Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Having survived decades of running amuck in the north of the Heavenly Mountain, Old Man Mu was pretty experienced, especially in terms of fleeing.
His present kung fu was not as good as Dog Butcher’s, and it was far worse than that of the two newly-arrived kung fu experts, but he was still the first one to sense danger. As the ring of torches went out, he quickly turned around, leaped up, and broke into the closest room.
Dog Butcher was only one step slower than him, but he didn’t know why they had to run, and neither did he know where the danger was coming from. He had ran purely out of instinct; he had to follow the one who had made the right decision.
In the house, it was completely dark. Old Man Mu broke through the paper window and cautiously peeked into the courtyard. The windowsill was pretty short, so Dog Butcher had to bend at his waist and to try to look out through the hole. Eventually, he knelt down on the ground, sweating heavily out of nervousness.
The moonlight was bright and it was not that dark outside, and yet the torches had gone out so unexpectedly that most people still needed some time for their eyes to adjust. As they held onto their weapons tightly, they were searching for enemies vigilantly.
“Was it the Dragon King?” Dog Butcher asked in a muted voice.
“Stop dreaming. Both White Ghost and Rock Monster are top-notch kung fu experts. No sane person would challenge them, especially White Ghost…”
Dog Butcher was in a daze as he asked, “Which one’s Rock Monster?”
“The one from the Heavenly Mountain Sect, the one who was as strong as a stone plateau.”
Dog Butcher nodded and said, “White Ghost must be a disciple of the Luo family. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t remember his name.”
“Idiot,” Old Man Mu tersely commented, and then started prayed softly. “Fight. Hurry up, and fight. The more intensely the better.”
Old Man Mu and Dog Butcher had barely entered the room when the man in white and the tough man readied themselves to chase them, but then they stopped at the same time. They were wary of each other, and since they knew that their targets were trapped in the room, they didn’t want to attack recklessly.
Between the two, the man in white was more confident, and also more composed. In a loud voice, he said, “Everybody stay put. Watch out for sneak attacks.” Then he turned to the tough man who was standing ten steps away. “I’m Luo Qibai. May I know your name?”
“Luo Qibai.” Dog Butcher gently smacked his hand on the windowsill as he exclaimed, “That’s the name. The seventh generation of the Luo family, the younger brother of Luo Qikang.”
Old Man Mu slightly snorted as if he’d known it for a long time, but he’d actually never heard a single character between the two names.
The tough man outside replied in a terse manner and only uttered three words. “Li Tongsheng.”
“Are you by any chance the ‘Mountain Splitter’ Li Tongsheng?”
“You know a lot.” Li Tongsheng braced his whole body, and was clearly ready to attack at any moment. “The Tianshan Sect’s going to take both of the men in the room. I don’t think that you would mind, would you?”
Old Man Mu mimicked Dog Butcher and mockingly said, “Li Tongsheng. That’s the name. The fortieth or fiftieth generation of the Li family. The son of Li so-and-so.”
Dog Butcher asked confusedly, “Is he famous? He’s not from the Central Plains, is he? I’ve never heard of him before.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. This guy’s the most well-known solitary bandit. No wonder his kung fu’s so good.”
Outside, Luo Qibai rejected the tough man’s claim to the two old men and smiled before replying, “How about you tell your companions to come out and we’ll have a competition right here in the open?”
Li Tongsheng studied the man opposite him in confusion, “All of the men of the Heavenly Mountain Sect are right here. I think that it’s you Central Plains guys who’re hiding, isn’t it?”
Luo Qibai was faintly surprised, yet he feigned a face of indifference and said in a loud voice, “Who’s been…”
Before he could finish his sentence, one of the disciples of the Heavenly Mountain Sect yelled out, “Hidden weapon. So underhanded!” Then he pounced on the Central Plains martial artist next to him.
The man from the Central Plain didn’t cower, however. He raised his saber and engaged the opponent, shouting, “Shameless!”
Another entangled battle started anew in the courtyard. People were fighting every which way they could – engaging in sneak attacks, retaliating, and ganging up on opponents. Li Tongsheng didn’t hesitate. He rushed towards his opponent and launched a series of continuous palm attacks. With one move following the next seamlessly, the whooshing sound of the air generated by the fierce palm attacks was so terrifying that no one dared to move closer than seven steps to him.
Luo Qibai was fairly startled and yet his moves were no less ferocious than that of his opponent’s. Likewise, he fought back with palm attacks. Although his palm attacks didn’t generate whooshing sounds like those of his opponent did, he moved and defended himself in a smooth and confident manner, and when he occasionally struck back, Li Tongsheng always retreated to evade.
Dog Butcher watched on in great admiration as he praised, “The Blue Wave Palm Technique handles fierce attacks with so little strength, and both its offensive and defensive moves are so ethereal. Luo Qibai’s reputation is well-earned.”
Yet Old Man Mu remained unconvinced. “If I could exert the my former power to its fullest extent, no palm technique would be a match for my Five Hole Punch. And don’t underestimate Li Tongsheng either; the renowned bandit from the Western Regions has his own talents.”
The people from the Central Plains were having an intense fight with the Heavenly Mountain Sect, and yet neither side forgot about the two old men. Just at the doorway alone, there were six or seven pairs of men fighting, trying to stop the other side from getting in the room first.
Old Man Mu watched the fight with great interest and had no intention of fleeing at all. He curled his lips and said, “They’re all morons. I mean, clearly it was a third party who put out the torches, yet none of them have realized it.”
“Maybe it’s not that they can’t realize it, but that they have been on guard against each other for a long time, and they’ve also already had a fight. So even if they know a third party is trying to play them off each other, they still got taken in easily.” Dog Butcher was a clear-minded bystander. “Who exactly put out the torches? If it wasn’t the Dragon King, then was it a Golden Roc killer?”
Old Man Mu hated it the most when people disagreed with him, so he snorted repeatedly before replying, “You know what? Your many years of life were experienced in vain; that’s why you’re still so stupid when you are old. The Dragon King said long ago that those crazy women of the Waning Moon Hall want to mess the whole world up. Who else would have done this except for them?”
Dog Butcher hadn’t met many disciples of the Waning Moon Hall, so he thought that the Dragon King’s words might have been a bit dramatic. He replied, “They’re just a bunch of women. Would they really go that far? What good will it do them to mess up the whole world?”
Old Man Mu got excited, and he even stopped watching the fight outside. He turned his head and asked, “Don’t you understand? In the eyes of a crazy woman, chaos is order – the messier the world is, the safer they feel, and the more important they become. If the world is at peace, then everybody would want to eliminate these monstrous women. The Waning Moon Hall has been hiding in the desert for decades, and they know this better than anybody else does. If I were them, I would mess it up too. The messier, the better.”
Dog Butcher spotted the contradiction yet he was too embarrassed to point it out. Old Man Mu angrily said, “Right, I’m also crazy. So be careful. Some day when I’m in a terrible mood I might bite a chunk of meat off of your ass. Bah, off of your thigh, not ass.”
Dog Butcher giggled yet didn’t say anything. His body involuntarily leaned to the side, trying to get further away from Old Man Mu.
The tangled battle lasted for about a quarter of an hour and both sides suffered casualties. It was at this moment that two more newcomers suddenly joined the fight.
Nobody knew when they had managed to maneuver their way in, but both of them were holding a narrow saber, and they had each found an adversary for themselves. As they fought, they gradually moved closer to the leaders of the two sides.
Luo Qibai had firmly gained the upper hand in the battle, and he was sparing some attention to observe the situation around him, so he was the first to notice that one of the men was acting suspiciously – that man was fighting with an opponent from the Heavenly Mountain Sect and yet he was not among those Luo Qibai knew.
“It was you who’s been playing us!” Luo Qibai let out a yell and leaped besides the mysterious newcomer.
The two sneaky newcomers had extremely quick reflexes. They stopped attacking their current opponents and immediately turned to attack Luo Qibai, one from the front and the other from the back.
Li Tongsheng discovered that Luo Qibai was attacking the enemies of the Heavenly Mountain Sect. He was very surprised, but after hesitating for a short while, he pounced on the other newcomer and thrust out with a palm attack.
“Are they disciples of Waning Moon Hall?” Dog Butcher contemplated the two new men carefully even though he was unable to see their faces clearly.
“No,” Old Man Mu said positively. He was more familiar with the Waning Moon Hall than even the Dragon King. “This is Golden Roc sabermanship, but… Son of a bitch! They’re killers trained by the little bastard Wild Horse!”
Dog Butcher didn’t even know whether Wild Horse was a man or an animal, but he knew one thing for sure. “Their sabersmanship’s just average.”
“Ha, give it a minute. They’ll show you how men of the Western Regions fight.”
Dog Butcher became even more confused. In his view, the two newcomers would be defeated soon, and they might not be able to make it out alive.
It seemed that his speculation was about to come true – the sneaky newcomers parried with several consecutive saber attacks, and then turned and tried to escape towards the north. Their lightness skills were pretty good.
Luo Qibai pursued them closely and Li Tongsheng followed right behind. Both of the two leaders already knew that there was a third party playing them off of each other. Even though neither of the two had enough time to order their men to stop fighting, some of their men still noticed their leaders’ movements and followed behind after disengaging.
The two sneaky newcomers leaped onto the wall of the courtyard. Luo Qibai was in the air less than five feet behind them, ready to launch an attack. Li Tongsheng was slightly further behind, yet he had already struck out with his palms, and the wind generated by them was so strong that the newcomers started quivering involuntarily.
Meanwhile, twenty to thirty men from the Central Plains and the Heavenly Mountain Sect had also leaped onto the wall. The targets would be solidly surrounded even if they managed to survive the palm attacks.
It was right at this instinct that Dog Butcher’s speculation was proved wrong, and he finally saw with his own eyes what Old Man Mu called “how men of the Western Regions fight.”
Abruptly, two figures shot upwards from the outside area of the wall like two frightened birds, only quicker.
One was holding a sword, and the other a saber, each of them having already killed a man on the wall. One move, one kill, all without excess movements.
“Ambush!” someone cried. More than thirty figures vanished from the wall at the same time.
Old Man Mu broke the window and rushed out without saying a word – on no account would he allow himself to miss such a fantastic show.
Dog Butcher had forgotten all about the Dragon King’s suggestion to “call the shots” long ago and he followed Old Man Mu without even thinking.
Most of the men on both sides were still fighting intensely in the courtyard and hadn’t noticed the shift in the situation around them. Old Man Mu and Dog Butcher used their lightness skills to evade several people who were trying to obstruct them. They leaped onto the top of the wall and saw four bodies on the ground, all the others gone.
Old Man Mu looked around for a short while before pointing in a direction and saying, “This way.”
The two old men sprinted out and soon lose their pursuers.
Without the leaders, the fighting continued for a long time and after both sides suffered heavy casualties, the surviving fighters stopped fighting, horrified. After retrieving some of their companions’ bodies, they confusedly started searching for their respective leaders.
Old Man Mu, followed by Dog Butcher, was searching the circuitous streets and alleys. He was tracking the targets as if he were a bloodhound. Every couple of streets, they would find another one or two bodies on the ground, confirming that they were on the correct route. Obviously, the people ahead of them were fighting while running, and yet their moving speed were still amazingly fast.
Dog Butcher began to admire Old Man Mu. If he were Old Man Mu, he would have been completely bewildered by now.
The houses were growing sparser, and it had two or three miles that they saw the last body. Yet Old Man Mu kept progressing in a fixed direction without wavering.
Another two bodies appeared ahead, each holding a narrow saber – they were the two killers who had initially sneaked in.
Old Man Mu paused here for a short while, and soon Dog Butcher also figured out the direction of their targets: some noises rang out from a small hill not far away, where numerous crows were flying around disturbed on this quiet night.
Flocks of crows were circling in the sky, almost completely blocking out the moonlight. Under the shadows of the crows, a dozen figures were fighting fiercely, and each time someone went down, the cries of the crows grew even more excited.
Old Man Mu proceeded to a position about a dozen steps away from the battlefield, chased away the crows, leaned on a rock, and watched enraptured. The longer he watched, the more fascinated he became. Without turning his head around, he said in a low voice, “Look, this is what you call swordsmanship. The Death Scripture, its name is even apter than the Grand Enlightenment Sword Sutra.”
Greatly thrilled by the fight, Dog Butcher asked a string of questions. “Who is fighting with whom exactly? Is that the Dragon King in the middle? Should we help?”
