Chapter 581: Trust thrown to the dogs (2/2)
“Abominable!” Chu Yunyi kicked at the man who was on death’s door already. The force of his foot sent him sprawling down to the ground again, but his mission had already been accomplished.
At the sidelines, the Western Zhou guards saw that the dead man wasn’t His Highness Duke of Qin at all. Though puzzled and bewildered, they wanted to seize the chance to rescue their empress. Unfortunately, the old mama currently had her in her grasp.
After taking care of the fake Long Feiye and Han Yunxi, Chu Yunyi immediately took out an arrow and aimed it at Gu Beiyue, who was currently evading a mess of arrows flying at him from all directions. But he didn’t even get a chance to shoot before the archers overwhelmed and captured their target. Gu Beiyue was perfectly capable of escaping now that he didn’t have anyone to protect, but the cost this time would be too great and injure him further. Moreover, he couldn’t be sure whether Long Feiye had planted any ambushes beyond the temple. With his current situation, he’d never be able to escape from the man if caught. Compared to the Duke of Qin, it was relatively safer to stay in Chu Yunyi’s hands.
Now that Gu Beiyue was in custody, Chu Yunyi was even more anxious to leave.
“Have you found it yet?” he yelled at the poison masters. The situation was turning more disadvantageous by the minute, so they had to speed things up and withdraw quickly. The Wood of Ten-Thousand Poisons wasn’t a simple toxin if it could hide in the thousand-year ginkgo tree all this time without negatively affecting the plant. All of the poison masters here were personally trained by Witch Aunt to hunt down the Wood of Ten-Thousand Poisons, but their endless circling around the tree yielded no results. It was basically impossible to find the poison in such a short amount of time!
“Clan Head, as things stand, we can’t find it without a few more days’ time!” the head of the poison masters reported urgently.
“Useless!” Chu Yunyi was both tense and furious. “Pull up this tree by the roots, we’ll take it back with us!”
He’d hardly spoken, when a mocking voice filled with laughter carried over in the air. “The Nether Clan Head is so overbearing!”
Chu Yunyi whirled around to see three masked figures dressed in black appear out of thin air. Whoever had mocked him had used the technique to change their voice so that he had no idea who was speaking. Still, he was certain that this had to be Long Feiye and his men!
“Long Feiye, you tricked this old man! Where’s your sense of trustworthiness?” Chu Yunyi loudly denounced him. He was obviously raising his voice so that everyone else could hear. No matter what, he wanted to drag Long Feiye down with him so that the man would forever be Emperor Kang Cheng’s enemy. This way, Western Zhou would never ally itself with the southern central regions of Tianning once the Chu Clan withdrew to Western Liang.
But the masked man only burst out into savage laughter. “Trustworthiness? Long Feiye’s long thrown his trust to the dogs, don’t you know?”
The masked man was laughing so brightly that anyone could tell he was in an excellent mood. Moreover, his laughter convinced them that he wasn’t the venerated Duke of Qin!
Who is he? Does he have a grudge against Long Feiye?
Chu Yunyi was dumbstruck. He glanced at the other two masked figures, but saw that they didn’t budge. Now he couldn’t help but feel muddle-headed. Did Long Feiye really not come?
Or perhaps, he was one of the two other masked men. Chu Yunyi didn’t dare turn careless, but signaled all of the archers to surrounded the ginkgo tree and shoot!
The masked trio immediately scurried towards the base of the tree, dodging arrows and killing archers as they went. Chu Yunyi quickly joined the fray. But abruptly, thorny vines burst from the ground like so many tentacles and began to spread wildly around the area as they reached for the archers. Meanwhile, the masked trio attacked them simultaneously from above, leaving the front line in a mess. Panic and confusion took over the archers, who had never seen such strange techniques before.
“Don’t get distracted! Kill them with all your might!” Chu Yunyi roared as he unleashed an arrow right at the base of the vine, severing it from its root. Seeing this, the archers refocused themselves and began to shoot with precision again—until three of them suddenly toppled without explanation to the ground.
“Hidden weapons! Everyone be careful, they have assassination tools!” one archer cried out, milliseconds before a needle pierced him through the throat and killed him!
Chu Yunyi was a clan head and a formidable opponent. He’d sensed something peculiar as soon as the first hidden weapons appeared and sacrificed a few archers as shields before spotting the man who was using them. Right now Chu Yunyi had his eyes narrowed, arrow aimed at the man’s heart while he was dodging the steady storm of arrows.
“Go die!” Chu Yunyi released his arrow. The first person to notice the weapon was the masked man who had been laughing at him.
He turned and cried out, “Be careful!” At the same time, he kicked his companion aside just as a second thunderous arrow came flying at him in place of the first. Meanwhile, a fresh storm of them were approaching him from the other side.
His allies were both besieged by arrows of their own and had no way to help him.
But then the lash of a whip filled the air. Following the sound was a streak of gold from the whip itself like a dragon in flight. Its swift and fierce attack easily cut down half of the incoming arrows.
Who had arrived?