Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Old Man Mu had voluntarily chosen to save another person for the first time ever. Even in a moment like this, his mind was very clear. “It’s too late to drag the Dragon King back, but it’s not too late to drag our enemies down with us.”
He targeted his moves at Deng Yuanlei and that mysterious figure. As a result, the four fell down together.
Gu Shenwei was the first one to land on the ground, with a loud sound. His feet were numb and he gauged the depth of the trap to be at least ten meters. The two sneak attackers were next, and because they were prepared in advance, there was barely any sound when they landed. The last one was Old Man Mu, and his landing was done in total silence. His kung fu skills might be the worst among the four, but his lightness skills were the best.
Thanks to Old Man Mu, Deng Yuanlei and the other person were finding it difficult to make a decision on whether they should engage or not, and that hesitation gave Gu Shenwei the chance to change his position. After a short while, the four were in complete darkness, unaware of where anybody else was.
Gu Shenwei had experienced this kind of situation before, and every time he was in one like it, he would always use the power of the Death Scripture to detect the life energy of nearby people, which would always give him an advantage in the dark environment.
He lowered his saber gently, still holding onto the hilt. Even a movement as simple as this could have alerted his enemies, who would then attack soon. Yet Gu Shenwei failed to enter a state of meditation.
This was like a precious life-saving pill turning into powder after being taken out of his pocket. Gu Shenwei felt his heart sink involuntarily, along with a flicker of nervousness that he hadn’t felt for many years.
The attack came from the frontal right side. He still had his sharp senses, so he pulled out his sword and struck back – just like before, no defense, only offense – but this time he was unable to identify the precise position of his target, and had to anticipate the enemies’ moves baser purely on his intuition.
The clash of sword and saber generated a few sparks, the light of which gave Gu Shenwei a brief glimpse of Deng Yuanlei’s excited, scared face.
Gu Shenwei grabbed the Five Peaks Saber from the ground and threw it out vigorously. The saber shot forward while spinning, whistling with a sharp whooshing sound. Deng Yuanlei evaded it, as did the other opponent. The saber crashed into the wall on the other side, generating more sparks. Yet this time, nobody emerged under the light.
Once again, the four returned to a situation where nobody knew the positions of the others.
It was at this time that Gu Shenwei discovered that this was no common trap. The underground space was very spacious, and there was a distance of at least sixteen meters separating his former position and the wall on the other side, which meant this trap was much larger than the tent above; additionally, the wall was made of giant rock, which meant that this trap was not something that could be prepared in days or even months.
Clearly, this was a secret underground chamber of the Royal Court, and it had been built a long time ago.
A series of questions arose, and they all pointed towards the same answer…
After a long time of silence, Old Man Mu spoke first with the Seven Magical Tones, which made his voice sound ephemeral and eerie. “Dragon King, where are y–”
Another burst of sparks lit up the wall, and it shed a light onto the figures of Deng Yuanlei and his companion.
Old Man Mu laughed out loud, “You two little bastards struck pretty fast! It’s a pity your skills of echolocation are terrible.” Then he sighed, “Dragon King, why haven’t you made your move yet?”
Gu Shenwei had just wasted an excellent opportunity to sneak attack. He was holding his sword, but he had hesitated because he had lost his blind trust in the Death Scripture. And in that brief moment of hesitation, his targets had disappeared.
Nobody dared to make any more sounds, except Old Man Mu.
“This house is pretty nice,” Old Man Mu said in a capricious tone, as his voice seemingly wandered here and there. “Thick and sturdy, and waterproof too. It must’ve been built by some rich guy. Qingcheng Sect, how did you find such a good place?”
Another attack was launched. A hidden weapon was shot and it hit the wall before bouncing towards another wall, circling around half the underground chamber before sparking and lighting up a small space.
With more and more hidden weapons hitting the walls, sparks were flying around like fireworks.
Gu Shenwei aimed a sword strike at the figure flashing past him, which he as Deng Yuanlei. While evading those hidden weapons which were shooting towards both allies and enemies of its user, the two started fighting intensely in the middle of the room.
While continually shooting hidden weapons, the other opponent seemed determined to find Old Man Mu. The last few hidden weapons were even shot upwards, until they finally went in the right direction.
Old Man Mu had stuck to the wall like a gecko and had never come down. “You’ve got so many of those things. Now it’s my turn.” After that, he jumped onto the ground. Yet he didn’t engage his adversary and instead bent forward and started running on his hands and feet like a wild cat that had mistakenly entered a cage.
He was also shooting hidden weapons, all of which had been previously shot out by the other person and subsequently picked up by him. “So many. They weigh at least 40 to 50 kilograms. You Qingcheng Sect guys really know how to carry heavy stuff, huh? Was it mule energy that you guys used to practice?”
Actually there were not that many hidden weapons, because the person who was shooting them was also recycling many of them.
Four people: two were fighting with their swords in the middle, and the other two were running in circles tossing around throwing knives. The spacious underground chamber immediately felt narrow and small.
“Haha, interesting.” Old Man Mu could never control his mouth, as he was unaware of the fact that he was no longer a top kung fu expert. “Ouch! you almost got me. Little bastard, do you even know how to respect the senior generation? I’m much older than your gran– Ouch! The more I talk, the harder you strike, huh?”
The two people on the periphery were throwing knives at an increasingly faster speed, which put the two in the middle in severe danger. Not only did they have to deal with the enemy, but they also had to evade the hidden weapons passing by their sides, and it was not easy to do both in absolute darkness.
As a result, both of them wanted to finish the other off and the swordsmanship they were using grew fast and strident, with both focusing more on attack than defense.
Gu Shenwei was unable to utilize the full strength of the Death Scripture’s swordsmanship, but he still had the upper hand. Fighting in the dark and life-and-death fights were both his fortes. By contrast, this was the first time that Deng Yuanlei had been in this kind of situation. Although his moves were ruthless, he still lacked experience.
A throwing knife – the thrower of which was unknown – skimmed across Gu Shenwei’s left arm, leaving behind a slight scratch.
And suddenly all of the hidden weapons stopped shooting, and Old Man Mu swore. It seemed like both of them had been hit by something.
Gu Shenwei immediately held his breath and thrust out with two quick sword stabs, one of which hit his target. Deng Yuanlei crumpled to the ground.
“Who? Who used the knockout powder? Was it you, Dragon King? Why am I down, too?” Old Man Mu still sounded robust.
Gu Shenwei couldn’t speak, but it wasn’t him who had used the knockout powder. This was an enclosed underground chamber, and he was not as good at these secret arts as the disciples of the Waning Moon Hall were, so he hadn’t dared to casually use powder that would easily spread around.
So, there must be a fifth person nearby.
He couldn’t hold his breath forever. Soon, Gu Shenwei dropped the Dragon Head Sword and also fell to the ground.
Deng Yuanlei had taken a sword hit in the hand rather than a fatal area, and he immediately yelled, “The Dragon King’s down! The Dragon King’s down!”
There was no response. The one who had cast the powder was very composed. Old Man Mu smiled. “You feel stupid, don’t you? This is called ‘killing all the birds in one shot.’ You two are going to die with us, haha.”
This was precisely what Deng Yuanlei feared the most. “Waning Moon Hall? Miss Han? Come out. I was hurt. We had a deal…”
Suddenly, a light shone out. Not far from Deng Yuanlei and the Dragon King, a female was carrying a lamp and smiling. “In the Waning Moon Hall, everyone is Miss Han. Which one are you talking about? I’m sure that I don’t have any deals with you.”
“Han Fen!” Old Man Mu recognized her, but there was a troublesome issue – “Dragon King, whose side is she on, exactly?”
“Me? I’m on the Master Com–”
Before Han Fen could finish her sentence, Gu Shenwei abruptly jumped up from the ground and threw a palm strike at her. Han Fen twisted her body but was still hit in the shoulder. With a scream, she was thrown towards the wall, landed at its foot, and passed out.
The lamp dropped onto the ground, but didn’t go out.
“Nice palm technique, Dragon King,” Old Man Mu praised. “But this girl pinned me, and she’s pretty heavy.”
Gu Shenwei managed to stand up, staggering. He couldn’t hold his breath forever, but he could hold it longer than what Han Fen had expected.
Picking up his sword and pointing it at Deng Yuanlei, he felt like a complete idiot. While clearly knowing that Lu Mian had probably gotten the slave girl from the Waning Moon Hall, he still wanted to use the poison left by Lotus to control Deng Yuanlei.
Deng Yuanlei struggled to raise his arm as he pleaded, “Please listen to me…”
Gu Shenwei stabbed out with his sword, but the knockout powder was taking effect and deprived his hand of its strength. The dragon-head sword tilted and went into Deng Yuanlei’s right shoulder instead. Then Gu Shenwei loosened his grip and fell over.
Deng Yuanlei watched the sword quivering in his shoulder in pain and horror, his face covered in a layer of fine sweat, “Han Fen, quickly. Wake up!”
Old Man Mu’s low voice came over, “Before she crushes me to death, I don’t think she’s going to wake up any time soon.”
“Sect Leader, how are you?” Deng Yuanlei changed subjects and talked to the other person who might be able to save him.
Lu Mian’s voice sounded a bit feeble. “Not good. But don’t worry, someone else will soon come.”
“Got it.” Deng Yuanlei felt slightly relieved. Yet when ne looked at the sword in his shoulder, he still felt chills in his heart.
“Han Fen has the antidotes on her,” Gu Shenwei reminded Old Men Mu. They were poisoned with the Indra Fragrance which suppressed internal energy and another knockout powder which paralyzed people’s bodily movements. It was impossible for them to recover naturally over time.
Old Man Mu gave a delightful shout, followed by a faint rustle of moving and searching. “This girl is so heavy. Her weight… Ok, my left hand is free. Let me search. Uh, not here. Here – Ouch! I think something bit me. Damn it. Eek, right, I’m immune to the poison of the Waning Moon Hall. Why do I feel so feeble? It’s so strange…”
After nagging for quite a while, he finally found the right place, “No wonder she’s as heavy as a rock. So many bottles and pots, even more than those bastards’ throwing knives. Oh, no! Dragon King, I don’t know which one is the antidote.”
Deng Yuanlei let out a few short laughs, but those strained his wounds, so he didn’t dare laugh again. Lu Mian remained silent.
“Take one pill from each of the bottles,” Gu Shenwei said. In front of him, Old Man Mu had once consumed a lot of pills of the Waning Moon Hall as if he were at a feast, so he had obviously developed some resistance to them. If it weren’t for the fact that the Indra Fragrance was from the Land of Fragrance, it would not have taken effect on him.
“I’ll try. But I don’t have any internal energy, so I’m afraid that my body might not be able to handle it.”
“Take them all at once. As long as the antidote is among them, you’ll be fine.”
“And what if it’s not?”
Gu Shenwei couldn’t answer.
“Dragon King, you’re so good to me. Even if I die and become a ghost, I’ll still protect you every day,” Old Man Mu said half-heartedly. He put a bunch of bottles and pots beside his hand, struggled to open them, and carefully took the pills out grain by grain. “The antidote is surely not some kind of powder, right?”
“It’s not,” Gu Shenwei actually suspected that Han Fen didn’t have the antidote, but this was their only possible way out. If he could, he would have swallowed all the pills alongside Old Man Mu.
Deng Yuanlei discovered that things were going south. “Dragon King, I was only following orders. I hope that you won’t take it the wrong way and think that this was personal.”
“I won’t. And later when I kill you, I hope that you won’t mind either, cause it’s just something that has to be done and nothing personal.”
More sweat appeared on Deng Yuanlei’s forehead, and he was just about to say something extra when Old Man Mu gave out a sudden screech, “My pills!”
Han Fen woke up and jumped to her feet instantly. The more than ten pills that Old Man Mu was struggled to grasp in his hand were all scattered onto the ground.
“Why did I fall asleep? Ouch, my stomach hurts. It hurts so bad… Eek, I got hit in my shoulder, but why does my stomach hurt? Wait, who took all my stuff?!” Han Fen jumped up with a whooshing sound, which indicated that her injury was not serious.
“Girl,” Old Man Mu was surprisingly calm, “you’ve been lying on me for quite a while, so could you please stop stomping on my foot?”
“Heh-heh, I thought it was the bumpy ground.” Han Fen walked out of the darkness from the nearby wall, picked up the lamp and ignored the pleas from Deng Yuanlei. “Dragon King, you hurt me.”
“My apologies. Give me the antidote first.”
“I don’t have any more antidotes. Those three pills were given to me by the Master Commander out of her mercy for me.”
Hearing this, Old Man Mu who was in the corner of the walls started vomiting terribly.
“These two are with you?”
“No. They’re Han Qin’s men and have nothing to do with me.”
Gu Shenwei stayed silent for a while before asking, “How long has it been since Lotus left the Royal Court?”
“How did you know… Heh-heh, a couple of days.”
Lotus was the answer to all his questions.
