Chapter 1331 — One Man Short
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"All right, now is not the time to shift blame. Old Hei didn't do it on purpose. Let's retreat first and talk after!" Lord Hao was, after all, seasoned and steady; he showed no great alarm now, only said in a low voice.
"That's the only way. Mr. Qiu, you lead the way back along the lime line. We're retreating!" Old Hei ordered Mr. Qiu at the rear.
But no one answered.
"Mr. Qiu? Did you hear me?" Old Hei called again.
Still no answer.
"Mr. Qiu?" Old Hei's face finally changed. He called a third time.
"Ah—" Just then, from the very back of the line, came a scream of terror!
Old Hei instinctively ran toward the rear, and everyone else turned their eyes that way. There, at the very back of the line, one of his men stood holding a severed arm aloft, screaming in horror.
On the arm still hung half a sleeve, stained with blood — it was Mr. Qiu's.
"Mr. Qiu!" Old Hei stared at the severed arm in horror, speechless. After a long moment he roared, "Where is Mr. Qiu? Why is there nothing left but half an arm?"
"I... I don't know..." The man holding the arm had gone white as a sheet. "Earlier, when you called Mr. Qiu and I heard no answer, I thought to turn and look. There was nothing to see, nothing to feel — and in my hand there was only this half arm..."
The party had already grown restless from taking the wrong path; now this horror, coming out of nowhere, left them shaken to the bone.
Old Hei's face was grim. If he had not known Mr. Qiu's skill so well, he might even have suspected this man of foul play. But Mr. Qiu was an expert at the peak of the early Yellow Rank — to kill him without a sound, what rank would such an expert have to be?
"Who did it? Who in the hell did it?" Old Hei grew agitated. Mr. Qiu was his greatest reliance, and now the man had been done away with soundlessly, without even the killer's identity known! And besides — was there anyone in this party capable of such a thing?
Wei Zhao was startled too, seeing that only half of Mr. Qiu's arm remained. He was confident he could kill Mr. Qiu and hack off his arm in a single move — but that was on the strength of his own identity as an assassin. For an ordinary Profound Rank expert, such a thing would be extremely difficult; there would surely have been some noise. Yet Wei Zhao had sensed nothing!