On the return journey, seated in the carriage, Arno drew back the curtain and looked outside. The road was all but empty, save for the occasional knight on horseback passing by.

  Since Hutt and Les’s bloody feud, law and order in Pramisburg had deteriorated. Security guards openly indulged the newly emerging small factions, turning a blind eye to illegal activities in the city. They not only failed to pursue or manage criminals but didn’t even bother maintaining the pretense of order. In this situation, those intending to travel to Pramisburg had all chosen to halt their journeys, quietly observing further developments in the situation.

  Regardless of what Pulth thought or how he had managed it, he had violated Arno’s interests. When someone seeks death, there are countless ways to achieve it.

  Lost in thought, Arno suddenly tensed. The official road was deserted in all directions. A chill quietly spread in his heart. Blair also seemed to sense that the atmosphere was abnormal—the chilly air carried a faint yet unmistakable murderous intent, mingling with the bleak autumn wind and crashing against the luxurious carriage on the official road like waves.

  Blair reined in the horse, which raised its head at the sudden pull and slowed its pace. Blair’s expression turned solemn as he drew his longsword from its sheath. “My lord, I think something is wrong here.”

  No need to state the obvious.

  Arno took out his dagger and played with it in his hand, eyes slightly narrowed as if indifferent to his own safety, but in reality, he was closely monitoring the situation outside the carriage.

  This was not Arno’s first assassination attempt. In the capital, before occupying this body, as an observer, he had watched the real “Arno” get injured and attacked, eventually withering and dying under the torture of a curse. Facing a similar situation now, he was not as uneasy and terrified as the first time. He said calmly, “Keep moving. You have more combat experience than I do—this is your domain.”

  After speaking, he took out an exquisite flint from a storage compartment on the carriage door. Actually, it wasn’t exactly a flint; advanced magic technology left traces of magic everywhere in this world. The moment the exquisite cylindrical flint was pulled apart, a micro-carved lava eruption magic array would activate, functioning similarly to spraying a tongue of fire. When the lid separated from the main body, the magic array on the lid would lose the energy supply from the Tiberium crystal embedded in the main body and thus extinguish.

  The sprayed tongue of fire would ignite a material called oilwood on the main body, forming a tiny torch. Such magical items were common, especially among nobles, who never lacked similar tools and considered them essential for travel.

  Arno ignited the flint and threw it out the window. Both sides of the official road were covered in withered grass, which had long dried out in the late autumn and could catch fire at the slightest spark. His purpose was to attract the attention of Pramisburg’s guards—they were only two or three kilometers from the city gates. Once the fire grew, the rising black smoke would surely catch the city guard’s eye. No matter how formidable the assassins were, facing a surround of hundreds of men and the confrontation of crossbows, they would choose to retreat rather than continue the assassination.

  The most pressing matter was whether Blair could withstand the assassins’ attacks and prevent this frail noble from meeting his end before reinforcements arrived.

  The carriage moved slowly forward, and the nearby grass pile had already caught fire. A small amount of grass ash was carried into the air by the rising heat. The smoke was not yet thick, as too few areas had been ignited.

  The atmosphere grew more oppressive. A bead of sweat oozed from Blair’s forehead, sliding down his square forehead to his cheek and dripping onto his collar. He clenched his longsword, staring at the waist-high weeds around them—their enemies were likely hiding there.

  As a Level 5 knight, Blair’s combat power was formidable. The previous clan leader had focused on training him as a retainer, sparing no resources and hiring numerous teachers, endowing him with strong practical combat abilities. If he hadn’t been guarding the clan leader during Arno’s last attack, perhaps the real Arno wouldn’t have met his demise.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Inside the carriage, Arno appeared calm, but his heart was boiling with anger. This assassination had shown early signs, but he hadn’t taken it seriously. On one hand, he rarely went out of the city lord’s mansion, which was well-protected by escorts borrowed from the guild. On the other hand, he had somewhat hoped to use the assassination as an opportunity to eliminate unwanted individuals. It seemed the assassins had been planning for a long time, possibly lurking in the city and waiting for the right moment.

  I was too careless! Arno’s temples throbbed as he made up his mind. As the saying goes, a nobleman does not sit beneath a collapsing roof—from now on, such threats must be eliminated at the bud stage, not allowed to develop.

  A journey that would normally take a few minutes had already taken nearly ten, with the carriage moving barely faster than a walking pace.

  Just as Blair began to feel anxious, two spears whistled out from the waist-high grass on both sides of the official road, piercing straight into the wheel brackets. The ten-foot-long spears entangled the wheels, forcing the carriage to stop. Immediately, four assassins wearing black robes emerged from the grass. Their faces were covered with black scarves, and their heads were shrouded in hoods, leaving only their eyes exposed. They held one-meter-long rapiers and moved with agile flexibility, surrounding the carriage almost simultaneously.

  It was true that a noble’s carriage was costly and heavy, requiring strong horses to pull, but it had one advantage: it was extremely sturdy. For safety, nobles didn’t mind spending extra to embed a rock-solid magic array in their carriages. Arno, hiding inside, had already locked the doors and windows. The two assassins behind the carriage kicked the rear window more than a dozen times without success, so they turned their attention to Blair in front. They planned to kill Blair, the obstacle, first before dealing with Arno. If they couldn’t open the carriage, they would simply sink it into the river, making the effort to open it moot.

  Blair’s knight’s sword was a one-handed heavy sword, also known as a knight’s greatsword, a very heavy weapon. In the hands of someone who had cultivated battle aura, it was a fearsome killing tool. Many times, knights would cut opponents and their horses in half with such swords, thanks in part to the greatsword’s design.

  But his opponents were the feared “Black Clerics,” said to come from a “heretical cult.” In the Light Church’s annals, the heretical cult had led a world-destroying disaster, which was only averted by the descent of the Light God. Since then, the cult had become a hated target; anyone found engaging in cult activities would be either sent to the mines to labor until death in the most dangerous jobs or burned alive to purify their sins.

  At some point, the cult had transformed into an assassin organization. Regardless of the target, as long as the price was right, they would carry out the kill. The cult’s black magic was strange and vicious, and their assassination attempts rarely failed. It was said that once targeted by Black Clerics, one might as well prepare for the worst.

  Arno watched through the window as Blair outside looked somewhat disheveled. The four nimble assassins circled him, avoiding direct combat and stabbing with their rapiers whenever an opportunity arose. They didn’t aim for instant kills but instead focused on inflicting continuous minor wounds on Blair. Fortunately, Blair’s battle aura cultivation was approaching Level 6, which meant these injuries were not yet life-threatening.

  As seven or eight minutes passed and the smoke column rose straight into the sky, the Black Clerics’ attacks grew more intense. Arno wanted to help but knew his involvement would only cause chaos, so he sat quietly in the carriage, silently cheering Blair on.

  Just then, Arno suddenly felt something odd: a wisp of shadow from his feet extended along the carriage door and floor to the opposite seat. The wisp of shadow became more defined, eventually forming a human shape, as if an invisible person were sitting there—his body unseen, but his shadow visible.

  After a moment of scalp-numbing dread, Arno held his dagger across his chest, staring coldly at the shadow, neither attacking nor defending in a flustered manner, just calmly observing.

  Applause suddenly rang out in the carriage, and the shadow gradually became more solid, with a man slowly emerging from it. The first thing that came to Arno’s mind was another infamous assassin organization—the Shadow Dancers.

  It was said they were a clan abandoned by the gods, born in pitch-black underground caves, feeding on insects and roots. Exposed to sunlight, they would disintegrate like snowmen in summer. Cursed from birth with an ancient malediction, they could not endure sunlight and lived forever in darkness. But heaven had granted them extraordinary powers: they could merge their bodies into the shadow of any object, detectable only by the Light Church’s divine evil-detecting magic—otherwise, they were invisible to all living beings.

  “Not bad—at least you’re calm. I rarely see such composure, especially when facing someone like me,” said the man opposite, a middle-aged man in his thirties. Ignoring his identity, he looked no different from the destitute men in the city—unshaven, hair as messy as a bird’s nest, wearing cheap burlap clothes and barefoot.

  Arno smiled slightly and opened his mouth. Just as the man prepared to hear what Arno had to say, Arno suddenly pulled open the curtain.

  Reading more books still has its benefits.