Unparalleled medical and martial arts skills, saving the CEO's fiancée at the start.

As soon as Wen Jiuhong finished speaking, the blue flames in the cave suddenly shot upwards, as if they had been pushed up from the ground by something.

The flames were extremely cold; the higher they burned, the colder the surrounding area became.

Ye Chen felt a chill creep up from the soles of his feet, making his back teeth chatter.

Ghost Servant pulled Jiang Ruoxi behind him, holding the iron ruler across his chest, his face solemn.

Han Song and his men also spread out in a fan shape, surrounding Wen Jiuhong and the ball of blue flame behind him.

"What are you burning?" Ye Chen asked, gripping his sword and walking forward step by step.

The firelight cast patches of blue and white on his face, but his eyes were like two drawn swords.

Wen Jiuhong didn't answer, but turned to the side so that Ye Chen could see what was in the fire.

The wooden box was burned down to half, and you could vaguely see some yellowed paper pages inside, with small blue flames rising from the edges of the pages.

Jiang Ruoxi caught sight of a very familiar piece of fabric dangling from the box. Her voice, as if gripped by a knife, was forced out through clenched teeth: "That's my mother's plum blossom patterned handkerchief! And my father's handwriting!"

She disregarded everything else and rushed toward the fire.

Ye Chen grabbed her hand and hissed, "Don't go over there! That fire is wrong!"

Wen Jiuhong clapped lightly, as if praising Ye Chen's composure: "Minister Ye is knowledgeable and experienced. This is the Cold Yin Fire brought from the Blackwater Headquarters' underground vault. When it comes into contact with a living person, it can absorb their yang energy. If you had taken just two more steps forward, President Jiang would have lost his life here. Fortunately, you did not disappoint me."

Ye Chen's pupils contracted.

This fire is definitely suspicious.

Wen Jiuhong's act of setting fire to the box was a ruse; his real intention was to force them closer.

On the surface, he was burning Jiang Ruoxi's mother's belongings, but in reality, he turned the entire cave into a trap.

The reason the blue flame was cold was that it wasn't burning firewood at all, but some kind of yin energy drawn from the depths of an ancient tomb.

"You burned Ruoxi's mother's belongings just to lure us here." Ye Chen's voice also turned cold.

He released Jiang Ruoxi and slowly drew the Ku Zhao Sword. The sword reflected the blue flames, as if it had been coated with a layer of ghostly light, emitting an extremely faint hum.

Two men in black behind Wen Jiuhong also stepped forward, each carrying a thick copper chain.

The chain was the same one Wen Jiuhong had used before; it seemed to be specifically designed to lock swords.

Ye Chen gave the ghost servant a wink, and the two of them sprang up almost simultaneously.

The ghost servant darted out like a gray crane, his iron ruler aimed straight for Wen Jiuhong's nape; Ye Chen swung his sword forward, the tip pointing towards Wen Jiuhong's chest.

Wen Jiuhong neither dodged nor evaded, but merely shifted his body slightly to the side. The two men in black behind him, like puppets on strings, simultaneously blocked his path, their copper chains swinging horizontally, one to the left and one to the right, like two copper snakes coiling towards Ye Chen and the ghost servant.

The sword clashed with the chain with a clang, and sparks, illuminated by the blue flames, resembled exploding will-o'-the-wisps.

Ye Chen felt a tingling sensation in his hand, and the force from the copper chain was continuous and subtle, almost causing the withered sword to be caught in it.

The ghost servant was also tightly bound by another copper chain, and the iron ruler could not be passed within three feet of Wen Jiuhong several times.

Seeing this, Han Song and Ayiguli also rushed up from both sides.

Aygul's knife moved nimbly, specifically targeting the nodes of the copper chain; Han Song's fist was heavy and powerful, striking one of the men in black head-on, forcing the man to retreat repeatedly.

Individually, none of these people are particularly strong, but once they form a formation, it becomes as slippery and hard as a tortoise shell.

The more Ye Chen fought, the more unfathomable Wen Jiuhong seemed.

He hasn't really made a move yet, relying solely on two henchmen and a copper chain to handle the five of them with ease in this cave.

Ye Chen glanced at Jiang Ruoxi and saw that she had retreated to a stone pillar, her face pale, but she didn't panic.

He was momentarily distracted, and the copper chain, like a serpent, had already passed under his armpit and almost wrapped around his neck.

In the nick of time, he performed a backflip with a swift movement, flicking his sword upwards to deflect the copper chain by half an inch, barely managing to avoid the danger.

The ghost servant seized the opportunity to strike the man's knee with a foot-long blow, causing the man to groan and fall to one knee.

Han Song also kicked another person away, sending him crashing into the stone wall, where he couldn't get up for a long time.

Wen Jiuhong suddenly changed his tactics.

He emerged from the copper chain array like a fish, grabbed the half-destroyed wooden box in the fire, and pulled it out of the blue flames, unconcerned about the heat.

He tossed the wooden box toward Jiang Ruoxi and laughed, "President Jiang, here you go. I burned half of your mother's belongings, and I'm giving you the other half."

Jiang Ruoxi saw the wooden box flying towards her and reached out to catch it.

Aygul rushed from the side, flicked her short knife, and stopped the wooden box in mid-air. The tip of her knife lifted the broken half of the box and landed on the ground.

Several charred pieces of paper fell out of the box, along with a whole corner of a plum blossom patterned handkerchief.

Jiang Ruoxi knelt down, held the handkerchief in her hands, and finally tears fell.

When Ye Chen saw the handkerchief, his heart felt as if it had been stabbed hard with a needle.

He lunged at Wen Jiuhong with a sudden, powerful strike, his sword flashing like a raging tide, leaving no room for retreat.

This time, Wen Jiuhong did not back down. He reached out with both hands from his sleeves and caught the blade with his bare hands. He slapped the back of the sword with one hand and aimed straight for Ye Chen's throat with the other.

Ye Chen tilted his head to avoid the claw, then spun his sword and slashed towards Wen Jiuhong's ribs.

Wen Jiuhong shrank back as if he had no bones, and the sword tip only sliced ​​off half of his clothes.

The two exchanged more than ten moves in front of the blue flame, so fast that bystanders could hardly get a chance to intervene.

Ghost Servant and Han Song sought an opportunity to attack from behind, but Wen Jiuhong always managed to avoid a fatal blow at a very small angle, like a slippery black snake.

Just then, a very deep rumble suddenly came from the back of the cave, as if some huge object had rolled down from the ground.

The blue flames also suddenly contracted, then exploded into a sky full of blue sparks, like hundreds or thousands of fireflies flying out of hell at the same time.

Ye Chen and the others instinctively retreated. Wen Jiuhong seized the opportunity to leap backward, his voice coming from the blue sparks, distant and cold: "I've returned the box to you. Now, I'll wait for you to come to me. I'll be waiting for you at the headquarters. Ye Chen, bring Jiang Ruoxi. All the answers are there."

When the blue flames dissipated, Wen Jiuhong and his last two subordinates had disappeared.

Behind the cave hall, a dark passageway appeared, like a stone door that had been shaken open by the roar.

Ye Chen did not chase after him.

He turned around and ran to Jiang Ruoxi's side, helping her up from the ground.

Jiang Ruoxi still had tears on her face, and she was tightly clutching the plum blossom patterned handkerchief in her hand.

She looked up at him and said in a hoarse voice, "He deliberately returned the things to me to lead us to the main headquarters."

Ye Chen nodded and gently wiped her face with his sleeve: "I know, so we have to go this time, but before we go, we have to search every corner of this place to see what else he has done in the cave."

After Ye Chen finished speaking, he sheathed the Ku Zhao Sword and glanced at the stone wall blackened by the blue flames.

Ye Chen knew that Wen Jiuhong's trip into the Dragon Heart Cave was not just to burn a wooden box.

He must have taken something else with him.

The thing that was taken away was the real hook.