First Meeting of Assassins (3)

Once the other three assassins had Shui cornered in an area far from the noise of the citizens, all three of them fired a spell at him which exploded on contact. The spells were so fast that they crashed into him before he could react. It seemed like a perfect kill, but after the dust caused by the explosion cleared, his figure was gone. The assassins were shocked as they knew that there was no way their spells were capable of annihilating him.

As they hastily tried to find him, Shui watched from a higher vantage point while stabbing a sword into the ceiling of the building he was on.

'That should do it.'

As the city's detection array was always up, one had to take special measures to avoid getting caught red-handed. The ones who had just attacked an illusion Shui made with a talisman, were hiding their presence from the detection array. However, it would be easy to find that something was wrong it someone checked the number of people who should be in the city. For his method, Shui decided to be thorough. By using four swords as array points, he read the array and made a false image to fool it. Now, even if someone checked this area specifically with the detection array, they would only find four people simply standing. He chuckled as he imagined what the person who made the array would think of him altering it like this, but that was for another time.

Now that his prey had been captured, Shui chose to finish them quickly. While one of them was still searching, Shui approached him from behind and tapped him with a finger covered in his spiritual flame. It was now of a purple-blue colour and though the evolution wasn't complete, taking care of a mere peak Earth Realm cultivator was no problem at all.

It took less than a second for him to be incinerated, but that short moment alerted the other two assassins. While Shui pocketed the space expansion bag that he saved from destruction, the two swung around to face him. When they noticed the pile of ash by his feet, they sent each other a glance and then, fled.

'They're decisive.'

There was no major grudge between them and they were assassins, not warriors, so Shui approved of how quickly they laid down their pride and chose to escape the moment things went awry. However, they still had to die here.

The two split up and ran in different directions, but Shui didn't need to move from his position. He carefully read their movements and then cast his spell. First, there was a spike that suddenly rose out of the ground; both of them managed to dodge this one, but the one on the right failed to react to the stakes that grew from the walls of the buildings beside him.

Unaware that he was the only one remaining, the assassin on the left had managed to keep his life by instinctively deploying his barrier to defend against the wall spikes. Unfortunately, the moment after deploying his barrier, the assassin was stuck in place, and there was no way Shui would miss that.

Like pocket knives, long thin wedges of stone popped out of the buildings beside him and closed in on him from opposite directions like a pair of scissors. Thanks to their pressure, he was properly forced to stay in position, and the focus on the walls made him lower his guard. At the time when he couldn't react, super thin needles flew out from the ground and made a porcupine out of him. With that, Shui's three pursuers were easily dealt with.

Shui had means of killing all three of them at once, but he chose this method because he wanted to see how well he could use different portions of his corna in combat. He was a little worried since this was the first time he chose to use only the earth element of the Four Elements Technique, but he discovered that his ability to focus and control divine energy was even greater than before. Thanks to this, predicting how the assassins would move and then cornering them was easy.

At the end of the battle, Shui collected the valuables from the two corpses with mental control before leaving. He could have taken care of the bodies as well, but since there were extra eyes watching the area anyways, he left the clean-up to them and retrieved the swords he had placed on rooftops to avert the eyes of the array from their short fight.

Shui began to leave the area, but on his way out, another assassin came to meet him. This was unexpected since he had no more direct competitors, but Shui still quickly prepared to kill. However, this assassin was different.

As Shui sent a sharp killing intent, the assassin with a fox mask shook their head.

"I was a little worried, but I'm glad that you were stronger than you came off, Thousand Face."

The voice was high-pitched like a young girl, but from the fluctuation of nature energy in it he knew that it was fake, like his. Still, even without seriously trying he could tell that it really was a girl. From her, Shui got a hint as to why he was targeted from the start. Since his nickname was Thousand Face, and he was more well-known for his disguises than fighting ability, they probably thought that he would be weak in a battle. It was a laughable idea to him, but he could understand why they had such thoughts.

"So, what do you want?"

Shui wasn't bothered by this fox assassin, but he still needed to find Iris so he acted cold and kept a sliver of killing intent released. Like it was light breeze, she brushed it off and revealed her purpose in seeking him out.

"I want your help in killing my target."

It was a surprising request, especially considering the fact that he just killed three people who were his competition.

"Why? It would be one thing if you still had direct competition to worry about, but you're the only one assigned to that playboy, aren't you?'

"That's true, all I need to do is kill my target and I'll pass this test. However, there are times when it's necessary to send more than one assassin."

The fox assassin wasn't wrong. When it came to figures who very important or very strong, having multiple assassins handle things was normal.

"So you're saying this is one of those cases?"

In response to Shui's question, the fox assassin handed him her scroll that held details about the target. According to the scroll, although the target himself was only in late Soul Realm and had little proper fighting experience, the guards that protected him were in mid Earth Realm at minimum. It purposely left out the number of guards and the cultivation of the strongest guard, because assassins also needed to be able to find their own information and be prepared for unexpected circumstances.

After looking through it, Shui nodded his head and said, "Okay, I can see why you would need help with this, still, I'm surprised that you thought about getting help in an exam like this."

"Well considering what you just went through I can understand why you would think that, but isn't killing the target no matter what the job of an assassin? An assassin who can't let go of their pride for the success of the mission is a failure."

Shui didn't really consider himself an assassin, but he admired her determination to the path.