Chapter 9 The Night Raid

Ning Xiaoling opened her eyes when the black shadow flashed across the grilled wooden gate.

“Who is that!”

A chill ran through her hands and feet. She shouted and instantly got sober.

There was a dead silence.

Yet, it was such a short instant that even Ning Xiaoling hadn’t finished breathing in and out once. In the darkness on the right side, the extremely low humming sound of the sword arose immediately with the latent killing intent.

The breaking sound of the porcelain bottles came clearly.

A long sword was stabbed from the wooden shelf on the right side with sheer coldness towards her neck.

It was an extremely dangerous attack, like a poisonous snake that jumped up under the grass, extremely swift and gravely fatal.

However, intuitively, Ning Xiaoling had noticed the coming attack and leaned backward before the porcelain bottle was broken. When the intent of the sword sprang across her face, her body had taken two steps backward. Thus, the intent of the sword couldn’t hurt her even though all of it was let out.

The stealthy assassin was surprised by her reaction. Besides, due to the hollow-carved cabinet between him and the young girl, he couldn’t make another move immediately.

Although Ning Xiaoling parried the stab, her hands and feet still trembled in horror with her eyelids constantly shivering.

At this moment, the door was tightly closed and the room was not spacious. In the darkness, the fatal sharp sword was still targeting her.

Ning Xiaoling had never experienced this before. Before she had time to make any effective reaction, the long sword cracked through the wood. Rather than withdraw the sword and go around the cabinet, the assassin patted the sword handle and made the sword stab through it. Meanwhile, he just moved around the cabinet swiftly and approached his target.

The killing intent came again.

Ning Xiaoling couldn’t see the moves of the sword clearly. Only her intuition alarmed by her consciousness in her heart got intensified, causing her to instinctively retreat.

Whoosh!

When the blade was reaching her, a night gale came, causing a window to open all of a sudden and the curtain to sway around. The light shone into the room from the corridor, reddening the blade brightly.

That was the window opened by the assassin when he broke into the room.

In that dim light, Ning Xiaoling could identify where the sword was heading. At that moment, Ning Xiaoling acted several times faster. She hit the ground with her feet, bent down, slapped the ground with her palms and leaped sideways amidst switching her hands. In this way, she parried the life-threatening attack.

The sword had been stabbed through the partition behind her with a clang.

Everything happened within an instant. The assassin also arrived in the darkness but his palm reached nothing but a part of her clothes.

He had no time to think about why this little girl suddenly acted so agilely. Instead, he could only draw out the sword with a backhand instinctively.

He found himself unable to get it out at all.

Then he felt a sudden pain in his wrist as if being bitten by something.

The assassin swung his wrist abruptly, shaking a snow-white figure down.

It was a snow fox without a tail, which was as petite as a kitten, but it acted very fast. As its feet hit the ground, it leaped swiftly like a bullet and jumped towards the young girl.

The assassin came to his senses instantly and then became terrified. “Innate spirit? You can foster a spirit?”

Very few people in the world could cultivate and even fewer of them could foster an innate spirit.

Ning Xiaoling didn’t have the habit of talking nonsense with others. She ran directly to the window through which a glimmer of light came. She cried out of the window for help and then leaped forward, trying to flee through the window.

The assassin was also horrified only for a moment. He reached his hand to his waist by instinct and got a small crossbow.

When Ning Xiaoling took off, he immediately aimed at the position where the girl’s body was about to move to, and pulled the trigger. With a whoosh, a bolt was instantly shot from the crossbow.

No matter how talented this girl was, she still lacked experience in the life-and-death matter.

Currently, her cultivation level was not high enough to let her change her speed and position in the air without a pivot point or leveraging the external force.

Hence, after she jumped up, she couldn’t avoid the arrow that came for her.

That small arrow whistled swiftly along a vertical direction through the wind.

The little snow fox sensed the killing intent and its hair immediately stood on end. It leaped into the air as if it were to block this deadly arrow.

However, the spirit was at the primary stage. Upon colliding with the arrow, it was smashed into ashes and then returned to Ning Xiaoling’s sea of consciousness bit by bit. She felt blood up in her throat. Before she vomited the blood, the arrow had reached her waist.

The assassin was about to get his way when he was suddenly shocked.

He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was dazed.

The arrow had torn off the paper window and punctured into the wall. Meanwhile, the girl vanished like a ghost.

Then, the door was suddenly opened.

A handsome young man in black walked in with a blank face, carrying a girl who was still in shock. The girl was Ning Xiaoling.

The assassin felt so frightened.

“Go back. Don’t make me change my mind.” The young man in black opened his palm and showed a jade tablet.

The assassin was stunned. “The jade tablet of Blue-and-white Office... Why do you have it?”

Ning Changjiu said, “You should follow my order as I show you the jade tablet. Go back. If you still don’t want to give up, you can try again and I will kill you.”

Amidst speaking, Ning Changjiu held the handle of the sword with his backhand and pulled it out. Ning Changjiu swung his arm and with a whoosh, the sword was placed back into his sheath. The sword-breaking sound was as loud as a burst of firecrackers.

...

...

In that room, the woman’s nightgown was messy and she was in a cold sweat.

She slumped on the bed, still unable to believe what she had just seen.

The formation was completed, which was powerful with an imposing momentum. The young man was obviously like a trapped beast, but only after three short breaths, she watched him pick up the lamp on the table and tread in an extremely regular sequence of positions. He took seven steps forward not too early and not too late. In an unbelievably accurate manner, he broke out of the formation and approached her.

“This is my sincerity for you,” He said nothing but that and then directly took away the jade tablet under her pillow.

She didn’t come to her senses until now. By sincerity, he meant power.

Because he was powerful enough, they must think highly of him and even cater to him.

The problem was...why was this young priest so powerful?

She took a deep breath and immediately went to get the paper and brush pen.

No matter where he came from, no matter which side he would take, this matter must be known to her mistress. The young man of obscure origin couldn’t be the key to affect the big picture.

After the woman took the brush pen and paper, she whistled out of the door.

When her note was written and the ink was dry, a small red sparrow had stopped on the window lattice, staring at her with sparkling dark eyes.

The woman quickly rolled up the note. Then the little sparrow opened its mouth, directly held the note into the mouth and flew into the darkness, flapping its wings.

Facing the misty night fog, the woman heaved a long sigh and felt slightly assured.

What happened tonight was so sudden that she couldn’t figure out the connection behind it and had no other choice but to finish what she should do.

“Yu, what, what are you doing?”

A voice came from outside the door.

The woman was shocked physically and mentally. She turned her head and saw Zhao Shisong, who was still in a nightgown with sleepy eyes, standing at the door unknowingly and looking at her with a complicated expression.

She was too nervous just now to pay the slightest attention to Zhao Shisong’s arrival!

“You...” Zhao Shisong tremblingly lifted his finger and pointed at her. He thought of the little red sparrow that had just fluttered away, and said in disbelief, “Are you working for her?”

The woman also looked at him with a complicated face without answering him.

Zhao Shisong was no longer sleepy and stamped his feet in anger. “Tang Yu! What have I done wrong to you? You are only a servant to her. And I, I have offered you the most delectable dishes, the most costly clothes, a high position and great wealth. Even when you are sick and bewitched, I’ve still kept you company for several days. What else can you be dissatisfied with?”

Zhao Shisong’s body trembled dramatically. His beards trembled and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes became deeper.

The woman named Tang Yu whispered, “I know you are nice to me, about which I’m quite grateful, and I really want to be nice to you but...”

The emotion in her words gradually faded away, just like the rain that quietly stopped tonight.

“But twenty days ago, you should never have brought so many people to besiege the goddess’s palace! The moment you went there, everything was settled.”

Zhao Shisong was angry and puzzled. He crossed the threshold, walked quickly to her, stared at her young and beautiful face, and said with regret, “What charisma did that woman have? Although you grew up there, given your identity, how could you have ever seen her? Why are you so foolishly loyal? Now that Zhao Xiang’er is back indeed, she is still too weak... If you repent now, it is still not too late. I...can still forgive your past misdeeds.”

As he spoke, he stretched out his hand, trying to hold her shoulders.

Tang Yu took a step back swiftly with an increasingly determined look.

“If I am foolishly loyal, you are foolish then.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t see the goddess’s corpse and yet, claimed that she was dead. Isn’t that enough to prove your foolishness?”

“But……”

Tang Yu didn’t want to listen anymore. Her eyes became colder and colder. “Besides, twenty days ago, many people died in Qianyu Palace, some of whom were my friends.”

Birds were twittering outside the window. The red sparrow left and returned.

Zhao Shisong glanced at it and huge fear rippled over his body. He finally realized something and immediately retreated, shouting, “Somebody come here!”

...

Ning Xiaoling’s room was a mess, and the assassin had already left.

Ning Xiaoling was reminiscing what had happened, still in a state of shock.

When she watched helplessly the arrow reaching her, a hand grabbed her arm and dragged her away fiercely.

She gripped Ning Changjiu’s hand tightly and almost burst into tears.

Everything happened too suddenly tonight.

Pressing her chest, she felt as if her heartbeat were hitting her palm and found it hard to calm down.

Curling up on the bed, she looked at Ning Changjiu with a sad face, “Changjiu, can we go back...”

Ning Changjiu said, “I will find a suitable time and send you back first.”

Ning Xiaoling said, “What about you? Aren’t you leaving with me?”

Ning Changjiu said, “I want to stay here.”

Ning Xiaoling asked, “Does everything that is happening in this imperial palace have something to do with you?”

Ning Changjiu said, “That is their business, not my karma.”

“Um...” Ning Xiaoling thought for a while, but she still ventured to ask, “What is the karma you are looking for?”