Chapter 886: Severing a Finger
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Shangguan Hong backed off one step after another, but no matter how careful he was, the snow beneath his feet still squeaked. His eyes remained fixed on the Dragon King’s back until it became a gray patch in the air and finally merged into the darkness in the room.
Shangguan Hong eventually began to suspect that the Dragon King had been gone for long, and that gray patch was merely a residual image.
He was wrong. That gray patch sudden flickered. It vanished and reappeared, and this process repeated itself three time. Each time it did so, it seemed to be accompanied by a vibrating sound of weapons ripping through the air.
He knew that the Dragon King’s sabersmanship was superb, but he couldn’t conceptualize how it was superb. This was the first time that he had not only faintly seen the Dragon King’s saber attacks but also slightly comprehended its secret. But unexpectedly, he only ended up more confused.
There had been assassins hiding in the room and they had almost merged with the environment. Before the fight started, Shangguan Hong hadn’t sensed the existence of those assassins at all. To his surprise, it was the Dragon King who had made the first move.
There was moonlight outside the room. The Dragon King had walked from outside into the dark room. Logically, it should have taken some time for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but he was the one who had made the first move, and all of his attacks were very accurate, as if the room was brightly lit with sunlight.
Three assassin were downed, but they were still alive. Shangguan Hong could hear their breathing.
Gu Shenwei walked out of the darkness, his right hand still holding the unsheathed Five Peaks Saber. His figure gradually emerged and suddenly became intact, as if the moonlight had just cast a devil-summoning spell.
Reverence, awe, and confusion surging in him, Shangguan Hong seemed as if he had just been hit by another palm strike with frosty Qi. His body started shivering relentlessly, his legs slowly buckling.
Gu Shenwei hadn’t performed the pure Death Scripture swordsmanship. Although he had switched his weapon from swords to sabers and his comprehension of the scriptures had become more profound, his moves were still a little rusty. When he had been trying to locate the enemies’ “living energy,” he had nearly miscalculated.
‘I have to keep practicing the Death Scripture uninterruptedly,” he reminded himself secretly.
Eventually, Shangguan Hong managed to not kneel down. A voice stopped him –
“No confidence, no swordsmanship.”
Gu Shenwei raised his eyes and saw a woman standing on the rooftop opposite. He could only discern a vague figure. Judging by the voice, that woman was neither Lotus nor Han Fen.
“Dragon King, please come with me.”
Gu Shenwei turned his head around. The three assassins walked out of the room, clutching their wounds. All of them were teenagers, and one was even younger than Tie Linglong. There was a miserable and disappointed look on her childish face.
The reason why Gu Shenwei hadn’t killed them was because he didn’t want to offend Lotus before meeting her. And the most important thing was that he was now able to control his saber, so he no longer had to kill his opponent with one blow like before.
The youngest teenager murderously asked, “How did you find us?”
Gu Shenwei ignored her. He put the Five Peaks Saber away, turned around, and leaped onto the rooftop to follow the woman who had started walking.
Shangguan Hong and the three young assassins hesitated briefly before following along with suppressed pain. The had just witnessed the true Death Scripture swordsmanship, and they couldn’t wait to see it again.
Although none of the three kids had managed to make a complete move, Gu Shenwei had still distinctly sensed that what they had practiced was also the Death Scripture swordsmanship.
Lotus seemed to be handing out this unique swordsmanship as if it were just some kind of cheap gift.
So this was why there were so many assassinations in Jade City. Lotus had been repeating the story of her and Servant Huan, helping beginners improve their swordsmanship by killing.
The Essence Pavilion had been burnt down. An ugly, shapeless and twisted house had been built on its site. The woman leading the way walked past it and entered the Gui Garden behind it.
There were peach trees everywhere in the Gui Garden. Two years ago, they had also suffered from that fire, and now they were recovering. Patches of small trees were weighed down with the late-winter snow, looking somewhat pitiful.
The female stopped under an old tree, turned around, and said, “I’m Han Yu. You probably doesn’t remember me, Dragon King.”
“I do. Two years ago in Jade City, you were my bodyguard. I didn’t see you at Xiaoyao Lake. I suppose that you’ve been staying here all along.”
Han Yu kept silent for a while. “You have a good memory, Dragon King.”
“Can I meet the Master Commander now?”
“Not yet. The Master Commander hopes that Dragon King can do us a favor first.”
“As you wish.”
Han Yu raised her hands and clapped twice. With that, a dozen people walked out from behind the trees around them. There were both males and females, and the oldest one was merely twenty or so. Each of them was holding an unsheathed sword. They formed a loose encirclement ring, surrounding the Dragon King.
The three injured teenagers subconsciously took several steps backwards, filling the gap of the encirclement ring.
Shangguan Hong was perplexed. He looked around and found that there was no place for him on the encirclement ring. What confused him the most was that there had been no signs of the Dragon King planning this trip, and he himself hadn’t had enough time to disclose this trip to anybody. So why had there been ambush in that room as well as here in the Gui Garden?
“You want a kung fu competition?” Gu Shenwei asked.
“Sort of. We have eighteen people here. They’re all disciples of the Essence Pavilion. And the Dragon King is the only one in this world who has mastered both the unique skills of the Essence Pavilion and the Waning Moon Swordsmanship. Thus, they want to see it with their own eyes.”
“Waning Moon Swordsmanship?”
“The swordsmanship that is original to the Master Commander. The Dragon King should be very familiar with it.”
Gu Shenwei didn’t argue with her. Lotus had been imparting the Death Scripture swordsmanship to others all around, and she had even renamed it to “Waning Moon Swordsmanship” and claimed that it was “original to her.” None of these deeds seemed to be things that the Lotus who he remembered would do.
“Will the Master Commander show herself after you see my swordsmanship?”
“The Master Commander is perfectly willing to meet you, Dragon King. But this is just the first step. You have to finish three tasks to prove that your swordsmanship didn’t go rusty and that you’re worthy of the Master Commander’s presence.”
Pride surging in him, Gu Shenwei gently pulled out the Five Peaks Saber as he said, “Fine.”
Han Yu briefly nodded and said loudly, “The living suffers in grief, and the dead settle in peace. Either the sword survives with the swordsman, or the swordsman perishes with the sword. Begin.”
Two swordsmen stepped forward, both of whom were fifteen or sixteen years old. One of them had a round face, and the other a square one. They faced the Dragon King and nodded to pay their respects. Suddenly, they simultaneously turned around and stabbed their swords at each other.
Gu Shenwei was greatly surprised. He didn’t expect that he would be merely a spectator during this first task.
Both of the two teenagers were performing the Death Scripture Swordsmanship, but after two moves, Gu Shenwei realized that Lotus had made some adjustments to the swordsmanship. No wonder Han Yu had used the word “original” while also calling the Death Scripture Swordsmanship the “Waning Moon Swordsmanship”.
Gu Shenwei had once made some adjustments to the Death Scripture too. Chu Nanping, the Big Snow Mountain swordsmen, and the killers trained by Hu Shining; a lot of people had benefited from those adjustments, but they all also had their original kung fu skills that they were good at and they had just borrowed part of the essence of the Death Scripture Swordsmanship, not those specific moves.
But the Waning Moon Swordsmanship was a different story. Both its moves and core were the same as that of the Death Scripture Swordsmanship, but Lotus had imbued it with a lot of her own comprehension, which imparted more implacable ferocity to this swordsmanship. The two teenagers had been risking life and limb to attack each other from the very beginning, but neither of them was capable of killing their opponent with one blow.
Those pluralistic annotations in the Death Scripture had been ignored. There was only one way to practice the Waning Moon Swordsmanship, and it was the only path: a path of endless killing.
When they exchanged the thirteenth move, the round-faced teenager won. The square-faced one was hit in the heart, and he kneeled down silently. With his sword still in his hands and his eyes gradually going dim, he went into the peaceful world of the dead.
The round-faced teenager faced the Dragon King again. This time, he didn’t nod. He wanted to challenge him.
This teenager used killing as his cultivation method. He had just gotten over an obstacle, and now he wanted to climb a higher mountain.
They were a group of swordsmen who lived for swordsmanship, and they were very similar to Chu Nanping on this point. They were truly disciples of the Essence Pavilion.
Tightly holding the hilt of his saber, Gu Shenwei chose to make the first move. He was a killer. He wouldn’t be polite to juniors and neither would he show any mercy to them.
The round-faced teenager raised his arms. If it weren’t for that his movement had been stopped halfway, he would have finished his move like greased lightning and nobody would have been able to see it. However, his only finished half of his movement. His arm was still in the air, and his sword had dropped to the ground.
“Don’t use a sword again,” said Gu Shenwei.
The teenager’s arm was still in a horizontal position. Like a rivulet carved out of flesh, blood dripped out of the wound where the severed finger used to be, and soon, a small red hollow appeared on the snowy ground.
He was left in the miserable world of the living.
“Leave,” Han Yu ordered flatly. The teenager immediately turned around, picked up the body of the square-faced teenager, and strode towards the depths of the peach tree forest.
Those teenagers continued fighting in pairs. Every fight ended with someone downed by a sword strike. Gu Shenwei refused to kill them, severing a finger during each fight. Nobody managed to last a single round with him. These teenagers’ swordsmanship varied in proficiency, but they were all at an elementary level. Gu Shenwei was confused about Lotus’ purpose of sacrificing these innocent teenagers.
Nine of the eighteen people had died, and the other nine left, leaving nine thumbs and nine bloody hollows on the ground.
Shangguan Hong had been spectating in horror, but he suppressed it and watched all the fights from beginning to end. The Dragon King had struck out nine times in total. The first three saber strikes were just rapid blurs to him. From the fourth strike on, he saw part of the secret, and during the fifth saber strike, he managed to see the route of the Five Peaks Saber. After the nine saber strike, he realized a mistake that he had been making again and again previously – substituting defense for attacks wasn’t synonymous with risking life and limb. He had wasted too much strength on pointless ferocity, which had slowed his striking speed.
Han Yu also comprehended a lot, “Your saber is your sword, Dragon King. Your swordsmanship is very different than that of the Master Commander. I am honored to have seen it, and I learned a lot.”
“Is the first task finished?” Gu Shenwei knew very well what he had been doing. The enemies wanted to learn from his swordsmanship, but he didn’t care. He had made every move with his full strength. He had shown mercy to those young swordsmen and hadn’t killed them, but his saber had been ruthless. Even if the target was only a piece of paper, he would still strike with his full strength. It was just that he could control his strikes better now, which meant that he could penetrate a piece of paper or a rock without deliberately limiting his strength.
“The second task is a fight between you and me,” Han Yu said to Shangguan Hong, pulling out the sword that had stuck vertically in the ground. It was a sword about three feet in length.
Shangguan Hong was startled. Nobody had told him about this fight tonight. He reached out with his hand to pull out the soft sword, his heart fluttering. He had just been defeated by the Dragon King not long ago, and he didn’t have the confidence to fight with someone else at all.
The Dragon King was a certain distance away from him. Shangguan Hong had to defeat Han Yu first. Only the winner was qualified to challenge the Dragon King.
“The living suffers in grief, and the dead settle in peace,” Han Yu said, as if these words had become some kind of incantation of hers.
“The living suffers in grief… ” Shangguan Hong repeated, but he couldn’t utter the rest of the words. He wanted to live, since he hadn’t achieved his revenge yet. Shangguan Fei was still alive, and he hadn’t even experienced the threat of Shangguan Hong yet.
But Gu Shenwei felt that the odds were stacked against him, as a state of preoccupation was by no means the best state to perform the Death Scripture Swordsmanship in.
