Volume 1, Chapter 29: A Cunning Rabbit Has Three Burrows

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All three of his brothers had died at the hands of the same organization.

One had to understand how much manpower and wealth China had to expend to nurture even a single elite warrior of God-of-War rank.

And this time, three such warriors had all perished in a secret operation.

Yet even now, the Chinese military had failed to provide a reasonable explanation.

Was he supposed to let his third brother die in a foreign land without doing anything?

His father was old, but that did not mean the last capable man of the Yan family would simply stand by and do nothing.

“Is it because your military is constrained by too many rules and unable to act, so you deliberately leaked this information to me and want me to do it instead?”

Yan Fengjia lit a cigarette inside the car, his gaze growing ever more ominous.

After a long silence, he dialed a number.

“Third Master, are you there? It’s Fengjia.”

“There’s something I’d like to ask you to help me with.”

The woman on the other end sounded slightly surprised, her voice carrying a trace of languid huskiness.

“Little Fengjia? What’s this—the sun rising in the west? This is the first time that stubborn little mule of mine has ever asked his master for help. What could it be that makes me so honored?”

There was a teasing note in her voice.

Yan Fengjia clenched his fists, his knuckles whitening under the strain. “My three brothers are dead. They died during a secret Chinese operation overseas.”

“The other masters are too reckless. I don’t want the entire world to find out.”

“Understood.”

The voice on the other end instantly turned cold and still, sharp as metal.

“Tell me. Your Third Master will cover for you. Even if the heavens collapse, I’ll hold them up for you.”

“Help me investigate a powerful organization. The key clue is a single character: Owl.”

“So the three brothers you kept mentioning in prison all died at the hands of this so-called ‘Owl,’ is that right?”

“Yes.”

“A small matter. You know what your Third Master can do. Give me a little time. Whether it’s a god from the Ninth Heaven or a demon from the underworld, I’ll dig it out by the roots and drag it straight to you.”

“Thank you, Third Master.”

Yan Fengjia hung up, killing intent burning fiercely in his eyes.

This grudge would be avenged. Blood debts had to be repaid in blood.

Perhaps the violent surge of his emotions had stirred something deep within his bloodline.

Yan Fengjia felt a sinister fire erupt inside him, spreading across his body in an instant.

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His consciousness began to drift. His vision blurred, and his breathing grew rapid and harsh, like air rushing through a broken bellows. His skin became frighteningly hot, as though he might burst into flames at any moment.

Yan Qiluo, who had driven to pick him up, immediately sensed that something was wrong.

In the rearview mirror, her eyes—usually devoid of emotional fluctuation—contracted sharply. Without the slightest hesitation, she wrenched the steering wheel, sending the car skidding to a halt at the roadside.

“Master, your… your illness has returned?”

Her voice remained cool, but she spoke a little faster, revealing a barely perceptible tension.

“I’m… fine.”

Yan Fengjia gritted his teeth and tried to sit cross-legged and regulate his breathing, but his body trembled violently. Sweat instantly soaked through his clothes, revealing the solid contours of his chest.

“Master, if this continues, your bloodline will turn against you! Why don’t I—”

Yan Qiluo unfastened her seat belt with the speed of a hunting leopard, quickly climbed out of the car, and opened the rear door.

Her slender hand, concealing terrifying strength, reached toward the front of Yan Fengjia’s clothes, intending to help ease the heat consuming him.

“Get away!”

Yan Fengjia’s tightly shut eyes snapped open, blazing scarlet. Almost instinctively, he swung his hand back. With a sharp crack through the air, his palm struck Yan Qiluo across the face.

Smack!

The blow was powerful enough to send her flying. She crashed heavily into a tree trunk by the roadside.

A thread of bright-red blood immediately seeped from the corner of her mouth and slid down her pale, exquisite chin.

But she merely raised a hand and wiped it away. There was no pain or resentment on her face, as though the body she inhabited did not belong to her.

She knew too well that when her master’s affliction flared, the agony he endured was worse than being flayed alive—a torment so terrible it seemed capable of scorching even the soul.

The blue-black veins in Yan Fengjia’s neck bulged grotesquely, like venomous snakes coiled beneath his skin.

Breathing heavily, he fixed his icy gaze on Yan Qiluo as she rose to her feet.

The Jiang family. Everything the Jiang family had done to him. Those humiliations and hatreds carved into his bones had been like maggots gnawing at him, and now the burning of his bloodline magnified them beyond measure, devouring what remained of his reason.

Especially when he saw Yan Qiluo’s face—the face that had once belonged to one of the Jiang family’s watchers.

Although she had long since submitted to him, that face was still a fuse, igniting the fury he had suppressed for years.

“Are you… all right?”

Yan Fengjia’s voice was hoarse and broken, heavy with ragged breaths and belated remorse.

“I’m sorry. Just now, I… I completely lost control. You made me… think of that old monster from the Jiang family.”

Yan Qiluo slowly walked back to the car, her movements as steady as though she had not just suffered a devastating blow.

She shook her head. Several strands of sweat-dampened black hair clung to her brow, making her complexion appear even paler and more translucent.

“Master, let me help you.”

“No… don’t.”

Yan Fengjia suddenly reached out and seized the hand she extended toward his clothes. Her delicate fingers were cold, as smooth as carved jade.

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“You bear the Jiang family matriarch’s cinnabar chastity mark, placed there by her own hand. If it disappears, the Jiang family will certainly notice.”

“All I want now is to care for my father until the end of his life. I don’t want him… dragged into any more trouble.”

He had already lost three sons. He could not allow his elderly father to worry over him again.

He could swallow this ocean-deep hatred for the time being, if it meant buying his father a peaceful old age.

Yan Qiluo smiled.

“Master, isn’t there an old saying that even a rabbit has three burrows to save its life?”

Yan Fengjia froze.

Before he could react, the weapon painstakingly forged by the Jiang family of the Celestial Palace slipped free from beneath his grasp like a boneless white serpent.

The next instant, she had gracefully straddled his burning thighs. Her slender arms, filled with irresistible strength, encircled his neck.

She drew his sweat-soaked, fever-hot face—twisted by agony—deep into the soft, shadowed cleft of her body and held it there with force.

The Celestial Palace’s Jiang family had always trained its dead warriors through the destruction of humanity and the eradication of every sensation.

Yan Qiluo had been the only one among that generation of trainees to survive by personally slaughtering every companion around her. She was the “ultimate weapon.”

What she lacked was far more than the sensation of pain. She was practically a walking, hollowed-out soul—a perfect machine of slaughter.

It was only because of Yan Fengjia that she had made any progress in matters of emotion over the years.

No one knew how much time passed before the suffocating heat and violent atmosphere inside the car finally began to subside.

Yan Qiluo lifted her head with a faint gasp. Her usually bloodless, oval face was now touched with a flush, while the hair at her temples and sideburns had been soaked through with sweat and clung to her delicate skin.

Her once-empty eyes now shimmered with something almost like satisfaction, as though she had just completed an extremely important task.

A proud curve touched her moist lips as she quietly studied Yan Fengjia’s finally calm expression.

“Master, do you… feel a little better now?”

Yan Fengjia forced out a weary, complicated smile.

He offered no explanation.

Some things were understood without needing to be spoken.

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