In his two lifetimes, this was the first time Yan Liqiang had killed anyone.

He had seen many novels and television series in his past life. He’d always thought that a person would feel unwell after killing another, such as feeling dizzy at the sight of blood, nausea, or vomiting. But in fact, Yan Liqiang felt pretty calm after eliminating King Cobra. His mind was not seeing the corpse of King Cobra dying before his eyes, but instead the memory of the two horrible and nearly fatal gashes on the body of his father, Yan Dechang.

After seeing the wounds on his father’s body and then looking at King Cobra still form, Yan Liqiang calmed down completely. He was so calm that it even surprised himself.

After confirming the death of King Cobra, Yan Liqiang just put down the bow and arrow in his hands. He then walked over and started to examine King Cobra’s corpse.

Yan Liqiang stopped before the dead body and squatted down. He felt around and discovered two sharp items protruding from his waist. He took them out and realized they were two polished throwing knives that were about the length of a palm. He recalled that King Cobra kept touching his waist earlier on and suddenly felt relieved. Luckily he’d been careful to keep his distance from King Cobra. If he’d let his guard down even a little and approached King Cobra while he played dead, these throwing knives would probably be lodged in his body by now. Indeed, it hadn’t been easy to take down these outlaws.

Aside from the two throwing knives, Yan Liqiang had also found a money bag on King Cobra’s body. In the money bag were six golden promissory notes and some pieces of silver. Each golden promissory note was worth ten taels of gold. He could exchange these notes for money at the official monetary house of the Great Han Empire. Apart from the money, King Cobra had a medicine sack with him as well, with three different colored medicine bottles in the medicine sack. As there were no labels indicating what the bottles contained, Yan Liqiang chose not to sniff their contents just in case the bottles contained something harmful like sleeping gas or the like. If he were to hastily inhale them and accidentally fall into a trap, that would have been hilarious.

Yan Liqiang kept the money bag and immediately tossed the medicine sack back on King Cobra’s body before carefully searching again.

"Huh….." Just when Yan Liqiang touched King Cobra’s underarms, he discovered the fitted clothes underneath appeared to have two layers. The material there seemed to be a little thicker and seemed to hold something within it.

Yan Liqiang pulled open King Cobra’s clothes. He took out a throwing knife and cut open the material under King Cobra’s underarm, digging out the item hidden inside.

It was a book with a silver-colored cover. The texture didn’t feel like paper. It was very soft to the touch and gleamed in appearance, yet had an underlying firmness. There was a metallic texture to it as if weaved out of some kind of metallic thread. Six golden words adorned the book’s silver-colored cover:"The Golden Bell Divine Protection Technique".

A secret cultivation manual!

He quickly flipped through the book. The whole book was thin, including the cover, comprised of only seven pages, with the rest of the pages having been ripped off. This secret manual hidden on King Cobra’s person was apparently only the front part. He wasn’t sure how many pages made up the latter part. At the top of that seven-page-book’s last page was a line of words: The Golden Bell s.h.i.+eld: Qi Circulation Diagrams for The Sixth Layer and Medicinal Pill Recipes.

Surprisingly, this thinly-paged, incomplete secret manual was outlining a realm of six layers. He wasn’t sure how many additional layers there were at the later realms, but it was definitely more than six layers. A secret manual like this was practically a priceless treasure.

Yan Liqiang’s little heart thumped as he looked at the incomplete secret manual held in his hand.. He looked around to make sure there was no one nearby before quickly hiding the secret manual on his body.

He searched King Cobra’s body once again and confirmed there was nothing more to find. Only then did he proceed to deal with King Cobra’s corpse.

Yan Liqiang first pulled out the two arrows piercing King Cobra’s leg. As he pulled them out, he realized King Cobra’s legs were st.u.r.dy and very muscular. The arrows he’d shot were wedged deeply in his muscles. Moreover, the depth of the arrows’ penetration was also slightly out of Yan Liqiang’s expectations. He’d initially felt that his two shots would at the very least penetrate five inches deep into King Cobra’s thigh. But in fact, the arrowheads had only sunk about three inches into his flesh.

Could it be that King Cobra had practiced the secret manual he’d carried everywhere with him—"The Golden Bell Divine Protection Technique"— until he honed his body’s ability in resisting attacks to an extraordinary degree?

While Yan Liqiang was wondering about that, he pulled out the arrow piercing King Cobra’s neck. As soon as he removed it, the pointed end of the arrowhead seemed to dislodge a small layer of skin above King Cobra’s Adam’s apple.

Feeling odd, Yan Liqiang gently pulled back the line of skin with his hand. He realized that there was actually another layer of skin underneath. Yan Liqiang exerted some force, and a soft ripping noise was heard, akin to the sound of a package being torn open. A thin mask was revealed in his hand and suddenly the face of King Cobra as he lay on the floor, had changed drastically into another face. The face appeared to be that of a middle-aged man’s, with skin so pale it looked like it had never been exposed to the sun. His eyebrows were spa.r.s.e and his cheekbones were sharp like a knife. His entire face revealed traces of a dark and vicious aura. But the face was now a grim mask of death. It couldn’t be any more lifeless than this.

Could this be King Cobra’s real face? He remembered King Cobra mentioning earlier that his name was Fang Ji and not Deng Long.

It had never occurred to Yan Liqiang that this King Cobra would bring this many revelations with him.

...

Yan Liqiang first dragged King Cobra’s dead body behind the nearby bushes. He then took the pack basket and hoe that he’d hidden in the rabbit hole behind the bushes. Using the hoe, it took him more than half an hour to dig a deeper hole within the abandoned rabbit hole. After that, he threw King Cobra into that hole and buried him. He’d pretty much kept his promise since he’d left King Cobra’s body still intact when he’d buried him.

More than an hour had pa.s.sed by the time he’d completed this task. But Yan Liqiang didn’t feel tired at all.

Next, Yan Liqiang used a knife to cut a cloth left behind by King Cobra into thinner strips. He wrapped the entire body of the Horned Python Bow, leaving only the bowstring exposed. This way, no one else would be able to see that it was the eye-catching Horned Python Bow.

After that, Yan Liqiang cleaned up the battlefield once again and took care of the bloodstains and any obvious traces on the floor.

When he was done cleaning up, Yan Liqiang took out the mask he’d torn from King Cobra’s face, his eyes now lighting up…

...

When Yan Liqiang walked out of the pine forest ten minutes or so later, perhaps Yan Dechang would be incapable of recognizing him, since he had currently transformed himself into King Cobra.

Yan Liqiang wore his bamboo hat and carried the Horned Python Bow with its quiver of arrows. He threw his pack basket and hoe into the weed bushes at the bottom of the valley before he made his way to the foot of the mountain…

The sun had set and the sky had turned dark when Yan Liqiang arrived at the peach forest situated at the foot of the mountain.

Seeing no one around, Yan Liqiang swiftly entered the peach forest.

...

Not long after entering, Yan Liqiang saw a slightly plump figure pacing to and fro in the deeper part of the peach forest.

Who else could this person be if not Hong Tao’s uncle, Hong An?

n.o.body, not even a single guard from the Hong Clan, accompanied Hong An. This kind of matter should be kept in the dark after all, hence the fewer people involved, the better, unless it was someone from the Hong Clan. If other people found out about it, the Hong Clan wouldn’t be at ease.

Yan Liqiang took a deep breath. He reached behind him, immediately gripping the Horned Python Bow in his hand. He couldn’t be bothered to move closer and waste his breath on the people of the Hong Clan anymore, so he released an arrow directly towards Hong An, at a range of more than a hundred meters away.

A ‘pu’ sound rang out. The long arrow entered Hong An’s left eye and pierced right through his brain. Without a sound, Hong An collapsed onto the ground.

Once the art of archery was successful, killing a person was practically just like killing a chicken. Drawing the bow and releasing the arrow. With just these two actions, a life within a hundred-meters radius could be easily extinguished in just a split-second.

...

Yan Liqiang, who had shot Hong An dead, remained in the peach forest for another half-hour. When the sky turned completely dark, only then did he pick up his bow and travel back to Liuhe Town.

It was at this moment when the Hong Clan’s ceremony to pay respects to their ancestors was scheduled to come to an end. The Hong Clan’s family were now feasting at their home…