He didn't know whether the palace maid from before had gone to raise the alarm, or if the female fighting master who had died by his hand had been a distraction, but Fan Xian knew that this fight—although he had not allowed the female master to make a single sound—would have alerted the real masters of the palace, so he did not bother to deal with the body. With the tip of his foot on the paving stones, he made his whole body an arrow, and flew upward toward the palace wall as he had planned.
The wall was still very high, and Fan Xian was frustrated by his speed. Once he had climbed the wall with great difficulty, he heard a humming sound behind his head, as if the space behind him had begun to vibrate.
He turned his head, stunned, then saw a space in a distant corner of the palace walls where a commander was drawing a bowstring pointed at him.
An arrow flew through the night like a ravenous ghost, headed straight for his face!
