The setting sun over the hilltop had already grown dim, and a rustling autumn wind swept away the last yellow leaf from the treetops. As the withered autumn came to an end, winter in the northern lands grew more overcast and freezing by the day.

A series of gloomy gusts blew by, causing the dead leaves on the ground to rustle. A carriage speeding along suddenly came to a rigid halt within the woods. The long, sharp neigh of the pulled horses broke the deathly silence of the sky, echoing long and deep throughout the narrow valley.

This was an ancient road south of Wu’an City, stretching for hundreds of miles directly to Yuzhou City. Because its path mostly wound through valleys, landslides were a frequent occurrence. Although century-old roadside trees stood on both sides, it was still unsafe for officials and merchants to travel, so it had been abandoned for many years and rarely saw human footsteps.

The horses had sprinted hard and stopped abruptly, nearly throwing a man and a woman off the carriage. The driver was an old man around his early sixties, with a sallow complexion, dressed in coarse cloth linen, and wearing a straw hat woven from wheat stalks. Pulling the reins with great skill, he swayed his body side to side and quickly stabilized the carriage, looking every bit the seasoned driver who knew the paths inside out.

The woman was in her early twenties, right in the beautiful prime of her youth. Dressed in a green gown, she possessed a refined and ethereal beauty without a speck of makeup or a single luxurious ornament, looking like a fairy untouched by the mortal world. As her collar fluttered slightly, her soft, flexible body shifted a few times, and she flew out of the carriage cabin, bumping right into the hunched back of the driver.

The driver quickly turned his head and asked the woman in a raspy voice, “Miss, are you alright?”

The woman peeked around to face the driver, gently shook her head, and asked softly, “Old gentleman, what happened?”

Seeing that the woman was safe and sound, the driver finally let out a long sigh of relief and said slowly, “It felt like we ran over something just now, maybe a rock that slid down from the mountain. This ancient road has been abandoned for years, and I am afraid it might be impassable. Why don’t we head back? At worst, I won’t charge you for the ride, what do you think?”

The woman knit her brows, looking completely pitiful as she pleaded, “Old gentleman, to tell you the truth, if I had any time to spare, I would never let you risk taking this old road. The main thing is that my husband has an appointment with someone at Nine Heads Mountain, and this trip will likely be fraught with grim danger. I must take this shortcut, please help me!”

The woman’s name was Zhong Yueping, and her martial arts skills were just like her name, incomplete like a half moon, sparse and ordinary. She had been weak and sickly since childhood, so she could not ride a horse at a gallop. If not for a reason that forced her to travel far, she would never have stepped a foot outside her own little comfort zone.

Zhong Yueping came from a poor family. Her parents were just escort fighters who traveled the martial world. A few years ago, because their cargo was hijacked, they both died a tragic death. In order to kill the enemy with her own hands, she dragged her sickly body to practice martial arts and stepped into this chaotic, killing-filled martial world.

Although she entered the martial world quite late, her martial arts were very mediocre, and she had no prominent family background, she held a beautiful title in the martial world that everyone knew without exception, the number one beauty of the martial world.

Her kind of beauty was the gentle type that men found most captivating, making anyone who looked at her feel an urge to dedicate their entire life to cherish and protect her.

Although the driver was already in his sixties, he was still a man of character after all. His face wrinkled up like a bitter melon, and finally, gritting his teeth, he jumped down from the carriage and said, “This old man is going all out, if you are going to help someone, do it all the way.”

“Thank you, old gentleman!” The woman said as she also jumped down from the carriage, and then added, “The saying goes, if you are going to save someone, save them completely, and if you are going to escort a Buddha, escort them all the way to the West.”

The driver smiled honestly, then walked to the back of the carriage, bent down, and tossed aside the fallen leaves in the wheel tracks. Zhong Yueping knew he was looking for whatever they had run over just now. Although she did not know why the driver wanted to find it, she still helped him search.

They searched along the wheel tracks for about ten meters, and sure enough, beneath a pile of dead leaves, they discovered the item. What first revealed itself was a hand, a bloody, severed hand. The palm was cut right down the middle, and four fingers had vanished without a trace, leaving only a solitary thumb curling strangely, looking just like a bloody little sausage. The wound had already turned purple, but there were no signs of decay yet. Zhong Yueping said confidently, “This hand must have been chopped off several hours ago, but definitely no more than a day.”

The reason she was so certain was because she had seen plenty of wounds and had become self-taught. Her husband was a famous swordsman in the martial world, and for a swordsman, getting injured was simply an everyday occurrence. An eight character phrase used by people in the martial world to describe her husband was, an entire city falls to his single sword, while the moon hides and flowers are plucked.

An entire city falls to his single sword described his exquisite swordplay, meaning that even if the people of an entire city swarmed forward, it would be as futile as an ant trying to stop a chariot, a useless waste of lives.

The moon hides and flowers are plucked was a playful nickname given to him by people in the martial world who envied his ability to marry the number one beauty.

Her husband was named Su Lianyun. People in the martial world did not even know how Su Lianyun became famous. Before he married Zhong Yueping, he was just an obscure swordsman. But after he married Zhong Yueping, his name spread instantly like a fierce wind sweeping away scattered clouds, suddenly taking the entire martial arts world by storm and becoming a dark horse that appeared out of nowhere.

Some said that Su Lianyun surely became famous because he married the number one beauty, an occurrence that seemed to be a common sight in the martial world. After all, if a person wanted to become famous, there were only two ways, either kill a highly renowned expert in the martial world, or marry a famous woman or man in the martial world.

And the reason Su Lianyun’s rise to fame was so baffling was because he did both of these things at the very same time.

Someone would surely ask, how did Su Lianyun manage to kill someone at the same time he was getting married?

In fact, this matter was extremely simple, and there were no soul-stirring, long-winded stories behind it. It was even as straightforward as a transactional killing.

That was a few years ago, but to every person in the martial world, it felt as though it had just happened yesterday.

A few years ago, right after Zhong Yueping was publicly recognized by the martial world as the number one beauty, seeing no hope for revenge, she offered her hand in marriage as a reward for vengeance, which caused quite a stir. Those martial arts figures who lusted after Zhong Yueping’s beauty searched everywhere for the leader of the hijackers from that year. As the saying goes, many hands make light work, and soon this ringleader was dragged into the light, turns out it was actually Hu Hefeng, the chief leader of the Thirty Six Escort Agencies. It turned out he had stolen his own cargo and brutally murdered his subordinates, committing such a despicable and filthy act.

Speaking of Hu Hefeng, one had to mention the Thirty Six Escort Agencies. This escort agency had the most bizarre name in history. Where lay the bizarre nature of its name? Its name was not set in stone, but would constantly change based on the number of branch offices the agency had. Today it might be called the Thirty Six Escort Agencies, and tomorrow it might be called the Thirty Seven Escort Agencies.

However, after Hu Hefeng became entangled in this mess, the name of the escort agency stopped at thirty-six. Not only did it stop increasing, but it kept decreasing instead, and in the end, he had no choice but to disguise himself and go into hiding.