Chapter 186: Smoke Trail

The hound bounded faster, closing the gap between Zen, Shibi and their temporary steed and its drooling jaws.

Shibi gathered fire in front of his chest and sent out a stream of fire. The hound dodged the fire, still moving forward. The Scorch Ape beat its chest in frustration.

“What’s wrong, Shibi?”

“Hound. Following us!”

“This guy should be faster than them.” Zen said, rubbing the steed.

The hound caught up and leapt onto the steed and sunk its claws deep into the steed. It became unsteady as Zen tried to reach for his storage stone in order to get to his Zen Blade. The hound bit his leg and Zen screamed as it took a chunk of his pants.

“Get off me!” he shouted as the steed veered into the tall grass before falling over.

Zen flipped over and over and instinctively got to his feet. He finally reached his storage stone and pulled out his short sword as he glared at the hound with a piece of his pants in its mouth.

It bared its canines at him and he did the same. They stood still, glaring at each other as the only movement came from the steed that was furiously struggling to get back to its feet. He got a whiff of killing intent and prepared to fight the beast then he realised that the hound was not the source of the killing intent.

Zen ducked as a stream of needles passed over head and arhed down to the steed, killing it. Shibi got onto his feet and began running, Shibi joining him.

“Shibi, some cover please!” he said.

Shibi’s body began blazing.

The Masked Woman joined her hound and looked out at the tall grass, a burning path was being lit in it, throwing up dark smoke into the air.

“Fools,” she said, looking at her hound and the piece of cloth on the ground. She picked it up and looked at it. “You won’t escape me with cheap tricks.”

Zen moved through the tall grass, keeping as low as possible while Shibi set the dry grass around them in flame.

“The smoke should cover our re…”

The Masked Woman came from seemingly nowhere atop of him. He rolled out of the way as the spinning needle sphere shredded into the grass and ground. There was a flash of flame from Shibi and there was a plume of smoke that hid Zen and Shibi.

She shot a stream of needles at the smoke but hit nothing. She looked as a line of fire stretched out in the yellow field of grass. She used a ki technique to boost her movement.

“How is he moving so fast?” she asked herself. “Does he or that moneky of his have a speed boosting techinique like mine?”

She stopped in front of the line of fire and saw… nothing.

She looked around, realising she had been tricked and did not know where they were.

Night had fallen and the crescent moon was up in the sky. Two enforcers heard a sound in an alleyway.

“Who is there?” one of them said. “Show yourself!”

They approached the source of the sound, their spears pointed at the ready. They saw nothing in the alleyway.

“Must’ve been some beast.” The other said before they moved on.

Above on the ledge overlooking the alleyway was Zen. He pressed his hand to his abdomen, where blood seeped out.

“Damn that woman and her needles!” Zen cursed.

Shibi looked down at the enforcers waiting for them to be out of sight.

“Why not ask enforcers for help?”

“The city is on high alert.” Zen said. “If I reveal myself to them, they’ll probably let me die out of suspiscion of being a commoner rebel. No, my only hope is to get back to the academy.” Zen began walking away. “Come.”

His vision began to blur as he entered the academy then everything went black…