Thirty feet above the curved gray roof tiles of Willow-Breeze Courtyard, the thirty Rank 4 Early Royal Blood-Hound Assassins descended through the midnight air like a flock of silent, murderous bats.
Every single one of these black-masked killers was a Stage-2 to Stage-4 Qi-Gathering cultivator raised in the secret underground kennels of the Royal Clan’s Ancestral Shrine. Thirty minutes ago, when the backlash from Gu Changsheng’s two-million-citizen hearth-fire pillar had blown up the Eastern Palace blood-altar and knocked out three Royal Blood-Mages. A half-mad Second Prince Qian Ye had burned his last royal emergency token to unleash the entire thirty-man Blood-Hound pack with one frantic order:.
“Burn Willow-Breeze Courtyard to the ground and bring me that Frost-Star Crystal—even if you have to die doing it!”
Seeing only a ten-year-old boy in a neat sky-blue school uniform standing at the porch railing holding a two-foot bamboo ruler, the lead Stage-4 assassin—Squad Commander Hound-One—let out a silent. Cruel sneer behind his iron mask and signaled all thirty men to release their Rank 4 Early Blood-Shadow Saber-Net simultaneously!
Thirty poisoned curved sabers ignited with dark crimson blood-qi, weaving a thirty-foot interlocking net of lethal blade-wind aimed straight at the porch table where Gu Changsheng, Gu Nian. Su Nuannuan sat beside the steaming pot of sweet-and-sour ribs!
