Niao Ni
Chapter 197: Uprising on the Meadow (Another Plea for Monthly Tickets)
Since Fan Xian and the seven experts were able to follow him all the way from the reeds by the lake to the forest, there must be something about him that they could control. Sean pressed his hand to his lips, forcibly suppressing the urge to cough. Twenty years of imprisonment had damaged his heart, and from the fall from the tree, he could clearly and sadly feel that his brain was reacting slower than his body.
If it were twenty years ago, he believed he could easily kill Fan Xian during that fall. Even with the seven swordsmen under the tree, as long as he had the familiar Northern Sea mist, Sean still had the strong confidence to easily escape.
But... everyone gets old.
The bloody wound on his shoulder couldn't be stopped. Fan Xian's strange dagger had peculiar edges. Blood flowed continuously, and Sean felt a wave of weakness. However, a hint of understanding flashed in his eyes. He tore off a piece of clothing and, with a single-handed twist, pressed the wound closed.
His kneecap had also shattered into several pieces. The excruciating pain stimulated his mind, allowing the aging head of the secret service to continue traversing through the thick fog.
After falling from the tree, the leader of the Tiger Guards, Gao Da's, snow-like blade light had cut across his abdomen. Although he had dodged incredibly fast, he couldn't stop the spreading of the bloody gash. His black clothes were gradually turning into blood-soaked garments.
Although Sean suffered many serious injuries, what truly made him feel powerless was the thin needle in his neck. He dared not pull it out, unsure of the consequences, but felt his blood vessels gradually congealing, and his pace slowed.
His pale, withered hands still firmly pulled out mushrooms from under a tree, chewed them a few times, and swallowed them. These redwood mushrooms could replenish blood and disinfect. He was very familiar with this low cedar forest decades ago, so he chose to escape from here, but he didn't expect to still be within reach of that young man's tactics.
Dawn gradually broke, but the thick fog remained. The white morning light diffused and refracted in the mist, exuding a sacred aura.
Finally, blood dripped from the old man's body, falling onto the muddy ground with a subtle sound. But he knew that those young men were following him like lurking tigers, ready to pounce at any moment, but he didn't know why they hadn't made their move yet.
But Sean knew he was finished.
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Some unknown force supported the old man, who had endured twenty years of torture and suffered several heavy injuries today, to persevere through the misty low cedar forest, climb over the mountain, and step on the vast, slightly damp meadow. He finally saw the land belonging to Northern Qi.
The town called Wudu River shimmered with patches of light in the distant sunlight. Sean sighed, sat down wearily, moved his shattered right leg to the left, and coughed twice.
The reflective surfaces in the town were glazed tiles. Although this was the countryside and they couldn't afford glass, they shouldn't be able to afford glazed tiles either. But Sean knew many years ago that there used to be a glazed tile factory a dozen miles behind the town. After it fell into disrepair, the townspeople picked up some fragments and placed them on the roofs of their houses.
People always need to arrange some light for themselves in a dark world, no matter when or where.
Sean was the same. He squinted, looking at those small, shining fragments, thinking that the town didn't seem to have changed much in the past twenty years.
On the meadow outside the town, a battle had long ended. The team that had come to meet Sean was completely slaughtered. More than two hundred black cavalrymen stood like a lifeless black wall on one side of the meadow. Several black cavalrymen moved through the blood of the battlefield, adding a knife to any enemy they found still alive. The battlefield was filled with the muffled thuds of blades.
……
……
"Those young men lying in the blood on the meadow, they should be Hu'er's subordinates, right?"
Sean squinted at the scene and suddenly felt tired, coughing again. He had long understood Fan Xian's plan. Although the handsome young man still lacked experience, he excelled in the courage to act. His continuous pursuit to Wudu River was naturally to frame the Northern Qi soldiers who had died tragically in the meadow.
A slender dagger was quietly handed over, and the coldness attached to it made the old man's neck break out in goosebumps.
"You're not as strong as I imagined," Fan Xian's voice sounded calmly from behind him.
Sean pursed his dry lips, smiled bitterly, and said, "I'm not as strong as I imagined either."
"With your experience, it shouldn't be difficult to judge that this is a trap. Why did you still jump into it?" This was the thing Fan Xian couldn't understand the most during the overnight pursuit.
Sean didn't answer him, just remained silent, not telling the young man that he had been reminded of a little girl and a temple by Wang Qinian's unintentional words.
"Why haven't you made your move yet?" Sean was unusually cold, looking at the quiet town in front of him, and said, "You and I are both in this line of work, we should know that the longer things drag on, the more likely they are to change."
"I just suddenly feel like I've made a mistake." Fan Xian's hand tightened on the dagger, and a hint of bewilderment appeared in his eyes outside the black cloth. "I thought Princess Royal would send someone to meet you, but I didn't expect only Northern Qi people to come."
"I don't know any Princess Royal." Sean seemed to have already put life and death aside, just deeply breathing in the fresh air of the meadow. He hadn't smelled such a natural scent in many years. In the Overwatch Council's prison, he could only smell rust and hay. After smelling it for so many years, he was really tired of it, sick of it, and exhausted.
Fan Xian suddenly felt that things were a bit strange, and his eyes stared like knives at the old man's pure white hair behind his head.
"I remind you again, since you want to kill me, and you've chosen this border line, then you better do it right away, so you can blame it on the team that came to rescue me," Sean said coldly. "Otherwise, if the reception staff from pseudo-Qi arrive, you'll have to consider the life and death of your colleague if you want to kill me again."
Fan Xian narrowed his eyes slightly. The plan to kill Sean on the border line this time was originally a risk. To be precise, it was risking Yan Bingyun's life. Since Northern Qi general Shang Shanhu had sent people to meet Sean and help him escape, then in the chaos of the battle, Sean's death should be a reason that the young emperor of Northern Qi could accept and had to accept—the key was that the envoy's back was always supported by Qing's powerful military strength. But what disappointed Fan Xian was that Yan Xiaoyi's army, which he had expected, didn't appear on the battlefield. If he couldn't scheme against Princess Royal, what was the point of killing Sean?
Not knowing what he was thinking, Fan Xian's fingers holding the dagger exerted force, and his knuckles turned slightly pale.
"Why do you always think I'm still a tiger?" Sean didn't look back, nor did he look down at the tip of the knife sticking out. He smiled to himself and said, "I'm just a toothless, skinny tiger. I just know some things that others don't, so I can linger on until now. In Qing, I'm a prisoner. In fact, back in the north, I'm still a prisoner in pseudo-Qi. Naturally, I have to take a gamble. People who live to my age aren't really afraid of death... but they're very afraid of not having freedom."
"I might understand a little bit why Director Chen was willing to send you back to your country and asked me to kill you," Fan Xian seemed to not care about Sean's reminder at all, and still spoke somewhat long-windedly, "This is a trial. Mr. Xiao En also said that my talent is very good, and my strength is already very strong, but I have never challenged a real expert alone. You are the first real expert I have challenged alone in my life."
Sean shook his head, still maintaining the posture of sitting on his heels and looking towards his hometown: "No, I'm no longer considered an expert. I've just been bluffing all the way. As for Chen Pingping..." The old man suddenly smiled extremely bitterly and yet extremely gleefully: "He actually... doesn't know anything. He only knows that he can't kill me, so he has to keep me locked up, but he doesn't know why he can't kill me, and he doesn't know what he should know from me. He prides himself on scheming against the world, but in reality, he's a pitiful little fool!"
The old man spoke excitedly and coughed. The wound had long been torn open, and blood splattered everywhere, falling on the fresh grass.
Somewhere in the grass, it trembled slightly in the wind.
"What secrets do you have?" Fan Xian was expressionless, but silently shifted his position slightly: "What do you know?"
"I've been locked up for twenty years, and I haven't said anything. Even Chen Pingping has lost patience and taken me out to be your trial prey," Sean mocked, "Do you think I would tell you, a greenhorn?"
"You're not even afraid of death, why don't you dare to say that secret?"
"There are many things in this world that are more terrible than death."
Fan Xian sighed, noticing that the seven long swords behind him had secretly crept close. He smiled slightly, turned his head to the right, and looked at the neat ranks of black cavalry in the distance, feeling quite satisfied.
Suddenly! Without any warning, he stepped on the meadow with the tip of his foot, and his body slid to the left. A poisoned needle flew out of his hand, piercing into the grass with a soft sound!
He was already in mid-air, as if dancing against the air. The slender dagger in his hand was like a pitch-black viper, stabbing straight past, incomparably straight, buzzing through the air, truly condensing all the domineering true energy in his body!
The seven Tiger Guards had secretly occupied advantageous positions. Fan Xian's sudden sneak attack caused the seven long swords to attack the pile of grass with extremely tacit cooperation, stirring up several patches of white snow, the light cold and dazzling!
With such power and such a sudden action, not to mention the ambusher, even Hong Gonggong, the unfathomable eunuch in the Qing palace, would probably be in a terrible state, forced to leave behind some flesh and blood as the price!