They had dinner at the inn, during which uncle Jin continued to discuss the matter of the Desolator of Life.
"Since there were no witnesses, it may be that we're stumped until he strikes again. What remains of the Xiong estate hasn't exactly been cooperative either. All things considered, this attack does not appear random. I would have liked to see their correspondences to try to nail down a potential suspect, but I was strictly forbidden from entering the estate by what remains of the clan, and they refused to show me their letters."
"Surely a martial artist like uncle Jin could just sneak in?" Bai Guo asked, which elicited laughter from his uncle.
"Silly boy, that would be a crime. And you get those kinds of thoughts out of your head right now!" Uncle Jin admonished him with a smile. "The Bureau is not part of the Wuyi Sect, or any other sect. We cannot just do as we please without express permission from the local authorities. And the Wuyi Sect has not approved our request either."
"If the Wuyi Sect hired you to investigate this, why wouldn't they grant you permission?"
"It could be a bureaucratic delay..." Uncle Jin twirled his goatee and continued in a hushed tone. "But I don't believe that. Who knows what dealings they may have had with each other? And the disappointing thing is, it might not even be related to the incident."
While his uncle was uncertain if it was unrelated, Bai Guo, having seen the things he'd seen, had already made up his mind on the matter.
They chatted about less gruesome subjects before retiring for the night.
The next morning, Bai Guo slunk out of the city without a proper goodbye. A couple kilometers up the road, he reunited with the eccentric golden haired senior.
"I brought you some sweets, senior." Bai Guo said, handing her a small bag with some pasties inside. The woman's yellow eyes went wide; she very eagerly accepted the gift.
"Are these good?" She asked, peering inside.
"I don't know..." Bai Guo answered. "But they look good, don't they? With the little flower-shaped candy at the top..."
She ate them all without delay. Bai Guo felt a little hurt that she didn't even offer to share, and the thought quite clearly never crossed her mind no matter how much he stared at her expectantly. When they were all gone, he sighed.
"There are going to be checkpoints past this point." Bai Guo said. "We won't be able to stay hidden any longer."
"It's not too late for you to turn back. I imagine I could find the rest of the way on my own."
Bai Guo shook his head. "No... There's no need. I've decided to see this through to the end."
Just as Bai Guo had said, the path took them to a gated mountain pass. As they approached the gatehouse, Bai Guo noticed something strange.
"I don't see anyone around..." He said.
When they rode through the open gate, they discovered the scene of a massacre. Sliced and blackened corpses wearing the black-and-red uniforms of the Wuyi Sect were scattered around the empty courtyard. The checkpoint reeked of blood and death. The bodies were fresher than the ones Bai Guo had seen the day before, but they were without a doubt slain by the same method.
"The Desolator of Life!" Bai Guo gasped. As the young man, in his panic, startled his horse, the senior regarded him with idle curiosity, unmoved by the carnage before them. He briefly explained to her the meeting with his uncle and what he had seen.
"I need to tell uncle Jin...!" Bai Guo blurted out. On the path ahead, a large patch of grass had wilted in the peculiar shape of a cone, like a round arrow unambiguously pointing in the direction of the killer. Perhaps as the killer walked off, the poisonous smoke must have receded the further he went.
"The smoke was emerging from the man himself?" Bai Guo wondered.
Since his uncle's intentions were to inform the Wuyi Sect about the man's whereabouts rather than actually fight him personally, Bai Guo realized that there was no sense in notifying him. The Desolator of Life was, after all, already headed right for them.
The senior began to ride ahead. "We'd better hurry before he kills everyone."
"Senior!" Bai Guo exclaimed, riding up to her. "Do you know how to deal with that kind of poison?"
"Well, more or less." She said. She then wordlessly turned to him and stared for a while, as if pondering something. When she turned away, she continued. "Worst case scenario, every poison user has an antidote on them."
Bai Guo did not find her words persuasive, but her confidence was staggering enough in its own way. She simply wasn't worried at all, and the young man found it hard to rebuke her.
They rode at full gallop for the better part of an hour. They discovered a second outpost, and with it, a second gruesome scene.
In the center of a stone tiled platform serving as a training field sat a sickly pale man surrounded by dozens of corpses. His disheveled, long black hair nearly touched the ground. His black clothes were covered by a transparently thin white garment, customary for one in mourning.
Bai Guo and the senior had both guessed the range of the poison gas to be about 20 meters, and both stopped just outside of that area. They left their horses a little further behind.
"Are you the Desolator of Life?" Bai Guo asked, sweat on his brow.
The man opened his eyes; the darkness in them radiated the coldness of bare steel. A sheathed sword rested in his lap, a spherical, fist-sized bell chained to the bottom of the hilt. His hand slowly crept towards the handle. He spoke in a low voice, but on the lifeless mountain, his impassive tone was heard with ease.
"I swore that I would kill every last man dwelling in these mountains." He stared at the golden haired woman. "But since I know that you are their enemy, I will give you one chance to turn around and leave."
Bai Guo felt an indescribable tension. Every last cell in his body was screaming at him to flee. The great distance between them offered no relief whatsoever. And it was quite evident that he was only in the periphery of the ruthless killer before them; he shuddered to imagine what it would be like to be in the senior's place, receiving the full brunt of his killing intent.
As both parties remained motionless, a new sound disturbed the dead - that of a sword leaving its scabbard. The Desolator of Life pointed his blade at the woman.
"I can cross the gap between us in two steps." He said. "You may have the skills to back up your fame..." The sword tip slowly shifted towards Bai Guo. "...But what about the runt over there?"
Bai Guo staggered a step back. "We may be on the same side here!" He desperately shouted.
The Desolator of Life had shifted from his sitting place and lunged forward like a loosened arrow. True to his word, it took him only two steps to soar across the entire field. As Bai Guo's heart jumped to his throat, his senses were just barely sharp enough to tell that the man wasn't leaping at him.
A deafening clang reverberated throughout the mountain range as the senior and the Desolator of Life had clashed swords. Bai Guo realized a moment later that his own sword was missing from its sheath - the senior had taken it at some point during the Desolator's two steps. He gawked, and couldn't help but blurt out. "When did she...?!"
The Desolator of Life spoke in the midst of their sword press. "Perhaps I was mistaken about your skill. With form as terrible as yours, it's a miracle that your sword hasn't snapped in two."
Their swords separated. The Desolator of Life's sword rose up towards the heavens, and was swiftly lowered back down onto the woman's head. When their steel clashed again and erupted into another thunderous sound, he repeated the motion again. His seemingly crude movements carried with them an incredible amount of force, and even Bai Guo had gotten the impression that there was more to it than appearances would suggest.
Each collision was louder than the one that came before. Their battle reverberated throughout the mountain range. After the senior had successfully blocked four of such successive strikes, the Desolator of Life widened his eyes and backed away.
As the traces of their clash still echoed across the mountains, the two of them stood motionless. Once the echoes faded, the senior spoke.
"Bai Guo, how are you feeling?"
Her question terrified the young man, because he realized her implication immediately. After all, they drew the ire of a man with an utterly ruthless method of fighting.
"I'm okay." He said, his voice quivering with uncertainty.
"Then may I perhaps take this as a sign that the Desolator of Life is willing to engage in discourse?" She asked. The Desolator of Life said nothing. "Bai Guo, you were saying?"
"We know of the Wuyi Sect's crimes! We're here to stop them!"
"And how do you intend to do that?" The Desolator of Life asked.
Bai Guo turned to the senior. She still hadn't told him what her plan was.
"I'll strike at the head of the sect." She said.
"Then we are at odds after all." The man shook his head. "My intentions are to kill every last man on this mountain, Deng Hong included! And I will not be satisfied unless they all die by my hand!"
He began to swing his sword again. The tip of it just barely touched the earth; a light clink betrayed its collision with something hard. Bai Guo made out a whistling sound as pebbles began to fly through the air towards the golden haired senior. She batted a couple of rocks out of the air with Bai Guo's sword, while two more flew past her.
Their horses neighed and dropped to the ground. The improvised projectiles hit them square in the head and slayed them immediately.
The Desolator of Life began to dash away from them like a bat out of hell. Bai Guo never even imagined that a man could move with such alacrity.
"Senior... What are we going to do?" He asked. "He's really going to kill everybody in the Wuyi Sect!"
The woman sighed. "He killed our horses so we'd take longer to catch up to him. But I was not planning to rush in the first place. Let's let him take his time."
She began to walk. Bai Guo chased after her.
"But... It couldn't be that all of them are guilty of those atrocities! There must be thousands of people living on these mountains! Are you really going to let him just kill everybody? You could catch up to him right away, couldn't you?"
The senior regarded him with a strange look. "My goal has always been the head of this sect alone. And if he gets killed by the likes of the Desolator of Life, then my interest was misplaced to begin with."
"What do you mean, senior? Why do you want to kill the head of the Wuyi Sect?"
"I don't want to kill him. All I want is to see is his strongest technique."
"...To what end?"
"Test of skill."
Bai Guo opened his mouth, but couldn't find the words. He decided to ask something else.
"...What about all the people they've killed?"
"After I defeat him, I can just put an end to that. He'll have no choice but to accept it or die." She dismissively waved her hand before turning back around and continuing on her way.
Bai Guo's eyes wandered over the buildings as he once again found himself questioning the decisions that brought him here.
"Wait, senior." He said. The woman stopped. "I've been to this place when I was a kid. This is where they held the tryouts for joining the sect. Come with me, please..."
He took her into a building which contained the black and red uniforms of the Wuyi Sect. Bai Guo put one on. "Would you like to wear one too, senior?" He asked.
The blond haired woman smiled in response. "Do you really think I'll fool anyone with that?" Bai Guo realized the folly of his question. She continued. "Why did you even bother wearing one yourself?"
"...It might keep me out of harm's way." He mumbled. The senior began to walk out, still with a smile on her face.
...