This night in Crimson Dragon City was destined to be clamorous beyond measure. "Someone is following me." Shen Mu had no sooner walked out of the city lord's mansion than he sensed he was being tailed. The adepts of the mansion made no attempt whatsoever to hide themselves; they evidently saw no need to conceal their tracks from a minor martial artist like Shen Mu, and so they simply followed him out in the open. At this hour, decorated floats were parading through the city. The merchants had built floats several dozen feet tall, fashioned in the shapes of enormous monstrous beasts and all manner of gods and demons, with dancing girls swaying atop them. The dancers were decked out in gaudy finery, their costumes the same as those of the stone idols in one village or another. Walking through Flower Street, Shen Mu felt as though he had wandered into a world where gods and demons danced in wild chaos. The street was a deafening roar of noise, packed from one side to the other with people, pressing and jostling against one another. Along both sides hung lanterns, and there were tall stone pillars topped with stone basins full of burning oil, blazing fiercely. There were also stilt-walkers whose stilts stood over a hundred feet high, so that a single step could carry them sixty or seventy feet; each stilt-walker held a torch in one hand and a gourd of oil in the other, and after taking a mouthful of the oil would spray it at the torch, sending out a fire-serpent several dozen feet long. It was a place of clamor and splendor, yet it carried with it the savage wildness of the Wasteland. Shen Mu was moving through the crowd when suddenly the sky blazed with dazzling light. Fine threads had imperceptibly filled the air, crisscrossing in every direction, and then the threads suddenly swelled and transformed into enormous silver dragons that swam swiftly back and forth above Flower Street. As the silver dragons moved, one could see that they were actually made of countless written characters, and as they swam they emitted thunderous demonic sounds—obscure, abstruse, utterly unintelligible. Boom! Boom! Violent shockwaves came roaring down, accompanied by light surging into the sky. When that light struck the darkness above Crimson Dragon City, it was swallowed up without the faintest ripple. Even the most terrifying shockwaves, when they crashed into the darkness, vanished like clay oxen plunging into the sea, leaving no trace at all. The crowd below grew even more riotous, bursting into cheers, with no idea at all that what filled the sky above them was not fireworks but fearsome experts locked in battle. Fortunately, the shockwaves all struck upward into the darkness; otherwise, who could say how many of the people below would have been killed or wounded? Among the silver dragons darting to and fro, several terrible figures appeared and vanished in the flickering light, like gods or demons—the lord of Crimson Dragon City, Fu Yundi, the Black Venerable, the yellow-faced woman, and others, clashing in midair. Shen Mu moved swiftly through the crowd. This was no safe place. Even though the impact of these experts' battle all burst toward the sky, what if some of it came downward? Then blood would flow in rivers and countless people would be left as corpses. Thunderous roars rolled ceaselessly across the sky above Crimson Dragon City, tumbling back and forth at dizzying speed—now in the east of the city, now in the west, coming and going like lightning. Behind him, the adepts of the city lord's mansion were still in pursuit, and even though Shen Mu wove this way and that through the crowd, he could not shake them off. "This whole night has been bizarre. Still, I've gone and made trouble—I couldn't hold back my killing heart, and I slew the city lord's son. I must tell Granny and Blind Grandpa as soon as possible and get away from here!" Shen Mu was about to quicken his pace when a dragon's roar suddenly rang out behind him. An adept with a green dragon coiled around his body lunged at him. When the adept was still sixty or seventy feet away, the green dragon was already threading through the crowd, about to pounce on Shen Mu. Shen Mu was about to dodge when, at that very moment, a strip of white silk dropped from a building beside the street, whipped around the adept's neck, lifted him out of the crowd, and dragged him up into a room above. Several young women flew forward, daggers hidden in their sleeves, and stabbed into the adept's chest. Shen Mu looked up and recognized them—the young ladies who had called him up to play when he entered the city. He continued on, past an alley. Inside the alley, an adept in a conical hat saw him pass and gave his body a shake. A monstrous wave rose out of nowhere from the alley, like a great serpent opening its jaws to bite down at Shen Mu; silver fish lurked within the wave, presumably essence soldiers. At that same moment, the shop next to the alley happened to be a blacksmith's forge. The blacksmith was a giant sixteen or seventeen feet tall, forging a long blade of refined iron—its handle fifteen feet long and its blade sixteen. The giant seized the blade and, with a single squelch, thrust it through the wall into the alley, piercing the conical-hatted adept through the chest and pinning him to the wall. Then he pulled the blade back, wiped off the blood, and went on forging, the furnace blazing behind him. Shen Mu stood stunned for a moment, then went on. The gongs and drums in Flower Street were shaking the heavens, and figures on the rooftops on either side were leaping and bounding like flying birds—adepts from the city lord's mansion, closing in on Shen Mu at great speed. One adept leaped down. Before he had even landed, the snake in a snake charmer's cage below suddenly thrust out its head, swelling to monstrous size, opened its jaws, swallowed the falling adept whole, then shrank back into its cage. Several other adepts landed and pushed through the crowd. One passed a wine shop, where the clerk had been grinning at the parade floats; he suddenly seized a huge wine jar and, without a word, clapped it over the adept's head. The adept dropped into the jar, and in an instant his flesh and bones dissolved, turning him into nothing but a jar of wine. The clerk set the jar back in place and sealed its mouth. Of the remaining adepts from the city lord's mansion, one met a drunkard in the crowd and was burned to ashes by a stream of fire spat straight into his face; one met an assassin and had his throat cut amid the crowd; one was drawn into a float by one of the women inside and made no sound at all. Seeing all this along his way, Shen Mu's heart churned with suspicion and alarm. The city lord's mansion had sent no small number of adepts to hunt him down, and yet all of them were dying silently in the crowd. "Who is helping me? Could it be the Nether Demon Sect? Does the Nether Demon Sect truly have so much power in this city?" He reached the inn and was about to enter when, all at once, he saw the blind old man. Beside the inn was a gambling house, and two men in black were just dragging the blind old man out and flinging him to the ground. One of the men kicked him hard in the backside and spat, "You're blind, and you still dare to cheat right in front of us? Do you take us for blind men too?" Shen Mu hurried over, but the blind old man had already picked himself up. He brushed off his backside and called into the gambling house, "My bamboo staff!" The door creaked open, and a bamboo staff was tossed out, smacking him on the forehead. The blind old man picked it up and laughed. "I had bad luck this time, but next time I'll make sure you can't even tell I'm cheating. I'll win it all back, principal and interest! Shen'er, is that you? Speaking of which, I came across something amusing tonight. I saw a big hen bird all dressed up nice go out for a little spree, and a little rooster tagging right along beside her on the