The Heaven’s Secret Sect was an assassin organization in the martial arts world, and since they were assassins, they risked their lives for money. However, the Heaven’s Secret Sect was completely different from typical assassin organizations, because not everyone inside risked their lives for money. There was a portion of people who had no choice but to join the Heaven’s Secret Sect in order to learn superior martial arts.

Every leader of the Heaven’s Secret Sect was known in the martial arts world as the Heavenly Sovereign. The first Heavenly Sovereign was originally just a scholar who gathered information on the martial arts world and compiled hero rankings. Ranking people was no simple task, as the martial arts world replaced old faces with new ones every single day. Therefore, he was destined to be isolated and helpless, failing to complete this grand ambition.

All that information and the martial arts manuals that the scholar had painstakingly gathered over many years actually became utterly useless trash. In his fury, just as the scholar was planning to burn them to ashes, someone offered a high price to buy the books from him. Once the scholar realized these manuals possessed such incredible value, he gladly refused the buyer’s request. He had thought of a much better and more sustainable way to generate wealth: using these gathered martial arts manuals as payment for those who risked their lives for him. This was how he began the business of accepting people’s money to eliminate their disasters.

Su Lianyun was by no means a person who coveted wealth. He actually belonged to the category of people who were forced by desperate circumstances to join the Heaven’s Secret Sect. Of course, he did not want to learn the sect’s martial arts to seek revenge for himself, but rather to avenge someone else. That person was the one he silently loved, Zhong Yueping.

When Su Lianyun fell in love with Zhong Yueping, she was completely unaware of his existence. Back then, Su Lianyun was merely an inconspicuous orphan who did not even know who his parents were, let alone where he came from or where he was going.

By pure chance, he saw Zhong Yueping and was completely captivated by her beauty. At that time, Zhong Yueping was only twelve or thirteen years old, while Su Lianyun was already in his early twenties, and that was when he began to watch her from afar. Although his low self esteem made him acutely aware that he was not good enough for her, he was infatuated with her as if he were possessed by a demon.

It was not until later, when Zhong Yueping’s parents both passed away and she spent her days washed in tears, that he saw her grief and felt a sharp pain in his own heart. Thus, he secretly made up his mind to avenge her hatred and ensure she would never shed another tear.

He had always drifted through the bustling marketplaces where all sorts of characters mingled, making a living by doing odd jobs for others. Years earlier, he had heard some martial arts figures talk about the Heaven’s Secret Sect, an assassin organization located within the borders of the southern Song State where one could learn superior martial arts, so he went there.

He did not tell Zhong Yueping any of this, because he felt it was the darkest and most shameful chapter of his inner life.

Although he originally joined the Heaven’s Secret Sect just to help Zhong Yueping kill her enemies and make her happy, without any intention of taking advantage of her, he ultimately gained an incredible blessing by marrying her. He was terrified that if his wife found out about this, she would think he had ulterior motives and would leave him.

He did not dare speak of it, he did not dare gamble on it, and he was even more unwilling to deceive his wife, so he chose silence.

Su Lianyun told the assassin everything about his past with Zhong Yueping from beginning to end. Only then did he slump over the table as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders, resting silently like a drunkard. Yet they were drinking tea, so how could he be drunk?

Clearly, these matters had been weighing heavily on his mind, keeping him in constant anxiety all these years, terrified that the truth would come to light one day and he would lose his wife. The weight had made him incredibly miserable. Now that he had finally found someone to confide in, his long suppressed heart was finally set free, which was why he collapsed limply onto the table like a drunken man.

The assassin could not help but sigh with emotion in his heart. It turned out the renowned Su Lianyun had actually spent his entire life living for Zhong Yueping. It was precisely Zhong Yueping’s rough and turbulent life that forged Su Lianyun’s illustrious reputation.

Su Lianyun and Zhong Yueping were like a pair of lovers deliberately matched by heaven, and a sweet time like this would not exist if either one were missing. Their relationship was like a steelyard and its weight; the scale could not do without the weight, and the weight could not do without the scale.

Clouds wrap around the moon, and water splashes onto the duckweed. Can Zhong and Su grow old together?

The assassin felt deeply moved after hearing these things about Su Lianyun. When he asked how Su Lianyun managed to successfully withdraw from the Heaven’s Secret Sect and how he had learned such superior martial arts, Su Lianyun stopped speaking, and his expression turned thoroughly melancholy.

The assassin knew the rules of the Heaven’s Secret Sect very well. If someone learned the superior martial arts of the sect, their status would surely be above the chieftains. When one became a chieftain, their name would enter the roster, which was just like signing a contract of lifelong servitude, making it incredibly difficult to break away from the Heaven’s Secret Sect.

There were only two ways to completely leave the Heaven’s Secret Sect: either complete the most difficult assassination mission, or get hold of the secret roster and erase one’s own name from it. However, the roster had always been a secret item passed down through the Heavenly Sovereigns, remaining a mere legend within the Heaven’s Secret Sect. Aside from the Heavenly Sovereign, probably no one knew what the roster looked like. Could it be that Su Lianyun completed the most difficult assassination mission?

Yet the assassin simply could not believe that Su Lianyun could complete the most difficult assassination mission, because throughout history, no one had ever completed it. If Su Lianyun had truly managed to do so, he would surely be celebrated by the disciples of the Heaven’s Secret Sect, revered as the ultimate god of slaughter.

The assassin no longer cared about how Su Lianyun had escaped the Heaven’s Secret Sect, because he himself had never thought about leaving, so caring about those things was useless. He only wanted to know how Su Lianyun had learned such superior martial arts. He had been in the Heaven’s Secret Sect for so many years and had finally risen to the position of a chieftain, yet he had only learned mid level martial arts. He could not believe that Su Lianyun had managed to rise to a position higher than a chieftain and learn the most superior martial arts in just a few short years.

The Heaven’s Secret Sect had always been lax about recruiting people. As long as someone was willing to risk their life for them, they did not care about the person’s background and accepted them without exception. However, they were extraordinarily picky when selecting talent. If an ordinary person did not complete hundreds of assassination missions, they could forget about rising to the rank of a chieftain, and a chieftain was merely the lowest level leader in the Heaven’s Secret Sect.

There were twenty nine leaders in total within the Heaven’s Secret Sect. This was a deliberate design by the scholar who created the organization, who purposely chose this number to avoid the number thirty, which sounded like death from injury. The positions were ranked from highest to lowest as the Heavenly Sovereign, the Four Heavenly Kings, the Eight Heavenly Generals, and the Sixteen Chieftains. Su Lianyun’s martial arts achievements seemed difficult for even the Heavenly Sovereign to match, making it truly impossible to imagine what he had experienced within the Heaven’s Secret Sect.

Of course, the assassin had no way of knowing that Su Lianyun was even more powerful than the Heavenly Sovereign, because he was merely a low level chieftain. Every time a mission was handed down, it came only from the messengers of the Heavenly Generals. Occasionally, when there were troublesome tasks, he could only follow the Heavenly Generals to complete them, having absolutely no way to ever see the Heavenly Kings or the Heavenly Sovereign. How could he know how formidable they truly were?

No matter what the assassin wanted to know right now, Su Lianyun could no longer answer him, because Su Lianyun had already fallen asleep.

From the very day he met the assassin, his past memories had been stirred up, and he had not slept for several days. Now that his worries had been poured out, he had finally achieved true release. The exhaustion accumulated over several days and nights made it impossible for even this man of iron to hold out any longer, so he fell asleep.