Seeing this, a flash of shock crossed Hu Rui'an's eyes. He had not expected that bolt from Cheng Zhong's mouth to be so powerful.
And at the very same moment that Cheng Zhong launched his sudden attack on Hu Rui'an, Wu Shang on the other side moved almost simultaneously, driving a bolt of sword light with the force of thunder straight at Shen Anran's throat.
Shen Anran's martial cultivation was inferior to Wu Shang's, and she had been attacked with no warning whatsoever. However, the Deer Slaughter Blade Art she practiced was one of the top-tier blade techniques of the martial world, and after Li Musheng's earlier guidance her blade path had advanced considerably.
She therefore managed, narrowly and in desperate haste, to slash out a single cut, which was just enough to deflect the sword slightly off course, and she herself moved aside with great speed, barely avoiding the killing blow.
Even so, though Shen Anran dodged the thrust, she was still caught by the reverberating sword energy, which sent her tumbling and spinning through the air.
Just as she was about to crash into the ground, a hand settled against her back and caught her steadily.
Shen Anran turned her head and saw Li Musheng standing behind her, "Your Highness..."
But before she could finish, both her palms suddenly drove outward with tremendous force.
In an instant, a terrifying wave of True Qi like a mountain collapsing into the sea erupted without any resistance straight into Li Musheng's chest.
Hu Rui'an and the others snapped around at the sudden turn of events in the courtyard.
In that moment, Shen Anran's lips curved slightly as she looked at Li Musheng, an deeply unsettling smile on her face.
Yet in her eyes there was a roiling mixture of shock, confusion, worry, and disbelief.
Li Musheng raised an eyebrow slightly, looked at Shen Anran's pale hands pressed against his chest, and said with a sudden look of understanding, "I was wondering who it was. Turns out someone has come to deliver a cultivation art to me."
At those words, the smile on Shen Anran's face froze instantly. In the next moment she moved to strike again.
But Li Musheng simply raised his hand and grabbed through the air.
At the same moment, a servant who had been somewhere in the Mei estate courtyard suddenly lifted his head.
He then watched in shock as a hand condensed from the True Qi of heaven and earth appeared out of nowhere above him and drove straight down to seize him.
Instinctively, the vast martial True Qi within the servant's body erupted as he desperately tried to retreat.
But he discovered with terror that the space around him had been locked down by a terrifying force, and his entire body was as though mired in deep mud, unable to move so much as a fraction.
"How... is this possible?"
The servant's face was filled with horror, and in the next instant the True Qi hand took hold of him and shot skyward, dropping into the courtyard where Hu Rui'an and the others stood in the blink of an eye.
The True Qi hand then slammed him directly into the ground, driving him into the powdered remains of the stone tiles with a thunderous crash.
At that point Shen Anran had regained the ability to move. She spun around and looked at the unfamiliar servant who had just fallen from the sky behind her, and cried out in shock, "What is happening..."
"Just now I had no control over myself at all. And I actually... struck at His Highness?"
Hearing this, Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong also came back to themselves, looking down at their own hands with expressions of utter dismay.
"I did not intend to act either. I was completely beyond my own control just now, as though someone were manipulating me."
"That was not my own strength either. I could not possibly have injured Commissioner Hu like that."
Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong spoke one after the other. Cao Gaoshan, who had not made any move throughout, was now standing in a state of bewildered uncertainty, clearly unsettled by what he had just witnessed.
Hu Rui'an furrowed his brow and looked at the servant lying in the courtyard, seeming to have understood something.
At that point Li Musheng narrowed his eyes slightly, and rather than looking at the servant on the ground, he looked at Shen Anran in front of him, saying, "Miss Shen, since you can move freely now, should you perhaps also remove your hands?"
At those words Shen Anran turned back, her luminous eyes wandering with an expressive glance, and the corners of her lips curved upward by the faintest trace.
She withdrew her slender hands from Li Musheng's chest with a show of puzzled innocence, gave a soft sound of acknowledgment, then calmly smoothed her flowing black hair without the slightest sign of embarrassment.
Li Musheng's eyelid twitched. If he had possessed even half this young woman's brazenness in his previous life, he would surely have managed more than seven girlfriends.
...
"Who... are you exactly?"
The Formless Elder on the ground lifted his head with great difficulty, revealing a deeply ordinary, aged face.
His entire body was trembling, and he could only speak in the faintest voice. The palm Li Musheng had just brought down had shattered his elixir field and meridians in an instant, severing every last puppet thread with which he had been controlling Shen Anran and the others.
Against this he had no power to resist whatsoever. Despite his extremely high martial cultivation, despite having refined the Formless Divine Canon to the point of perfection, despite the vast and mighty martial True Qi within him, under Li Musheng's move not a single one of his methods or abilities could be brought to bear. In the end he had been seized and was entirely at his captor's mercy.
Li Musheng withdrew his gaze from Shen Anran and looked at the Formless Elder, then walked over and stopped before him, saying, "I imagine you came here for your disciple. That Formless Puppet Technique of yours suddenly brought it back to me. You and your disciples seem to owe me a cultivation art."
As he spoke, Li Musheng raised his hand and flicked a Life and Death Talisman into the old man's body.
Earlier, when the Formless Elder had been using Cheng Zhong to make his move, Li Musheng had already noticed him. He simply had not remembered the Formless Elder's identity at first. It was only when Shen Anran struck at him that he just barely recalled the scholar who had been impersonating the prince, and the fact that the scholar's martial sister had apparently sent out a signal before she died.
Li Musheng had in truth largely forgotten the whole affair. He had never genuinely expected the man's master to come seeking him out.
What could he say about that?
Only that the man had traveled a thousand miles to deliver a cultivation art, and that the gift, however modest, carried great sentiment.
After that, the Formless Elder experienced firsthand the Life and Death Talisman's suffering that made one wish for death over life.
Having learned from the Han estate that among Li Musheng's group there was a powerful expert who had killed the Bai family head with a single finger, the Formless Elder had been extremely cautious from start to finish. He had never shown himself, and had chosen the moment when Li Musheng and the others were most relaxed to make his move.
Even to avoid being detected by that expert, he had from the beginning used a feint to draw attention elsewhere, not attacking Li Musheng directly but deliberately creating confusion and misdirection, until at the very last moment he had made his true intentions known through Shen Anran's hands.
He had believed this to be entirely airtight.
What he had miscalculated, however, was the one most important thing. He had never imagined that the expert who had killed Bai Changfeng was Li Musheng himself.
Even now, the Formless Elder could not make sense of it. This Eighth Prince of Great Li was clearly not yet twenty, yet he possessed martial strength this terrifying. The whole thing was simply too far beyond the realm of what seemed possible.