Great Li Martial God

”A death list?”

Wu Shang spoke up from behind with a puzzled tone, while Li Musheng raised an eyebrow slightly.

Hu Rui’an looked at the writing on the bloodstained scroll and said, ”The death list recorded here is not quite like an ordinary one. It does not record individual people, but areas of land, ranging from a single village at the smallest to an entire town at the largest. All of them are marked as targets for elimination.”

He scanned through the booklet once more and continued, ”The list records dates and locations across Sheng Province over the past five years. There are nearly thirty entries in total, all marked as having been carried out, and the operatives in every case were skilled agents from the Tianjin Guards branch office here in Sheng Province.”

At those words, the expressions of Wu Shang and the others shifted. Among them, Cheng Zhong said thoughtfully, ”The kinds of villages and towns that would warrant the Tianjin Guards being sent to eliminate them would most likely be gathering points for forces rebelling against the court, or bases for certain martial world brigands, would they not?”

Hearing this, Hu Rui’an gave a slight nod, then glanced at Li Musheng and said, ”I had the same thought. What puzzles me is why this list was hidden away. If these were ordinary Tianjin Guards assignments carried out in the line of duty, there would be no reason to conceal them. I am only concerned there may be something within it that someone did not want known.”

With that, he looked at the large cat in the corner and then at the old woman in the cell.

At that point the old woman suddenly let out a creaking, rattling laugh that seemed to wheeze out of a broken bellows, cutting through the silence and interrupting everyone’s thoughts.

”You have got it wrong... what is recorded there is no ordinary matter. It is the sort of business that cannot be brought into the light...”

The old woman continued in her rough, rasping voice, and slowly turned her body around to match the direction her head was already facing.That looked considerably more normal, though her face remained unsettling enough to be difficult to look at directly.

Hu Rui’an was not bothered by her appearance. He narrowed his eyes and looked at her directly, saying, ”Given that you are being held in the Tianjin Guards branch office, you are surely no ordinary person. You deny being behind the ghostly appearances, and now you tell us this death list is problematic. I find myself rather curious about who you are.”

Hearing this, the old woman’s clouded eyes moved slowly and came to rest on Hu Rui’an, saying, ”This old one is nothing but a plain and pitiable ugly old woman. What standing could I possibly have to speak of...”

Then her tone shifted, and in a voice like sandpaper dragged across rough wood she said, ”But... looking at you all, you do not seem like bad people. If you truly wish to understand something of the matter, this old one could tell you a thing or two.”

As she spoke, the old woman’s gaze fixed directly on the bloodstained booklet in Hu Rui’an’s hand.

Hu Rui’an looked at her carefully for a long moment, then turned to glance at Li Musheng beside him to gauge his thoughts.

”Since we have come all this way, we may as well hear what she has to say.”

Li Musheng spread his hands, though not toward Hu Rui’an. He was teasing the large black cat crouching in the corner.

The cat straightened up at that, let out a meow, extended its tongue to lick its paw, and its green eyes flickered with an unreadable light.

After what seemed like a moment of hesitation, it padded over toward Li Musheng with measured cat-steps.

It rubbed its body, roughly the size of a country dog, against Li Musheng’s robe, then settled down and lay at his feet, even letting out a lazy yawn.

In the cell, the old woman’s eye twitched almost imperceptibly at the sight of this, though she showed no other sign of anything unusual, and continued in her rasping voice, ”All the people the Tianjin Guards killed on that list were innocent, just like this old woman.”

She swept a slow look over the group and said, ”I know you are all wondering, if they were ordinary people, why would the Tianjin Guards move to kill them?”

Hearing this, Hu Rui’an said nothing and simply waited for her to continue.

At that point the old woman let out another grating laugh that was deeply unpleasant to hear, and said, ”Ha... naturally because among those ordinary people there may have existed certain extraordinary ones.”

”Those extraordinary ones were the Tianjin Guards’s true targets. And in order to eliminate every possible target without missing any, they had no choice but to kill everyone.”

Hu Rui’an’s brow furrowed, and he said, ”I am not aware of any such assignment existing within the Great Li Tianjin Guards.”

The old woman shook her head and did not respond directly. Instead she fixed her gaze on Hu Rui’an and asked, ”Then do you know that there exists in this world a kind of person called those of divine nature?”

At those words, Hu Rui’an’s brow furrowed even deeper. He considered for a moment, then answered plainly, ”I have never heard of such a thing.”

Wu Shang, Shen Anran, and the others also showed expressions of confusion. None of them had any idea what the old woman meant by those of divine nature.

At that, the old woman withdrew her gaze, sat in the damp cell, and let out a chuckling laugh, saying, ”Then let this old one ask a different question. Do you know of Falling God Peak? And do you know where that name comes from?”

Hearing this, Wu Shang nodded at once, saying, ”As one of the four great top-tier sects of the martial world, who could possibly not know of Falling God Peak.”

”As for the origin of the name... I have heard a rumor circulating in the martial world. According to it, there was once a supreme martial artist whose power was spoken of as that of a War God, and who was the mortal enemy of the founder of Falling God Peak in the days before the founder had made a name for himself.”

”The two of them later fought a duel to the death at the summit of a certain peak, and in the end the founder of Falling God Peak killed the War God, making his name resound throughout the martial world. That is how Falling God Peak got its name, meaning the place where the War God fell. The site later became the foundation upon which Falling God Peak was established as a sect.”

When Wu Shang finished, however, the old woman let out a derisive snort and said, ”You take hearsay as truth. Though... it is not your fault for not knowing. Even within Falling God Peak itself, the number of people who truly know the truth of the matter is likely very small.”

With that, the old woman shook her head, glanced at the large black cat lying at Li Musheng’s feet, and said slowly, ”The words ’falling god’ in Falling God Peak are directed at those of divine nature. The founding patriarch of Falling God Peak was peerless in martial skill and had reached the very summit of the martial path, but he was a man who believed deeply in fate. Wishing for the sect he founded to endure for ten thousand generations, he sought out the Heavenly Mechanism Elder of the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion of that era to have the sect’s fate read.”

”The Heavenly Mechanism Elder, under pressure from the patriarch’s martial might, had no choice but to exhaust years of his own lifespan to peer into the will of heaven, and in the end told him that the sect he had founded would be destroyed at the hands of those of divine nature.”

”It was because of this that the founding patriarch named his sect Falling God Peak and left behind a standing testament, commanding that those of divine nature throughout the world be hunted and killed without exception, as though doing so would allow the sect to endure ten thousand generations.”

At those words, Li Musheng’s brow immediately furrowed, and he was the first to speak, ”Somehow this account of yours strikes me as even less credible than the hearsay Wu Shang was passing along.”