4 am on March 11, 2010. Jin City Golden Rose Community…
This was one of the most expensive real estate properties in Jin City. The unites here were well over ten thousand Yuan per square meter. No one was up yet at this hour in the morning, and even the security guards had dozed off in their office.
“Ding ding ding….”
Qiao Luoyin was woken up by the ringing of the telephone.
She hated to be woken up by phone calls so she turned her cellphone off before sleep. However, the ringing came from the emergency landline that connected to the room of her family’s most trusted servant. Qiao Luoyin knew something was up, so she reluctantly got out of bed to answer the phone.
“What’s going on Qiao Qiao?”
Her BFF who was sleeping over at her place yawned with sleepy eyes. As she stretched her body, bedsheets slid off of her naked chest, revealing her breathtaking body. There was a feline quality to the way she carried herself: quiet, elegant but infinitely seductive.
“Probably nothing.” Qiao Luoyin turned on the table lamp and suddenly noticed her BFF’s fully naked body. She shot the girl a glare and said: “Cover yourself please. You are married and almost thirty, why do you still act like a three-year-old?”
“Haha, who cares? It’s only two of us here. Why? Are you interested in this gorgeous body as well?” The girl’s eyes were lit up with glee as she shook her ample bosom, making her perky breasts jiggle.
“You!”
Qiao Luoyin was suddenly at a loss for words.
She met her BFF—a rich girl form Yan Jin when she was studying in the United States of America. They both shared similar family background and had many things in common. Just as Qiao Luoyin came home to take over the family business, so too her BFF returned to China to be married off by her family to a rich heir of Yan Jin.
Ever since her marriage, she rarely got any chance to spend time alone with her friends, and this was one of those rare occasions. Qiao Luoyin had no choice but to put her business aside and entertain her friend.
“Hello, is that Uncle Hu? What’s happening?”
Qiao Luoyin picked up the phone and heard Uncle Hu’s urgent voice: “My lady, something bad had happened. The Song Family mansion caught fire and killed everyone inside before the firefighter could put out the flame.”
“What?”
Qiao Luoyin was shocked.
Song Family was Qiao Family’s biggest opponent in Jin City, therefore, she always kept a close watch on them.
By the time she put down the phone, even her BFF had registered that something was amiss. Although the girl was a pleasure-seeking bimbo, she was quick to capture the change of mood in the air.
“What happened? Is it bad?”
“My family servant called me, saying the Song Family mansion had caught fire and killed everyone in it. The Song Family is no more, I am afraid.” Qiao Luoyin said with a blank stare.
Just a week ago, Song Family had been nipping the Qiao Family’s heels and forced the Chen family to be on their last leg, a week later, the entire family clan had been wiped out.
Something was not quite right about this.
“Are you talking about that Song Family related to the Han Family?”
The girl yawned again as she asked disinterestedly. She was from a mighty family clan of Yan Jin city and was married to one of the most influential heirs in the city, therefore, she wouldn’t care less about the Song Family. If not because the Song Family was an ally of the Han Family of Yan Jin, she might not even know who they were.
Many elites in the Jinlin City were woken up early in the morning just as Qiao Luoyin was.
As more shocking occurrences were discovered, they filled the air of the Jin City with restlessness and fear.
“Who could be so audacious as to commit these brazen crimes?”
Many people’s knee jerk reaction was shock and some even swore revenge, but deep down, everyone was seized by fear. The person who committed these heinous crimes must be a heartless and ruthless monster.
“What do you think that golden light was? I don’t think it’s any kind of modern weapon. It sounded more like the flying sword used by ancient swordmasters. I think the perpetrator was a powerful spell caster.”
Someone guessed.
“Flying sword, Dharmic powers, Spellcaster, and the feud with the Chen family that were shared with all victims…”
When people started to connect the dots, many of them felt that development was eerily familiar.
They vaguely remembered that a year ago, another family clan in Jin City was annihilated in a similar fashion a year ago.
“Could… could it be him?”
The terrifying thought made everyone look at each other in fear.
As it turned out, even more things had happened outside of Jin City. There had been murders at Jiang Zhou City, Tian He, and Hai Zhou city as well.
The bodies of Baldy Liu and Lord Wu were also discovered at Jiang Bei.
Nearly all the victims were controversial men and women who were not afraid of risking a run-in with the law from time to time to get things done. Their unscrupulous methods and tremendous influence made their deaths carry even more weight than the deaths of an average Joe.
Many elites of the society were woken up by phone calls early in the morning.
The police officers in many cities dispatched their units to the crime scenes. After seeing the aftermath of the slaughter, they looked at each other in trepidation.
“These are all murder cases, and the perpetrator is the same person. He had used a sharp weapon, likely a sword or whatnot and decapitated these victims’ heads. Director, did you see how sleek and smooth the wound was? The perpetrator must be a skilled swordmaster, worse, he could be an internal force user. These men and women seemed to have died simultaneously, meaning, the perpetrator must have killed multiple people in one attack.”
A veteran detective reported to his director.
The Director said nothing, his dark face was an anvil.
These victims were infamous tycoons of the city, adding in the possible involvement of Internal Force users, these cases were well above the local sheriff’s pay grade. He wagered that he would even soon see faces from the higher-level governments in his office to take over these hot cases.
Even as the director ordered his men to cordon off the scene, he got a phone call from his colleague in the neighboring city.
“What? the same crime happened at the City of Clear Water? Baldy Liu is decapitated?”
“Xu Long was killed at Hai Zhou city?”
“Zhou Tianhao was found dead in his house at Chu Zhou City?”
The series of news had shocked everyone.
“Boss, how should we handle this?”
The voice of even the most seasoned detective started to become shaky. This was one of the most serious cases of violence in China. The death toll had reached five hundred, yet, the perpetrator was only one person.
In the detective’s mind’s eye, he saw a white robbed sword master who flew past many cities where heads rolled and blood were spilled.
He had killed these men and women with otherworldly methods that had left no trace of evidence behind. He then walked away from the bloody scene guilt-free as if these men and women hardly deserved to live in the first place, leaving the world to solve the impossible riddle.
He acted exactly like the sword-hero in poems and ballads.
Hands shaking, the Director ordered: “Close off the area and return to your office. This is beyond our pay grade. I will report to the federal government and request the involvement of the Special Case Department.”
“Yes, sir. ”
Everyone nodded in relief.
They knew that this case was too big and too dangerous for them to take on.
More than five hundred people were either dead or injured in Jiang Bei. The news took the entire Jiang Nan Province by storm.
Many tycoons of Jiang Nan Province had to spend the following few nights constantly waking up by nightmares.
During the day, they tried all they could to get as many details about the incidents as they could.
Wu Zhou City, Su Family Residence…
Su Yanghao grunted after he was woken up by the phone. He picked up the phone and heard the voice of his son Su Zhengde on the other end.
“Dad, are you safe? The Song Family of Jin City were all killed last night, killed by fire and none of them survived. The family lords of the Hua Family, Ren Family, Gong Family, and sixteen other families were all killed around the same time.”
“What?”
The news awakened Su Yanghao as his eyes lit up with surprise and shock.
“The same thing happened across Jiang Bei. Over five hundred men and women were killed by now. Everyone is talking about the return of HIM.”
The last word rang like thunder in Su Yanghao’s ears. His son kept on talking on the other end, but he could no longer hear anything as a name reverberated repeatedly in his mind.
“..HIM… HIM….”
“Chen Fan was back!”