Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Gu Shenwei looked down at the book in his hands as his horse slowly trotted forward. The autumn sun was so bright he had to move his eyes away every now and then to rest them while he pondered over the meaning of the words.
He had read through this small booklet many times, which summed up the general principles of the Daoless Scroll, and could almost recite it entirely by heart. But every time he thought of something new, he would read through the booklet again. Although he felt he understood most of it, there were still many abstruse parts that he couldn’t even scratch the surface of, and he would need to find a Taoist priest to explain it to him.
But Gu Shenwei had confirmed one thing. The Daoless Scroll and the Death Sutra must have been written by the same person. As a book of general principles, it elaborated on the essences of both training manuals. And the more he comprehended of it, the more helpful it was towards his practice of both internal and external martial arts skills.
With this booklet, Gu Shenwei could already incorporate the Death Sutra Sabersmanship into his sabersmanship, and he no longer needed to wield a sword anymore. As he stroked his saber hilt, he couldn’t help but think of Lotus, wondering whether he had surpassed her in kung fu or not.
There was a carriage parked by the side of the road ahead, and five men were standing with their backs against the carriage, staring at him from a great distance.
Gu Shenwei put away his book and urged his horse to speed up to a gallop.
The five people varied in height but all of them looked very young and strong, and the oldest of whom could be no more than thirty years old.
The young man in the middle casually threw a stone at him. However, Gu Shenwei easily caught it, stopped, threw it on the ground, and then stared back at the five sabermen.
Their sabers were not very well hidden, as they peaked out from behind their legs.
“What’s the matter?” asked Gu Shenwei.
The sabermen revealed a typical sarcastic smile especially common to young arrogant men. To them, the rules of the world were very simple. First, the saber could solve all problems; second, the world revolved around them.
“We want to borrow your horse,” said one of a saberman in a laid-back tone. It seemed that he hadn’t consulted the other side at all.
In front of the carriage were two horses, but one of them had already fallen to the ground, dead. Gu Shenwei took a glance and then drily said, “Well, what can I get out of it?”
The five sabermen laughed together, and one of them took out his saber from behind. “You can walk to Jade City and enjoy the early autumn scenery on the way.”
Gazing at the monotonous wilderness, Gu Shenwei shook his head and merely said, “There’s nothing to enjoy about it. Are you all robbers?”
The saberman patted his left palm with his saber and curled his lips before contemptuously asking his companions, “Are we robbers?”
The saberman in the middle thought for a brief moment before playfully replying, “No. Bandits are not allowed to exist in the territory of Jade City. We’re just borrowing it. Maybe we’ll meet again in the future and return it to you.”
The saber-wielder nodded vigorously. “Yes. We are borrowing it. Kid, come on down.”
Gu Shenwei had always been a very suspicious person. He had asked Han Fen to disguise herself as him while he would travel around alone. He didn’t even bring the Five Peaks Saber with him. Instead, he had only taken a common narrow saber with him. But as soon as he saw these five people from afar, he had suspected that he had been exposed.
He looked the five people up and down one by one, but could not tell who was an expert amongst the five.
He then observed the terrain before approaching. Now, he looked around once more and still found no signs of an ambush. In fact, this area was a boundless plain and wasn’t an ideal place for an ambush at all.
Gu Shenwei dismounted from his horse and walked three paces sideways to make sure that there was no one in the carriage. Were these five people really just inexperienced arrogant young sabermen?
The saber-wielder walked over and said, “This kid is not bad, very obedient. Leave his package with him.”
The other four nodded in agreement as if they had done a great deed of kindness.
Instead of stopping the saberman from throwing away his bundle, Gu Shenwei walked around the carriage slowly and after reaching the opposite side, even lifted the curtain of the carriage to take a look inside.
The now four sabermen standing there felt both surprised and amused by his actions, but no one said anything. They did not want to look stupid.
The other saberman thrust his saber into the ground and untied the last bundle from the horse. He was just about to remove the saddle when he felt that something was amiss. He stooped to pick up the bundle, searched for a while, and then took out a narrow saber.
“Heh, he uses a saber, too. And it’s even a narrow saber of Golden Roc Castle.”
“Woo-hoo,” the five people gave out a special roar of laughter. Only a small group of close friends would make such a uniquely strange noise.
Gu Shenwei happened to turn around and once again confirmed that there was no ambush and that none of the five were kung fu experts.
“You are a killer?” asked one of the sabermen with a contemptuous tone who obviously thought that it was impossible.
Gu Shenwei wasn’t the kind of person who would leave a heavy first impression, and he looked even more ordinary after disguising himself. Even experienced Jianghu wanderers might not see through him easily.
“Not anymore,” said Gu Shenwei.
The five people laughed again, but this time it was a burst of normal laughter because they really thought that his answer was interesting.
“Then why do you still have this saber? Were you hunting rabbits on the side of the road?”
Gu Shenwei went up to the speaker and drew out his saber. “To defend myself.”
His movements were very simple but surprisingly quick. In an instant, the saberman was left with an empty scabbard in one hand and the bundle in the other. His actions were like those of a clumsy attendant unable to fathom his master’s intentions in time.
The other four sabermen were taken aback and immediately grabbed their sabers, poised to attack. Their idleness was completely gone.
“It turns out you are a veteran.”
‘Veteran’ wasn’t a word frequently used by people of the Western Regions. Gu Shenwei put the narrow saber back into the scabbard and replied, “And you are from the Central Plains.”
The saberman who was holding onto the scabbard still wasn’t able to react in time, which made him look even clumsier. Blushing, he dropped the narrow saber on the ground and grabbed his own single saber, “Heh, we are from the Central Plains. So what?”
As he spoke, he made a move, slashing at his opponent’s arm. He didn’t have the intention to kill, and just wanted to frighten this odd man and teach him a lesson.
Gu Shenwei realized that he might have been foolish in wasting this much time on the five scoundrels. With a shake of his body, he flashed behind the attacker, grabbed both the bundle and narrow saber, and then put them back onto the horse. During his quick movements. the saberman had slashed at him three times, but they were all easily dodged by Gu Shenwei.
“He knows kung fu!” The other four sabermen drew their sabers and joined the fight. Their sabersmanship wasn’t that weak, but their eyes were too poor to realize that they were actually the weak side.
Without waiting for the enemy to surround him, Gu Shenwei struck out five times in a row with his palms. The five sabermen retreated step by step, all of them nearly bumping into the carriage at the same time. As they plopped onto the ground, the five of them found that their internal Qi had become chaotic and they were actually unable to stand up for the time being.
Gu Shenwei got back onto his horse and took one last glance at the five people. He hadn’t used his narrow saber or the frosty Qi. To hide his identity, he had to let them off with their lives.
He was starting to understand Old Man Mu’s pain of being unable to kill people. He could have easily killed the other side, but he just couldn’t do so. It was like a naughty boy that had caught an insect in a net, but couldn’t pluck its wings. This was also a form of torment.
He could hide his killing aura deeply at heart but his killing desire was becoming more and more vigorous with each passing day.
Gu Shenwei urged his horse to run forward. The five sabermen finally came to their senses and abused defiantly.
The sound of cursing soon faded away, but Gu Shenwei remained unmoved, completely absorbed in his pondering of the Daoless Scroll and the Death Sutra. Occasionally, one or two unrelated ideas would float through his mind.
One of the ideas actually prompted Gu Shenwei to turn around his horse and run back along the way he came. He had paid too much attention while reading the book and neglected an important flaw.
Unfortunately, he was a bit too late. Four sabermen lay dead on the road while the last had disappeared. The carriage was still there, but the lone living horse had also disappeared. The dead horse, in contrast, had been cut open and its entrails spilled out all over the ground, even more gruesome than the corpses nearby.
The mistake Gu Shenwei had made was the dead horse which he had ignored. For common people or even ordinary killers, it would be nigh unbearable to hide in the airtight belly of the horse’s corpse, but Gu Shenwei knew that some people could.
The sabermen had died from saber strikes, and each of them only had one wound, all of which were precisely made at the throat, heart, and other vital parts.
There had been an assassin hidden in the horse’s belly. Why didn’t he make a move back then? Why did he kill the four scoundrels and take one away, alive?
Gu Shenwei mounted his horse and left again without touching anything in the scene.
He quickened up and this time, he spent more time thinking about things unrelated to kung fu.
He arrived at Jade City at noon the next day and was surprised to find that it had barely changed. The streets were still crowded, especially Southern Jade City. The brothels on both sides of the street had opened early, and the gambling houses and taverns were hustling and bustling as usual.
Before entering the city, Gu Shenwei had already disguised himself as a common saberman by settling down in a saberman village, wandering around with other sabermen, looking for jobs everywhere, and observing the all-around situation.
He was not followed because he was no different from any other wandering sabermen except for the sole peculiarity that he did not drink. But even this was not particularly odd as some of the sabermen would abstain from drinking before being hired by an employer, in an attempt to leave a good impression on their new master. Only when they found that the received payment was far less than expected would they start cursing the rich and revert to their old habits.
One day in early autumn, three caravans arrived at Jade City before noon. Before unloading their goods, many buyers had already surrounded them and asked about the prices of the new merchandise. The merchants perfunctorily turned away all the requests. They did not care about these casual buyers at all. They would entreat some really rich people in the evening, and if they were lucky, they would be able to sell most of their goods in one go.
Southern Jade City had become even busier. The businessmen who had made a fortune spent lavishly. Some of them even booked a whole brothel to enjoy themselves while many more spent money renting houses because they still had to deal with the rest of the goods in Jade City. Meanwhile, they would indulge in giving and ‘returning’ most of the profits they had made back to this Sin City.
Gu Shenwei found a part-time job easily, working as a guard for one of the big houses of the Southern Jade City for half a month.
Although the businessmen had their own bodyguards, those bodyguards would still want to take a break every once in awhile to enjoy themselves so the businessmen had no choice but to hire some local people to take their place.
Lü Qiying wished that the Dragon King’s use for him would end there. After the three bandit chiefs returned the money to him, a few strange-looking guests suddenly appeared in the caravan which terrified him. He had no choice but to hide them among the goods and smuggled them into Jade City, hoping that the Dragon King would take them away soon.
He knew nothing about the Dragon King’s coming.
On the third night, Lü Qiying went to attend another banquet, and Gu Shenwei joined his companions.
There was Han Wuxian, Old Man Mu, Dog Butcher, Shangguan Fei, Nie Zeng, and Tie Linglong for a total of six people.
Although there were no fights or murders, Dog Butcher was very pleased with their tortuous journey. He looked excitedly at the Dragon King, hoping for more exciting adventures.
“Someone betrayed me.” Dog Butcher’s enthusiasm was immediately extinguished by Gu Shenwei’s words.
“Who? Was it one of us? It’s definitely not me.” Dog Butcher wanted to seem calm, but he only revealed his flustered mind.
“It’s someone from the Xiaowan Kingdom,” Old Man Mu responded faster. “Shangguan Yun let out the secret and sent a message to Golden Roc Castle.”
“Shangguan Yun only has access to Long Fanyun and Chu Nanping; there was no third person.”
Azheba was actually the one Gu Shenwei was guarded against the most. Liman and Mo Lin had gone to the Naihang Tribe to lobby them. While there might be someone else who could guess the Dragon King’s scheme, those who really knew the details only numbered ten, and six of them were next to the Dragon King right now and the other four were in the Xiaowan Kingdom.
