The Great Heavenly God looked at the four Ning'an Army soldiers with contempt. "You? You think you are fit to raise a hand to this god?"

The four of them burned with rage. If they had a musket on them now they would have put a bullet in the bastard.

They glanced at each other, got up together, and threw themselves at the Great Heavenly God again.

They had been ordered to protect Liang Anzhi. They would not fail their prince.

The Great Heavenly God laughed coldly. "Amitabha. Your sins are grievous. This god sends you early to the Pure Land." (TL Note: 早登極樂, "an early ascent to the Land of Supreme Bliss" — the Buddhist paradise of the western quarter. It is a pious formula for a good death, and the Great Heavenly God is using it to mean he is about to kill them.)

With that the staff went whirling up and down in his hands.

Crack!!!

One of them took the staff on the head and went flying across the cave into the rock wall, then dropped to the floor. Blood poured out of his mouth. He twitched a few times and stopped moving.

The other three glared until their eyes looked ready to split.

They were simply no match for the Great Heavenly God. He knocked every one of them down with the staff, bones broken and sinews torn, and they could not get up.

The Great Heavenly God's smile was cruel.

He fixed his eyes on Liang Anzhi. "This god knows what you are thinking. You are a servant short, and you are waiting for him to bring help.

Let this god tell you. This god's men ran that servant of yours down, and he went over into a ravine and ascended early to the Pure Land."

The servant he meant, the one who went over into the ravine, was the Ning'an Army soldier who had risked his life to carry the message.

He had gone over, but he had not died. He broke a leg and took a good many other injuries, and on…