So, Zhang Baishan had also set his sights on Li Ban's visual abilities.
At least he wasn't expected to just charge in and fight to the death.
Li Ban took the dagger and sprinted outside.
Bursting out of the Death Prison at last, he arrived at the sinkhole.
The area was a mess, splattered with large amounts of blood.
The main battle must have taken place here.
In front of the Water Room, Li Ban spotted the corpse of Min, the slave in charge of cooking.
A massive hole had been punched through her head. Her eyes were still wide with terror, as if she hadn't understood what was happening.
This time, every slave in the sinkhole had been wiped out.
There was no sign of the escaped convicts, nor any trace of Huo Jiang.
The weather was starting to warm, but patches of snow still clung to the ground, leaving the earth in the grove slick with mud.
At a glance, Li Ban could tell where someone had walked and where the ground lay untouched.
But he was no expert tracker; he could only blindly follow the heaviest cluster of footprints.
Dark drops of blood trailed along the path. Cat Girl and the other escapee were likely injured.
For a tracker, this was good news.
But not necessarily for Li Ban.
If he actually caught up to the convicts, he would only end up as a corpse pointing the way for Huo Jiang.
Still unsure if his forced log-out had been fixed, Li Ban had no intention of actually hunting them down.
He just needed to find enough clues to report back to Zhang Baishan.
If the convicts were capable of breaking out of prison, did they really expect a lowly odd-job worker to drag them back?
Soon, Li Ban followed a set of tracks to the edge of the grove.
Here, he could clearly see a much more measured set of footprints leading toward the main road.
Those had to be Huo Jiang's prints.
But the main road had no tree cover, and the melted snow had dried quickly. Li Ban soon lost sight of the footprints.
There were no more bloodstains on the road, either.
Just outside the grove, the trail went completely cold.
It seemed Li Ban had overestimated himself.
Untrained in tracking, he couldn't even bring back a single valuable clue.
He couldn't go back too early, though.
Li Ban lingered at the border between the grove and the main road. He saw no sign of prison official Huo Jiang, nor the two escaped convicts.
"Official Huo is certainly brave, chasing down two convicts all by himself," Li Ban muttered. He didn't dare go any further; bumping into them would spell disaster. "Then again, Cat Girl and Number Fourteen probably haven't removed their Obscuring Sun Locks. They might not be a match for him."
After pacing a few more circles, he finally decided to head back.
But just as he turned around, Li Ban suddenly spotted a speck of dark color in a spot he had overlooked.
It was just inside the grove, beneath a large tree. The tip of an inconspicuous weed had been stained dark.
Even from a distance, Li Ban could tell it was the rusty hue of dried blood.
Alerted by that smear of blood, Li Ban's sharp eyes noticed something off about the ground behind the weed.
The soil there was darker, damper, and slightly more elevated than the surrounding dirt.
It looked as though someone had recently turned the earth.
Turned the earth?!
Li Ban immediately realized he had been staring at that spot for too long.
He tried to casually turn his head away, but at the last possible second, the soil behind the tree exploded outward!
Trouble!
Someone was actually hiding there!
Li Ban had zero intention of getting into a fight.
Liu Mu had been heavily wounded by these people. Who could a lowly odd-job worker like him possibly defeat?
Cat Girl could probably pierce his skull with a single finger.
He spun around and sprinted for his life.
He ran toward the Death Prison. As long as he made it back inside, he would be safe.
But since they knew Li Ban had spotted them, why would they ever let him run back to report their position?
Hearing rapid footsteps closing in from behind, Li Ban sighed inwardly. He knew he couldn't keep running.
Back when Cat Girl had taught him hand-to-hand combat, she had warned him that exposing his back to an enemy was the single stupidest thing he could do, regardless of whether he could win.
He hadn't expected the escapee to run so fast while injured!
With that kind of speed, why not just run down the main road?
Why bury themselves in the dirt in this grove?
Complaints aside.
Li Ban planted one foot on the ground, arresting his momentum, and twisted around to look back.
Now he wanted to run even more.
There was only one set of footsteps behind him, but there were two fucking people chasing him!
The first was Number Fourteen. One of his forearms had been chopped off, and though he had wrapped the stump in a slave's tunic, it was still bleeding heavily.
He gripped a boning knife that Li Ban found incredibly familiar, charging at him with a savage expression.
And right behind Number Fourteen, completely uninjured and running in absolute silence... was Cat Girl!
If it were only one enemy, Li Ban might have tried to fight.
But with two of them right in front of him, he hardened his heart and thought, 'Fuse element: Blazing Flame Art!'
[Element 'Blazing Flame Art' has been fused.]
The third element fusion!
Still without the slightest side effect!
Still a split-second fusion!
But Li Ban didn't unleash the Blazing Flame Art immediately.
It was his trump card. He needed to strike by surprise and land a one-hit kill.
Li Ban then opened his right hand, reaching directly to grab the boning knife Number Fourteen was thrusting straight at him.
He acted as if he didn't care whether the enemy's blade would cleave his hand in two.
But before Li Ban's hand could touch the blade, the convict abruptly twisted his wrist. Bypassing Li Ban's palm, he thrust the knife straight at Li Ban's throat.
"Clang!"
A sharp pain flared in his throat.
Li Ban's body simply hadn't been able to react in time. Only his mind had managed to shift the Iron Fish Scale to his throat at the very last second.
Otherwise, that single exchange would have slit his throat and killed him on the spot.
In a true life-and-death battle, who had time to meticulously read and counter every move?
Li Ban instantly cast all his previous plans aside. His mind went blank, but fortunately, the combat instincts drilled into him by Cat Girl were still there.
Seizing the moment of the enemy's shock, he reached back and grabbed the man's upper arm, simultaneously thrusting his left hand forward, palm out.
The enemy recovered, skillfully using his other hand to block the strike while simultaneously turning the blade in his grip to stab upward at Li Ban's jaw.
With another sharp "Clang!", Li Ban felt an unbearable, jarring ache shoot through all his teeth.
But he ignored the discomfort, executing the only thought left in his mind.
'Flames!'
He roared in his mind, as if using the explosive force of that cry to draw out every drop of the spiritual rhinoceros from the element.
Boom—
A torrent of ghostly blue fire blasted from the palm of Li Ban's blocked hand.
Number Fourteen could block Li Ban's hand, but he couldn't block the fire.
As he released the flames, Li Ban violently wrenched his hand, redirecting the hottest, most concussive center of the fire straight into Number Fourteen's eyes!
"Aaagh!"
A bloodcurdling scream rang through the grove.
The upper half of Number Fourteen's face instantly melted into a charred ruin.
The convict's combat instincts were terrifying. Even through such agonizing pain, he didn't drop his knife to clutch his face.
Instead, after the initial shock of the agony, he wildly swung his knife in a frenzied arc—using offense as defense—while scrambling backward.
He only stopped when he backed into Cat Girl.
"Kill him! Aaagh! Cat Girl, kill him!"
Li Ban's desperate blast of fire had completely scorched away the skin on the upper half of Number Fourteen's face, but the man hadn't died immediately.
Li Ban halted his pursuit, locking eyes with an expressionless Cat Girl.
Cat Girl supported Number Fourteen with one hand, simply letting the fire on his head continue to burn.
"Oh," she said, the corners of her lips curling up as her large, round eyes bored into Li Ban. "What do we have here?"
Li Ban had been forced to play his trump card, the Blazing Flame Art, just to deal with the first attacker.
But he'd had no choice. If he hadn't used it, he would be dead.
Once Number Fourteen had attacked two of his vitals at the same time, Li Ban hadn't been able to dodge or block.
Using multiple elements in rapid succession left his head aching as if needles were piercing his brain, but he could only feign composure and stand his ground.
"I don't want to fight you," Li Ban said coldly.
Thanks to the pain, his voice came out through gritted teeth.
"Aaagh! Kill him! Cat Girl! Kill him!"
Number Fourteen was still howling, though his voice was growing weaker.
Looking at the ruin of his head, it was obvious he wasn't going to survive.
But even as he was dying, he wanted Cat Girl to kill Li Ban first.
Having lived his entire life on the edge of a blade, he never imagined that he would one day die at the hands of a lowly odd-job worker.
"You're too loud."
Cat Girl raised her free hand. With a swish, claws half a foot long sprouted from her fingertips, and she lightly traced them across Number Fourteen's neck.
Thud!
The headless corpse collapsed to the ground.
Thump, thump, roll...
The blazing head hit the dirt, rolling a few times before the flames finally guttered out.
The grove finally fell silent.
Cat Girl flicked the beads of blood from her claws.
"Let me ask you a question."