The young voice was neither loud nor soft, yet it echoed in the ears of the three of them.
For a moment, all three standing in the air in the dark of the night went suddenly still, with only the night wind drifting past them.
The next instant, Zheng Shangzong snapped his head back and looked up toward the roof of the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion.
There sat Li Musheng on the ridgeline, his outline somewhat blurred in the darkness of the night, his gaze apparently turned toward the three of them.
"Who are you?"
Zheng Shangzong narrowed his eyes as he asked, a flash of wariness crossing his eyes beneath the killing intent.
At that point the two Falling God Peak elders looked up, and clearly recognized Li Musheng.
Both of them changed expression at once, saying with bewilderment and alarm, "It is you?"
Hearing this, Zheng Shangzong fixed his gaze on Li Musheng, quietly locking onto him with his aura, then turned to the two elders and said coldly, "You know this person?"
Hearing this, Zheng Shangzong said nothing, and continued studying Li Musheng in the darkness.
During the exchange between the three of them just now, none of them had at any point detected anyone's presence on the roof of the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion. If the other party had not spoken up voluntarily, they would never have noticed him at all.
For three Heaven-Human level martial artists, this was something almost impossible to imagine.
The distance between them and Li Musheng was not great. By any measure, he should not have been able to escape their perception without a sound.
Yet after scrutinizing Li Musheng for a while, Zheng Shangzong still could not detect so much as a trace of martial True Qi anywhere on the man. He appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary person with no martial cultivation whatsoever.
"You just said you killed my brother Zheng Zi?"
Zheng Shangzong's expression grew increasingly savage, and he pressed down the ferocity rising in him as he asked.
Hearing this, the two Falling God Peak elders became visibly more cautious, and said in low voices, "City Master Zheng, something seems off about this person. We must not be careless."
At the same time, Li Musheng, sitting on the ridgeline of the roof, looked at them with an entirely composed air, saying, "That is correct. Are you here to take revenge?"
At those words, Zheng Shangzong was clearly enraged, and could no longer hold back the fury and ferocity inside him.
In the next instant he let out a sudden, low shout, "Very good."
The True Qi of heaven and earth all around the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion erupted into a violent surge, pouring into his two arms like rivers pouring into the sea.
In an instant, Zheng Shangzong's knuckles rang like ten thousand iron chains striking together, and streaks of golden light appeared around both arms, then condensed before him into the phantom shape of a mountain.
The air erupted with roaring cracks, and the terrifying fist force that had built without dispersing beat outward like war drums, twisting the surrounding air into spiraling columns that drove toward the sky.
"Mountain-Stilling Fist of a Hundred Peaks. Die!"
Zheng Shangzong let out a full-throated roar and drove both fists forward toward Li Musheng on the roof. His left fist fell like a golden mountain collapsing, his right like a divine peak tilting over.
The golden mountain phantom condensed from the force of the fist technique erupted in rippling waves of gilded light, bringing hundreds and thousands of fist forces with it, the overlapping fist shadows rolling through rending gusts that split the night sky, crashing down toward Li Musheng on the roof of the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion.
Even the stray edges of the fist force that spilled into the street below drove straight through the paving stones and blasted open furrows several yards long, sending billowing clouds of dust rolling upward.
The two Falling God Peak elders watching this did not join in, and instead immediately channeled their vast True Qi to cover the flanks for Zheng Shangzong, maintaining wary watch over every direction.
"What sort of fist art is this poor? It is nothing but openings."
Li Musheng sat calmly on the ridgeline, watching the golden mountain phantom full of overwhelming fist intent bear down on him, and furrowed his brow.
Then he flicked a finger lightly.
In an instant, the True Qi of heaven and earth all around them froze. The powerful, imposing fist intent dissolved in a moment, the golden fist light and the mountain phantom vanishing at once.
The darkness around Li Musheng returned to what it had been before, and not a single roof tile beneath him was disturbed.
The night sky was utterly silent, as though nothing had happened at all.
The two Falling God Peak elders who had been covering Zheng Shangzong's flanks changed expression at once, completely unprepared for an attack of such force and power to be neutralized with such ease.
But before they could even begin to make sense of how the other man had done it, both of them suddenly stared in horror.
Out of the corner of their eyes, they caught a glimpse of something that made them go cold. At some point, a blood-rimmed hole had appeared in Zheng Shangzong's head, passing clean through from front to back.
His vital aura was already draining away at terrifying speed, and the body that had been standing in the air was falling in a rigid, straight-backed plummet from their sight, dropping toward the furrow in the street below.
Through the darkness, in that single instant they could just barely make out that the fierce expression on Zheng Shangzong's face had been frozen there permanently. Clearly he had not understood even at the moment of his death how he had died.
In an instant, both Falling God Peak elders felt a wave of cold terror wash over them, and they looked instinctively up at Li Musheng on the roof of the pavilion.
They found him utterly undisturbed, as though what had just happened was no more than a trivial and unremarkable thing.
In the next moment, without a fraction of hesitation between them, both of them channeled their True Qi with all the force they had and made to flee.
But before either of them had moved an inch, both of their skulls were pierced through in an instant.
The aged expressions on their faces became ones of profound terror, yet they could do nothing at all, and could only feel their lives extinguished in a moment as their bodies fell away below.
Having done all of this, Li Musheng withdrew his gaze and paid no attention to the three bodies, saying to himself with a thoughtful expression, "Kill the small ones, and the big ones come. Kill the big ones, and the old ones come... what a predictable story..."
"Though predictable as it is, it works well enough every time. This bunch of paper tigers..."
...
The force Zheng Shangzong had unleashed a moment ago at Heaven-Human level had been so staggering in its power that the people throughout the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion had scattered and fled in all directions.
Yet the terrifying fist intent had appeared as quickly as it vanished, and the area around the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion returned to silence within the span of a few breaths.
Even so, not a single person dared to come anywhere near, and it was only when the martial artists from the City Master's residence arrived and gathered at the side of the damaged street furrow near the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion that they discovered, with profound shock, the bodies of Zheng Shangzong and the two elders.
"City Master!"
A silver-haired elderly man crouched beside Zheng Shangzong with an expression of shock and fury, and as he looked at the finger-width blood hole punched clean through the man's forehead, an inexplicable chill rose in his heart.
The old man immediately swept a look around the surrounding area, and found nothing out of the ordinary, at which point the color drained from his face entirely.
To kill three Heaven-Human level martial artists in this manner required martial cultivation that was without question far above all three of them.
"Who could have done this?"
The silver-haired elderly man's expression went through several rapid changes, and he immediately called over one of the City Master's residence martial artists and said in a low, urgent voice, "Go at once to Hundred Refinements Peak and report this. It is very likely that a powerful Tianjin Guards martial artist has infiltrated Hundred Refinements City. You must report it to the Peak Master in person."