53 - Up to fate

Su Tao stood there in perfectly black robes that looked like the darkest of midnight skies. In his hand was a knife, and he was trying to cut a small part of the sleeve on the robes.

However, he was surprised to find that, without putting in the black power of his heart into the knife, he couldn't actually cut through it. However, this didn't surprise him at all. What he was truly curious about came next.

He then tried to interact with the black power of his heart that was left in the robes, and he felt as if he could control every bit of that power. As such, he tried to control the power surrounding certain threads in the robes.

Soon enough, the threads in the part of the robe that he had cut started to move towards each other, and once they touched, Su Tao felt the fibers in the threads start to wrap around each other and twirl together, mending the thread.

Slowly, he could see that the robes started to put themselves back together, and that the cut vanished as if it was never there. He could not help but be happy seeing this, as it meant that he had yet another layer of protection.

He figured that the robes themselves could stop a lot of an attack, and the fact that they could heal themselves spoke of their value now.

And this was under the basis that he wasn't even actively putting any of the power of his heart into them. All it took was a bit of focus to heal them, and that was it. He figured he could increase their defense if he put more power in, but he didn't want to do that for now since he didn't understand what exactly had just happened.

He looked at the ground, only to see that his bow and all his arrows had been covered by the black power of his heart as well. Not only that, they were also of higher quality than before, and he could sense that they were slightly stronger.

As he sensed the black blood within his body, he realized that there was a larger amount of it than before, and that it was also recovering what had been lost just now in healing the robes extremely quickly.

He also realized that as long as he was in contact with his robes, he could subconsciously control the black power of his heart in it and prevent it from fading away, meaning that it was constantly full of the power of his heart without him even intentionally doing so.

He was extremely happy right now, and he was even more confident in completing the assassination and getting away unharmed.

But the only disadvantage of this was that the robes were more recognizable since they were unnaturally dark. However, this was not very uncommon, so it didn't really matter.

Picking up his bow, he felt that he could completely control it, and that he could control it as he wanted without even thinking about it. The string was also not rigid anymore, and just like the robes, it acted as it originally did.

However, he felt extremely weird at the moment. If someone was to look at him, they would undoubtedly all say the same thing. He looked like an assassin, and nothing about him seemed to say otherwise.

As such, he naturally felt weird. He was not a person who killed for a living. He paid back what he was dealt, but that was it. He didn't like killing, so he was not fit to be an assassin.

He didn't like this look, so he instantly took out the arrows and took back all of the power of his heart from them, and he put all of it into his robes. He then did the same with his bow.

After all, he couldn't just go around with these things showing, because then everything could easily be traced back to him.

After putting all the black power into his robes, they looked extremely weird. They seemed to be living, yet they obviously weren't since they were just robes.

Su Tao was happy to find that he now needed to use the power of his heart to improve his knife to the absolute maximum and also use his a large portion of his lightning inner energy just to cut through the robes, and even then, not a lot of damage was dealt to his body underneath, and it simply healed right away anyway.

Paired with his misty ripple body, he was almost completely invincible against those at the one star silver rank even if he didn't fight back much.

At this point, he was confident to go up against a two star silver rank even without the power of his eyes.

He had also discovered that with the help of the power of his eyes and his full force attack with a weapon that was strengthened by the power of his heart, he could unleash attacks comparable to a weak middle tier two star silver rank warrior.

As for his normal attacks, they were comparable to an average low tier two star silver rank with the boost of using a weapon strengthened by the power of his heart.

He also found that the black barrier he could form with the black blood also got stronger, and he figured it could likely stop the full force attack of a low tier two star silver rank head on. And since the amount of the black blood had increased, he figured that he could at least use this stronger barrier three times.

In short, unless it was a prolonged battle with someone at the two star silver rank, he was completely confident to come out of a fight basically unharmed.

He also felt that his body had become a little stronger as well as his potential, which was just a side effect of the evolution of his heart. But whether it was a side effect or not, he would gladly accept it.

With the evolution of his heart over, he then moved on to cultivation once again. He had already figured out how to shoot from a mile away, so the only thing to do now was wait.

He could technically go into the city and look for a vantage point, but that place wasn't very important to have right now since he would be able to find it just as fast later on.

There were now fourteen days left until the night before the wedding, and time was getting short for him to get any stronger.

Those fourteen days passed very quickly, and Su Tao steadily ground away at the barrier to the two star silver rank, having broken through 24% by now.

On this night, Su Tao moved into the city. It was still extremely easy for him to get into the city despite the Su family increasing its security before the wedding. Adding his perfectly black robes, it was even easier.

It was a clear night, which was extremely good for Su Tao. He quickly leapt up on top of some houses and looked into the center of the Su family.

At the edge of his view, he could see that there were many people bustling about despite it being nighttime. Everyone was hanging up decorations and they all seemed to be excited.

They were setting up the venue of the wedding, and this was where Su Xue and Su Long would be married to each other.

As such, Su Tao moved a little closer to the venue just to get a closer look, and he found a few places a mile away that he could hide in to have sight of the wedding ceremony and pull off the assassination.

He then went to what he thought was the best of these places and just sat down on the roof, watching everything being set up. Nobody could possibly see him in the dead of night, and his body had no aura whatsoever.

He was not just watching the venue being set up though. He was scanning through the entire city just to make sure that the Elders weren't pulling any tricks. After all, the only reason that the wedding was moved up was because of him. He fully expected them to try to pull off some tricks.

But weirdly enough, there seemed to be nothing wrong happening at all, and he didn't even see any of the Elders. It was as if they really were planning on just having the wedding tomorrow without even looking for Su Tao, who they knew was coming.

This made him suspicious, and he couldn't stop himself from going around the whole Su family looking for things out of the ordinary.

He even looked into Su Xue's house, but he saw that the window shades were closed, and he couldn't see anything inside.

However, the one thing that he did see was that there were guards around her house, not to keep other people out, but to keep her in. It was clear that she had tried to run away at some point and was brought back.

Su Tao hated to see this, not only because of the fact that he owed Su Xue a life debt, but her situation was similar to his sister's. She was being forced to be with someone she didn't want to be with, and he would likely rape her under the name of being husband and wife.

Seeing this, Su Tao got angry, but he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize the assassination he was planning.

He never ended up finding anything, so he just went back to the roof where he was waiting for the morning. Nobody would ever look for him here since even the most experienced archers couldn't shoot from so far away. Even he could barely do so.

Soon, the sun came up over the horizon, and he saw the whole Su family get lively as many many people started to move towards the wedding venue. There was barely anyone that didn't show up.

Su Tao also saw the Elders as well as the Grand Elder of the family at the three star silver rank. As expected, the Grand Elder stood directly next to Su Long, and he was keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings.

It was obvious that they were waiting for Su Tao to make his move. After all, a peak tier one star silver rank could easily kill a low tier in less than a second, let alone one skilled in bow and arrow that had no aura.

Su Tao could clearly see the Grand Elder's perceptive eyes even from a mile away, as if he was right in front of him.

But even the Grand Elder was incapable of detecting his gaze.

Su Tao was just watching the situation for now. It would be a long time before the ceremony actually started.

But it was at this moment that he saw Su Xue. The moment he saw her, he knew that something was terribly wrong.

Something had gone terribly wrong, but he didn't know what it was.

Her face had gone somewhat blank, and she had a numb expression. There was no hope in her eyes as she looked around. Su Tao could see stains of tears on her cheeks that had long ago dried.

This was not the face of someone who had lost hope for the future. It was the face of someone who had been wronged and had no way out.

Su Tao didn't know what had happened to give her this expression, but he hated it. He hated seeing that expression of helplessness. It sickened him to his core.

At this moment, Su Tao realized that he was likely already too late. She had lost all power to resist as she just complied with whatever the people told her to do.

Seeing this, Su Tao was extremely angry. Without hesitation, he took out his bow, filled it with the power of his heart, and nocked an arrow filled with the same power onto it.

He then drew it back to full draw, and he shot it up into the sky.

A little while later, the arrow landed in front of Su Xue. She was currently alone in one of the rooms of a building, but an arrow had just burst through the roof and into the room.

It caught her attention, obviously, and when she saw it stick into the floorboards in front of her, she got curious as to who had shot it. It was clearly not intended to kill her, but she didn't understand what it meant.

She then pulled the arrow out of the ground, only to be surprised as she saw that it was more than halfway into the ground before it stopped.

As she looked at it, she hoped to find a note or something, but there was nothing there.

As such, she simply looked at the arrow itself. It was a perfect arrow, one that even her own arrows could not compare to.

She then sat back down with the arrow in hand, and continued to stare at it, as if pleading it to speak to her.

Only after another few minutes had passed did something finally happen. The black arrow started to fade, and it was revealed that it was just a normal arrow covered in something.

As she saw this, it reminded her of something, but she couldn't quite recall what it was.

However, as the black started to fade more and more, she suddenly remembered what it was, and a tear dripped down her face as she felt a moment of joy and hope as a faint smile of relief covered her face.

She knew who this arrow was from, and it gave her a bit of hope in this seemingly hopeless situation, like charcoal in a snowstorm.

Su Tao saw this through the window of her room, and he knew that his message had gotten across. He then turned his attention back to Su Long.

Unfortunately, he was guarded by his grandfather at all times, and Su Tao couldn't possibly get past a three star silver rank warrior that was on guard.

Su Long was as happy as could be right now, and his face was filled with joy. However, Su Tao could see that, rather than joy, he mostly felt lust.

He was lustful towards Su Xue, and he didn't really love her. He wanted her because she was beautiful and talented, and he couldn't resist.

After another hour or so, the ceremony finally started. Su Xue was dressed in a beautiful white gown, and it made her look like a goddess in white.

There was a fake expression of joy on her face, but Su Tao could see that there was some real joy hidden on her face, undoubtedly because she knew that Su Tao would try to help her.

The wedding ceremony was grand and glorious as nearly the whole Su family was here.

Behind Su Xue stood her father and her grandfather, of which the grandfather hated this marriage and only wanted her to be happy. Her father, on the other hand, had a fake look of joy on his face that concealed greed and nothing else. She had no mother or grandmother.

Behind Su Long stood his father and grandfather. His mother stood beside him, and his grandmother was dead.

Su Tao knew that now was the time. He only had one chance, and if he messed it up, he couldn't salvage the situation.

As the wedding started, Su Long was the first to say his vows, and during this time, he had to step forward and away from his father and grandfather.

But Su Tao did not act yet.

After this, Su Xue stepped forward and said her vows, getting slightly anxious at how close this was getting.

She couldn't help but worry that something had happened to Su Tao. After all, he wouldn't shoot that arrow for her to see if he wasn't going to help.

However, it was not the time to worry as she said her vows and walked in front of Su Long.

They were now right in front of each other, and they both held goblets of wine in their hands.

This world's wedding ceremony was to say vows and drink from each other's wine goblets.

At this moment, they started to say their final vows and were preparing to exchange wine.

It was now the final moment, but Su Tao had already shot the arrow. It was now up to fate's hand.