Nine Chapters of Strange Cases

Chapter 59 A Perfect Match: Counterattack
There was a loud bang.

The two stone pillars collided and fell backward, raising a huge cloud of dust as they hit the ground.

Liu Huang bent down, picked up the straw hat that had fallen to the ground, put it on his head, let out a long sigh of relief, and walked to Zhou Zhao's side.

"Cough cough..." The tiger-toothed boy sat up from the pile of rubble and coughed violently. Strange cries kept coming from his throat, like a male duck whose throat was being squeezed.

Xu Qifang stared wide-eyed at the scene, her face filled with disbelief.

Is that human being?
She had seen Ye Xuan, the Xuanwu Hall Master, lift a cauldron with one hand, but this seemingly inhuman boy in front of her was probably the same Ye Xuan who could lift a cauldron with one hand!

"How did you know? You don't want to join the Inner Seven Halls? Zhou Zhao, I can help you get into the Inner Seven Halls!"

Everyone else was blinded by the prospect of entering the Inner Seven Halls. In Tianying City, as long as there was an opportunity to enter the Inner Seven Halls, even if people knew it was a trap, they would still jump in one after another.

Zhou Zhao clicked his tongue twice, raised his hand to press Xu Qifang's pressure points, and then released his hand.

"Know what? Know that you killed your own family? Or know that this mission was all about choosing sacrifices from beginning to end?"

“What the Inner Seven Halls want are not living people, but lively sacrificial offerings. Is there any need to look? You didn’t even try to hide it, because the four hall masters and you, who are under the command of the Third Hall Master of the Inner Hall, treated us like dead people from the very beginning.”

Xu Qifang's body was unable to move, but her eyes could still move. Her pupils suddenly contracted, and her gaze towards Zhou Zhao was chilling.

This person has only been in Tianying City for a few days, yet he knows so much!
"How do you know I'm the Third Hall Master's man, and not Ye Xuan's subordinate? That's impossible!"

How did Zhou Zhao know she came from the inner hall, and how could he guess whose people she was working for? They never mentioned the Third Hall from beginning to end.

"The leaders of the four outer halls have all been controlled. Ye Xuan is old and wanted to retire, and that yellow-faced hall leader looks like he's terminally ill, but they are all full of energy, as if they're having a final burst of life before death. It's either medicine or Gu worms."

"Although I have made a name for myself in Tiandou Village, I am not good enough to catch Ye Xuan's eye."

She's just a minor third-in-command. Xuanwu Hall has three strongholds, and each stronghold has three leaders. She's only one-ninth of them.

"He chose me because you were hiding in Tiandou Village and observing me. The sacrifice you were looking for was a young man with high martial arts skills and strong vitality, and I just happened to fit the bill. In the underground cave, although you were standing behind Ye Xuan, it was obvious that you didn't show him much respect and were making decisions on your own the whole time."

“This is not something someone in a lower position would do. You are not Ye Xuan’s informant, but someone in the inner circle.”

Of course, there was another reason that Zhou Zhao didn't mention.

The reason she ruled out Xu Qifang being Qin Tianying's man, and the fact that Qin Tianying orchestrated the entire mission, was because Ye Xuan had arranged for Li Shi to participate in this doomed mission. Qianmian had told her that the tattooed man, Li Shi, was Qin Tianying's man. If Xu Qifang and Li Shi were from the same person, then Xu Qifang would definitely know this and wouldn't have chosen him.

“This house is the Xu residence. The three heads on the bronze tripod at the south gate all have cat eyes like you. They are your relatives.”

During the firefighting incident, Zhou Zhao met Xu Qifang for the first time and noticed her cat-like eyes and long green whip.

“Ah Huang said they were poisoned before they died, and the color of your whip was wrong, it was obviously soaked in poison, and you came to visit the hospital in advance, so I immediately suspected that you were the murderer. Later, you led us ahead to avoid the traps, which further confirmed my guess.”

"This mission was a scam from the very beginning."

“Ah Huang’s lightness skill is average, and he can’t keep up with your pace at all. He walks like he’s drunk. He took thirteen wrong steps along this route, but he didn’t trigger any traps. Or rather, you, as a descendant of the Xu family, have already cleared away all the traps along the way.”

"After all, we can't die on the road; we have to die beneath these six sacrificial stone pillars."

"A square gate, a bronze cauldron, three human heads, and six stone pillars. The corpses in the training ground are in distorted positions, which is a deliberate arrangement. If I am not mistaken, the same pattern is used on the coffins under the Xuanwu Hall."

Zhou Zhao paused, his gaze falling on the seventh stone pillar that had risen up beside Xu Qifang.

The patterns on the stone pillar, soaked in blood, looked exceptionally eerie. The blood of everyone present flowed down the grooves in the arena floor to the center, drenching the pillar. In the center of the pillar was a hollow, and in the center of that hollow was a scarlet tortoise shell. Zhou Zhao looked at it and uttered four words, "Six Paths of Reincarnation."

Xu Qifang looked terrified. She looked up at the thin crescent moon in the sky. "Whatever you want to ask, I'll tell you!"

“My master is the head of the Tianji Hall, the third hall of the inner palace. She is skilled in Gu magic and admires intelligent people like you. If I introduce you to her, she will definitely take you in…”

Xu Qifang stopped abruptly halfway through her sentence, staring at Zhou Zhao with wide eyes in disbelief.

The dagger severed her neck with lightning speed.

This person is absolutely outrageous!
She's said so much, analyzed the whole situation clearly. Next, we should hear her explain why she slaughtered her entire family; she must have some ulterior motive, such as using it to blackmail them into joining the Tianji Hall, or something like that…

But Zhou Zhao finished speaking, and before she could say anything else, she was killed...

They died with their eyes wide open in disbelief!

Zhou Zhao didn't even glance at Xu Qifang. She took out a handkerchief, wrapped the bloodstained tortoise shell in it, and put it in her bosom. Then she gestured to Liu Huang, "Someone's coming!"

The boy with the tiger teeth had caught his breath and heard Zhou Zhao's words. He looked around and saw that the place was bare except for a few large pillars, so there was nowhere to hide. He was extremely anxious and looked at Zhou Zhao for help.

Upon seeing this, they were instantly dumbfounded. Zhou Zhao and Liu Huang had tacitly returned to the place where the pillar had been. Zhou Zhao sat with her back against the stone pillar, her head lowered. There was blood on her chest that she had smeared at some point. Her red hand hung by her side, loosely holding a dagger.

Liu Huang lay down directly in the pile of stones, and damn it, he even picked up a stone and put it on his straw hat.

Two living corpses!

The boy with the tiger teeth felt that in one night, he saw a new world that was longer than his entire previous life!

As he thought about it, he numbly collapsed, sticking his tongue out... If it's a hanged ghost, it should stick out its tongue, the tiger-toothed boy thought haphazardly.

Footsteps sounded, approaching from afar and gradually becoming clearer...

Tiger-toothed boy felt his heart leap into his throat. He suddenly remembered that Xu Qifang's body was still standing in the center of the training ground. If the person who came was one of her inner circle members, then seeing her body would definitely reveal something was wrong.

Will their disguise still work?

He was truly led astray by Zhou Zhaotong and that monstrous, straw-hatted spirit with immense strength named Ahuang.

"Qifang is gone."

The boy with the tiger teeth felt a sudden jolt in his heart; what he feared most had come to pass!
A gust of wind blew by, and Xu Qifang's body, which had been frozen in place due to the acupoint strike, collapsed with a thud.

The newcomer paused slightly, then walked across the center of the training ground and headed towards the three pillars to the north.

Zhou Zhao leaned against a pillar, listening to the approaching footsteps, counting in his mind: "Three...two..."

The man was already close to her, and he raised his longsword at her...

Out of the corner of Zhou Zhao’s eye, he could catch a glimpse of the strange green light on the long sword, which looked exactly like Xu Qifang’s long whip.

Just then, a deep voice suddenly rang out, "Hall Master Qi."

"one……"

When Master Qi heard the familiar voice, he turned his head and subconsciously looked in the direction of the speaker.