Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
Woken up by urgent knocks on his door, the keeper of the inn hurriedly came to the door with a lantern in hand while lamenting in his heart. “Times are really bad now. Business is languishing, and rooms of the inn are occupied by a group of refugees who’re often late with their rent. Some of them probably got desperate and caused trouble somewhere. The people who’re tracking them down will naturally come here.”
The innkeeper believed himself to be fully prepared for the worst situation, but the moment he opened the door, he got so frightened that he nearly collapsed to the ground.
His inn was tightly surrounded by a group of soldiers, and a pale young man was standing at his door. “This man seems to be the Dragon King,” the innkeeper thought to himself worriedly.
He stood gaping at the young man for a long time, lost for words, before finally saying, “Sir, do you want to check in now?” Even he himself did not understand why he would be asking such a thing as this moment.
Upon learning that the Dragon King just came here for information, he relaxed a little and quickly thought of the handsome teenager. “That was a really strange night. A dozen guests fled without paying their rent. Alas, it was from that moment on that my business started to go into decline,” he said to the Dragon King.
“The boy paid me when he checked in. He was the only one who paid the rent that night. When the night fell, I went to close the door of the inn, but suddenly, 12 or 13 fierce-looking guests rushed into my inn. They were all carrying weapons and asked for best rooms while banging on the tables.”
According to the innkeeper, he had spent quite a long time to settle those guests down and had been too nervous to sleep well that night.
“During the night, I heard a lot of noise. First, I heard somebody kicking a door followed by incomprehensible shouting. After a while, I heard them fighting noisily. The fight lasted for only less than 15 minutes, and then I heard more people joining in. Some of them started escaping and the others chased after them. When they all left, it quickly quieted down outside,” said the innkeeper.
“I went to notify the authorities about the incident the next morning. The officers have come here twice for investigations without managing to find any clues. Since the siege began, I haven’t seen any of them return. After all, it was just a trivial matter; no one died. Only a dozen guests fled without paying rent.”
“Are you saying that the officers haven’t found any corpse here?” Gu Shenwei asked while feeling quite puzzled.
“Yes, they haven’t even managed to find a blood stain here. It was very noisy that night during the fight, but those guys seem to have somehow restrained themselves from hurting one another.” The innkeeper spoke much more fluently now, as he discovered that the Dragon King was not as dreadful as he had imagined.
“That’s all I know about the young swordsman. I’ve never seen him or heard anything about him after that night.”
Gu Shenwei felt even more bewildered after hearing the innkeeper’s statement.“Chu Nanping’s fighting style is just like mine. No matter how many enemies he’s faced with, he’ll not be making so much noise or fail to kill even a single opponent after 15 minutes,” he thought, his lead suddenly gone.
With this in mind, Gu Shenwei asked the innkeeper about the young swordsman’s looks once again. “He had big eyes, a high nose and thin lips and he always kept his mouth tightly closed. He looks like a girl, but I’m sure that he’s a boy. He’s of medium height, so his sword looks quite long for him. When he walks, his feet barely seem to touch the ground. He usually looks thoughtful, but sometimes when he lifts up his head to stare at you, you’ll feel scared. His cold eyes will make you feel… feel… very uncomfortable.” The innkeeper gave the Dragon King a detailed description of the young swordsman. Evidently, he had once carefully observed the boy.
Upon hearing that, Gu Shenwei was 100-percent sure that the young swordsman was Chu Nanping. “There must be some other reasons for this strange incident,” he thought to himself and then asked his men to give the innkeeper a big chunk of silver, which was enough to make up for the loss in revenue suffered during the recent downturn in business.
When he walked out of the inn, it was already dawn. He rode his horse, looking at the ground contemplatively. When he was about to leave the alley, he suddenly looked up, as if struck by a new idea. He said nothing and continued on although he had already gotten a rough idea of what had happened that night.
He was busy for the rest of the day. Although he thought it unlikely that Shangguan Jianyi would come back in three days with a large army to besiege him like what the queen and the prime minister of the Hui Kingdom claimed, he still sent scouts to the Kang and Sha kingdoms to investigate.
To pacify the citizens of the country, he appointed some people to handle governmental affairs, as all the ministers of this country were currently in custody.
The news that the Dragon King was looking for a young swordsman inevitably spread throughout the city, prompting speculation amongst the citizens. They showed even more interest in talking about this matter than discussing about the future of their queen and ministers; some of them even began to have weird ideas.
“Oh, the Dragon King likes…”
“No wonder he was reluctant to marry…”
“…”
They dared not to be too blunt and could only express themselves by exchanging sly looks and smiles.
Soon enough, Gu Shenwei heard about the rumors, but he did not take any measures to stop them. In fact, it was reassuring for him to hear that people of this country cared more about amorous affairs than recent political changes in their nation.
Besides, he also benefited from these rumors, since they made the citizens of the city believe that the Dragon King adored the good-looking boy and would be willing to give handsome awards to the ones who could offer him reliable clues about the boy. As such, lots of people flocked to the Dragon King’s residence to offer information about the young swordsman.
Gu Shenwei did not have much time to deal with these people, so he put Shangguan Fei in charge of this matter. Once a person offered a credible lead, he or she would be awarded.
Shangguan Fei spent an entire day listening to these people, but none of them gave him any valuable information. They were all vague, for example someone would claim that he or she had spotted Chu Nanping being followed by a mysterious guy in some street and that the boy and his stalker had suddenly disappeared together after making a turn. Their so-called intelligence reports sounded alike except for differences in locations; it seemed as if they had bought this piece of information from the same source.
“Stop wasting money,” Shangguan Fei told the Dragon King while cleaning his ear. “Little Chu is probably dead now. Needless to say, it must be my un… no I mean, Shangguan Jianyi who had him killed and buried somewhere. I’m afraid that we’ll never be able to find his corpse unless we’re lucky.”
Gu Shenwei had thought of this possibility before, but he felt that there were too many loopholes in this theory, leading him to disregard it. “Shangguan Jianyi was indiscrete when he carried out assassinations in the Stone Kingdom, as if he was afraid that the people would not know they were committed by the Golden Roc Fort. Why would he suddenly change his style in the Hui Kingdom? If he really killed my bodyguard, why didn’t he chop off his head and show it around to boast of his achievement?”
Out of all the people around the Dragon King, only Shangguan Fei was good at scheming. He was also the only one who dared to not filter his speech when talking to the young lord. This was not because he was braver than the others, but rather due to the fact that he had a casual attitude towards everything in his life, which was meaningless to him anyway.
“Well, that’s a good question. Didn’t he know that Little Chu is your bodyguard? No, that’s impossible. The killers would tell him. They’re well aware about this fact,” replied Shangguan Fei.
He had not cared much about this thing in the beginning, but the Dragon King’s question made him reflect seriously. After a while, he added, “He even sent a guard of the palace to investigate the matter. It seemed unnecessary. Besides, it’s not the Golden Roc Fort’s style to send a group of people to check into an inn openly and cause a commotion there.
“Little Chu also seemed so careless. Why did he openly enter the city? Neither party is stupid, but they did something silly successively. What a strange thing!”
The Dragon King remained silent and gave Shangguan Fei no response. Shangguan Fei frowned and took this as a test; he began to put serious thought into it. A moment later, he suddenly clapped his hands together, saying, “I think there’s only one possible explanation for this incident. Little Chu wanted to lure the enemies out and thus deliberately made a public appearance. Shangguan Jianyi pretended to fall into his trap, but actually he intended to take this chance to capture Little Chu. The winner seemed to be Shangguan Jianyi, but why hasn’t he claimed his victory? I think it must be because he hasn’t killed Little Chu. He probably still has Little Chu under his control and plans to use him against you.”
Gu Shenwei had thought about this possibility before, but at times, he needed somebody to voice out his own thoughts for him; it allowed him to check his theories for loopholes from the perspective of a third party. “Two months have passed since then. Shangguan Jianyi seems too patient. Why hasn’t he taken any action by now?” asked Gu Shenwei.
“Hur Hur. You have to get prepared, Dragon King. Little Chu may suddenly pop out, bloodied and wounded, looking as if he’s been through hell and is now turning to you for consolation. Once you go soft on him, you’ll fall into his trap. You know the tricks of the Golden Roc Fort. No one can endure that kind of torture for two months. Even if his heart was made of stone, he’ll have cracked,” replied Shangguan Fei.
Gu Shenwei was ready to face betrayal at any time since he always regarded loyalty as a rare quality and never expected anyone, even his most trusted friend, to remain loyal to him all the time.
It looked as though the investigation would now be stalled for a while, leaving Shangguan Jianyi with a clear advantage. The Dragon King seemed to have only one choice, which was to wait for his enemy, who was in hiding, to make the first move.
Shangguan Fei thought that this matter did not concern him and thus did not bother to delve too deeply into it; he did not even bother to apply his instincts.
Gu Shenwei did not want to wait any longer, since it would allow his enemies ample time to get fully prepared. At midnight, he quietly left his residence, planning to search for leads by himself.
“Only people can tell lies. By now, many people have given me their testimonies, and unfortunately, this further blurred the truth. I need to find other sources of information that can’t speak and thus can’t lie to me.”
With this in mind, Gu Shenwei looked down upon the alley, where the inn was located, while crouching on a nearby roof, which was slightly higher than the others. He increasingly felt that the guess he had made during the day was correct.
The alley was narrow, twisting and led to a dead end. It was only about 50 to 60 meters long but it had three turns. The houses on both sides of it were low, shabbily-built and joined close to each other. The windows on them looked like small square holes, since each of them was just about 0.04 square meters large. Even in broad daylight, a pedestrian in the alley could not see the insides of the houses. Finally, at the dead end of the alley stood the inn which Chu Nanping had been residing in.
“This is a perfect place for an ambush if there are enough skirmishers involved. Some of them could block the entrance of the alley, forcing their enemies to ump up onto the roofs to flee. Although the houses along the alley look almost the same, there are three parts which are obviously lower than the others. People with some experience will naturally choose these three places to flee toward to. Given this, the ambusher can send some other people to ambush the runaways in those places. They can easily catch and slaughter them one by one.
“Perhaps this is the intention of Chu Nanping. Just like Shangguan Fei has said, Little Chu chose to live in this inn just to lure his enemies out. However, he needs many people to set up such an ambush. How could he get so many people?
“Even if Hu Shining didn’t betray me, it would be hard for him and his young apprentices who have just started their killer training to perform such a complicated task,” thought Gu Shenwei.
He had bought a piece of land in a valley outside the capital of Shu-lik and built a secret training base on it for his apprentices. He had about 60 or 70 apprentices. Some of them were bought by him, some were selected from among young beggars, and the others were children from the Great Snowmountain tribes.
“Such a large group of children is very conspicuous wherever they go,” Gu Shenwei thought to himself.
Right at this moment, he suddenly saw a child sneaking into the alley.
“How come this child is out here at this hour?” Gu Shenwei wondered. The child was walking cautiously and was adept in utilizing the shadows of the buildings to cover himself, indicating that he had received some basic killer training.
Gu Shenwei did not expect to uncover any leads tonight that would lead him to Chu Nanping directly and was thus vigilant against this child who popped out all of a sudden.
