All this time, Madame Ying had only been listening quietly, but now she blurted out, “Then that should be more than enough to fund the war!”

The words were barely out before she realized she had spoken amiss.

Everyone else kept silent, while Fixer Liu only lowered his head, not daring to join in.

He Yue quickly steered the topic elsewhere. “Since General Ke has come all the way back to plead, do you think the Fu Family can escape disaster?”

Ke Jihai had first crushed the rebels at Woling Pass, then fought Dong Haoming in the west. At present, he was the most relied-upon general in the royal court’s service. If he personally rushed back to intercede for the Fu Family, surely the king, who still needed him to defeat Dong Haoming, would have to give him some face?

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

Madame Ying, feeling stifled, lifted the curtain to check the road. Their carriage was making its way down a winding mountain path. The snow was falling thicker now, so heavy that nothing could be seen beyond ten meters.

Even on a broad road, in such conditions, every step had to be taken with care. Only one lantern glimmered ahead and another behind, faint halos of light keeping pace.

Wait, one behind?

She glanced back. “There’s another carriage following us. I wonder whose it might be.” Ahead, General Ke’s carriage was very near, within seven meters. That was the unspoken rule of snowy mountain travel—stay within sight, so that if trouble came, they could help one another.

So which household had also left the banquet early?

He Lingchuan poked his head out for a look, then drew back and closed his eyes before saying, “What a coincidence. It’s the same commoner’s carriage that was following us up the mountain. I’d wager its passenger is that youth who handed a booklet to General Ke. He didn’t look noble or wealthy.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Hmm, his carriage just stopped.”

Madame Ying asked curiously, “How are you able to tell in this snow?” All she could see was the warm glow of a lantern and the faint outline of a carriage. Any finer detail was impossible for her to discern.

The answer to this was actually quite simple. The lantern on that carriage was covered with azure-dyed paper, its light an azurish yellow. On the other hand, all the other carriages showed the usual yellow-white glow. He Lingchuan had noted it on the way up, and it had not been too long since then, so he still remembered it.

Still, he merely continued to face his father and flashed his teeth. “Just a guess.”

Perhaps it was only his imagination, but he felt that his father did not truly want him to accept Ke Jihai’s Hundred-Forge Saber.

In that last glance, he had seen the carriage stop, the driver leaping down into the snow to check the wheels. Who knew what the problem was?

Madame Ying rolled her eyes.

But her question had sparked an idea in He Lingchuan. With nothing better to do, he decided to practice then and there, once again attempting to spread his spiritual sense.

To others, he simply looked like he was resting with his eyes closed.

The results surprised him. At night, the effect was actually far stronger, and the strain far lighter. Perhaps it was because his spirit itself was still weak.

The sensation was uncanny. He could see each snowflake’s shape with crystalline clarity.

Though six-sided, each flake bore subtle differences in angle and edge. Countless flakes whirled around the carriage, far too many for the eye to take in, yet his spiritual sense caught every single one.

The comparison made plain to him the value of this sight beyond sight.

There was no need to even say aloud that this was one of those “essential skills for travel, home life, and sudden murder.”

He allowed his spiritual sense to extend further, but it reached no more than seven meters. It could go no further than that. Clearly, its reach was limited by the strength of his soul and spirit.

Still, he could perceive the snow piling on the road, the stones beneath the cliff, the white clouds of breath from the driver’s mouth, and on the mountain wall, a strange shadow.

Eh?

He Lingchuan’s eyes snapped open. He thrust his head out of the carriage, tongue ringing like spring thunder, “Stop! Ambush!”

Only a thick cloth screen separated him from the driver up front. The shout, laced with true energy, was like a thunderclap in winter, making the driver’s ears ring. Startled, he yanked hard on the reins.

On such a snowy night, the carriage had not been moving fast. At that sharp pull, it ground to a halt at once.

Caught off guard, everyone lurched forward in their seats.

“What—” Madame Ying began to complain, but before any more words left her lips, a massive boulder came crashing down directly in front of their carriage. The impact shattered more than a dozen of the black paving stones set into the road.

And that was not the end of it. The boulder tumbled and rumbled forward several more turns before plunging off the mountainside.

A heartbeat later, a dull crash echoed up from below.

Madame Ying’s face turned as white as paper.

The boulder had been larger than a tavern door, weighing at least four hundred kilograms. If her eldest son had not shouted for the driver to stop, their carriage would have been crushed and shoved off the cliff, and their whole family would already be dead.

But this was an imperial hunting estate; how could weathered stones just happen to fall so suddenly?

She forgot for a moment that He Lingchuan had cried out, “Ambush!”

Suddenly, something else seemed to streak across the sky.

Everyone looked up just in time to see a hulking shadow drop from above and slam onto Ke Jihai’s carriage with a thunderous bang!

The strike landed dead on. The fine rosewood carriage might as well have been paper; it exploded apart with a sharp crack.

Splinters flew more than seven meters, even striking the He Family’s horses. One of the horses got hit in the shoulder, and it reared up in terror, nearly overturning the carriage.

“General Ke!”

The members of the He Family were aghast.

Could it be that the supreme commander of over a hundred thousand troops had just been crushed to death in his own carriage?

By the light of the lanterns, they saw clearly that the second falling shadow was no boulder, but a giant ape.

The beast stood over three meters tall, every corded muscle straining as though to burst through its hide. It appeared to weigh no less than a metric ton. Its body was crisscrossed with scars, and a thorn-studded collar bit cruelly into its neck—the sort used on mastiffs to guard against wolves and tigers, but here tightened around a giant ape.

Stranger still, it wore dull gray plate armor. However, the material from which the armor was made did not gleam like metal. Instead, it looked more like bone.

After dropping down like a living cannonball, the ape did not stop there. It pounded its iron fists down again and again, smashing Ke Jihai’s carriage into splinters.

Madame Ying almost screamed, but when its blood-red eyes swept her way, she slapped both hands over her mouth to stifle the sound.

“Out!” He Chunhua ordered in a low voice. Using the carriage body as cover, he lifted his wife in his arms and leapt to the ground.

Against such a monster, a carriage was no protection. Instead, it would be no different from a coffin.

He Yue dragged the dazed Fixer Liu and the driver down as well. While the giant ape was still busy wrecking Ke Jihai’s carriage, He Lingchuan drew his saber and, with one stroke, split apart the harness, freeing two horses. “Mount up! Quickly!”

On a mountain road in the dead of night, no aid could be expected. Survival depended on speed. Only by fleeing into the forest could they hope for safety.

There was no time for false modesty. He Chunhua vaulted onto a horse with Madame Ying still in his arms, directed it, and charged uphill.

He Yue mounted another, stretching a hand toward his brother, but He Lingchuan shoved Fixer Liu up instead. “You go!”

“Brother!” He Yue cried, panicked.

However, He Lingchuan only slapped the horse hard on its flank. The horse surged forward, carrying He Yue after their father.

As for himself, he had no intention of waiting for death. Seizing the driver by the collar, he leapt in a single bound toward the commoner’s carriage trailing behind them.

The gap was no more than ten meters, and such a distance was nothing to him.

He landed lightly and, without hesitation, repeated his trick: another slash of the saber to cut loose its horses.

The Hundred-Forge Saber might not be quite as viciously sharp as his old broken saber, but it was still a rare treasure. Its edge sliced through the tough wooden beams like tofu, quick and clean.

At a moment like this, a good weapon meant the difference between life and death.

The driver and passenger of that carriage had been struck dumb with terror at the sight of the giant ape. He Lingchuan’s sudden move left them even more bewildered. They were just about to cry out when he barked a reminder, “Get on and escape! Hurry!”

No matter how broad the mountain road, a carriage could never turn as nimbly as a rider. In a fight for their lives, horses meant survival.

He Lingchuan also got a clear look at the passenger, and it was indeed the youth who had earlier toasted Ke Jihai and offered him the booklet.

The driver snapped out of his stupor, vaulted onto a horse, and spurred it down the road. The young man tried scrambling up behind him and nearly toppled off. He Lingchuan caught him with one hand, steadied him, then swung onto the last horse himself. Together they galloped uphill.

This was his true aim: borrowing someone else’s mount.

Eight people, four horses. In the blink of an eye, they were already pounding along a path to escape.

It might have sounded complicated, but from start to finish it had taken no more than seven or eight breaths—the same time it took the giant ape to hammer Ke Jihai’s carriage half a dozen times.

How could such a massive, feral monster suddenly appear outside Shihuan City?

He Lingchuan’s first thought was of the northern monster state. After all, had a banished crocodile monster at Woling Pass not made itself a river god, stirring storms on the Hongchuan and routing Yuan’s navy? Perhaps this terrifying monster had come from the north as well.

The giant ape tore Ke Jihai’s carriage into splinters. One of the terrified horses broke free and fled; the other, still bound to the wreck, shrieked and thrashed in panic.

Then, with a casual heave, the ape wrapped both arms around the shattered frame of the carriage, lifted it in its entirety overhead, and hurled it into the abyss.

The cliff dropped more than thirty meters. Even if Ke Jihai had not been crushed already, that throw surely finished him.

He Lingchuan heard the neigh of a horse fade into the distance, then cut off abruptly. Cold sweat beaded in his palms.

The giant ape had struck at two carriages. Was its target General Ke, or the He Family? Against Ke Jihai, it had come down personally. Against the He Family, it had only flung a rock. In other words, General Ke should be its primary target.

In that case, then perhaps the He Family still had a sliver of hope.

They pressed their mounts uphill, desperate to put distance between themselves and the monster. It looked immensely strong, but not built for speed.

Somewhere along the way, the snow had stopped.

Just then, the corner of He Lingchuan’s eye caught a flicker of motion in the forest.

Ahead, He Yue shouted in alarm, “Watch out! Something’s in the trees!”

The figure darted forward, so swift it outpaced galloping horses.

He Lingchuan drew a deep breath, true energy filling his chest, and roared, “Father, get down!”

At the very front rode He Chunhua and his wife. At his son’s warning, he turned his head to look, but the forest beyond lay black and empty.

The road curved past a great rock outcrop, rising more than three meters above the roadway.

Before He Chunhua could look forward again, a dark silhouette appeared atop the stone. From its high perch, it swooped like a raptor striking prey, diving straight for him!

It ignored the three riders behind; its sole aim was to take He Chunhua’s life.

Strike the leader first—these monsters understood such logic.

However, He Chunhua’s nerves had been strung tight all along. The instant his peripheral vision caught the motion ahead, he yanked the reins with all his strength.