As the sound of footsteps, laced with the iron stench of blood, crashed into Ye Fan's nostrils at the northern edge of the village, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The piercing agony of an assassin slitting his throat just before his fall in his past life suddenly surged back—the blood-scent of that night was seven parts identical to the reek in the crisp snap of gravel crushing right now.
"Zhaoyue, guard the left. Old Han, come with me to the village entrance." Ye Fan gently tapped his fingertip against Jiuxiao Huanpei, and the Yuanqi vortex within his Inner World instantly condensed into substance, surging through his meridians to his limbs and bones. He could clearly perceive the owners of those footsteps: three heavily injured bodies, with barbed short blades hanging at their waists. One of them had a thumb-sized hole in his left lung, leaking air with every step he ran.
Lin Zhaoyue's sword cleared its scabbard with a humming resonance, its tip angling downward to carve a half-circle in the dirt as she shielded the three of them in the center. "I'll go with you." The corners of her eyes flushed red, and the sword intent of the Taichu Sword Canon spread out along the tip of her blade, slicing even the moonlight into slivers of silver.
Chapter 390