The chieftain’s eyes were fixed on the jade-green pill in the young man’s hand. Whether it was a hallucination brought on by tension or the poison truly taking effect, he vaguely sensed a prickling pain in his palm.

Looking again at Scarface, he was already in such pain that he kept stretching his fingers, his expression clearly unable to endure it. Just as he reached to snatch the pill from the young man’s hand, the chieftain raised his blade and struck hard with the hilt against Scarface’s tiger’s mouth.

Scarface bared his teeth in pain and withdrew his hand, glaring at the chieftain. “Big Brother! You only touched the wine bowl I touched, but I carried that sword all the way. Even if you’re poisoned, it shouldn’t be life-threatening!”

At this moment, he regretted it beyond measure—he should not have coveted that silver snake flexible sword for its dexterity and beauty and played with it all the way here.

Hearing this, the chieftain looked again at the young man’s face. He saw that the young man’s eyes were naturally smiling, yet his expression was cold and composed, revealing not the slightest hint of his thoughts. That, instead, made one’s heart grow colder, not daring to take risks.

“I indeed brought more than just this one pill.”

Zhezhu lowered the sword and looked toward Shang Rong behind him. “Although this poison no longer affects me, sometimes she touches my sword or my hand. This medicine was originally prepared for her.”

He lifted a brow and gave a soft scoff. “Otherwise, why would I bother poisoning the blade and bringing an antidote?”

Shang Rong suddenly met his gaze. Hearing the faint trace of “ambiguity” that slipped unconsciously between his words, her eyelashes trembled lightly, and she lowered her head in silence.

“So today, it just so happens only this one is left?” The chieftain’s brows knitted tightly.

Zhezhu brushed away the blood on his cheek with his fingertip. “I know some martial arts, but to deal with the Third Master and the dozen or so men he brought, I wouldn’t have much confidence. That’s why I told the lie about the thirty thousand taels.”

Hearing this, Shang Rong immediately raised her head, only to see the young man lower his brows and sigh softly. “If the Second Master hadn’t just now intended to harm her, I wouldn’t have killed in haste.”

He then lifted his head and looked at the chieftain, whose expression was shifting uncertainly. “This is your territory, and you have so many subordinates. Even if I deceived you, could I really escape?”

The chieftain thought for a moment, then his gaze fell once more on Scarface. “Third Brother, in the end, this matter was brought about by you.”

“If you hadn’t been greedy for those illusory thirty thousand taels, the Second Brother wouldn’t have died.”

The mountain bandits who usually followed under the Second Master had already been barely restraining themselves from attacking the black-clad youth. Now, hearing the chieftain’s words, they too fixed their eyes on Scarface.

“Big Brother! So you won’t give me the medicine?”

Scarface, being stared at by so many eyes, let out a cold laugh. Glancing once more at the pill in the young man’s hand, the pain in his hand growing severe and his fear of death intensifying, he immediately drew his blade. “Then what is there left to say!”

The entire hall descended into chaos as the chieftain and Scarface fought. The dead Second Master’s men either rushed toward Zhezhu or tangled with the Third Master’s people.

At first, no blood was seen. But after Zhezhu, protecting Shang Rong, easily slit two men’s throats with the flexible sword in his hand, he seemed, as if by accident, to toss the pill out. Immediately, Scarface exerted all his strength to snatch it.

The chieftain took a heavy blow from Scarface’s blade across his shoulder. His face turned iron-green, and when he attacked again, he was several times more ruthless than before. As for Scarface, perhaps the pain in his hand was so intense he could hardly grip the hilt—within a dozen exchanges, he fell into a disadvantage.

As the chieftain pressed him back step by step, a mountain bandit behind Scarface suddenly pierced through his chest. Blood gushed from his mouth, splattering across the chieftain’s face.

“Third Brother…” The chieftain stared at him, momentarily bewildered.

Scarface collapsed heavily, his breath gone in an instant. The mountain bandit who had pierced his chest was then hacked to death in a frenzy by Scarface’s own men.

Blood sprayed everywhere, a field of scarlet.

“Chieftain! The antidote!” Someone presented the pill—rolled several times in the dust and smeared with much blood with both hands.

The chieftain did not even glance at Scarface’s corpse on the ground. Taking the antidote, he swallowed it without caring about the filth. In that instant, he let out a breath of relief. He then ordered the subordinates of the Second and Third Masters to be restrained. After all the commotion, he realized that the young man and the girl beside him had disappeared.

Yet the main door was clearly shut, and not a single guard at the entrance was missing.

“Chieftain, he’s up there!” Someone raised a hand and pointed at the beam.

Following the voice, the chieftain looked up and saw the black-clad youth and the girl wrapped in a cloak sitting on the crossbeam. The youth looked down from above, his robes fluttering.

His clear, crystalline eyes gazed down at the remaining mountain bandits below, the ground full of blood and ruin. Seeing the chieftain’s grim killing intent, he smiled. “So you’re going to cross the river and dismantle the bridge already?”

“Sit properly. Don’t fall.”

Shang Rong clung to the pillar. Hearing his brief instruction, she raised her eyes just in time to see him leap down. Instantly, everyone surrounded him.

The grating sound of blades clashing was piercing, while the sound of flesh being cut was dull and heavy. The flexible sword in the young man’s hand moved like a living serpent, and his light, elusive figure wove through the hazy mist of blood. Shang Rong did not dare look too much and could only shut her eyes tightly.

Suddenly, a gust of wind rushing toward her made her open her eyes in alarm. It was the chieftain, leaping off the long table, flying toward her with his long blade raised.

The blade’s edge brushed the fur lining of her hood in the wind—but in that instant, the broad-faced chieftain suddenly cried out in pain. His massive body crashed onto the table, causing it to splinter and collapse completely.

His face twisted in agony. His legs, their tendons severed, bled without stop, and his entire body trembled. Cold sweat covered his head as he suddenly realized the hall had fallen utterly silent.

It turned out that, aside from him, not a single one of his brothers in the hall remained alive.

“You…”

His lips trembled as he stared in terror at the young man walking lightly toward him, stepping through corpses and pools of blood. He could not help shrinking backward.

Droplets of blood fell one by one from the tip of the young man’s sword. His voice was calm, smiling:

“Did the sugar pill taste good?”

What?

The chieftain froze in shock, his eyes widening—but the next moment, the blade thin as a bamboo leaf sliced through his throat.

There was no longer the slightest sound in the entire hall.

Shang Rong’s back was nearly soaked with cold sweat. She did not dare look at the corpses covering the ground below, only stared at the black-clad youth—watching him turn around, watching him raise his head.

His fair and handsome face was smeared with blood, tinged with a faint, inexplicable flush. When he looked at her, those eyes seemed as though touched with dew, slightly moist.

Snow began to fall in the mountains. The entire stronghold built against the cliffside was swallowed by blazing flames, black smoke coiling upward.

“I remember you can drink alcohol.”

Shang Rong struggled to support the young man as they walked through the snow-filled mountain hollow, lifting her head to look at him as she spoke.

By the Yu Liang River, he had even forced a mouthful of wine into her.

The intoxication had gradually risen, and Zhezhu’s thoughts seemed somewhat sluggish. He raised two fingers toward her and said, “Only two mouthfuls.”

“But today you only drank two mouthfuls too.”

Shang Rong was panting, never having expected that although he always carried a small wine gourd at his waist, his tolerance would be so poor.

“Mhm.”

He responded indifferently. After a moment, he remembered to answer her, “Their wine is stronger.”

“Then don’t drink it,”

Shang Rong frowned. “That was clearly such a dangerous place.”

Zhezhu gave an inexplicable soft laugh but said nothing. Only when her strength gave out and her knees buckled, sending the two of them falling into the snow, did she hurriedly sit up—only to find that he had already closed his eyes.

At a loss, she noticed the flexible sword that had fallen to one side and reached to pick it up for him but suddenly heard him say, “Don’t touch it.”

Shang Rong’s hand halted. She turned back, meeting his misty eyes, and asked, “Wasn’t it fake?”

From the moment he took out that jade-green thing, Shang Rong had known he was deceiving those mountain bandits. That was no antidote, it was a sugar pill she had eaten before.

Zhezhu always carried many sugar pills.

“It’s just the juice of a kind of medicinal herb. If it gets on you, it numbs and hurts,” Zhezhu’s eyes curved with a smile, a trace of not-so-strong drunkenness wrapped in his voice. “I smeared it on for fun.”

If it had only been brief contact, it would have been nothing. But that Scarface had carried his sword the whole way, so naturally he was exposed to more. Later, the chieftain had held the wine bowl for a long time without letting go, so he too had gotten a bit on him.

Shang Rong stared at him in astonishment. After a moment, she looked at his hands again. “What about you? When you hold the sword, doesn’t it hurt when it gets on you?”

If it hadn’t hurt terribly, how could that Scarface have been so certain he was poisoned? If the medicinal herb’s juice hadn’t been potent enough, how could it have spread from Scarface’s sweaty hands onto the wine bowl, making the chieftain also believe he was poisoned?

“I don’t feel pain.”

Zhezhu gave a soft scoff. He stared at her. “Not everything I said was false. For example, I truly dislike others touching my sword.”

Shang Rong felt something strange in her heart, but she silently studied him. The young man’s brows and eyes were striking, and indeed there was not the slightest trace of discomfort or pain. His fair face was faintly flushed from the wine, and his eyes shimmered with light.

“Then why didn’t I feel any pain either?” Shang Rong remembered that he had supported her before and had even helped her stick on her mask.

“It’s nothing remarkable. It can be washed off with water.”

Zhezhu’s tone was languid.

Hearing this, Shang Rong could not help but be stunned.

So the reason he often washed his hands was not because of any obsession with cleanliness, but because he sometimes smeared that teasing substance on the sword hilt.

She said nothing, yet could not help recalling what had just happened in the bandits’ hall. Without revealing anything, he had seen through the nature of those three men, deliberately killing first the Second Master who was least likely to fall for deception, leaving the other two. With only a few words and a single sugar pill, he had driven them to slaughter each other.

Of the nearly one hundred bandits, half were left and then he alone killed them all.

Only now did Shang Rong finally understand what he had meant on the mountain path when he said, “If it can’t be hidden, then don’t hide it.”

The wind howled across the snowy wilderness.

“This secret—you must not tell anyone.”

Zhezhu’s eyes were half-open, his voice clear and cold.

The secret he spoke of was that he could only drink two mouthfuls of alcohol. Snowflakes fell upon Shang Rong and also upon his thick lashes. Everything here was a vast expanse of white, and the only noise had always been the wind.

Shang Rong rested her hands on her knees and looked far into the distance. Cold mist and white snow intertwined into utter desolation—everywhere she looked was strange, cold scenery.

“Who would I even tell?”

She turned back to him. “Zhezhu, I only know you.”