They had escaped!
At the instant An Wu cut open the prison cell, the martial monk imdiately realized sothing was wrong.
In Chang’an City, people were unable to harm each other spontaneously; to capture a person required several individuals assisting.
Now that more than a dozen people had broken out of the cell, there was no way they two alone could handle the situation—they needed the whole of Anguo Temple to quell this group!
He turned and punched the copper bell fixed in the wall; instantly a clear, resonant chi echoed through the cell.
Then, the two martial monks blocked the narrow corridor together, yelling, “You can’t escape! As long as we block here, not one of you can fly away!”
This explained why they had painstakingly excavated space underground to build the prison cells—in Chang’an, it might take five people to catch one, but only two to block a hundred!
An Wu could sever the iron grille, yet he could not harm them!
Soon Anguo Temple would close its doors, dozens of martial monks would descend to suppress this cowardly lot; they just needed to hold for a quarter of an hour… no, half that!
An Wu did not look at the monks, but turned to Xue Yan and the others, saying, “When we go up, we will draw the monks’ attention; they won’t bother with you. Then you yourselves figure out how to escape.”
“Why didn’t you use dicine to save us earlier?”
“Yeah, why did you watch us starve for so many days?”
“You nearly got us killed by starvation!”
“Whose subordinates are you, that you don’t care whether we lived or died?”
As soon as they exited the cell, soone began complaining, and soon others echoed, accusing An Wu and An Liu.
Xue Yan was too furious to hold back, and now that he had strength, he shouted, “You ungrateful fools! It was the bald monk at Anguo Temple who starved you, so why curse these two? Without them saving you, you’d have been sold off sowhere by now!”
At once a delicate noblewoman retorted, “They saved us to gain rit, but that’s what they should do!”
“They ought to have slapped you across the face!”
The speaker was not Xue Yan but little Miss Yang San, who almost jumped as she said, “You just think you’re untouchable in Chang’an, so you can talk this bullshit? A few days ago when they blocked the door, did you think they were trying to starve that bald monk Ben Zhi? It was to protect us! You’re truly a bunch of ungrateful beasts, not caring at all—”
“Hahaha.”
An Wu suddenly laughed. Everyone looked at him, but he kept his head down, muttering to himself, “There are really people who complain…”
He looked at everyone and said sothing odd: “If you complain about , I have only one answer.”
If? But hadn’t that already happened?
“Although I wanted to save you, if my actions made you suffer or even die, I would not care.” An Wu said calmly. “I saved you simply because I was willing.”
“I don’t need your gratitude, nor will I accept your complaints. Even if all of you die now I wouldn’t mind.”
“I saved you only to make the world turn according to my will!”
Not just the complaining nobles, even Xue Yan and Miss Yang were stunned by An Wu’s words.
Even the emperor wouldn’t dare speak so arrogantly, would he?
Before they could respond, the cell echoed with the sound of objects falling. They turned to see a triple twin—five identical dinsions—matching An Wu and An Liu…
Even amid more curses at An Wu, he and An Liu ignored the prisoners and each lifted the canisters of oil the monks had placed in the corner.
Those oil cans were the monks’ weapons to kill people or even destroy corpses, but weapons lacked owners.
When the monks blocking the stairwell saw them move the oil cans, they imdiately understood their plan. Seeing An Wu approach, they scolded in harsh voices, “You want to burn us with oil? Hahaha! Before burning others, you'd have to burn yourself first—dare you? We trained specifically for this. You’d burn to a crisp!”
An Wu picked up a can of oil and poured it toward the monks. The monks felt unsettled, but remained unafraid—only flas upon the body could ignite the oil upon them.
That was the law of the inner city: only by harming yourself first could you find a loophole to harm others.
“An Wu,” Xue Yan removed his own jacket, “use our clothes to soak—”
An Wu did not heed them; instead he applied oil onto his own right arm.
Even the monks who weren’t afraid when he’d cut the cell open were now frightened to see this. “What are you doing? Think carefully, you’ll die! Fire and oil—you can’t control it—”
Swish!
An Wu lifted the candleholder and set it afla, and his right arm imdiately burst into roaring flas, the searing heat so intense no one dared approach!
The martial monks doused in oil scread in agony and scrambled up the corridor as An Wu strode behind them with his flaming arm held high like a torch, leading everyone out of the dungeon's darkness.
At that mont, even the noble who had just angrily shouted at An Wu closed her mouth obediently.
The iron door at the end of the corridor was shut and could only be opened from the outside.
Two martial monks pounded the door frantically, and soon a chubby monk opened it casually and asked, “Why the hurry? You bumped the copper bell just now—I haven’t even reprimanded you—”
“Quickly shut the door!”
As the prison overseer, the martial monks usually bowed to him, but now they had no ti to care and crushed past him to run outside, leaving only one sentence behind.
The overseer, with oil smudged on his hand, looked down into the corridor and saw a flaming arm running toward him.
His reflexes were quick—he slamd the iron door shut with a crack—but the flaming arm was faster: it reached through the crack in the door first.
The door’s weight brought trendous force, and the flaming hand’s wrist was nearly crushed off; charred flesh sared like minced at on the doorfra, revealing white, bloody bone splinters—it was impossible to imagine the pain.
But!
But!
That nearly severed hand, like the claw of a yaksha demon wretched by imprisonnt, clutched onto the overseer’s oil-sared arm as if trying to drag him into a hellish abyss to atone for sins!
“Ahhhh!”
The overseer, himself ablaze, howled and ran outside, banging the copper bell inside nonstop while shouting, “Shut the door! Quickly shut it! A demon’s escaped from hell, a demon’s escaped from hell!”
……
…
anwhile, the main hall of Anguo Temple was enveloped in clanging bells from all directions.
The reception monk ordered the doors to be closed while approaching a newcor: “Sorry, honored guest, water has flooded inside Anguo Temple; we cannot receive visitors now. Please co back tomorrow.”
Walking up front was a strange figure fully wrapped in bandages.
His companions were also odd: a masked mask‑rchant, a lively girl wearing sunglasses, and a youth who looked volatile just from his appearance.
The reception monk saw they ignored him and kept walking, so he signaled a martial monk by the counter and hurried to close the doors himself—where a temple opens the Changsheng Vault it must have both the red-faced and white-faced roles.
“The timing is perfect,”
the bandaged stranger said, pointing to the main hall door.
“See, soone will close it for us.”
“Then, let the mission begin.”
He pulled a mask from his bosom, painted with a yellow dog—quite cute—and put it on casually.
He drew his blade indifferently, like greeting soone, and slashed at the approaching monk.
The martial monk was still bewildered—this was Chang’an City; why draw a sword? His slash wouldn’t even cut clothes—
Slash.
Not until a severed hand dropped to the ground and blood splattered everywhere did the delayed pain storm into his brain.
It also triggered fear among all the surrounding monks.
“Ahhhh—my hand, my hand!”
dicine‑Master Wen, Ying Ru Shi, and Shang Xinlei all put on masks, and Yan Qing strode forward holding the dripping-blood White‑Iron Straight Blade, scanning the scene as he declared:
“All of you, freeze. This is a robbery.”
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