Republic of China Era: Entering the Dao through Divine Strike.

Lu Changming lay on the roof of the guardhouse and saw that there were more than a dozen military horses tied up in the stable, with hay piled up to half a person's height.

Two grooms were dozing off beside a pile of hay; one was holding a whip, and the other was leaning against the manger, his head nodding.

Four jailers stood at the door of the guardhouse, their belts hanging from their waists, chatting and warming themselves by the fire.

Further away on the prison walls, the torchlight illuminated the top of the walls as bright as day, and patrolling soldiers moved back and forth, the tips of their spears gleaming coldly in the firelight.

"I'll go down and set it on fire. You all stay on the roof and keep watch. Once the fire starts, the soldiers on the wall will definitely panic. Take advantage of the chaos and charge westward, making as much noise as possible."

After Lu Changming finished speaking, he pulled a tinderbox from his boot, put it in his mouth, and rolled off the roof.

He crept along the wall to the back of the stable, pulled out a few bundles of hay from the bottom of the hay pile, piled them next to the wooden pillars of the stable, and then poured half a jar of tung oil that the grooms used to polish the saddles onto them.

He stuffed the tinderbox into the haystack...

When the hay came into contact with the open flame, it leaped up to about half a person's height. The flames climbed up the wooden posts, and the roof of the stable was burned through in the blink of an eye.

A dozen or so military horses reared up in fright, their reins snapped, and they neighed as they charged out of the stable and ran wildly.

"Fire! Fire!" The four jailers at the door of the guardhouse threw down the iron basin they were using for heating and ran toward the stables.

The patrolling soldiers on the wall were also in chaos, some carrying buckets of water and rushing down, while others were blowing whistles to call for help to put out the fire.

The entire east side of the prison was illuminated by the firelight, and the sounds of horses neighing and shouts for firefighting were mixed together, creating complete chaos.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Lu Changming climbed onto the roof and ran westward with Sun Liancheng and the other man.

As Sun Liancheng ran, he killed people, and the screams echoed far into the night sky, attracting Qing soldiers from even further away to rush in this direction.

……

Wang Wu determined the location and crawled into the prison cell through the ventilation opening.

First, it inserted the large knife inside, and its body crackled and popped, twisting and stretching like a noodle, slowly wriggling as it passed through the ventilation opening.

It landed silently.

The passageway was dark and narrow. He slid down the cold brick wall for about 30 feet and entered the passage.

When they encountered patrolling prison guards along the way, they would sneak up from behind and knock them down with a single finger.

Two jailers were dozing in front of the first iron gate. He slid down from the ceiling, pointing at each of them, and collapsed to the ground, being dragged to the corner of the wall.

Four jailers were gambling away at the second iron gate when he went behind them and knocked them all down with a single blow. The coins on the gambling table were still spinning, but he reached out and stopped them, then continued walking inside.

There was no one in front of the third iron gate. The gate was ajar, and a sliver of dim oil lamp light shone through the crack.

Wang Wu pushed open the door.

A figure wearing shackles was squatting in the corner of the cell. The shackles were made of black iron, and a ring of dark red scabs had been rubbed off his ankles.

A sliver of moonlight shone through a small crack in the window in the wall, illuminating the person's face:

One of his glasses was broken, his face was bruised, and his prison uniform was stained with straw and dried blood.

"Brother Tan, I can break the lock, let's go!" Wang Wu gripped the hilt of his knife tightly.

Tan Shaoyang slowly raised his head.

He looked at the sharp broadsword in Wang Wu's hand, then at the deep passageway outside the prison gate, and shook his head. "You can walk out of this imperial prison, but you can't walk out of this vast world."

"As long as we can escape tonight, we can gather our strength and wait for tomorrow. There is still a chance for a turnaround!" Wang Wu said urgently.

Tan Shaoyang shook his head slightly. "The road ahead is for future generations to walk. What I need to do today is to bravely face death and use my passion to awaken the ignorant masses in the world."

He raised his hand, his fingertips dabbing at the blood seeping from his shackles, and began to write stroke by stroke on the cold stone wall.

Wang Wu stared intently. The four lines of blood-red characters on the stone wall trembled, yet each stroke seemed as if it had been carved into the stone.

"Looking towards the gate, I think of Zhang Jian; I endure death for a moment to wait for Du Gen. I laugh as I brandish my sword to the sky; whether I stay or go, my heart and soul are as firm as the Kunlun Mountains."

It felt like something had hit Wang Wu's chest.

He sighed deeply and said in a deep voice, "Brother Tan is absolutely right. To accomplish great things, one either achieves great success or suffers great failure. Today's failure is merely due to bad luck. The land of China will eventually follow the path you envision."

Tan Shaoyang stared at the faint light leaking through the window crack. The light shone on his face, making half of his face look deathly pale.

He suddenly smiled, a very faint smile, as if he had used the last bit of strength in his body. "China will eventually find a way out. Fifth Brother, allow me to rest quietly for a moment. I haven't had a good night's sleep in a long time."

Wang Wu gripped the iron chain tightly, causing it to vibrate and rattle.

Watching Tan Shaoyang close his eyes and lean against the stone wall, his breathing gradually becoming steady, it seemed as if he had truly fallen asleep.

He clasped his hands in a fist salute across the iron fence and said, word by word, "Those who have always worried about their country are all people who have suffered for a thousand years."

Tan Shaoyang didn't open his eyes, his lips moved slightly, as if he were talking in his sleep. "Even if the road ahead is full of hardships, there will eventually be a time when the sun shines brightly."

Wang Wu turned and left.

When he reached the prison gate, the hilt of the knife in his hand was cracked from gripping it so tightly, but he never looked back.

……

Lu Changming was leading Sun Liancheng and the other man up the wall, running and fighting as they went. Lu Changming flashed his sword and charged into the group of archers.

Blood splattered as the archer screamed and fell from the wall, crashing into a pile of hay and sending sparks flying.

Lu Changming leaped into the air, and before he could even land steadily, he had already cleaved a prison guard who rushed out of the guardhouse in two with a single stroke. The blade was covered in blood. He shook the blade and was about to continue rushing inside.

Suddenly, two rows of torches lit up at the entrance of the alley.

The firelight illuminated the dark muzzles of more than twenty guns, their barrels gleaming with a ghostly blue light in the night.

Behind the gunman was a dense mass of Qing soldiers, at least forty or fifty in number, their spear tips gleaming coldly in the firelight.

Two men stood in front of the gunmen's line.

On the left is a large, dark-skinned man who reaches into his waist and pulls out an axe.

The strips of cloth wrapped around the axe handle were blackened by blood. As he walked forward, he untied the cloth and threw it on the ground, revealing the axe handle underneath, worn smooth enough to reflect a person's image.

He squinted and scanned the alleyway, as if counting how many heads he could chop off tonight.

He wore a greasy leather apron splattered with old blood, his face was full of fleshy bulges, and his two small eyes gleamed murky in the firelight.

The stench of blood emanating from him wafted on the night breeze, as if he had just stepped out of a slaughterhouse.

On the right was a gaunt old man, as thin as a bamboo pole, holding a narrow-bladed rapier with a greenish-blue gleam at its tip.

His fingers were thin and long, with prominent knuckles and an unnatural curve, as if each finger could be dislocated and put back in place at will.

His standing posture was also strange, with his toes slightly turned inward and his knees bent, making him look like a spring that could be launched at any moment.

Lu Changming recognized the two people.

The fat man is Chang Yushan, the warden of the Ministry of Justice, nicknamed "Blood Butcher".

This man became an executioner in Zhili at the age of sixteen. When carrying out executions, he liked to cut off the prisoner's head, hold it by the queue, and walk around the execution ground, letting the blood draw a circle on the execution ground.

Later, he was noticed by the Minister of Justice and transferred to the capital to serve as the prison warden, where he was responsible for interrogating prisoners.

He had a private torture chamber, with the walls covered with axes and boning knives of various sizes. The bloodstains in the grout between the floor tiles had seeped into the stone's texture and could not be washed away no matter how many times he washed them with water.

He never asked for confessions when interrogating prisoners; he would first strike them with three axe blows.

The first axe blow chopped the left leg, the second the right leg, and the third the wooden stool less than an inch from the prisoner's crotch.

After the three blows, most people even confessed to stealing a few eggs from their neighbors when they were kids.

For those few tough nuts to crack, the fourth axe will not go astray.

He served as the warden in the prison for six years, and at least a hundred prisoners died by his axe.

The first thing he does every morning is sharpen his axe, until the blade is sharp enough to shave.

What Lu Changming was more wary of was actually the gaunt old man on the right...

This man is named Bai Gui, a court official in the Ministry of Justice, and he came from the deep mountains of western Sichuan.

In his youth, he studied Gu poison under an old Miao doctor. Later, he combined Gu poison with martial arts to create the Soul-Chasing Thorn technique.

The narrow-bladed rapier in his hand was not coated with ordinary poison, but with a kind of corpse poison extracted from rotting bones.

After being stabbed, the venom spreads upwards along the spine. The victim will not die immediately, but will become paralyzed.

Watching myself rot away inch by inch, from skin to muscle to bone, the whole process took about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

His favorite spot to stab is the spine on a person's back, because that's the hardest place to defend against, and it's also where he can best appreciate his work.

During his three years as a court official in the Ministry of Justice, not a single prisoner he handled survived; all of them died in extremely gruesome ways.

"Lu Changming." Chang Yushan spoke, his voice muffled, as if he always had a mouthful of phlegm in his throat:

"Where's Wang Wu? Let him out. You think you can break into the Ministry of Justice prison with so few men? Have you lost your mind?"

Lu Changming did not answer.

His hand rested on the hilt of the knife, his knuckles turning white.

The four disciples knelt behind him, their breathing growing increasingly rapid.

Sun Liancheng's hand holding the knife was trembling slightly, but he gritted his teeth and did not back down.

"Fire!" Chang Yushan swung his axe.

The roar of matchlock guns tore through the night sky.

The bullet struck the earthen wall in front of Lu Changming, sending up a spray of broken bricks and dust.

One of his disciples behind him groaned as he was shot in the shoulder and fell backward, crashing into the wall.

Blood streamed down his arm, and the knife fell to the ground with a clatter.

Sun Liancheng raised his hand and threw out three flying stones, then crouched low and charged forward.

Having just killed two people, bullets immediately rained down on the direction where he was hiding, pressing down on him so he couldn't even lift his head.

The dense barrage of bullets struck the earthen wall, causing the plaster to fall off in a flurry. A piece of broken brick cut open a bloody gash on Sun Liancheng's left cheek.

Chang Yushan strode over, carrying an axe.

He walked in a strange way, with his two thick legs slightly turned outwards, and each step he took was accompanied by a heavy and powerful force.

The stone slabs trembled slightly from being stepped on, and a layer of wet, dark red liquid seeped from the footprints.

His Heart-Eating Black Fiend Technique was developed using the heart blood of death row inmates...

With each person killed, the resentment in his heart would be absorbed by his vital energy and integrated into his poisonous skills.

Over the years, he has accumulated the lifeblood of countless people. When he circulates his energy, he becomes like a human meat grinder, and anyone within three feet of him can feel a nauseating stench of blood.

At that moment, he raised the axe, and a layer of dark red blood mist rose from the blade.

The blood mist condensed in the air without dissipating, like a living flame, causing the surrounding air to distort slightly.

At the same time, the White Ghost also moved.

Unlike Chang Yushan, he did not charge forward with great strides, but instead glided silently through the gaps in the Qing soldiers' ranks.

His movements were extremely strange; he was like a boneless snake, his feet didn't lift, his knees didn't bend, and his body drifted forward close to the ground, yet his speed was nearly twice as fast as Chang Yushan's.

The stone slabs along the way hissed and hissed as the corpse poison dripping from the sword corroded them, emitting wisps of emerald green smoke.

He bypassed the Qing soldiers' spear formation and cut into Lu Changming's ranks from the side, targeting the young disciple who had been shot in the shoulder and was holding a knife in his left hand.

His tactics were clear: kill the weakest first, use the corpses and screams to demoralize the others, and then deal with them one by one.

Lu Changming drew his sword and charged at Chang Yushan.

His swordsmanship was second only to Wang Wu in Yuanshun Escort Agency. He had practiced with a waist knife for thirty years, and his swordsmanship was as fast as the wind. When he slashed at Chang Yushan's axe blade, a string of sparks flew up.

The moment the blade and the axe blade collided, a dark red mist of blood spread from the axe blade, crawling along the blade towards Lu Changming's wrist.

The moment the blood mist touched his skin, he felt as if countless red-hot needles were simultaneously piercing his entire arm. His blood and qi stagnated, and the second cut was delayed by half a beat.

Chang Yushan swept his axe horizontally, and he barely managed to block it, but was knocked back three steps.

His back slammed against the earthen wall, splitting his hand open, and blood flowed down the hilt of the knife.

He looked down at his hands; the veins on the back of his hands were bulging, and a layer of dark red, fine blood spots had appeared on the surface of his skin.

The poison from the Heart-Eating Black Demon Technique was seeping into his meridians.

If I hadn't retreated quickly, this hand would have been ruined.

He gritted his teeth, holding his sword horizontally in front of him to protect himself. His right arm was already starting to go numb, and his hand holding the sword was trembling slightly.

The white ghost had already circled around to the back of the injured disciple.