Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Lü Mian and Deng Yuanlei were standing at the door, each wielding an exquisite sword. One of them looked dead and the other delighted.
Han Fen didn’t sense danger and happily said, “We meet again. Eek, why’s your waist fatter?”
Deng Yuanlei slightly flushed – he had looted plenty of treasure on his way here, then sternly said, “You’re a disciple of the Waning Moon Hall, Han Fen, so step aside. The Qingcheng Sect and the Dragon King are going to fight to the death.”
It was only now that Han Fen did a double-take. “That’s so strange. How have you both regained your powers? Was it because Indra Fragrance shouldn’t be used concurrently with the paralytic powder? I’ll have to tell the Master Commander.”
Old Man Mu gave a long sigh. “I haven’t recovered yet. Old Deng, Junior Lu, you… Did the Khan hide some antidote in this mausoleum?”
Deng Yuanlei was only a few years younger than Lü Mian, so he was shocked for a while when he heard the way Old Man Mu had addressed him. Then he gave a hideous smile. “More than that. The Khan spared a room for the Waning Moon Hall, and there’s also a statue of the Master Commander in it, ha-ha…”
Before his laugh stopped, Han Fen pounced on them out of the blue. Deng and Lu evaded her subconsciously, raising their swords and pointing them at her. But Han Fen had already run into the corridor, yelling loudly, “Where’s the room of the Waning Moon Hall…”
Deng Yuanlei muttered “maniac” under his breath, and resumed talking. “This is what people mean when they say ‘God sees all.’ We took our respective roads. While you were here reading fake books, Sect Leader Lu found the real antidote. Dragon King, come out and face your fate. Today, the Qingcheng Sect will slay the devil.”
Old Man Mu wanted to try his best to buy the Dragon King some more time. He gave a few laughs and said, “If the Dragon King dies, you won’t be able to get Khan’s head.”
Deng Yuanlei glanced at Lü Mian who was beside him. The latter indicated him that he could tell the truth, so Deng Yuanlei gave a few loud laughs in response. “Ridiculous. The Khan’s head is right here in this mausoleum. The wing guard of Khan was tricking us all long. Dragon King, you didn’t even realize that you were tricked by him too, did you?”
Old Man Mu let out a few loud laughs the same way Deng Yuanlei had, yet he had nothing to boast about – Mo Lin had apparently given them a counterfeit head, which was completely against all expectations, so he had to brazenly lie. ” You idiots. The Dragon King knows everything. He was just fooling you. You think that the head here is real? You’re terribly wrong.”
Deng Yuanlei was about to contradict, when Lü Mian ran out of his patience. “Enough. Move!”
Although Deng Yuanlei had regained his internal energy, his wounds hadn’t healed yet, especially his injured leg, so he didn’t want to be the vanguard. But he also didn’t dare disobey his Sect Leader’s order, so he started moving forward slowly, monitoring the bookshelves on his two sides vigilantly. Out of the blue, he changed his mind and sped at Old Man Mu, shouting out, “Let me roast the old devil first.”
Old Man Mu leaped backwards until his body was against the wall. “Heh-heh, I’m totally powerless. You’re from the prestigious sects of the Central Plains, so you have to behave ethically, right? Actually, we don’t have any grudges against each other, and even the Dragon King doesn’t hold any grudges towards you.”
“Don’t have any grudges?” Deng Yuanlei had had a bad day, and had been suppressing his resentment this whole time, so he refused to hold back anymore. “The Dragon King said that he defeated the Qingcheng Sect’s Harmonious Sword of Wisdom, but in fact all he did was cheat and plot. Yet he bragged about it relentlessly. If I don’t avenge myself, I would be…”
Poof, all the oil lamps on the left wall suddenly went out almost simultaneously.
The Dragon King had been silent all this time, so Lu and Deng were guessing that he was going to launch a sneak attack, and thus they had been vigilant all along. As soon as the lamps went out, they pounced towards the left side instantly. Though they each had a wounded leg, their movements weren’t slowed at all.
Gu Shenwei launched an attack from behind Lü Mian, at his back.
The moment the two challenged him, Gu Shenwei had come up with a tactic. He tilted the lamps on the left side, and hid in ambush behind a bookshelf on the right side, waiting for the fuel to burn out.
Lü Mian was taken by surprise, and for the first time, Gu Shenwei saw the true swordsmanship of this Sect Leader of Qingcheng Sect.
He had once cut words on the foreheads of more than seventy cavalrymen and then retreated unharmed. He had also once displayed the quintessence of the Gu Family sabermanship with a sword before the Dragon King, and done so well enough to trick Gu Shenwei into believing him.
But currently, this kung fu expert didn’t have enough time to perform his swordsmanship and could only pelt his opponent with throwing knives in the underground chamber.
Gu Shenwei was ninety percent sure that this saber attack would hit its target. Once Lü Mian was downed, Deng Yuanlei would be of no concern.
Lü Mian had barely merged into the darkness on the left side of the book chamber when Gu Shenwei’s saber, which had been following him as closely as a shadow, suddenly took form.
There was nothing where Lü Mian was supposed to be. It seemed as if he had sped up the moment he merged into the darkness. Gu Shenwei could still choose to keep moving, but his move had lost its momentum, which meant that he would be forced into a passive situation if he missed.
Gu Shenwei was shocked – this Sect Leader of Qingcheng Sect was better than he had expected. So he made the choice to retreat.
It was at this exact moment when he made this choice that a sword struck out from the darkness as fast as a snake’s tongue.
Gu Shenwei twisted and maneuvered between the two bookshelves behind him.
The left side of the room was dark and the right side was bright. For quite a while, there was silence. At last, Deng Yuanlei hesitantly called out, “Sect Leader, you…”
“I’m fine. Guard the door.” Lü Mian’s voice reverberated in the whole room and made it impossible for others to locate him.
Deng Yuanlei rejoiced. He started shuffling towards the door and on his way he said,” Dragon King, didn’t you claim that you could defeat the Qingcheng Sect in a face-to-face fight? Why don’t you dare to show yourself? Stop hiding and sneaking around if you’re truly a hero.”
It was probably because he thought that these words would be helpful in provoking the Dragon King that Lü Mian didn’t stop him. Deng Yuanlei, who was now certain that his Sect Leader’s swordsmanship was more powerful than that of the Dragon King’s, became much more self-complacent. “Oh, I forgot that the Dragon King used to be a killer, who likes to perform sneak attack in the darkness – like a rat.”
Gu Shenwei remained calm, but Old Man Mu, who was on the innermost side of the book chamber, became angry. He randomly grabbed some books, then threw them towards the oil lamps on the left side and started turning them back aroundone by one, “What’s wrong with sneak attack in the darkness? No one can see so it’s just as fair. The nine major sects of the Central Plains have won their authority by sheer weight of numbers, and of course you want to talk about rules and ethics. So we all have to obey the rules even if we have no power, no background? Fight face to face even if we know we don’t stand a chance? No way! Dragon King, be sure to give them some stabs in their backs.”
Before long, Old Man Mu had turned over most of the oil lamps, in the process of which he had accidentally lit one of the books, causing a fire which he then had to subsequently stamp and put out. There were only two lamps left, and they were near the door where he didn’t dare to get close to because Deng Yuanlei was watching him with a heavy hostility in his eyes. And if it weren’t for the fact that Deng Yuanlei had been told to guard the door, he would have stabbed Old Man Mu to death by now.
Both Gu Shenwei and LüMian remained silent as if they had disappeared. But in reality, they had merely lost sight of each other.
Lü Mian had only made one sword strike, but it had pressured Gu Shenwei like no other.
The sword strike of the Sect Leader of Qingcheng Sect was distinctive. The most formidable part was neither the fast speed or the strength, but rather the unpredictability. Lü Mian seemed to anticipate the Dragon King’s every move, which was why he could evade hostile moves and plan his own moves in advance.
Gu Shenwei wondered whether his sabersmanship had suffered a decline like Chu Nanping’s. In some cases, this kind of decline was difficult for oneself to detect, and it was only when they fought their enemies in a serious duel that they realized that the weapons in their hands could no longer be wielded as freely as they previously had been.
Suspicion was in of itself a weakening of a certain kind. Gu Shenwei remained crouched on top of a bookshelf for quite a while.
Deng Yuanlei became fairly anxious as the wait dragged on. “Sect Leader, shall I light the lamps?”
Lü Mian remained silent, which was interpret as a “no” by Deng Yuanlei, so he stayed where he was and continued to guard the door. He believed that his kung fu was no worse than the Dragon King’s and that there were just too many wounds on him, which conveniently made for a perfect excuse.
Gu Shenwei couldn’t help but wonder whether he would have suffered a great loss if Lü Mian had launched his attack the moment they fell into the underground chamber. He moved slightly to get a better angle to hear any nearby sounds, and he accidentally brushed against the book at his chest. Then he suddenly understood that his hesitation had nothing to do with Lü Mian, and that it had everything to do with that Daoless Scroll.
Old Man Mu’s previous claims that all the secret kung fu manuals here were counterfeit was rather too dramatic. There were many kung fu experts in the Norland and they no doubt had their own distinguishing capabilities, so it was highly unlikely that the kung fu manuals they had collected were all counterfeit without exception. It was especially so for this volume of the Daoless Scroll; it looked rather ancient and didn’t resemble a modern forgery.
But the contents of the book were very bizzare – not just the methods of cultivating internal energy but also the long passages of profound discussion, which Gu Shenwei hadn’t finished yet, and few of which he couldn’t understand. Yet a metaphor from the book had made a deep impression upon him.
It was a typical Dao Sect’s manual, yet it had quoted a Buddhist story that went along the following lines: a Buddhist monk, after many year of extremely hard cultivation, was still unable to receive spiritual enlightenment, so he began to reproach himself and felt that his body was nothing but a useless burden. He took a sharp stone and killed himself by stabbing his neck. And it was at that very moment of his death that he achieved enlightenment. His body turned into flame and he ascended to the heaven and became a Buddha.
Unshakable belief and sacrificing one’s own body to access enlightenment – these were the tenets of this story, and they also seemed to be what this volume of Daoless Scroll was trying to express.
The Death Scripture, Daoless Scroll, and Sumeru Mustard technique were like three severe teachers, each one of which demanded in an indisputable tone that their student trust what they were teaching, yet Gu Shenwei felt lost. Just like what Old Man Mu had said, this might be a well-packaged joke. “Sacrificing one’s own body” was easy, but “gaining enlightenment” was difficult. Maybe it wasn’t the genuine Daoless Scroll after all.
As he thought about these, Gu Shenwei didn’t even remember whether this old book against his chest had the words Daoless Scroll on its cover page or not. After all, it had merely been placed beneath the other two transcripts.
He had stayed in one place for too long and Lü Mian’s sword moved towards him soundlessly. The vigilant instincts which Gu Shenwei had honed through years of practice took action and pulled him out of the inappropriate contemplation.
Gu Shenwei jumped off of the bookshelf. He could almost feel the gentle caress of the sword blade on his arm.
Before he could land, a soundless palm attack came towards him next. The distance between the sources of the sword attack and the palm attack was so dramatic that it seemed as though they had been launched by two separate people.
Gu Shenwei had no choice but to parry it with a palm attack of his own.
Lü Mian’s internal energy was also different from that of others. It didn’t emit in a continuous manner, but rather pounced right on the eyes of its target like a chunk of hard black iron.
Gu Shenwei was hit and flew like a dead leaf, knocking down rows of books on his flight path.
“Sect Leader, you got him?” Deng Yuanlei asked worriedly. The answer to this question would determine what he would do next.
“It turns out that Dragon King knows what he’s doing,” Lü Mian replied flatly.
Deng Yuanlei was relieved. On an impulse, he intended to run over and check, but he had barely a single step when he was stopped abruptly by Lü Mian. “Don’t move. Just guard the door.”
“Yes, Sect Leader,” Deng Yuanlei responded with a deep respect. He was becoming more and more confident in Lü Mian, and also more and more positive about his own choice. But there was one particular issue that concerned him – the Sect Leader had once given him a chance to defeat the Dragon King, but he had failed.
“It was impressive that you broke one of my legs. I’ll give you that.” Lü Mian kept moving in the direction that the Dragon King had been thrown. “And the frosty Qi deserves its reputation. But your sabersmanship slightly disappointed me. Is that all a Western Region killer can do? If so, then the Golden Roc Castle’s reputation is not well-earned.”
Gu Shenwei felt that a giant rock was crushing his heart. Even as he faced imminent danger, he couldn’t get the words “sacrifice the body to achieve enlightenment” out of his mind no matter how hard he tried.
