Battle Through the Heavens: Starting with Cao Ying as an apprentice

As for small families like the Ya family, four or five have disappeared without a trace in the past few months. The reason he has been reluctant to move his entire family is only because he is hoping that he can survive this chaotic world and that the Ya family may rise again once the situation stabilizes.

“Wait a little longer.” He seemed to be persuading his wife, but also himself: “I’ve already contacted a royal deacon; if we can get through this connection…”

Before he could finish speaking, a shrill scream suddenly came from outside the courtyard.

"Ah, no!"

"I am a member of the Ya family, who are you?!"

"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"

Shouts of battle, the clash of weapons, and the explosions of fighting spirit instantly tore through the night sky.

The couple stood up abruptly, looked at each other, and saw deep fear in each other's eyes—what was bound to happen had finally arrived.

"Take Fei'er through the secret passage!" Ya Tian made a decisive decision, took out a storage ring from his pocket and stuffed it into his wife's hand: "This contains everything I've accumulated over the years. Go to Wutan City and find the old subordinates of the Xiao family. I helped them before, and they owe me a favor."

“No, let’s go together!” Mittel grabbed her husband’s arm tightly.

Ya Tian shook his head with a wry smile and gently pried her fingers apart: "I am the head of the Ya family, the King of Fighting. If I'm not here, they won't believe you really escaped."

He cupped his wife's face in his hands and planted a deep kiss on her forehead: "Protect our daughter. Live on."

Having said that, he pushed his wife away, turned around, and drew the long sword from the wall. His battle aura erupted, a cyan vortex swirling around him, and the pressure of a one-star Dou Wang was released without reservation.

"Come on!"

Mittelxue burst into tears, but knew this was not the time to hesitate. She gave her husband one last, deep look, then turned and rushed into the inner room. Her ten-year-old daughter, Yafei, had been awakened by the commotion outside and was curled up at the head of the bed, trembling.

"Fei'er, come with your mother."

She scooped up her daughter, lifted the bed board, and leaped into the deep, secret passage. Just as she was about to close the hidden door, she heard her husband's furious roar from the courtyard, followed by a deafening explosion—

That was a sign that a Dou Wang powerhouse was about to self-destruct.

Darkness completely swallowed her vision.

"Mother, you are bleeding."

The childish voice pulled Mittelxue back to reality from her memories.

She looked down and saw her daughter pressing her small hand against a deep, bone-revealing wound on her waist—caused by a slash of fighting spirit during their escape.

"It's alright." She tore off a corner of her sleeve, hastily bandaged the wound, and then struggled to her feet. "It's not safe here yet. We have to keep going."

She took her daughter's hand, but felt that the little hand was terribly cold. Moonlight filtered through the leaves, illuminating the girl's pale yet unusually determined face.

“Mother, we will survive, won’t we?” Ya Fei asked softly, her eyes shining brightly in the darkness.

Mittel nodded emphatically and held her daughter's little hand even tighter.

"I will survive. Not only will I survive, but I will survive better than anyone else."

Beneath the ancient trees in the wilderness, Mittel Snow suddenly opened her eyes, wiped away her tears, and broke free from that painful memory.

The daughter in his arms was still sobbing, and the wind in the forest whistled mournfully.

She gently wiped away the child's tears and the wetness from her own face, her voice low but firm:

“Fei’er, we cannot stop. The path your father paved with his life… we must continue.”

She picked up her daughter, took another step, and ran towards the depths of the forest, towards the faint but necessary hope of survival, without looking back.

In the darkness of night, two figures, one tall and one short, set off again, disappearing into the boundless, dark forest. Their red robes fluttered in the wind, like an unquenchable flame, stubbornly burning in the blood-red night.

About half an hour after Mittel and her daughter left, several dark figures slowly emerged from the depths of the tree shadows.

The leader was wearing a dark cloak and a half-silver mask covering his face, his exposed eyes gleaming with a cold metallic luster in the moonlight.

He gazed in the direction where the beautiful woman in red had disappeared, his voice rising as if from an ice cellar: "Target's trail spotted. Secretly send a message to the assassins, instructing them to continue the pursuit."

A man in black knelt on one knee, bowed his head, and replied, "Your subordinate understands. We will not let anyone know that this was our doing."

“Remember—” The cloaked figure slowly turned around, his gaze sharp as a knife: “Make it look like a pure hunt. The grudges of the Mittel family must never be known to outsiders that it was us… no, it was us, the ‘Shadow Guards,’ who were stirring things up behind the scenes.”

The man in black trembled almost imperceptibly: "Yes, Elder."

The shadow quickly dissipated, like ink dripping into water, silently merging into the night.

Watching his men leave, the cloaked man looked in the direction where Mittel and her daughter had fled.

“Xiaoxue, forgive me. Blame your husband Yatian. The clan leader gave him so many opportunities to join the Mittel family, but he was just stubborn.”

"Since he's unwilling, we have no choice but to get rid of him. As for you and the child, I'm sorry, I can spare the child."

"But I'm sorry about you. I can't keep you here. Only in this way can we take over the Ya family's business. All of this is for the sake of the Mittel family."

The cloaked man looked ahead with a pained expression. Before the plan began, he had pleaded with the clan chief to spare Mittelxue's life, but the clan chief insisted on eliminating all traces of her and then taking over everything from the Ya family through that child.

The cloaked figure flickered, transforming into an almost invisible phantom, silently following the direction Mittelxue had gone. His steps were unpredictable, each one precisely landing in the deepest shadows, as if he himself were part of the darkness.

The wind rustled through the treetops, and all was quiet.

Just after all the pursuers and fugitives had left, ripples suddenly appeared in the space three zhang above the giant tree.

"Shoot-"

A pitch-black rift suddenly tore open, like a giant maw slowly opening. The edges of the rift shimmered with silvery-white spatial turbulence, emanating a chilling aura.

Chapter 128 The mantis stalks the cicada (2)

Two figures stepped calmly out of the crack.

The leader was a young man who looked to be in his early twenties. He was dressed in white, his long hair was casually tied up with a jade hairpin, and his face was so handsome that it was almost otherworldly.

He stood with his hands behind his back, his clothes fluttering without wind, and there was no fluctuation of battle aura around him, yet the surrounding space was subtly distorted.

Half a step behind was an old man, dressed in a gray robe, with long silver hair and beard, his eyes gleaming with a worldly wisdom that had seen through the vicissitudes of life.

—It was Su Baichen and Yao Chen.

Yao Chen stroked his beard and glanced mockingly at the young man beside him: "What's wrong, kid Su? After watching the show for so long, you've finally decided to meddle?"

Su Baichen didn't answer immediately. His gaze drifted into the depths of the dense forest, where the figure in red was no longer visible, only the faint scent of blood lingering in the wind. After a long while, a playful smile curved his lips:

"At first, I really just wanted to watch the show." He paused, a glint of shrewdness flashing in his eyes: "But now... I might really have to get involved."

At first, Su Baichen was truly just passing by. While tearing through space to travel, he happened to sense movement below and stopped to observe the chase. Until the little girl peeked half her face out from behind a tree—

Although his face was covered in blood and he was terrified, the light in his eyes and the composure he maintained even in dire straits... were so similar.

She is just like the woman in my memory who, with Xiao Yan's help, made waves in the business world and turned an auction house into a business empire spanning the continent—Ya Fei.

Su Baichen secretly calculated: The system shop does have many good items, but they all require a massive amount of gold coins. He can't keep relying on robbing and stealing, can he? That would be too undignified. Now that Heaven has delivered a future business prodigy right before his eyes, it would be an injustice not to seize the opportunity and bring him under his wing!

Yao Chen, of course, had no idea what he was thinking. Upon hearing this, he immediately showed a disdainful expression, circled Su Baichen halfway around, and looked him up and down: "Tsk tsk, I've lived for so many years, what kind of weird quirks haven't I seen? But you kid... you actually like this kind of thing? That's a married woman!"

Su Baichen's lips twitched: "Get lost. Who said I wanted that woman?"

Yao Chen's expression instantly shifted from disdain to shock. His eyes widened in disbelief as he exclaimed, "You...you actually want that child?!"

He pointed at Su Baichen, his finger trembling: "How old is she? Is she even twelve? Su Baichen, Su Baichen, I always thought that although you acted eccentrically, you at least had some principles! You, are you even human?!"

"Damn it!" Su Baichen's forehead veins bulged, and several black lines were clearly visible: "Slander! This is blatant slander! I'm going to sue you for defamation!"

He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the urge to stuff the medicine dust back into the Bone Flame Ring, and gritted his teeth, saying, "What I value is her business talent! Talent, you understand?! That girl can become a business queen with wealth that rivals a country in the future! I want to nurture her, not... ugh, I can't reason with an old man like you whose head is full of dirty jokes!"

Yao Chen narrowed his eyes in disbelief: "Really?"

“Absolutely true.” Su Baichen rolled his eyes and looked back at the dense forest. “But speaking of which… the conversation between those men in black just now was quite interesting.”

He lightly tapped his finger, and a wisp of silvery-white spatial power coiled around his fingertip: "'The grudges within the Mittel family'? Ha, this pool of water seems to be even more murky than it appears on the surface."

Yao Chen's expression also turned serious: "The Mittel family... the Gama Empire is likely to be in turmoil soon."

Su Baichen smiled, a hint of lazy amusement in his smile: "The bigger the storm, the more expensive the fish. Let's go see my future 'business queen'."

He raised his hand and made a light sweeping motion.

Space tore open again.

The moment the two stepped into the crevice, Su Baichen glanced back at the almost imperceptible figure of the pursuer in the shadows in the distance, a cold glint in his eyes.

The crack closed again.

The moonlight remained cold and clear, and only the night wind howled through the woods, as if no one had ever been there.

Several miles away, Mittelshe was leading her daughter into a hidden cave.

Little did she know that tonight's bloody escape would completely alter the trajectory of her daughter Ya Fei's destiny—and bring an unprecedented business legend to this continent.

"Fei'er, let's rest here for a while and have something to eat." Mittelxue took out a portion of dry food from her bosom and gently handed it to Ya Fei.

Yafei took the food and nestled in her mother's arms, eating it in small bites. The days of fleeing and panic had made even swallowing difficult for her.

The destruction of his family, the tragic death of his father, the endless escape from the light of day... the series of misfortunes that came crashing down on him almost crushed his young shoulders.

As Ya Fei chewed her dry rations, she suddenly raised her head, a faint light seeming to gleam in her eyes: "Mother, why don't we go to the Mittel family? Isn't that your maternal home?"

Mittelshee paused for a moment upon hearing this, and did not answer immediately. She lowered her eyes, her fingers unconsciously tracing the rough edges of the dry rations.

—Yes, why did the husband point to the Xiao family in Wutan City at the last moment, instead of the Mittel family in the capital?

This is a chilling answer in itself: he doesn't trust her family.

The blood and fire of last night still stung my mind. Although the Ya family wasn't a top-tier wealthy clan, they were still a prominent family in the capital. How could they have been so easily slaughtered overnight?

The fact that those men in black acted as if they owned the place, openly committing violence in the imperial capital, was already highly unusual.

The only force capable of forcing a husband to self-destruct must be at least a Dou Wang level expert... Within the Jia Ma Empire, there are only a handful of forces with such capabilities.

What chilled her to the bone even more was the eeriness of the journey. Despite using treasures to conceal her presence and changing direction multiple times, the assassins always managed to reappear with pinpoint accuracy shortly afterward…

It was as if there were always eyes in the darkness, firmly watching over the mother and daughter.

A conjecture she didn't want to confront had already surfaced. She simply dared not, and was unwilling to, believe it.

“Hoo…” Mittel Xue let out a long sigh, as if to expel the suffocation in her chest. She shook her head and stood up: “Let’s not think about these things for now. The most important thing right now is to get out of here.”

She reached out to pull Ya Fei, saying, "Fei'er, we have to go. It's not safe here yet—"

Before the words were finished, a long laugh suddenly came from outside the cave, like the cry of an owl, piercing the silence with its coldness:

"Hahaha... Madam, there's no need to rush anymore. We've already arrived, haven't we?"

Mittel Snow froze, then looked up sharply—at the cave entrance, three dark figures had appeared like ghosts, blocking the only source of light.