Chapter 63: The Price of Palm Thunder and a Cunning Plan

Master Qian, his daughter, and the household guards exchanged bewildered glances, their expressions frozen in disbelief. ‘Such a way to die?’

Su Qinghan’s hand, gripping the water cup, froze mid-air. She remained silent for a long moment.

In her mind, Jiu Li’s irrepressible loli voice was practically rolling on the floor with laughter. “Hahahaha! The White Dragon of the Waves? Pfft! Oh, I can’t, this fox is going to die laughing! Do humans in this world always have such a flair for the dramatic?”

Su Qinghan’s lips twitched upward, an involuntary tremor. ‘The White Dragon of the Waves indeed. That moniker is truly… apt.’ She wanted to laugh, but fearing the pain would exacerbate her wounds, she forced herself to endure.

“Pfft—” Yet, the moment she strained to suppress her laughter, a searing, tearing pain ripped through her chest. Her throat sweetened, and a mouthful of dark, foul blood erupted forth, splattering onto the stone table before her.

“Cough… cough, cough, cough…” Su Qinghan was seized by a violent coughing fit, her entire body hunching over as if she were trying to expel her very organs. The cost of forcibly activating the Palm Thunder had been far greater than she had anticipated. That single strike had nearly drained her of all vital energy.

“Su Qinghan!” Lu Hongzhuang’s face paled dramatically. She stepped forward, reaching out to steady her, only to halt her hand mid-air, terrified of touching Su Qinghan’s wounds. Her anxiety was palpable.

“Don’t move! You’re gravely injured!”

Su Qinghan waved a dismissive hand, coughing for a considerable time before finally managing to catch her breath. Her lungs burned with a fiery ache, and every inhale carried the metallic tang of blood.

“I won’t die,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and breathless.

Lu Hongzhuang gazed at Su Qinghan’s paper-white face and the stark streak of blood at the corner of her mouth. A wave of guilt and apprehension washed over her. She lowered her head, her voice thick with self-reproach.

“I’m sorry, I arrived too late.”

‘If only she had arrived sooner. If only she hadn’t been entangled by those two. If only she had been cleverer, discerning their feint to lure her away… Su Qinghan wouldn’t have been injured so severely.’

“No need,” Su Qinghan interrupted, raising a hand to slowly wipe the blood from her lips with her sleeve.

“You were intercepted, weren’t you?” Su Qinghan stated.

Lu Hongzhuang snapped her head up. “How did you… How could you know?”

Leaning against the cold stone table, Su Qinghan took a shallow breath, steadying her voice. “It wasn’t hard to guess.”

“From the start, those two assassins were in a hurry, as if desperate to complete their mission and rush to their next reincarnation.”

“But when I called out your name, only one of them visibly froze. His first reaction was to guard the entrance, not to dismiss me as bluffing. This indicated he knew you, and he believed you shouldn’t have been here.”

“There’s only one explanation for that: after you were lured away, they were convinced the person holding you back would succeed without fail.”

Su Qinghan spoke slowly, yet her logic was impeccably clear. With just a few details, she had deduced the entire sequence of events with remarkable accuracy.

Lu Hongzhuang listened in a daze, her heart churning with a tempest of emotions. She had always believed Su Qinghan’s mystical talismans and incantations were her greatest asset. Yet, only now did she truly realize that the most formidable aspect of this woman was her mind, capable of discerning everything.

‘In such a life-and-death predicament, she actually had the presence of mind to observe and analyze her opponent’s reactions!’

“Thank goodness… thank goodness you’re alright.” Lu Hongzhuang’s voice trembled, the true depth of her fear only now surfacing. She couldn’t imagine what scene she would have walked into if she had arrived even a moment later. The mere thought of that possibility sent a sharp pang through her heart.

She took a step closer, her gaze fixed on Su Qinghan’s face, her tone more serious than ever before.

“In the future, if there’s ever danger like this again, please don’t try to face it alone.”

“You can wait for me! Or… tell me, and we’ll face it together.”

“Your life is more important than anything!”

Su Qinghan fell silent, listening to the words that held both a command and a plea. She turned her head, looking at the osmanthus tree in the courtyard, snapped in half by her own palm, and the pile of utterly ruined wheelchair parts.

After a long pause, she let out a soft sigh, a self-deprecating curve forming on her lips. “This time, it was my mistake.”

“I thought they were too foolish.” Lu Hongzhuang was speechless.

Su Qinghan continued, her voice weak yet laced with a hint of playful mockery.

“The original plan was to lure the snake out of its hole, with you, the ‘oriole,’ feigning retreat before striking back, trapping them like turtles in a jar, caught in a pincer attack.”

“Who would’ve thought the snake would come out, but the oriole would get into a fight with sparrows halfway there?”

She shook her head, a trace of helplessness on her face. “In the end, I, the orchestrator, became the clown trapped in the cage.”

These words were her summary of this particular misstep. It was also the first time since her transmigration that she had so frankly admitted her failure. She had underestimated the ruthlessness and determination of Magistrate Jia’s desperate subordinates.

This world was not like the novels of her previous life, where villains were often foolish and one-track-minded. Here, every step had to be taken with extreme caution. A single misstep could lead to eternal damnation.

Lu Hongzhuang’s cheeks flushed as she listened. ‘What did she mean, ‘got into a fight with sparrows’? Those two were skilled cultivators in the Qi Gathering realm!’ Yet, she couldn’t refute it. Because, ultimately, it was true that she hadn’t arrived in time.

“The human witness is gone,” Lu Hongzhuang’s tone grew solemn, bringing the conversation back to the matter at hand. “With the death of ‘The White Dragon of the Waves,’ we’ve lost our most direct evidence to bring down Magistrate Jia.”

“What do we do now?” She looked at Su Qinghan, realizing that, without even noticing, she had begun to treat this ailing woman as her central pillar of support.

Su Qinghan didn’t answer immediately. She closed her eyes, adjusting her breathing for a moment, feeling the emptiness and even the faint ache within her Dantian Qi Sea. Her spiritual energy was depleted, her body damaged, and even her means of transport had become a pile of scrap wood.

Most critically, the sole survivor had chosen to end their own life in an act of extreme, almost artistic, self-destruction. Truly… she had lost both the wife and the army.

“Hey, hey, hey! Are you alright?” In her mind, Jiu Li’s voice held a hint of worry. “You’ve overdrawn your energy far too severely this time. You absolutely cannot use any more spells for a while, or you’ll really die!”

‘I know,’ Su Qinghan responded mentally.

She opened her eyes, looking at Lu Hongzhuang, whose face was grave as she awaited Su Qinghan’s decision. The scent of blood in the courtyard seemed to have somewhat faded. Master Qian, astute as ever, was already directing his servants to clear the scene, rolling away the incomplete corpse in a straw mat.

Everything seemed to be slowly returning to calm. But Su Qinghan knew this was merely the quiet before the storm. Magistrate Jia’s assassins had been completely wiped out; he would never let this go.

Who knew what would come next? She had to strike first!

She looked at Lu Hongzhuang, a faint, yet profoundly meaningful smile slowly gracing her pale face. “The lack of a human witness is indeed troublesome.”

Her voice remained weak, yet it carried an odd, unsettling calm. “But who says you always need a human witness to bring someone down?”

Lu Hongzhuang paused, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

Su Qinghan’s smile widened slightly, a glint of cunning flickering in her cool, clear eyes. “The human witness is gone…”

She drew out her words, articulating the latter half of her sentence slowly and clearly. “Then… we’ll just have him deliver the evidence of his crimes right to our doorstep.”

‘I’m out of ideas myself,’ she thought. ‘I’ll just have to improvise as I go. But with everyone looking at me, I ought to say something impressive to keep up appearances.’

📚 Also on NHV Novels

Underdog Connection

ChaebolContemporaryObsessiveLove

Read Now →
Not interested