A memory of Bai LiuXian's death

The darkness lifted and their vision cleared up.

Jie Fu Lian was sitting on the bed, Hua Tianshu was standing near the window and Duan Luoyang was sitting beside the door with a lamp in hand .

The moment they opened their eyes, they looked at each other and immediately understood the situation.

"We are at... The Bai Manor?" Duan Luoyang asked with a small frown plastered on his face.

Jie Fu Lian nodded his head and gulped as he spoke, "We are in the guard quarters."

"Did we possess the body of the guards?!" Duan Luoyang asked with a bit of shock but before his question could be answered, he immediately shook his head as he spoke, "That can't be it. We look like ourselves. Were there any guards that looked like us?"

Jie Fu Lian sighed as he heard this and shook his head as he explained, "We didn't possess the guards. Our existence was merely added to the story when the real existences were deleted."

"Huh?"

"We weren't sent to the past," Hua Tianshu spoke up as he tried to explain it a bit more clearly, "We were sent into a memory of the past. Since it's a memory, it can't be altered and whatever we do, won't change what happened in real life. The memory seems to be of three guards. The guards themselves were removed from the memory and we took their place."

Duan Luoyang gulped as he heard this and felt that he had definitely read and learned something about such a technique used in some special investigations. However, it was the first time he was practically experiencing this method of investigation and hence his fascination could not be hid.

"So we are currently eight years in the past?" Duan Luoyang enthusiastically asked.

Hua Tianshu and Jie Fu Lian nodded their heads in unison.

"So Master Jie Fu Lian is still alive?"

"..." This time, Hua Tianshu and Jie Fu Lian looked at each other instead of answering and both had a hint of sadness in their eyes.

Hua Tianshu, "He is alive but we won't get to see him unless he really is the killer."

"Then for the first time, I'll have to hope that I do not meet him today!" Duan Luoyang exclaimed with a small chuckle, "But it's still quite refreshing to know that he is still alive in this memory."

"It is," Hua Tianshu nodded his head with a small smile as he agreed. His expressions were so gentle that Jie Fu Lian couldn't help but stare at him with a weird warm sensation in his heart.

Suddenly, they were interrupted by a knock on the door and Duan Luoyang, who was sitting closest to the door, reacted first as he stood up and opened the door, "Who is it?"

"What do you mean who is it?" An annoyed voice of a man came, "It's your shift, are you slacking off now?!"

Duan Luoyang secretly glanced at Jie Fu Lian and Hua Tianshu before he spoke to the man, "I seem to have forgotten."

"Tch- This is why I tell the chief to train all guards properly," The man grumbled before he replied, "You three, get your asses upstairs! You are in charge of guarding young master Bai LiuXian's chambers tonight. You are already running late so you better hurry!"

"We'll get to work immediately," Duan Luoyang politely responded to the man who looked to be their superior with a nasty personality.

He closed the door and looked back at Hua Tianshu as he asked, "Is he going to die today?"

Hua Tianshu nodded his head, "He'll be attacked today and his body would be found tomorrow."

"Then let's go," Jie Fu Lian jumped off the bed as he spoke, "We can't interfere and save his life but we can try our best to identify the killer."

The three came to a silent agreement and nodded as they immediately left the room and headed upstairs. Although they had never been to Bai LiuXian's chambers before this, it seemed that the memory guided their bodies and they had no problems finding the room.

As guards, their job was to quietly stand in front of the door and prevent anyone from entering, however, as soon as the previous guards switched out with them, Duan Luoyang approached the door of the room and knocked as he asked, "Young Master Bai, are you in there?"

At first, there was no response so the man knocked once again and asked the same question for the second time.

"Who is that?" Bai LiuXian's hurried voice came from inside.

Duan Luoyang gulped as he looked at Hua Tianshu for further orders and Hua Tianshu immediately glanced at Jie Fu Lian who frowned as he heard the voice.

It was quite late at night and Bai LiuXian should have been deep asleep by now. Even if their knocking sound had disturbed and woken him up, his reaction wouldn't have been this hurried, it would have been annoyed and angry.

It seemed that something had already happened!

"Stand aside!" Jie Fu Lian exclaimed and Duan Luoyang instinctively moved aside, letting Jie Fu Lian kick the door open.

"How impudent!" Came a voice from inside the room but it wasn't Bai LiuXian, it was the man who had previously responded to them, pretending to be Bai LiuXian.

"G-guards! Capture him! He's trying to kill me! Capture him!" The real Bai LiuXian who pushed the man off him, shouted at the top of his lungs as he ran towards the three guards.

However, the killer moved faster and with a single sword move, he thrust a wooden sword into Bai LiuXian's chest from behind.

The sword appeared from the front of the man's chest, covered in blood and tearing a hole in the man's chest. Bai LiuXian stared at the three guards in disbelief as he spat out a mouthful of blood before looking down at the hole in his chest.

Duan Luoyang gritted his teeth and took a step forward, trying to help but was immediately held back by Jie Fu Lian who whispered, "You can't save him."

This was nothing more than a mere memory. Whatever they did in the memory was not going to affect the incidents that had happened in the real world. The moment they made a drastic change to the memory, they would be thrown out.

The wooden sword was pulled back by the killer and once again poked another hole in Bai LiuXian's back, this time, the tip of the wooden sword emerged from the man's stomach.

Jie Fu Lian gulped as he carefully looked at the wooden sword.

Surely enough, the wooden sword had been infused with spiritual energy and the art of controlling spirits had been used. However, this wasn't the art of controlling spirits that Jie Fu Lian practiced!

When Jie Fu Lian used the technique, the wooden sword could turn into a snake made from wind or another animal made from different natural elements. However, the art of controlling spirits used by this killer turned the wooden sword into the claws of a demon.

The wooden sword, in itself, wasn't sharp enough to injure a person but when this killer attacked, for a split second, the wooden sword turned into a demon's claw and ripped through Bai LiuXian's flesh and skin.

Jie Fu Lian clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth as he looked at the killer who had his face masked away.

Since the art of controlling spirits was used in such a degrading manner... It was only natural that Jie Fu Lian was a little pissed off.

Right in front of their eyes, Bai LiuXian was killed in the most gruesome way possible. Several holes were poked in his body and his organs splattered out of his body. His eyeballs rolled to the back of his eyes but he never closed his eyes and hence, his face was twisted in fear, his mouth hung open with blood pouring out and his eyes completely white.

He looked like he had died a terrifying and painful death while the sight of his dead body instilled fear in the eyes of the onlookers.

However, the three guards hardly paid attention to Bai LiuXian. Their eyes were focused on the man who had killed Bai LiuXian.

When Bai LiuXian's corpse fell onto the floor, The killer lifted his head to look at the three guards and immediately took out three pins that he aimed and threw at the three guards.

Jie Fu Lian gulped as he saw this action and in a split second, he moved aside and avoided the pin before kicking the other two pins that aimed towards Duan Luoyang and Hua Tianshu.

The murderer looked to be quite shocked by this and immediately turned to flee the scene but before he could jump off the window, Hua Tianshu pulled him back into a fight.

"Duan Luoyang, stand by the window and make sure that he does not escape. There would be more guards outside so he would probably not dare to use the door," Jie Fu Lian immediately explained and ordered Duan Luoyang before he joined Hua Tianshu and fought the murderer.

Duan Luoyang gulped as he saw the intense fight and couldn't help but feel a little intimidated by the skills and power shown by the murderer. He doubted whether he could stop him from escaping but since Jie Fu Lian had entrusted such a task on him, he didn't bother letting his doubts stop him. He quickly moved and guarded the window.