Ning Chen stood with his hands behind his back, his face without expression, his eyes cold.

"I broke into the Tuoluo Kingdom's North Royal Court, and I have been inside the Wu Kingdom's palace. Nobody has been able to stop me... I can cut my way out of a petty little Ghost-Shadow Sect through blood too."

"Would you all care to try?"

Gu Su frowned. "Ning Chen, this old man has told you there is no ill will toward you here."

"Is that so?" Ning Chen's face was all mockery. "And yet from the moment I stepped through your Ghost-Shadow Sect's gate, ill will is all I have felt."

Gu Su said, "Ning Chen, this is all a misunderstanding."

Ning Chen laughed coldly. "Call your daughter out and let me insult her here in front of everybody. If you are broad-minded enough not to hold it against me, I will grant that this was a misunderstanding. How is that?"

"You are insolent!"

Gu Su was provoked. He was sect master of the Ghost-Shadow Sect after all, and his disciples were watching... and Ning Chen had not left him a shred of face.

Ning Chen's cold eyes were like lightning. "It is not that I am insolent. It is that you people are asking to die."

Gu Su's face was ugly.

Just then an aged laugh sounded.

"All of you, stand down. Men like you cannot hold down the Great Xuan's Idle Marquis."

"One general's fame, ten thousand bones. On a battlefield, the bodies heap up into hills and the blood runs like a river... It is not a thing you can measure against having murdered a few men."

Ning Chen looked toward the voice.

An old man was coming toward them, unsteady on his feet: a loose black gown, a walking stick, hair and beard shot with white, and the look of a man the coffin was already waiting for.

But Gu Su, and the elders of the Ghost-Shadow Sect, and every disciple of the Ghost-Shadow Sect standing around them, bent and bowed their heads.

"Master..."

"We greet the old…