins that was even partially intact.

Most of the ancestral hall’s courtyard wall had been destroyed, and looking in through the crumbling gaps, they could see a thousand-year-old ginkgo tree standing before the hall.

Yet the ancient tree, which had once taken multiple men’s arms to embrace, had now become a tree of death. The clothing of Murong family women hung from its branches, and beneath the bloodstained silk the feathered tips of arrows protruded, with the sound of blood dripping clearly audible in the night air.

Shen Anran turned her head away, unable to look at it.

Just at that moment, a crumbling five-story bell tower in the distance collapsed with a thunderous crash under the consuming flames. The great bronze bell hanging from it plummeted to the ground, slamming into the pile of bodies below and sending a zhang-high spray of blood and dust into the air.

The reverberating sound drifted over the silent ruins, and the tremors it caused brought down several more already-teetering structures, sending a flock of vultures that had been feeding there flapping up in startled panic.

At this point, Hu Rui’an and the others stepped through a gap in the broken walls and entered the inner courtyard of the ancestral hall.