20 - (Spoiler in title)

A few hours later, Su Tao woke up. He felt groggy at first, but it cleared up almost instantly. He looked around him, only to be confused. In front of him stood the city master and his daughter, while his hands were bound behind his back. He instantly became completely alert and stared in front of him at the two.

Instantly, both of them felt the strength of his gaze, and they felt as if all their secrets had been exposed and like they had been seen naked. Both of them felt at this moment that every move they made, every drop of sweat, every flutter of their hearts, could all be seen by Su Tao.

But as strong as his gaze was, it seemed soft and kind, like the loving gaze of a mother looking at her baby. He sat there with a smile on his face despite being tied up, seemingly at ease.

He sat there for a few moments before he spoke. "I don't care that you tied me up as it is perfectly logical to be initially suspicious of me, but I'm sure that you've both already thought through all the possibilities and have realized that there was no way for me to have been teamed up with the assassin. So just get to the point and ask me what you want to know."

Both the city master and his daughter were surprised at that moment, because he had seen through their plan in only a couple seconds. They were planning to question him as to how he knew the assassin was there and how he was able to prevent the assassination when even a gold rank warrior could not.

Seeing that their plan had been seen through, Su Tao felt the binds around his hands loosen and fall off. Feeling this, he knew that he was right. He brought his hands in front of him and rubbed his wrists, which had been rope burned. But after a couple seconds, the city master and his daughter saw the wounds from the rope heal and vanish without a trace.

The binds had been cut off under the order of the city master, but even he was surprised to see how quickly Su Tao's rope burn healed. But he ignored this and moved on.

Then, the city master asked his first question, "How were you able to see that assassin? He had a shadow technique for his inner energy and his aura was completely erased along with being hard to see in the first place. Even I could not sense him, so how did you?"

Su Tao had already prepared a reply for this question as he knew it was going to be asked. "I'm sure that you can feel right now how strong my vision is. Since the moment I opened my eyes and looked at the two of you, both of you have been uncomfortable. Before that, you were at ease and calm."

He spoke with utter confidence as he exposed exactly what they were thinking at that moment. They were not expecting this, but they both recovered instantly and ignored it.

"I'm well aware of how this is supposed to go, but I promise that you will get nowhere by asking about anything related to the assassin. All you will learn by doing that is stuff that you already figured out for yourself, so I suggest that you move on to better questions."

"Since that is the case, then what is the green lightning power that you used to kill that woman in the arena? I heard about it from the overseer of the matches and know all about it. It had the ability to break through a strong defense type inner energy barrier and not only kill the woman, but also completely shattered her entire chest and threw her a hundred feet back into the wall while burning her at the same time."

Su Tao did not want to answer this question, but there was nothing he could do aside from bend the truth. "That power is a one time use thing, and I cannot currently replicate it for the time being. As for what exactly it is, that is an abomination's secret. I used it to save my own life, and the overseer can also attest to this as well."

The city master was not expecting this answer, and he thought for a few moments and was about to ask his next question, but he was interrupted by his own daughter asking a question of her own. Her voice was soft and warm, like a gently flowing stream, soft as silk.

"Then what about your ability to heal? I just saw for myself rope burns vanish in only a matter of a few seconds where it would normally take an hour or two.

On top of that, no one would be able to go into the arena and fight a fight that nearly killed them and come out completely unscathed, even if you used that 'abomination's secret'.

You still had your arm jammed back by that woman's kick, which must have caused some damage or bruises, yet you are completely fine and unscathed.

On top of that, there are reports that you were shot through the arm with an arrow, yet you healed in only two weeks, and you had a caved in ribcage not even a month ago, yet you are completely fine right now." Her question brought up several things at the same time that he could not avoid, and he could not talk his way out of them either since everything she said was true.

"That is an abomination's secret." He once again replied simply and left them both confused.

Then, the city master spoke once again. "We will leave it here since you don't want to answer based on the fact that you saved my daughter. If you would like anything in return, then please don't hesitate to ask. And I have to apologize for doing this, we just had to be sure.

And I would also like to express my most profound gratitude for saving my daughter even though this city has done nothing for you at all. I would also like to apologize for the terrible death that befell your mother, and I would like to tell you that I was outvoted on her punishment method. But it was an urgent issue, and I could not save her as she was the number one suspect for the events that happened that day."

Su Tao could tell that the city master was being sincere, and that he really was outvoted. It had been set up that major crimes and major events in the city would be voted on by all the top powers of the city, and the city master had the ability to be outvoted. This was one reason why the people respected him so much - he was not a tyrant.

"I appreciate you saying that, but there is no need whatsoever for you to pay me back in any way. I saved your daughter to pay back the debt of my life that I owed to you. A life for a life. You saved mine, I saved your daughter."

The city master was taken aback when he heard this. He had not expected that Su Tao would not ask anything at all out of him. He had also not even thought about the fact that Su Tao owed him a debt for saving his life and protecting him.

Su Tao had figured out that it was indeed the city master who had protected him earlier this night, when he went up and stood next to Su Xue, even the grand elder of the Su family looked at him with a small hint of killing intent and hatred.

This meant that it was absolutely not him who protected him from being killed with his mother, because if that was the case, then the moment Su Long was embarrassed by Su Tao in the way he was, Su Long's grandfather, the grand elder, would have allowed Su Tao to be killed by the elders themselves directly.

After saying this, Su Tao stood up. "I bid you good day and a prosperous life. I am not your enemy, but it would do you good to look into me a bit further than just the lightning." After which he left the room.

It was an unnaturally short conversation, and everyone afterwards was slightly annoyed by the result of it, but the city master and his daughter were annoyed because they could not find out the main things that they wanted to know about him because every answer he gave was not direct.

None of them had any way to make the conversation longer, and although a lot was said in it, it left them with even more questions than before. As for Su Tao, he was annoyed that he had to reveal as much as he did, because even if they did not understand it now, they would find out soon what it meant.

They realized that Su Tao was much more bizarre than he seemed to be, with many layers of secrets beyond the color of his eyes and hair. He was also extremely intelligent and straight away called them out for what they were trying to do, and continued to dodge his way around giving them an answer for every question they asked.

After Su Tao left the room, he was guided out by a servant and he went back to Su Xue's residence.

As for the city master and his daughter, they were talking amongst themselves about what he said and all the things he did. The city master then sent people out to find out everything they could about Su Tao, and he was surprised by the results.

It was only now that he found out that the young master had raped his sister and had her thrown into the prison where the inmates raped her until she died of starvation. As a result of finding this, he finally realized that his son was still doing as he pleased with no restrictions.

As such, he instantly sent out a command to all the guards and servants in the young master's residence to keep him in his room and not listen to a single thing he says, no matter how many threats he makes.

He would deal with him later, but as of right now, he needed to keep his daughter safe against any more assassination attempts, which meant that she was to never leave his side for the next day or two.

He could not care less about his son because even though he defended him when he messed up, his son was a complete failure in his eyes and if there was no obvious threat to him, he would not take the effort to protect him when he did not need to.

He spent the rest of the night protecting his daughter and privately celebrating with her since the banquet was cut short by the assassination attempt. He knew that it was another city that had sent the assassin because they were at the second silver star, and they had a shadow ability, which was extremely rare, and he was certain that it had not showed up in the City of Silver Sparrow since he had become the city master.

Shadow abilities were able to be learned by anyone, but the process of training them was ten times harder than any other element or inner energy type, and it was also extremely difficult to understand, let alone train, leading to very few people ever being able to use it.

As for Su Tao, while he was walking back to Su Xue's residence, there were several people watching him. Most people were asleep since it was the middle of the night, but there were four people in black robes watching him from a far distance. These were the same black robed people who had attacked him previously as well as two others.

Su Tao had heard from the one man that he killed that he had five senior brothers and sisters, and he had killed one of the sisters, leaving four of them left. Of the six so far, their biggest advantage was not their raw strength, but their skill. But he was worried because if that sister that he had killed in the ring was not the strongest among them, then he would be in extreme danger right now.

It had only been a few hours, and it was not long enough for him to fully replenish the power of his right eye. And it had already taken nine tenths of his power in one hit to kill that sister, and although he could have done it with less, it would not make much of a difference.

He had currently only replenished about half of the power of his right eye, and it would be fine if it was just two of them that he had to fight, but he definitely could not handle all four. But he was surprised because they were not attacking at the moment, and although he could tell that they were going to, he could not tell when. As such, he kept a keen eye at his surroundings.

He was long ago outside of the range of the city master's residence, but even if he was still right outside of it, the city master would not help because it was an issue between kids, and he was not able to interfere.

Su Tao was about a quarter of the way back to Su Xue's residence, which was in the middle of the Su family, when he saw a change in his watchers' behavior. They seemed to get slightly anxious all at the same time. As such, he instantly raised his guard and looked all around him, only to see nothing.

He found this extremely odd since there was nothing and no one there. He even looked on the ground for traps and stuff, but it honestly seemed like there was nothing there. But because there was nothing there, he stopped dead in his tracks. His instinct was telling him that something was off.

He continually scanned his environment with his eyes, but he still saw nothing different. His eyes allowed him to see in the night as if it was the middle of the day, and he could see thousands of times better than a normal person even in the dark. The people in black robes saw this, of course, and got a little anxious.

Su Tao was completely on his guard, but nothing happened as long as he stood there. Yet his instinct was telling him that something is wrong. Suddenly, the people in black robes decided that he was not going to move from that spot due to being on guard, and they should just attack him.

They were coming from up a hill to his right, and he instantly turned to face them. He knew that he was fast, but not fast enough to escape them all. And either way, he felt that he should not move another step forward, although he did not know why. As such, he moved back and away from them, back towards where he had come from about fifty feet.

By the time he had moved far enough back, the four black robed people had gotten to him. It was the two twin brothers he had previously encountered who were dominant in fire and ice techniques with knives. But there was another pair of people, two women, both of which he knew nothing about.

Su Tao was not as bothered by the two brothers because he had fought with them before, and he was capable of fighting against them, but he knew nothing about the two women, and it was now a four on one fight.

They had already surrounded him completely, cutting off any method of escape. Su Tao could also see that all of them had already activated their inner energies, and they glowed in different colors. The twin brothers had the fire red and ice blue, while the two women had different colors. They had purple and orange inner energies respectively.

This was a major problem for him because the purple color meant that it was a corrosive inner energy that was not meant to maximize damage, but it would cause damage over time, which was a major problem for him since it would nullify his healing.

And the orange color meant that it was an interruption inner energy, which would go into the body of the opponent and cut off their control of their body and inner energy. This meant that this was pretty much the perfect team. A fire and an ice to cause the most damage, and a corrosion and interruption type inner energies to degrade the person's body.

Previously there were two more people in this team, and they were a defense type and a physical type, which would improve weapons significantly. This meant that there also used to be another damage dealer as well as a tank to take hits. It really was the perfect team.

But now, there were only four of them left because of Su Tao. The other two had met brutal deaths without mercy from him, making the rest of them extremely angry. One had been shot in the head, whereas the other one had been completely destroyed by him.

They did not waste any time speaking and just straight up attacked. All four of them launched themselves at him at the same time. The corrosive woman had a sword in her hand, which was glowing purple from being infused with her inner energy and the fire and ice brothers both had their knives out again.

The one he considered to be the most threat at the current moment were the two women, especially the one with corrosive inner energy, which would cancel out one of his advantages. As such, he launched himself towards the woman and was preparing to strike her.

He was going to try something new. He did not have nearly enough of his right eye's power to fight against them all considering that he only had half of normal. On top of that, he did not have any weapon.

All of them were more skilled than the people he had gone up against in the arena, and he had merely been lucky when he previously half won against the twin brothers because they did not know about the green lightning ability of his, leading them to have their main advantage, their inner energy, dissipated, and by the time it came back, one of them was in too vulnerable of a position for the other to continue the fight.

But now, every single one of them knew about it and knew just how terrifying it could be. The reason they attacked right now was because they were sure that whatever that power was would require time to recharge - if he could even use it again - since he was not even at the silver rank yet, meaning that he would be at his weakest right now.

This was probably their only chance to kill him, and after now, he would be too much for them to handle. As such, they had to attack now when they knew he was weak.

Every single one of them knew about the green lightning, so they would do their best to avoid letting him touch them at all. As such, he had a new idea. He could not count on every one of his blows to land since he knew that rather than block they would always dodge, meaning that he needed a way to have that power in his hand at all times.

As such, he thought about bringing out the power of his right eye just like he had previously. But this time, instead of focusing on it going onto the opponent, he tried to simply store the power in his hands. He figured that this would lower the power and effect of it a lot, but it would also not use so much of the power all at once.

Weirdly, when he did that, he felt the existence of the tattoos on his arm and hand. He looked at them, only to see that the lightning tattoos were glowing lightly. He could feel that the power of his right eye was being perfectly stored and used in the tattoos on his fists.

By now, he had reached the corrosive woman, and he saw her swinging her sword at him in a chopping motion, while also watching him closely to avoid letting him touch her. He then ducked down below her sword and slid on the ground, but because she was watching his every move, she quickly jumped to avoid him, while also swinging the sword behind her in an upwards chopping motion to not allow him to directly attack her.

But he did not try to attack her, but rather, he simply slid past her. She had no idea what he was doing. Then, after he was clear of her sword, he stood up and launched himself at her again. She was already swinging the sword again, but he dodged it easily and just barely managed to get past her.

He then instantly turned around far faster than she could react, and punched towards her shoulder. His fist connected with her shoulder, but seemingly nothing different from a normal hit happened when the hit connected.

But after a moment of contact, there was a small explosion of green lightning bolts and the power of his hit was significantly increased, but it did not bring any of the previous disruptive or burning capabilities. It simply increased his physical power, but he felt that it barely used any of his right eye's power compared to before.

The corrosive woman screamed out in pain as her shoulder was dislocated, forcing her to wield the sword one handed and without her dominant hand. But Su Tao did not bother with her as he rushed over to the fire and ice brothers. He went for the weaker of the two, the ice brother.

He then ran straight at the ice man with seemingly no regard for the other brother or his own life. He charged straight into the swing of the man's knife, but just when it was about to hit him, he swung out his own fist, driving it directly into the icy man's knife hand, knocking it out of the way before ramming his entire body straight into the icy man, knocking him over.

There was no way for the icy man to avoid it, and he fell straight onto the ground. As for his knife arm which had been hit, the inner energy barrier on his arm had been shattered, but it did not do a ton of damage to his arm itself, meaning that he was still capable of using the arm with most of its normal capacity.

But Su Tao had full on rammed his entire body into the icy man, knocking the breath out of the icy man, temporarily stunning him, after which he turned towards the fiery man who had just now reached Su Tao because he was the fastest.

Not far behind him was the disruptive woman, who was charging straight at Su Tao as well. Su Tao, however, ran straight towards the corrosive woman who was further away than they were. She was right in between the middle of them and was also charging at Su Tao.

Su Tao managed to slip past the fiery man and the interruptive woman and because of their momentum, they could not stop him from getting to the corrosive woman. She swung her sword at him, but once again missed. He then went right past her and turned around.

This was his advantage over all of them. He was much more agile and had much faster reaction speed compared to them, making him able to slip around them while they tried to hit him. But he lacked in the power that they had.

So even though he had gotten in a very good hit on the corrosive woman, she was not hurt by it that much. He had only managed to dislocate her shoulder.

He then launched himself towards her back once again, but she was already swinging the sword around with her body pivoting on a swivel. She once again missed him mainly, but she managed to cut a small cut on his shoulder, but he did the same thing he did to the icy man, charging directly into her and ramming her with his body.

He managed to throw her several feet back and down to the ground since she was not moving towards him in the first place, while he continued with his momentum going right next to her, bending down and punching towards her other shoulder.

A sword was hard to handle with one non-dominant hand, leading to her not being able to swipe it at him quick enough to stop her other shoulder getting hit and dislocated, but she managed to slice into his side a little bit.

Su Tao tumbled to the side a little bit to avoid getting cut any further, but it was at this time that the fiery man and disruptive woman had reached him. Seeing him get cut, they were extremely happy.

But Su Tao did not stop in the slightest as he dived towards the disruptive woman's leg, but he was too slow and she moved it out of the way before swinging her fist towards him. At the same time, the fiery man, who was now directly on top of Su Tao, swung his knife, cutting into Su Tao's back as well.

The disruptive woman's fist missed, but the damage from the fiery man had been done and there was a giant gash across his back. His clothes were burning a little bit, so he ripped them off.

When Su Tao ripped off his shirt and robes, they were astonished by the sight they were greeted with. Across his whole torso were purple flower tattoos, and going all the way down his arms were green lightning tattoos, which were currently glowing a little bit.

Not only the lightning tattoos, but at this moment, the purple flower tattoos started to glow as well, and the giant slice across his back started to close up. But the cuts from the corrosive woman's sword did not heal at all. They were very slowly getting worse and spreading, as the inner energy was stronger than the healing power of Su Tao's left eye.

Su Tao then noticed that the icy man was back up and was charging at him. The corrosive woman was pretty much out of the fight for the time being, but she had done quite a bit of damage to Su Tao.

There was a gash on his right shoulder and a long cut going down his left side as well. These were slowly getting worse by the second, but it was very little and would likely not get much worse through the course of the fight.

At this point, the three people charged straight at the now injured Su Tao, and coordinated their efforts with one another to try to kill him. At this point, the icy man was coming at him from the left while the fiery man and disruptive woman were coming at him from the front.

The corrosive woman had stood up and was going over to the side of the street and staying out of the fight, Su Tao had dislocated both of her shoulders, making her incapable of fighting for a minute or two. She was going to the side to pop them back into place.

Su Tao then instead of going for the icy man like they all expected, went for the disruptive woman instead. But instead of just using his right eye power that was stored in his hand, he sent out a portion of it into his fist as he swung it towards the disruptive woman's own fist.

Then, their fists collided with a violent bang, and both of them stopped dead in their tracks. But Su Tao then bounced backwards towards the icy man without caring about what happened to the disruptive woman.

When the power of his right eye collided with her inner energy, it instantly shattered the barrier, and the lightning entered into her arm and burned and singed it, also disrupting her own inner energy in the process, not allowing her to use it at all on that arm.

But some of her own inner energy went into Su Tao's arm when the fists collided, making his hand and arm numb all the way up to his shoulder. He felt like he did not have as much control over his arm as before, but it was not enough to make a super major difference because of the healing abilities of his left eye countering the disruptive inner energy in his arm.

When everyone there saw him moving about almost normally despite not only being hit by the corrosive inner energy and disruptive inner energy, they were completely shocked, and one thought was going through all their minds: 'What a beast!'

But they had no time to worry about how strong he was as he was now going straight towards the icy man after disabling the disruptive woman's entire arm.

By now, he only had about a quarter of his right eye's power remaining (a quarter of his max) and had also used quite a lot of his left eye's power as well, about a quarter of it, to heal the gash on his back from the fiery man and to counter the corrosive and disruptive inner energies in the other injuries.

But he still continued to charge straight at the icy man, with the fiery man following close behind him and the disruptive woman further away where the fiery man had come from.

Su Tao then once again seemed to be about to ram into the icy man with his body, to which the icy man tried to dodge, seeing that he had already used this move twice. But he did not expect Su Tao to reach out at the last moment and catch the icy man with his fist on the side right into the icy man's stomach.

But the icy man was already swinging his knife towards Su Tao even before Su Tao's fist slammed into his stomach, and just before Su Tao's fist connected with his stomach, the icy man got a deep cut straight into Su Tao's back, digging much deeper than the cut from the fiery man. But as Su Tao's fist collided with the icy man's stomach, the knife was violently pulled out as his body got flung to the side.

The icy man had done much more damage to Su Tao than Su Tao had done to him, but the icy man was knocked out cold from that punch to the gut, and he was out for the rest of the fight, leaving Su Tao with the last laugh.

Su Tao felt part of his back freeze from the icy inner energy and another part burning from the fiery inner energy, even though the burning was already long gone. The icy inner energy slowed him down quite a lot, but it also stopped the bleeding on his back, which actually helped him. The icy man's knife had cut all the way down to his bone, and his bones were exposed.

But Su Tao seemed like he didn't care in the slightest as he turned around and charged at the fiery man. He was still using the inner energy stored in his hand in the tattoos to increase his power, meaning that he hit much stronger than anyone in this fight currently. That was why he was able to knock out the icy man just by punching him in the gut.

Su Tao was now charging at the fiery man, but the fiery man was far too close for him to get any momentum. As such, at the last moment, he dodged to the side of the attack, going to the side of the fiery man and he stuck out his leg, which the fiery man was not expecting, causing him to run into Su Tao's leg and trip, falling over in a tumble.

Su Tao then continued on his path, moving towards the disruptive woman. She now only had her left arm viable for use of inner energy, but her right arm was not useless. It was simply singed from the lightning and twitching a little bit from the electricity, but she could still use it to block punches from Su Tao.

By now, Su Tao had used half of his left eye's healing power and only had a fifth of his right eye's power left. His whole body was covered in deep cuts at this point, and his right arm was now starting to feel more numb. He could also feel the corrosive inner energy start to work more as the fight went on, and it was slowly overpowering his healing ability.

He was now charging at the disruptive woman, and she used her right arm to block Su Tao's hit while swinging at him with her left arm which had the disruptive inner energy on it.

Su Tao's swing was about to connect with her arm, but he suddenly pulled it back and ducked down, avoiding her own punch, after which he sprung up from the ground and smashed his fist directly into her jaw, and she was not quick enough to block it.

The full force of his fist impacted with her jaw and it slammed into her head, knocking her out. Now, two of the four people were unconscious. But it was at this time that the corrosive woman came back. She had to find a sold wall to slam her arms into to pop them back into place, which took a minute to do.

Now there was the fiery man, who had regained his footing at his back, and the corrosive woman who was now charging at him from the front. But he unexpectedly did absolutely nothing, just standing there.

At this point, he only had a tenth of his right eye's power left, and he had only a fifth of his left eye's healing power left as well. He was reaching his limits, literally. If the fight dragged on much longer, he would not be able to stop himself from being killed.

He just stood there, and just as both of them were about to reach him, he crouched down into what seemed to be a ducking position, but the next moment, when both the corrosive woman and the fiery man had already swung their weapons, he put every ounce of strength he had into his legs and jumped straight up into the air, just above where their weapons were going to hit him previously.

The two weapons then collided with each other, and the fiery man's knife was knocked out of his hand from the weight of the sword, and the sword overswung, throwing the corrosive woman off balance at the same time, messing both of them up in one move.

Then, as Su Tao was coming down, he swung his fist, going straight towards the woman's head, which it collided with instantly. Her body was then flung into the ground face first, with her being knocked out instantly. The fiery man had moved out of the way quick enough and he was trying to get his weapon back now.

The next moment, he managed to grab it off the ground, but he was not paying close enough attention, and Su Tao's fist slammed into the back of his head, throwing him into the ground unconscious just like the corrosive woman.

All four of them had been knocked out at this point, but suddenly, Su Tao's right eye's power completely ran out, and there was only a quarter of his left eye's power left.

As soon as it wore off, the fiery, icy, corrosive, and disruptive inner energy would all start affecting him at the same time, and it would not be good if that happened in the middle of the streets. Most of the fiery and icy inner energy was gone, but there was still some remaining.

And as for the corrosive and disruptive inner energies, they would take about fifteen minutes to go away, meaning that it would be after he had already used all of his left eye's power that it would wear off.

He was faced with a decision, take the time to kill all these people and risk not being able to get back to Su Xue's residence quick enough, or let them live and have a much higher chance of reaching her residence quick enough.

After a moment of consideration, he decided to leave them alive for now, because he could feel just how quickly the power of his left eye was fading. He would absolutely kill them here if he had the time to, but currently he did not have any of the explosive power of his right eye to help him, and it would take quite a bit of effort to kill them without it.

This would not only use time he did not have, but also energy that he could not afford to waste, so as much as he wanted to kill them all, he had to let them live for him to survive. He just knew that it was going to come back to bite him in the ass later.

As he made his decision, he quickly ran as fast as his legs could carry him down the road, but he forgot about the reason he had stopped earlier.

As soon as he passed where he had previously stopped, he saw someone hiding in a corner holding a container of some kind, and the second that person saw him, they threw the container, which exploded midair, releasing a large quantity of some form of gas into the air.

The moment the person threw the gas canister, they put on a mask and ran away. It was too close to Su Tao for him to avoid the gas in the air, so he just held his breath as well as he could, but some of the gas got into his open wounds. He could instantly feel that it was a strong poison that could even get someone sick through skin contact.

Instantly he started to feel a little groggy, but he pushed through it and ignored it. He ran as far as his legs could carry him and ended up reaching Su Xue's residence. He was barely able to keep himself standing as he opened the door and fell inside. He did not even have the ability to yell for Su Xue to help him as he lost consciousness and the power of his left eye was spent.

Title: Ambush in the Night