How could Li Ban have missed it? The moment the suspected secret shipment appeared, the Butcher's eyes had changed.
His initial ruthlessness had given way to struggle and conflict, only to harden back into pure malice.
Someone wanted to pocket the shipment.
But it wasn't Li Ban. It was the Butcher.
Looking at the masked assassin before him, Li Ban was eighty percent sure that once the job was done, the Butcher would silence this man too.
After all, only dead men kept secrets.
"Since you're going to die anyway, you might as well die by my hand."
With that, Li Ban raised a hand and hurled something at the assassin.
The masked assassin, who had just launched a sneak attack, was still staring in shock at Li Ban's unharmed neck when a sharp pain bit into the back of his own. It was as if an identical iron arrow had somehow pierced him from behind!
Li Ban took a step forward, closing the distance between them. "The kind you'd expect," he said, his voice stripped of all emotion.
The masked assassin scrambled to dodge, lunging to one side to escape the iron arrow that had materialized behind him.
But he had barely taken a single step when Li Ban closed in again, thrusting out a right palm.
'His Ninety-Seven Palm Technique is nothing special, but he packs massive physical power!' The masked assassin had secretly watched Li Ban fight earlier and knew his capabilities.
But with no chance left to evade, he could only raise his scabbard and brace himself to block the strike.
Then, a surge of cyan flame erupted right in his face!
'What... what Tier is his identity really?'
It was the masked assassin's final thought.
Standing over the assassin's corpse, Li Ban stepped forward and severed the man's head.
Learning from his previous experience, this time Li Ban opted to burn only the severed head.
This way, no one would ever be able to tell how the masked assassin had died.
He wrapped the charred remains in the dead man's outer coat, just as he had done before, and quickly searched the body.
This was an unidentified assassin who had died deep in the mountains. No one was going to come looking for his corpse to examine it, so Li Ban wasn't worried about anyone discovering its anomalies.
Judging by the way he had attacked, this assassin definitely had a public identity, and he was a 2nd Tier Spirit Practitioner.
However, Li Ban only managed to loot a single waste element from him, which he immediately absorbed.
He couldn't find another.
The mission assistance system's ability to break down elements was tied to a success rate, after all.
After mutilating the rest of the corpse, Li Ban decided to head back to Yongan Pawnshop in Qingcheng County to report the Butcher's probable betrayal.
But after taking only two steps, Li Ban changed his mind.
If he simply reported that the Butcher was stealing the shipment and betraying the Assassin Hall, he could clear his own name, but the Hall might still take their anger out on him.
But what if he killed the Butcher himself and secured the shipment? Couldn't he use that merit to earn a direct promotion?
Li Ban didn't actually care about being promoted to Iron Token, but it was what Zhai Liu demanded.
And right now, he had no way of escaping the Death Prison.
Li Ban really hated the idea of joining assassination missions time and time again just to scrape together merit.
With his mind made up, Li Ban retrieved the Silver Kingfisher and the assassin's Sleeve Arrow, then bolted back toward the wooden cabin.
In such a short time, the Butcher couldn't have gone far. Carrying such a large wooden crate, he would definitely leave tracks when he left.
Li Ban was confident he could track the man down.
He quickly arrived back at the cabin. Even from a distance, he noticed that people were fighting in front of it.
He immediately found a dense patch of tall grass and dove in to hide.
At this range, his Superhuman Vision still allowed him to see the battle clearly, while keeping him entirely hidden from their view.
Li Ban narrowed his eyes. He finally recognized the combatants—it was Lu Qinghe and the Butcher!
'Did Zhai Liu send Lu Qinghe here to protect me?'
'And she figured I could handle the masked assassin on my own, so she went straight for the ringleader?'
Li Ban had already determined that the Butcher was at the 3rd Tier in strength, whereas Lu Qinghe was at the 4th Tier.
Logically, the Butcher shouldn't have been a match for Lu Qinghe, but many other factors influenced the outcome of a battle.
Things like element counters, superior martial arts, and even sheer physical fitness could shrink the gap created by their differing spiritual rhinoceros reserves.
Right now, Lu Qinghe and the Butcher were locked in a fierce, back-and-forth struggle.
Lu Qinghe held a slight upper hand, but the Butcher's footwork was incredibly bizarre, allowing him to dodge her fatal strikes time and time again.
For the moment, it was impossible to tell who would emerge victorious.
Li Ban adjusted the Sleeve Arrow on his arm, preparing to lend Lu Qinghe a hand when the moment was right.
Just then, the branches directly above him swayed.
'There's someone above me?!'
A cold sweat instantly broke out across Li Ban's back.
'Why didn't the Silver Kingfisher warn me?'
He threw himself forward, spinning around and raising his hand to aim straight up.
But Li Ban didn't fire the Sleeve Arrow. Instead, he crashed rather clumsily into a pile of dirt.
Perched in the leafy canopy of the towering tree, the Cat Girl was waving a leafy green branch at him with one hand. In her other hand, she held his Silver Kingfisher.
Li Ban had an overwhelming urge to curse her out, but now the Cat Girl was no longer a prisoner.
He looked back to check on Lu Qinghe's fight.
Fortunately, they were far enough away that the combatants hadn't noticed the commotion on his end.
He glared back up at the Cat Girl. "Do you realize you can scare a man to death like that?"
"I know," the Cat Girl said. She was wearing dark green nightclothes and smiling slyly.
She dropped lightly to the ground, as completely silent as a real cat.
"I've scared someone to death before."
She pulled Li Ban back into the tall grass.
"Even from this distance, if you want to watch the show, you still need to hide properly."
Li Ban crouched back down in exasperation and reached out for the Silver Kingfisher. "Give it back."
The moment the Cat Girl opened her hand, the Silver Kingfisher eagerly shot forward and sank right back into Li Ban's body.
It was so frantic that it looked as if it had just escaped from the jaws of a tiger.
"Is this your new ability?" she asked. "The abilities of you Wizards aren't restricted by the elements, are they?"
"I wouldn't know," Li Ban replied, his gaze fixed on the distance, where the fight was still raging. "Have you been here this whole time? How did they end up fighting?"
The Cat Girl grinned, completely unbothered. "Lu Qinghe and I bumped into each other up on the mountain. She mentioned you were running a mission out here, so I came to take a look. I arrived just in time to see you two walking back from your fight, with that Iron Token treating you like a pack mule."
Li Ban said, "He had already decided to kill us by then. He saw how capable I was and deliberately tried to wear out my stamina."
He had already been suspicious at the time, which was why he had stayed highly vigilant and kept his distance from the others along the way.
He had even secretly sent the Silver Kingfisher out early to keep watch.
When the Butcher finally dismissed them to go their separate ways, Li Ban had actually thought he wasn't going to make a move.
But what he hadn't expected was that one of the other assassins present was actually the Butcher's man.
The man had used the excuse of pocketing the shipment to get close, waiting for a chance to assassinate him.
But what the assassin hadn't realized was that Li Ban had been on high alert the moment he appeared, simply waiting for him to get close enough to finish him in one blow.
Li Ban had consumed a lot of physical stamina, but his Blazing Flame Art was at full capacity!
"And then—"
"And then, I saw it," the Cat Girl interrupted, her face lit up with excitement. "When I got here, I was just in time to see you loose that fire."
Li Ban paused.
He had observed the area to make sure no one else was around before making his move.
But once he made his move, he couldn't keep watch anymore.
He had many abilities, but most of them were secrets that couldn't see the light of day.
If it had been anyone other than the Cat Girl he encountered this time, he would have had to consider killing them to silence them.
Compared to whether he liked it or not, avoiding being captured and tortured was much more important.
Li Ban didn't want to discuss his abilities further, so he asked instead, "Is Lu Qinghe trying to snatch the Cyan Silk Algae?"
She clearly already possessed a Seed Plate.
"No, she's trying to grab that red thing. I can't see it too clearly, but it should be a superior element."
"So the secret shipment was a superior element all along. No wonder Lu Qinghe is so active," Li Ban said. Although he was also very interested in a superior element, he knew how to restrain his greed.
Especially when Lu Qinghe already had her eyes on that element.
Lu Qinghe had been just as desperate the last time she saw the Cyan Silk Algae.
And having returned empty-handed last time, there was no way she was going to give up this time.
It looked like his chance to earn merit was gone.
Li Ban started considering what he should say to the people at the Assassin Hall when he got back.
"What about the other assassins? Did you kill them all?"
"We didn't make a move. That guy probably still has no idea what happened behind him. The Iron Token hadn't even had time to go silence him before an anxious Lu Qinghe came knocking at his door. I couldn't be bothered to watch them fight, so I came looking for you instead."
Li Ban nodded. "Since one of them ran off without knowing the truth, I need to report this as soon as possible. I'll say they tried to silence us, but I managed to escape, and then they got double-crossed by an unknown party. That's what I'll go with."
"Alright, then once they're done fighting, I'll go set the scene," the Cat Girl said, looking like someone who was highly experienced at double-crosses.