Chapter 66
Chapter 66
Just then, a torch suddenly cut through the darkness, illuminating the surroundings. As Tian Heng shot to his feet in alarm, a figure appeared outside the door. A handsome young man with an extraordinary air stood against the wind.
It was too dark outside to see his face. Only his silhouette and demeanor were visible, but Tian Heng would have recognized him even if he were dead and turned to ash. It was Shen Lang.
Tian Heng laughed heartily and said,
“Hahaha. Shen Lang, you wretched bastard. I was about to hunt you down, yet you've come to me instead. You've shunned the path to heaven and chosen to break down the gates of hell.”
He was ecstatic. Heaven itself seemed to have read his mind, delivering the wretched cur right to his doorstep. All that was left was to tear Shen Lang limb from limb, make him feel every ounce of pain, and then kill him.
“You're too late, you bastard. How could I, Song Yi, possibly let you go? I've killed your entire family, so now you too can feel the sorrow of losing your own!”
Even in that moment, Tian Heng did not forget to conceal his identity.
“Shen Lang, come and see. Your parents and younger brother are all dead. You're the only one left.”
“Tian Heng, stop the act.”
Tian Heng was startled. He was confident his ruse was flawless. He and his brother were identical in every way. Even the aura emanating from their martial arts was the same. Not only that, but after burning his brother's body, he had even planted a fine silver needle inside, identical to the one in his own body.
“At your level, you couldn't have found a perfect body double, so the one who smashed his head and died must have been your twin brother.”
A muscle twitched in Tian Heng's face, and he was rendered speechless.
“You... you're truly worse than a beast. To sacrifice your own brother without a moment's hesitation just to save yourself.”
Even then, Tian Heng merely sneered, saying nothing. He would never give Shen Lang an opening.
“You disguised it all to look perfectly real. You even placed a fine silver needle, identical to the one in your body, inside the burnt corpse. That was well done. But... what you didn't know is that the needle in your body and the one from the corpse are different shapes. The needle in the burnt body was straight, but the one in your body is bent.”
Tian Heng was utterly shocked.
‘He figured it out from such a tiny flaw? No, more importantly, how the hell does that bastard Shen Lang know the needle in my body is bent?’
But he still remained silent. He thought that perhaps Shen Lang was just bluffing, trying to intimidate him with mind games.
“So you pretended to be Song Yi, murdered my family, and tried to escape the law? Truly impressive, to the point of being sickening. Not only that, you even disfigured Song Yi's face with sulfuric acid. Who did it? Xu Guangyun? Or Xu Qianqian?”
Shen Lang gestured, and a figure was pushed forward. It was Song Yi. His face, too, was ruined by acid, a sight so horrifying it would make one's knees buckle.
“Agh, it hurts. It hurts. Give me water.”
While Tian Heng had endured the pain of his acid-scarred face with sheer force of will, Song Yi lacked such resolve and was still screaming, out of his mind.
‘This damned bastard anticipates everything.’
Only then did Tian Heng realize he could no longer hide. As he stood tall, a murderous aura, like that of a wild beast, began to erupt from him.
“Hahaha! So what if you know? You're too late, Shen Lang. I killed your whole family. How does it feel, Shen Lang? Isn't it painful? Go on, scream! Didn't you love your family more than anything? Now they're all dead, tragically, right in front of you, and you couldn't do a thing.”
Every word from Tian Heng was like a sharp dagger aimed at Shen Lang, but Shen Lang's gaze remained unshaken.
“Tian Heng, your eyesight is terrible. Take a look at who you really killed.”
After speaking, Shen Lang tossed the torch to him. Tian Heng picked it up and shone it on the three corpses he had killed. In that instant, a cold chill shot up from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, as if it would split his skull open. The hair on his body stood on end, and a cold sweat broke out all over him.
After a long moment, he finally made a sound.
“Ah... Ah...”
Tian Heng let out a wretched howl. The woman he had killed was not Shen Lang's mother, but his own wife. A vicious woman who had committed every evil deed imaginable, even forcing a lady from a good family into prostitution.
The old man killed by Tian Heng was his trusted steward, and the young man he had killed was none other than his son, Tian Sheng.
“No, no. No...”
Tian Heng screamed as if he were dying. But his wife had been the woman of the previous Gang Leader of the Black Clothes Gang; he had married her purely for personal gain. And though his son was his own flesh and blood, he had been neglected since childhood and had grown up to be a twisted fool. Was he truly grieving?
He held no deep affection for his wife and son. The son he truly loved was his illegitimate child, only four years old.
He had poured all his love into his younger son. For the boy's safety, Tian Heng had never publicly visited the woman in his life, nor had he let most people know of his younger son's existence.
Therefore, Tian Heng was not grieving their deaths. Rather, he was screaming in agony from the misery of his plan's catastrophic failure and the realization that he had been played by Shen Lang.
How many times had it been? Since meeting Shen Lang, he had never won. He had lost again and again, been trampled again and again. Just moments ago, he had been soaked in the thrill of finally getting his revenge on Shen Lang, but that was fleeting. In the end, all that remained before him was defeat, misery, and pain.
“I'll kill you. I'll tear you to pieces. I swear I'll tear you apart!”
Tian Heng charged madly toward Shen Lang. If he were in his right mind, he would never have dared to touch Shen Lang, who had the backing of the Count of Xuanwu's Estate. But none of that mattered to Tian Heng anymore. He felt that as long as he killed Shen Lang, he wouldn't care if he was killed later. But he was forced to a halt when he saw a frail woman holding a boy of about four.
The woman holding the child was the one he had raped, who had been forced to live in hiding, and in her arms, sleeping soundly, was his most cherished illegitimate son.
Shen Lang didn't hold a knife to her throat, nor did he say a word about her. He just stood quietly near the terrified woman, who was holding the sleeping child.
Tian Heng stood rooted to the spot, not moving an inch. It seemed that even he, who thought he had given up everything, had something he wanted to protect until the very end.
Beside Shen Lang stood Jin Mulan, and behind him were a dozen experts from the Count of Xuanwu's Estate.
Tian Heng gazed at his sleeping son's face with a thirsty look in his eyes. After a long while, Tian Heng forcefully tore off the mask he was wearing, revealing his acid-damaged face. Though it must have been excruciatingly painful, he showed no reaction.
Tian Heng waved a hand toward the woman and said in a calm voice,
“Take the son and go over there.”
As instructed, the woman took the child and hid in the darkness by the side of the road. Once the woman was out of the others' reach, Tian Heng turned to Jin Mulan and spoke in a monotone voice.
“I've heard that Lady Jin's martial arts are exceptional. I, Tian Heng, would like to request a lesson.”
To this, Jin Mulan slowly nodded, accepting his challenge.
“Very well!”
As Tian Heng raised his saber, a powerful aura surged from his entire body. Only now did Tian Heng finally look like a true wanderer of the martial world, a hegemon in his own right. In this moment, he was not a hunting dog for the powerful, but a true master of the martial arts.
“Die!”
Tian Heng roared and shot forward like a flash of light. His fierce momentum was incredible, like a tiger or lion descending from a mountain. This was the best strike he could muster, a blow that concentrated all his martial arts expertise. But Jin Mulan tapped her foot, and her beautiful form swept past him as swiftly as a swallow skimming water.
Thud.
The two figures tangled for an instant, then immediately separated. Returning to Shen Lang's side, she lightly sheathed her precious sword. The blade was as clean as if washed with water, without a single trace of blood.
Tian Heng's body stumbled forward a few powerful steps before stopping in front of Shen Lang. He looked down at his saber.
*Click.*
His saber was broken, and a thin red line was drawn across his chest. Soon, bright red blood spurted from the red line. Not only that, but his internal organs had also been severely damaged by Jin Mulan's attack, and fresh blood trickled from his mouth. Suddenly, memories of his youth began to surface in his mind. Memories of when he and his brother were raised by the old head of an escort agency.
The two of them had made a mistake while training and were forced to kneel in a snowy field in the dead of winter. When they were seventeen, they saw the agency head's eldest daughter accidentally reveal her waist, and they became so infatuated with women that they couldn't focus on training for half a year.
What beautiful times those were. If he hadn't coveted the treasure in the chest they were escorting and killed his brothers from the agency, he and his brother would never have had to flee. And everything that followed would not have happened either... Perhaps he and his brother would have stayed at the agency, married fiery agency women, and lived out their lives as ordinary men, regretting their marriages.
Did he regret it? No, it wasn't regret. He was just lost in a moment of sentimentality.
* * *
Shen Lang walked up to Tian Heng, squatted down, and said,
“Tian Heng, what will you give me? Do you know how much energy I spent to kill you after you needlessly made an enemy of me? You should give me something before you die!”
Hearing this, fury rekindled in the eyes of the dying Tian Heng.
‘Son of a bitch, is my fate as Tian Heng really this cruel? You bastard, I'm dying, and you're telling me how much trouble you went through to kill me? You won this lying down. Can't you show a little respect for the dying loser?’
Shen Lang said to him,
“I didn't bring your younger son here to watch you deeply repent or lament your regrets before you die. I just want you to give me something.”
“Are you... are you threatening me with my son's life?”
“No, unlike you, I have a conscience. However, if you agree, I will take care of the child from now on.”
Tian Heng wept. Tears streamed down his face.
“Shen Lang, you son of a bitch!”
“Stop struggling and just talk. If you keep quiet, you'll be dead soon.”
Tian Heng coughed up a constant stream of blood as he cursed even more vehemently.
“Shen Lang, you bastard. In the left garden of White Snow Villa, there's a cellar. That's Liu Wuyan's secret vault. Almost all the gold I recently bribed him with is stored there.”
“Is that all? Is there anything else you'd like to tell me? For example, evidence of Liu Wuyan's crimes?”
With nothing left to lose, Tian Heng cursed even louder and said,
“All civil officials are treacherous thieves, every last one of them a lowborn son of a bitch like you, craftier than monkeys. Do you think he'd tell me a fatal weakness? Did you have any others?”
Shen Lang thought for a moment, then nodded.
“That makes sense. If you have nothing else to give me, then rest in peace!”
“You fucking bastard.”
With that curse, Tian Heng fell back and died. He had wanted to die a glorious death, but that wish was not granted. He probably couldn't rest in peace even in death.
Shen Lang looked at Tian Heng's body, his eyes still open in death, and sneered inwardly. Could one really forgive an enemy before they died? What a joke. Once an enemy, always an enemy. And when that enemy died, the human heart only found satisfaction in giving the body a good kick.
Shen Lang said to Jin Hui,
“Cut off this man's head and put it in a box. Send it to Lord Zhang Jin and the City Lord.”
Jin Hui was startled, but he nodded and replied,
“Understood!”
Shen Lang said to Mulan,
“We mustn't delay. Let's head to White Snow Villa immediately and claim our windfall.”
Shen Lang led the experts from the Count's estate and hurried toward White Snow Villa.