Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Old Man Mu glanced at the four people at the door and said rather gravely, “Dragon King, you should’ve given me the antidote sooner. Now it’s too late. I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you to fight all of them once again.”
Though the four people were masked, Gu Shenwei already knew their identities. “White Eagle, Red Kite, Sky Condor, Purple Vulture.”
The four surviving wing guards of the Khan removed their masks and stared at the Dragon King vigilantly. At last, it was Red Kite who spoke up as the representative of the group. “We won’t allow anyone to desecrate the Khan’s remains.”
Gu Shenwei shook his head and replied, “Neither will I.”
Red Kite sneered in response. “So the Dragon King changed his mind that quickly. Would you like us to see you off?”
“That was what he said too.”
Old Man Mu suddenly chipped in. “Forget about my nonsense. If you come out a short while later, you would’ve heard the Dragon King refusing my suggestion. Ha-ha, also, Mo Lin is a friend of ours, so you should be our friends too…”
Red Kite shook his head and replied, “Mo Lin’s a traitor. Now that you’ve come, you have to stay here forever.”
“That can’t be true. You see, the Khan has specially dedicated a room to Silver Condor. Ha-ha, I noticed that you guys don’t have one. As for us, the Khan didn’t like us at all, so there’s no need for us to stay here with him.”
“There are plenty of rooms here, and some of them will stay empty, their residents never returning. These empty rooms, conveniently, can be used to house you.” Red Kite was immune to Old Man Mu’s mischief, and was determined to have these intruders remain behind in the mausoleum.
Han Fen chipped in too, saying, “I want to choose my room if we have to stay.”
“Suit yourself,” Red Kite sharply replied.
“It was you all who stopped the Waning Moon Hall from raiding the mausoleum,” Gu Shenwei suddenly made an irrelevant remark, seeming completely ignoring the threat in front of him.
Red Kite was slightly caught off guard and answered, “The Master Commander thought that she was the only one who knew about the secrets of the mausoleum. Once she discovered that she was not the only one, she immediately gave up her tomb-raiding efforts. Humph, it turned out she was also afraid that her misdeeds of desecration would be heard by the whole grasslands.”
“That’s not fair,” Old Man Mu said angrily. “Lotus took all the gold and left unharmed, while we just came in by mistake, but we are the ones who have to stay forever?”
“The Waning Moon Hall was just lucky. Someone will bring back the Master Commander’s body eventually.”
“I think that Mo Lin’s a traitor,” Gu Shenwei speculated, hinting that Mo Lin was the only one who was suitable for this task.
“Mo Lin’s a traitor but Silver Condor isn’t,” Red Kite mysteriously replied, with a hint of a smile on the corner of his mouth and a ghost of sneer smeared across his face.
“The Wing guards of the Khan also play with words?” Old Man Mu responded to the sneer with contempt. “Does Mo Lin think that changing his name can change the fact that he’s a traitor? Ridiculous. Are you a bunch of kids?”
Old Man Mu raised his closed fist and aimed at the four people. The hand opened and a small bottle shot forward and exploded in front of Red Kite. The four wing guards all held their breath and whipped out their scimitars in unison. In the face of danger, all of them remained composed.
It was at this very moment that Gu Shenwei made his move. Old Man Mu had attracted part of the enemies’ attention, and his killer’s instincts refused to give up any tiny advantage.
Gu Shenwei had once been mobbed by the four wing guards and nearly been killed. This time around, Red Kite had replaced Silver Condor, but that didn’t weaken their attack one bit.
The target of his first saber attack was not Red Kite, who was the closest to him, but rather the wing guard who was the furthest away. Three scimitars flew at him, yet he didn’t switch targets.
Han Fen hadn’t quite understood what these people were saying, but she knew what she should do. The moment Old Man Mu made his move, she also bent over and started moving, throwing out various sacks of powder.
In just a brief moment, the room had been filled with colorful smoke. Both sides could barely see the opposing parties.
Gradually, the smoke dispersed. Howver, no one could be seen in the room. The Wing guards and the Dragon King were all kung fu experts, and Old Man Mu was highly experienced, so Han Fen’s knockout powder hadn’t knocked anyone down.
Four wing guards were lying in the corridor. Two of them had been stabbed in the chest by a saber, and the other two’s faces were pale with blood dripping out from the corners of their mouths – clearly, they had been hit by the Dragon King’s frosty Qi.
Their main priority had been to evade the knockout powder, but Gu Shenwei had attacked and pursued them with his full strength, which gave him an advantage in their engagement. Even so, wing guards were still surprised by Dragon King’s kung fu prowess.
“Ha, the Dragon King’s made some progress in his sabersmanship again.” White Eagle was the eldest wing guard and he had fought Dragon King before, which was why he could sense the difference between the two fights.
Red Kite had been hit by a palm attack, and he had heard that the frosty Qi would wear off over time as long as the victim protected their heart meridian. But the Dragon King’s palm technique seemed to have changed – it now rampaged in his body more ferociously, which meant that he would suffer more severe internal injuries if he didn’t control the frosty Qi. “You’ve won again.”
Gu Shenwei put away his saber and placed it on the ground along with his scabbard. “I’m not going to take anything from the Khan’s mausoleum, let alone his remains. Now you can believe me.”
The four wing guards shared a glance with one another – they had lost the battle and were now lambs waiting to be slaughtered, so indeed they could believe him now.
“And you won’t tell anybody the secrets of this mausoleum?” White Eagle asked, clamping the wound on his chest.
“I won’t.”
“And the other two?”
Old Man Mu puffed out his chest. “The Dragon King won’t, and I won’t either. As for Han Fen, she will only tell Lotus, but since Lotus already knows, that doesn’t count as telling. And one more thing, Dragon King, there’s absolutely no need to keep it a secret – I mean, the Court Attendants Army already believes that the Khan’s in the heaven anyway, and there’s so much treasure here… Even if we ourselves don’t need it, it would be an act of charity to use it to help the poor.”
“Don’t you dare do that,” the four wing guards shouted almost simultaneously.
“Lotus took the gold and yet nothing happened to her. Isn’t that true?” Old Man Mu took a step forward, his hands feeling itchy.
A beseeching look finally appeared on White Eagle’s face. “There are plenty of treasure in the outside halls. If the Dragon King needs them… you can take all of those. There are actually not many precious items in these inside rooms…”
“I’m not changing my mind. I won’t take anything from here.”
Old Man Mu sighed and shook his head repeatedly. Then he took out some jewelry, dropped them onto the ground, raised his head to look at the oil lamps on the wall, and spoke no more.
Han Fen hesitated for a while, then she also took out several items and put them on the ground. But they were all personal belongings – a handkerchief, needle and thread, and so on – she hadn’t understood their words at all.
“I trust the Dragon King,” White Eagle said, and then he suddenly grabbed the scimitar on the ground, pointed the blade upwards, and fell down heavily with his neck facing the blade.
Sky Condor, Purple Vulture didn’t say a word and killed themselves in the same way.
Red Kite was the only one left. By now, Old Man Mu was completely lost. “Hold on. Please explain to me – what are you doing? The Dragon King has already spared your lives. Do you really care so much about your pride? You barely got hurt and you have to commit suicide?”
After glancing at the other three who were dead, Red Kite’s face turned even paler. “The wing guards once took an oath. We voluntarily agreed to be buried with the Khan. Yet after the Khan’s death, in order to seek vengeance and guard the mausoleum, we never had the chance to fulfill our commitment. Now it’s Silver Condor’s responsibility to avenge the Khan’s death, and as for the guarding of mausoleum… we will entrust the Dragon King with that duty. So it’s about time we met the Khan.”
Old Man Mu couldn’t believe it. “You guys are all smart people. Why do you have to be so stubborn? Silver Condor’s at least got a statue, and yet you four have nothing. Why take it so seriously?”
Red Kite smiled. He couldn’t find a reason, and he also didn’t intend on answering. “The exits of the silver and gold halls are all blocked. Only the exit of the emerald hall is left.”
Red Kite didn’t kill himself by falling towards a scimitar. Instead, he took the scimitar, aimed at his neck first, then switched to his stomach and finally said, “Please do me a favor, Dragon King.”
Old Man Mu thought that this was his only chance, so he quickly moved forward with a single step, said “I’ll do it”, and pushed the scimitar into the stomach. The blood flowing out of the corner of Red Kite’s mouth was as bright as a blooming rose in Old Man Mu’s eyes.
The four bodies were left where they were – they hadn’t requested a burial, so Gu Shenwei wouldn’t bother doing that.
Old Man Mu’s power gradually recovered, and now he could walk faster even with Lü Mian’s body pinned to his waist. “The people of the Central Plains are stubborn, while Norlanders are even more so. Alas, why do people like them even exist?”
Gu Shenwei barely talked along the way back. These people, who in Old Man Mu’s eyes were obstinate, were the exact kind of servant that all emperors were in desperate need of and spent much effort in nurturing.
Two perspectives were fighting against each other in Gu Shenwei’s mind. One of them was the same as Old Man Mu’s, which was that this kind of loyalty was stupid; the other was Marshal Yang’s. Even though he was already dead, his deed of venturing into Golden Roc Castle alone was the most standard version of “being stubborn.”
Gu Shenwei caged them both into a corner of his mind he had never touched before. He preferred choosing strategies that corresponded best to the path beneath his feet rather than committing to any one fixed principle.
Old Man Mu had been nagging for quite a while before he suddenly recalled an issue. “Han Fen, the Dragon King and I are about to leave this place. You’re not going to play any tricks on us at the last moment, are you? I noticed that you haven’t talked in quite a while. It seems that you’ve got a problem or something.”
Han Fen pointed at the wound in her side. “It hurts a little, so I don’t want to talk. The Master Commander made it very clear that I should put the Dragon King in the dungeon if he’s powerless; if not, I shouldn’t take any risks. Now that you’ve regained your power and I’m no match for you, there’s nothing I can do anymore.”
The three were now walking through a dark tunnel. Han Fen was leading the way, carrying an oil lamp in each of her hands with an extra one on her head. Old Man Mu was right behind her. He giggled and said, “So you’re our prisoner now, Han Fen.”
“Okay,” Han Fen agreed without any hesitation as she didn’t care at all. “I’d love to be Dragon King’s prisoner.”
After walking for an unknown long distance, they finally reached the end, and the valley Han Fen had once mentioned was right outside. Old Man Mu couldn’t help but swear, “That little bastard lied to us. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had to walk so far.”
At the end of the tunnel, there was a metal paling blocking the way. It was made of refined steel, and every bar was as thick as a man’s wrist. Even if Old Man Mu had all of his former power and joined his force with that of the Dragon King’s, they still wouldn’t be able to break it.
They gave it a try, and true to its image, the paling didn’t yield even a little bit.
Right outside, the run was rising, but they were stuck here. Old Man Mu became indignant and swore at the wing guards’ names. Then he asked the Dragon King, “Now what? Shall we try the other exits?”
Gu Shenwei looked into the sky outside, “Wait here.” Then he whistled.
“You can summon the giant bird here? I don’t think it’s got enough strength to break this paling.” Old Man Mu was skeptical.
Yet Han Fen became excited. She dropped the lamps and hurried to the paling, looking into the sky together with the Dragon King, “I’ve always wanted to see the giant bird. Master Commander says that it’s very cool.”
Gu Shenwei’s whistle gradually grew louder.
Old Man Mu unceremoniously sat on Lü Mian’s body, “You guys are so tough. I’m starving. One more minute and I’m going to start eating human flesh.”
For the next two hours, Gu Shenwei whistled intermittently, yet the giant roc never showed up.
Old Man Mu looked at the dead body and licked his lips. Then he pounced on the paling and shouted, “God, even a small bird would be nice.”
Puff! In response to his call, something dropped out of the sky. Only, it was not a bird but rather a rope.
