The falling man in black was caught by him and used as a living shield, placed in front of his horse, instantly blocking the dozen sharp arrows flying towards him.
Having completely entered the assassin’s encirclement, Saknu’s excited eyes brightly sparkled. He casually discarded the meat cover, laden with arrows like a hedgehog, dismounted his horse, raised the Liaodan scimitar, and swung at the bushes.
The cries of pain were endless. Although the assassins were all well-trained killers from the Jianghu, they were accustomed to killing ordinary people. They had not encountered such a monster that was impervious to swords and immune to hundreds of poisons, and whose strength was boundless. They could not match the monster and there was nothing else left for them to do but await execution.
Saknu’s slaughter was swift, a killing spree unprecedented, his scimitar, like a snowy blade, was barely visible, harvesting the heads of dozens of masked men in an instant.
On the other side, seeing their men being passively killed, the Liaodan warriors fought back. They wielded their scimitars to block the arrows and advanced. Despite suffering over half casualties, a considerable number still broke through the rain of arrows and reached the side of the masked assassins. With their Liaodan scimitars and howling roars, they fought, up close, with these men in black.
The Liaodan warriors were valiant and adept in combat, but the assassins were not to be trifled with either. In addition to their swordsmanship, their tactics from the Jianghu were also problematic, employing various hidden weapons and drugs, killing many more warriors who had broken through the arrow rain formation.
The Liaodan warriors, greatly outnumbered and continuously injured by the assassins’ covert weapons, fell one by one. Only Saknu was still crazily slaughtering. The assassins scrambled to avoid him, but Saknu’s speed was so astonishingly fast that none of them stood a chance of survival if they got marked by him.
Both sides suffered disastrous casualties. In the end, no one was left on Saknu’s side, except for Saknu himself. On the masked men’s side, seeing Saknu’s bravery, those who were not killed, dared not fight any longer. They signaled and retreated collectively.
Saknu originally intended to pursue them, aiming to kill all these people who dared to ambush him. However, he suddenly noticed that Zhao Yang’s carriage was gone. His rage reached new heights. After killing a few men in black nearby, he mounted his horse, rode to the place where the carriage had originally stopped, examined the area, followed the traces left by the carriage on the grass, and galloped off to chase it...
Meanwhile, Zhao Yang was so tense that her heart was about to leap out of her throat. She curled up in the carriage, letting Luo Xue stick a thin human-skin mask on her face, and pull off her head full of jewels, to replace it with a rural lady’s hair bun. On the bun, a crude wooden hairpin was slanted. She also changed into a shabby coarse cloth outfit.
"Princess, it’s done. Let’s go!"
Luo Xue said softly. She also changed her appearance, changed into a coarse cloth outfit, disguising herself as a typical rural girl with a basket of wild vegetables beside her.
According to the Empress Dowager, Jin Guifei knew about Duke Li Guo’s plan to rescue the hostages and must have arranged people outside the forest to capture them all. Moreover, Saknu, once he discovered they were missing, would not let it go easily. He would flip the forest upside down to find them. Therefore, the only way out of the forest now was to disguise themselves this way.
She knocked on the wall of the carriage, and the carriage silently came to a halt.
Luo Xue helped Zhao Yang out of the carriage, then carried the basket of wild vegetables, now acting as props, on her arm, pulling Zhao Yang along. "Princess, let’s go!"