At the sa ti, Hu Rui'an, who had just been revived by the antidote, seed to think of sothing, and his expression turned extrely unpleasant all at once.
He imdiately struggled to sit up, and said in a feeble but deeply anxious voice, "This won't do. The young master and the others must be in trouble. I have to go save them."
At this point, how could he not have worked it out? The food and wine they had eaten during the day were clearly tampered with, and in all likelihood Li Musheng and the others were in exactly his situation, long since poisoned and unconscious.
It was only because he had his cousin to help him that he had managed to co around. Li Musheng and the rest had surely already beco fish on a chopping block, helpless in whoever's hands.
As he saw it, only he could save them now.
Ruan Zhenhui, sitting at the edge of the bed, had a vague inkling of what was happening. She was just about to speak when a sudden gust of wind erupted from outside the courtyard, and the door was blown forcefully open.
It swept through every corner of the room, sending the candle fla thrashing wildly and the curtains billowing in restless waves.
"Zhenhui. What is the aning of this?"
A voice ca in from outside the courtyard. Ruan Zhenhui's expression changed drastically at once.
She turned her head, and there was Zhanliu Manor Master Shen Liancheng, clad in his dark cloud-patterned robe, stepping slowly in from the courtyard outside.
Shen Liancheng's expression was perfectly composed, and his gaze settled on the two of them, whose closeness left no room for misinterpretation. Not a flicker of any emotion could be read on his face.
Ruan Zhenhui leaped to her feet, her face full of alarm, and quickly explained, "Liancheng, don't misunderstand. It is not what you are imagining."
At this point, Hu Rui'an had finally recovered enough strength to push himself up and sit upright on his own.
He looked at Shen Liancheng walking slowly into the room from outside, and his expression turned deeply unpleasant.
Shen Liancheng walked to the center of the room and stopped. From beginning to end his face showed no ripple of emotion, and he did not look at Ruan Zhenhui. Instead his gaze rested on Hu Rui'an, and he said, "So it is you."
He had clearly recognized the identity that Hu Rui'an had been disguising all day.
Then Shen Liancheng's eyes narrowed slightly, and he said with cool indifference, "Hu Rui'an, have you forgotten the promise you made back then? That you would never set foot in Zhanliu Manor for the rest of your life, and would never see Zhenhui again?"
Hearing this, Hu Rui'an's expression shifted through a rapid series of changes.
And to his side, Ruan Zhenhui looked stunned, snapping her head sharply toward Hu Rui'an, saying, "When did the two of you ever et? Did you truly make the promises he says you made?"
Hu Rui'an said nothing. He simply looked at Shen Liancheng before him, then after a mont of silence said, "Rest easy. I ca only to see my cousin one last ti. I have no other aspirations beyond that."
The mont those words fell, Ruan Zhenhui's gaze went blank, and an expression of sheer disbelief spread across her face.
She seed unable to accept that Hu Rui'an had actually made such a promise, and had kept it from her for so many years.
At this mont, Shen Liancheng gave a light laugh, then suddenly stepped toward the two of them, saying with cold indifference, "You made an oath. You said that if you violated it, you would accept any consequence I chose to impose. I want your life now. Surely that is not unreasonable."
With that, True Qi swirled around Shen Liancheng's palm, and he raised his hand and condensed a crimson claw shadow in the air, then without any warning drove it toward Hu Rui'an.
In that instant, the heaven and earth True Qi within the room shuddered, and the bed fra and curtains crumbled to dust beneath the spreading claw shadow.
Seeing this, Ruan Zhenhui's expression changed drastically. She imdiately redirected all the True Qi in her body and drove her palm upward against the claw shadow descending from above.
Yet her martial Dao cultivation was far below Shen Liancheng's, and he needed only a single glance in her direction. An invisible stream of True Qi sent her entire body flying, crashing into the room's window.
"Mother!"
Shen Anran cried out in alarm and without hesitation leaped from the rooftop in a flash, catching Ruan Zhenhui's body as it was sent flying.
At the sa ti, Hu Rui'an lying on the bed looked up at the claw shadow slowly descending upon him with an expression of extre unpleasantness.
Because the Drunken Immortal's Death had not yet fully dissipated from his body, even pouring everything he had into trying to circulate his True Qi was completely beyond him.
Summoning the full strength of his Heaven-Human cultivation to draw on the surrounding heaven and earth True Qi was out of the question entirely.
Hu Rui'an understood that in the current situation, facing Shen Liancheng, whose martial Dao strength even at full capacity was no weaker than his own, he had no ability to resist whatsoever. His life and death were entirely in the other man's hands.
Even so, Hu Rui'an had a certain stubbornness to him, and from beginning to end he said nothing to beg for his life.
And just at that mont, the crimson claw shadow crackling with its terrifying martial aura drew closer and closer to Hu Rui'an.
Not far away, Ruan Zhenhui witnessed this and cried out in pale-faced alarm, saying, "Don't!"
Shen Anran, holding Ruan Zhenhui in her arms, looked up toward the room, having more or less resigned herself to the fact that under her father's strike, the fate of this man with his unclear relationship to her mother was already sealed.
But in the very next mont, that crimson claw shadow, suffused with such dense and overwhelming True Qi, silently dissolved away without a sound.
The powerful martial aura belonging to Shen Liancheng, which had perated the entire room, vanished at the sa instant, and the surroundings beca utterly calm in a single heartbeat.
"How are you feeling, Commissioner Hu? Quite the thrill, wasn't it?"
At that mont, a rather mocking voice rang out in the room, and Li Musheng's figure appeared suddenly beside the bed where Hu Rui'an was lying, saying, "Sneaking out to pursue won instead of doing your job has its consequences."
Everyone in the room froze simultaneously at the sight.
When they ca back to themselves, Shen Anran and Ruan Zhenhui both had expressions of pure disbelief on their faces.
Even so, Ruan Zhenhui quietly let out a small, private breath of relief, though the look she directed into the room was unmistakably full of puzzlent.
From the way things had unfolded just now, it seed that the young man who had appeared out of nowhere had moved to stop Shen Liancheng.
But the man was simply far too young, and she was not entirely sure whether it had truly been him who acted.
At the sa ti, Shen Liancheng's expression beca deeply grave. He had naturally seen Li Musheng during the day.
And by all reasoning, the man should have been poisoned by now, captured by the Alliance Under Heaven's Jing Chengluo and the others.
Yet not only was Li Musheng completely unaffected, he had appeared in the room without Shen Liancheng detecting him in the slightest.
More than that, at so unknown mont he had made a move that silently and effortlessly dissolved his own attack.
While Shen Liancheng had not actually intended to take Hu Rui'an's life outright just now, to casually neutralize a strike of his required a level of ability that was far from ordinary.
Yet what left him deeply unsettled was that Li Musheng appeared to carry not even the faintest trace of martial True Qi.
And the man was simply too young, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to soone who could possibly possess such astonishing martial Dao strength.
"Sir, you... how did you co to be here?"
Naturally, the most stunned of all was Hu Rui'an.
He had already completely abandoned any hope of resistance monts ago, and had been filled with nothing but regret at having made a misstep and fallen into Shen Liancheng's trap.
But what he had not expected was that at this critical mont, Li Musheng would appear, and on top of that would move to block Shen Liancheng's strike.
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