54 - (Spoiler in title)

Everything was in peaceful suspense as the wedding came to the climax. Just a couple more moments, and they would be wed forever.

Su Xue and Su Long stood in front of each other, each holding up a goblet of wine. They had said their final vows, and they were just about to drink each other's wine.

However, it was at this moment that the Grand Elder finally noticed that there was a black blob moving rapidly towards Su Long.

He had been on guard against Su Tao's lightning or watery inner energies, spending a lot of his focus sensing for auras. However, he had not expected the arrow to have absolutely no aura at all and was thus caught off guard.

He instantly tried to get to Su Long, but Su Long's father was in the way, and he spent only a moment pushing him out of the way as he fully activated all the inner energy in his body as everything around him started to get colder.

However, he was destined to be too late as the arrow struck into Su Long's shoulder just before his lips touched Su Xue's goblet. If Su Long's father hadn't been in the way, the result might have been different.

He instantly fell back in pain. However, the arrow just continued to go through his shoulder as if it had hit nothing at all.

But just as it was a quarter of the way through his shoulder, the vast amount of Su Tao's black power of his heart grew extremely unstable and bulbous.

Su Tao had put an extreme amount of his black heart's power into this arrow, and it was many times more than he normally would, and this was why.

Before the arrow could even get halfway through his shoulder, the entire arrow suddenly exploded, blowing up his entire shoulder and and sending splinters of wood and metal everywhere, including directly into his heart.

Su Long had almost instantly died, and his grandfather only reached him the moment the arrow exploded, unable to save his grandson.

"NOOOO!!!" He called out as he saw his grandson die right in front of him. He had thought that the issue of a looming assassination was not a major threat since he was right there, but his grandson had just gotten snuffed out right under his nose.

He really did care about his grandson even if he was an idiot. Seeing him die right in front of him filled him with such immense hate that he didn't know what to do with it.

He didn't even have enough time to look which direction the arrow had come from, so he had no clue where to start searching for his grandson's killer.

Su Tao had already moved to a different position the moment he fired the arrow as well, so even if the Grand Elder truly could track the direction, it wouldn't be correct.

Seeing the arrow strike Su Long, Su Tao let out a breath of relief. He never doubted that, as long as the arrow struck Su Long, it would kill him.

Su Tao then left the Su family and went back into the woods without the slightest hesitation.

Meanwhile, Su Xue had just been feeling anxious because Su Tao hadn't taken action, and she felt that it might be too late.

However, the moment they were about to exchange wine, a black arrow appeared out of thin air and stabbed into Su Long's shoulder, after which it exploded and killed him instantly.

She didn't even have time to react before Su Long was dead. The one who had made her life a living hell recently was dead just like that.

But then, a fragment of the arrowhead suddenly flew towards her, and before she had the chance to react, it cut straight through her cheek, leaving a long cut along her cheek under her eye.

Finally, a moment after all this happened, she finally reacted and dropped the goblet of wine, which fell to the ground, spilling all over everything.

Her dress had already had some of Su Long's blood splashed on it, but it wasn't very much.

However, at this moment, Su Long's dead body also dropped his goblet of wine, and it splashed across her white dress, drenching her torso in wine, making it look like someone had bled out on top of it, totally ruining it.

Only as the goblets loudly clattered on the ground did anyone else finally react.

At first, there was a moment of absolute silence in which a pin drop could be heard.

Then, after a few seconds, absolute chaos broke out among the crowd.

Su Xue took a couple steps back, completely incapable of understanding what she had just seen.

However, the next moment, her eyes filled with tears of joy as she found it impossible to conceal her joy. But she couldn't let anyone else see this.

As such, she ran away, and nobody could care to stop her as she ran straight out of the city and into the forest. She didn't stop until she was well into the forest.

Then, she fell to her knees as she sobbed tears of joy. Her face had a radiant smile on it, and she found it impossible to contain herself.

She didn't even notice that her cheek was bleeding, nor that it was cut at all.

Her dress had been stained with the wine which had almost ruined her life forever, and the blood from her cheek dripped down onto it as well, staining nearly the whole dress blood red.

The bottom of it was filled with mud and leaves, and there were several chunks that had been ripped out by bushes and branches in the forest as she ran through it.

Nobody would think that it was a wedding dress anymore based on its current condition.

She continued to sit there for a while, sobbing. Her personal hell was now over, and she almost didn't believe that it was real.

However, at this moment, a voice rang out nearby.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't help you earlier."

Su Tao had long ago seen her leave the Su family, and he had come over to her. After all, he already expected her to possibly run out here.

But she barely even reacted to hearing his voice.

"But I cannot do this again. If you need help again, I cannot help you from the shadows anymore."

Su Tao spoke coldly, obviously telling her that he was now looking out for himself.

It wasn't that he wasn't going to help her. Rather, it was that he wasn't going to help her from the shadows like he had just done.

That was because, this time, because everyone was caught off guard, nobody - not even the grand elder - was able to determine what exactly it was that killed Su Long.

But if Su Tao were to help her again in a similar or the same way, they would be on guard against it, and if they could identify what it was that did this, they would be able to figure out that it was Su Tao.

This was because he obviously wasn't going to hide the fact that he could use the black power on his weapons. After all, his robes themselves had that same power in them, and that was impossible to hide anyway.

Anyone would be able to tell that there was something off about his robes, and the fact that they had no aura was something that could be related to the arrow that was shot to kill Su Long.

In short, if he were to attempt something similar in the future, it would be somewhat possible for them to figure out it was him, and there would also be more witnesses as well since it would be more expected.

Currently, the only one who had actually even seen the arrow itself was the grand elder, and even he wasn't able to identify what it even was, seeing it only as a black blob due to his inattentiveness towards it.

He hadn't even managed to figure out that it was an arrow, and he hadn't even really seen it explode either, thinking that whatever it was had broken and shattered from the force of the impact or something similar. After all, such a thing was not exceedingly uncommon.

After saying this, Su Tao left her alone. He could do nothing to help her get away from the city, and she knew this. She had merely come here to get away from the city in order to calm down.

She would be tracked down and brought back to the city if she didn't go back on her own, and Su Tao couldn't help her to escape from that right now.

He technically could help her, but not only did it cause a massive amount of problems, it also inconvenienced him to the extreme and also would cost him a massive amount of time and effort.

Such problems were not worth protecting Su Xue when she would face no harm even if he didn't help her.

She didn't really mind him saying that he couldn't help her like this again, and even if he said that he would never help her again, she wouldn't particularly care. This was because she had just been saved from a fate worse than death, and both of them knew it.

This was because, a while after Su Tao left the city, Su Long started to come over to Su Xue's house nearly every day.

Under the pretense of being fiancé and fiancé, he would then rape Su Xue every single time he came over. Su Tao had been able to figure this out on his own the moment he saw Su Xue before the wedding.

She had tried several times to run away, but she was caught and brought back every single time.

In a way, Su Tao accidentally making the wedding earlier was a good thing, because it saved Su Xue from being raped nearly every day for several more years before the wedding.

And after the wedding, Su Long would only do even worse things to Su Xue, undoubtedly getting her pregnant being one of them. Su Xue was happy that she could escape from such a horrible fate at all, let alone earlier than previously possible.

In her eyes, Su Tao had more than paid her back for her saving his life twice. And the fact that he said he couldn't help her in the shadows showed that he still intended to help her at some point further along.

She didn't blame him for not helping her earlier or staying with her previously, and that was because, if he did, things would only be worse than they were now, with Su Tao likely dying in the process and never giving her the chance to escape from Su Long.

Now, when she went back into the city, she wouldn't be raped nearly every day, and she wouldn't have to worry about anyone trying to marry her or force her into marriage.

This was because nearly everybody thought that the assassination was done by some supreme expert based on the fact that not even the grand elder could sense the aura of the arrow.

Everybody figured that that expert had set their eyes on Su Xue because she was pretty, and nobody would dare to go against such a person just for the chance to marry her. In other words, she was forbidden.

The cut across her cheek would serve as a reminder of what Su Tao had done for her for years to come.

After a long while, she stood up with a much calmer expression and went back into the city. She didn't stop for anybody and went directly to her house.

She didn't do anything to help the cut on her face heal. She wanted it to scar, and she couldn't care less how it affected her beauty.

As for Su Tao, he stayed in the forest, and he wouldn't come out for a while.

He promised to himself that the next time he would come out, he would be at the two star silver rank.

Title: Success