Chapter 302: Chapter 122 New Year_2
The woman sighed, but a faint smile bloomed on her face as she slowly approached Pei Yunmeng and whispered, "Now the lord knows my secret."
She lifted her head, her trailing voice soft and ambiguous, "Are you going to turn me in, like Liu Kun did to my brother?"
Pei Yunmeng stopped short.
Standing under the lamplight, the woman appeared delicate and frail, with a willowy figure. She seemed as fragile and tenacious as a meandering stream after the snow melts in spring. With those beautiful eyes pleadingly gazing at him and her delicately knitted brows, she evoked pity.
The vision of her springtime sorrow almost instantly sparked a flicker of unease in Pei Yunmeng’s heart, as if something darted by. In the flash of his thought, Pei Yunmeng suddenly made his move.
"Bang——"
A gleaming dagger traced a silver arc through the air as Pei Yunmeng firmly clamped the woman’s knife-wielding hand, then violently pushed her away.
"Old habits die hard," Pei Yunmeng withdrew his hand, watching Lu Tong coldly.
She stumbled backward, nearly crashing into the table behind her. Whence came that delicate, pale, seemingly only capable of playing the zither and embroidering hand that now wielded a dagger from her sleeve?
While she had spoken to him with tender words, an intense murderous intent had been unveiled.
There was no plea, no resignation; her glare was chilling and icy, carrying a tint of desperate madness.
It was not a fragile, tranquil stream at all, but a whirlpool, violent and terrifying enough to shred a person to pieces.
"My lord is really quick to react," she taunted.
Pei Yunmeng was about to speak when his body suddenly stiffened for a moment. His heart tightened, and the next moment, the incense burner on the table was swept by a gust of wind, tumbling to the ground. The partially-burnt incense was broken into pieces, emitting a faint fragrance of lilies, so clean yet dizzying in an instant.
"Despicable," he said, his face turning colder.
From the very start, she had had no intention of talking it through. From the moment Lu Tong lit the incense, she had harbored a killing intent towards him.
His steps faltered momentarily, but the woman had already tightened her grip on the dagger and lunged at him!
Her eyes were void of any emotion, as indifferent as if she were looking at a corpse.
Pei Yunmeng’s face hardened as the Silver Meeting Knife was unsheathed. The tingling stiffness was forcibly broken by his inner power, and the long knife brought a fierce gust of wind as it plunged toward her.
"I had previously warned my lord," even with the knife before her, she showed no fear, and her voice carried a hint of ridicule, "Every corner of the medical hall contains poison. If you carelessly perish here, no one else is to blame."
He didn’t get angry but laughed instead, "Do you think I am as useless as they are?"
With a gentle sway of the Silver Meeting Knife, the dagger in Lu Tong’s hand was severed into two.
Her heart sank.
Too short.
The time of incense burning was too short.
This man was keen and quick to caution; the incense hadn’t had the chance to exert its full power. Otherwise, given another half-stick of incense, no matter how skilled Pei Yunmeng was, he would have been at the mercy of others here.
Anyone else would have already fallen by now.
"Of course, my lord is unlike those useless ones. Rest assured, when you die, I will bury you beneath that plum tree. Your body is undoubtedly far more beautiful than that dead pig we buried, and as fertilizer, it will surely make the plum blossom especially enchanting."
She had been pushed and jostled, and her fingers nicked by the blade’s wind raised by the incoming Silver Knife, blood pouring out, but Lu Tong didn’t care at all and charged at him with the broken dagger, her eyes alarmingly bright.
She didn’t avoid him.
Like a desperate blaze, she burned wildly.
"If you’re in the way, then die——" she said.
The dagger was sharp and cold, its silver gleam aiming directly at his vulnerable heart. In the nick of time, he abruptly stopped, suddenly turning the blade’s tip around to meet her charge and firmly grabbed her arm, pushing her back.
Lu Tong was pushed back into the altar, colliding with the merciful white-robed Guanyin statue atop it. The force of the collision caused it to teeter and tumble out of the shrine.
"Crash——"
"No——" The woman suddenly startled.
In the silent chill of the night, the crisp sound of ceramic shattering could be heard, and next door, Yin Zheng’s drunken murmurs seemed to stir faintly, only to quiet down again shortly.
Utter chaos.
The ash from the altar lay scattered about, having been freshly offered that morning. The oranges with red characters stuck on them rolled to Pei Yunmeng’s feet.
The young man’s eyes shimmered.
The little shrine that had always housed the white-robed Guanyin was now broken into pieces on the ground, revealing several palm-sized porcelain containers hiding inside, four in all, also shattered. They had spilled out soil, and one container had held water, now spreading across the floor.
"What is this..." he peered closer.