On a small hill that was less than 200 feet tall stood around two dozen people in a loose gathering. They were all in different attire, but the looks on their faces and in their eyes were completely identical.

A burly man was knelt down on one knee, carefully examining a pair of stiff corpses. He used his fingers to pry back the eyelid of one of the bodies, revealing an eyeball that resembled a piece of cracked porcelain.

The short woman, who had changed into cotton clothes worn by the common woman, slowly made her way up the hill, followed by Yang Hua and Xu Hunran.

She refrained from approaching the two bodies, pinching her nose shut as she asked in a heavy nasal voice, "What happened here, Wang Yifu?"

Wang Yifu heaved a faint sigh in response. "Both of them were killed by a single strike from a master blade user. Their bodies are completely unharmed, but their meridians have all been shattered, and their internal organs have completely rotted away."

A grim look appeared on the woman's face as she mused, "How is it possible that two master martial artists of such a high caliber have appeared in our Great Li Empire without being detected? Song Changjing has always been responsible for supervising the border, and he's always proclaimed that nothing gets by him. Why is it that he was unable to detect anything this time? Could it be that he intentionally let the perpetrators go?"

Wang Yifu hesitated momentarily, then said, "Your Majesty, if I'm not mistaken, there is only a single perpetrator."

The woman's eyes immediately narrowed upon hearing this, giving her a rather menacing appearance. "What did you say?!"

Wang Yifu pointed at the necks of the two bodies, and there was a thin red line visible on each of them. "This line runs continuously across the necks of the two deceased individuals, so it's clear that both wounds were dealt by a single slash."

The woman took a deep breath, trying to repress her fury and killing intent as much as possible as she sneered, "Since...