Volume Three: Rising Fame Chapter Twenty-Three: One Must Never Be Bound by Fixed Thinking

“I didn’t expect to be so lucky, to run right into the assassin!”

Seeing that Li Yu still had the presence of mind to joke, Xiaocui finally breathed a sigh of relief. With some anxiety, she asked, “Young master, are you hurt anywhere?”

“This?”

Li Yu glanced down, lifted his shirt, and replied, “This is his blood. You’re worried about the wrong person.”

Following the direction of his finger, Xiaocui saw a man in black lying on the ground, half of his arm severed and lying nearby, still spurting blood.

Li Yu surveyed the surroundings. “It seems my unexpected move disrupted the assassins’ plan?”

Now that the Qingyang soldiers had regrouped and were cooperating, even though most of the assassins were at the seventh rank, they were being forced back. As time passed, the seasoned coordination of the soldiers would gradually turn the tide of the stalemate.

If the target of this setup was truly him, then this formation seemed… somewhat weak.

If the Qingyang soldiers alone could resolve it, what did they expect to use against him?

“Young master, you still need to be careful,” Xiaocui said, choosing not to assist the soldiers and even pulling back Li Yu when he seemed about to move.

She ended the struggling, not-yet-dead assassin with a single stroke.

‘Shouldn’t we keep one alive to interrogate…’

Li Yu opened his mouth but said nothing.

Xiaocui used her long blade to lift and tear open the black-clad man’s clothes, revealing two black pouches beneath. Only then did she speak: “These are all trained deathsworn. Young master, you must never let your guard down just because their strength seems low. See these two pouches? They’re filled with hidden poison.”

“People trained like this are meant to use the small to overcome the great. In the future, when you face such foes, you must strike even more decisively,” she said, her gaze falling to the assassin’s chest, where a sunken fist mark showed the true cause of his collapse and struggle. Without that blow, even a severed arm wouldn’t have stopped him from biting if he had to.

Li Yu nodded. “I understand.”

He knew Xiaocui was teaching him how to handle such matters, and these were hard-won lessons, the kind one must remember. Such knowledge was purchased with countless lives. He did not believe himself blessed by heaven; to underestimate these things might mean a price he could not afford.

Just now, when everyone was distracted by the soldiers, if he hadn’t happened to have his senses heightened and been drawn by the sounds from all directions, he might have missed the faint noise behind him.

“From the sound earlier, it seems they used some means to block off the way ahead and behind us,” Li Yu observed, seeing the battle was stabilizing.

“It’s nothing. That trick won’t hold for long,” Xiaocui replied.

Both sides were surrounded by red stone. No matter what preparations the deathsworn had made, it was impossible to destroy such a wide area. If they truly had that capability, it would be better to tamper with the ceiling and crush them with stones rather than waste manpower.

Most likely, they had sacrificed more men to delay the Qingyang reinforcements.

“So do we just wait here?” Li Yu scratched his head, looking around and noticing that the two newly assigned men were gone.

‘Were they separated during the commotion just now?’

Li Yu didn’t dwell on it.

“It’s rare to assign two assassins to the same spot,” Xiaocui explained. “If we move rashly, we might run into an assassin who hasn’t revealed himself yet.”

That was easy to understand, and Li Yu asked no further.

Moreover, the situation was now much clearer. Where once it took two or three soldiers to handle one assassin, now seven or eight were needed to subdue just one.

The outcome was set.

‘Now is the moment!’

Inside the stone wall, a black-clad man had been lurking all along like a viper, never exposing himself. Only now, when his prey relaxed its vigilance, did he bare his fangs.

He burst through the paper-thin stone camouflage and leaped down!

“A fifth rank?”

Spiritual power surged around the assassin; he controlled fire affinity within his domain, forming a giant sword that thrust straight at Li Yu’s head.

Not only that, but he used a fierce secret technique that harmed himself before harming the enemy. Blood spurted from his mouth as the condensed sword grew even larger.

He shouted, “Qingyuan, meet your doom!”

Li Yu: ?

Xiaocui: ?

Without hesitation, Li Yu sprang up, his thunder affinity erupting, forming a longsword as spiritual power at the sixth rank rippled around him.

“You’ve got the wrong man, ironhead!”

Li Yu’s sword shattered the assassin’s spiritual domain, thrusting directly at his head.

This time, he heeded Xiaocui’s advice—his strike was lethal from the start.

“Why is it thunder affinity?” the assassin gasped, caught off-guard by the sudden jolt of lightning. The shock lasted only an instant, just enough for him to turn his head.

Li Yu’s sword, forged of spiritual energy, pierced deeply into the assassin’s right shoulder. In a surge of pain, the assassin exploded with fire power within his domain, knocking Li Yu back.

“That’s why I said you got the wrong person,” Li Yu shrugged.

The assassin’s mistake was understandable.

Only someone of the fifth rank could break through red stone with their body.

Their team had intended to ambush Qingyuan, whose cultivation, according to intelligence, was at the fifth rank. Thus, the assassin was also fifth rank and possessed a secret art to burn his own life and cultivation for a momentary boost.

With such surprise, even Qingyuan would not escape decapitation, nor would any favored scion of the Qing clan.

Although “Qingyuan” had just happened to stumble onto an ambushed assassin, forcing them to act hastily and preventing his companion from striking together, the man in black made his own judgments—first sending cannon fodder to lull “Qingyuan.”

Bare-handed, he had punctured the stone wall and then used brute strength to kill an assassin. The man in black knew this “Qingyuan” could not be underestimated, so he attacked with full force—never expecting his target to suddenly wield thunder affinity, losing the initiative at once…

“You’re Li Yu!”

“So, defeating a fifth-rank with a sixth-rank wasn’t a Qing clan ruse… You truly have the strength!”

The assassin whispered, clearly privy to the Qing clan’s candidates, naming Li Yu without hesitation.

Xiaocui’s sixth-rank aura flared as she shielded Li Yu, wary of a final, desperate attack.

“Be careful, young master!”

Li Yu tugged at Xiaocui, but she didn’t budge, so he let it go.

After all, standing behind Xiaocui, facing a spent fifth-rank assassin, he felt no pressure to protect her.

“Didn’t you say it was rare for the same spot to be dangerous twice?” Li Yu suddenly recalled.

Xiaocui: …

“Rare, but not impossible! Young master, this shows we must never cling to fixed thinking,” Xiaocui replied, her cheeks flushing, “I don’t believe there’s another!”

Just as her words fell, a hand shot out from the ground at her feet, clutching her ankle!