Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 23. Monsters.
“So persistent,” Greywolf mumbled grudgingly, but still cracked a resigned smile. He wanted this bunch to keep chasing him and he had even managed to split the fastest three of them from the rest by keeping a neck-breaking pace… but he wasn’t allowed to do it out of his own accord. Those two boys and that martial master of the second rank were incredibly good riders and had excellent mounts; especially that martial master. He had come dangerously close to catching and at one occasion even intercepting his unit and caused him to use up fifty-three of his fire element spirit stones; now he only had twelve of them left.
The loss of resources was painful, but on the other hand, he managed to get very close to the camp of his and his two brothers and more importantly, the three most problematic of his targets were recklessly chasing after him without ever stopping for a second to consider the possible danger awaiting them. To him, the very worst possibility would be if they chose to simply abandon their comrade and hurry onwards through the Anarchic Lands. Then all of his efforts would have been in vain and his tarnished reputation would be all that was left of this whole endeavor.
“We are just about in. Let’s see how you deal with a truly well-trained small army,” Greywolf thought in amusement, his thoughts wandering to what kind of wealth those boys and their guards possibly had on themselves and to the amount of face he and his brothers would gain for disposing of a team consisting of multiple martial masters.
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“There they are. He used the main entrance, good.” Blackwolf nodded to himself. Since Greywolf was bringing trouble upon their heads he should at least not cause them additional problems, and he did not. With him coming in from that angle the camp won’t be visible for his pursuers until they basically ride into its main courtyard. With their forces spread throughout the area, hidden behind the buildings and on the trees, they would then attack in mass and slaughter whoever came. Unless Greywolf managed to be unlucky enough to be chased by a martial master of the fourth or fifth rank they were confident they would be able to deal with anything that came.
A few seconds later Greywolf and the five men he had with him charged into the camp. He raised his hand and showed three fingers; obviously enough he meant three enemies were incoming.
Blackwolf, Whitewolf and their men readied themselves to target one person each with their own elite units. They were sure Greywolf would quickly take command of his own men and with the aid of their lackeys would turn around and join the battle, thus ending it quickly and effectively.
Yet, instead of three riders, only two emerged from within the bushes. Both Blackwolf and Whitewolf stared blankly, just as all of the men in the camp did. Those two pursuers were mere boys! They were just children! Why was Greywolf running from them? Was an extremely powerful martial artist accompanying those two after all? There were many questions, but no time to have them answered.
Choosing to be cautious and remaining in place was the decision Blackwolf and Whitewolf both made out of consideration for that third person incoming. They couldn’t afford to divide their elites if they wanted to deal with a really powerful opponent, and they were sure Greywolf wouldn’t have brought someone he didn’t believe they could defeat together to the camp.
This decision would have been a correct one nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand situations, but this one time it proved to be the worst thing the two of them could have done. Without any clear orders, the lower-level men of theirs didn’t really bother to move, none of them feeling pressured enough by the presence of two kids to swarm and attack them. They were all waiting in nervous anticipation for that third rider when suddenly, Greywolf’s cry rang out.
“Idiots! Attack them! They are powerful!” Greywolf cursed silently. Due to how their camp was laid out it was impossible to charge through it; he was forced to slow down and stop, but in their confusion, none of the men moved. Even his two brothers remained baffled, failing to understand the degree of danger those two boys represented.
Laien and Yin both smirked ever so slightly. They didn’t need words to communicate and they had two hours to figure out what that man’s intentions were and to work out a decent plan. With just a few sentences exchanged in a low voice, they came up with one, then told Ruan to do as they said and wait for their signal to enter the fight. Of course, their plan was completely reliant upon spotting the point of ambush beforehand, but with Yin’s instincts and his acute senses, they needed not to worry about that part failing.
Laien aided himself with a foothold created from his spiritual energy and jumped from his saddle, going right at the boss who was keeping their comrade with himself. A split second after he did Yin also leaped, setting his eyes on their guard as they had planned beforehand.
The sight of two boys fearlessly, if not foolishly attacking Greywolf made the minds of each and every person in the camp go blank for a second. However, when the two youths roused their Qi and spiritual energy mid-air and their auras spread out, they all trembled as they stared with disbelief.
The lightning dancing at the green-haired boy’s twin sword, the water and icy mist covering the black-haired boy’s spear… they both emanated incredible auras of strength! Those auras were definitely comparable to those of martial masters of the second rank! In fact, one of them was at the level which most average martial masters of the third rank couldn’t achieve!
They all could only watch as the black-haired youth swept with his spear, shattering first the sword then the head of one of Greywolf’s subordinates. Before the other four men could react, a dozen of ice spikes formed right in front of them and pierced their bodies, then froze them from the inside, killing them pretty much instantly. It was one thing to face a martial master… but facing a spiritual master was an entirely different thing and more importantly, sparsely anyone had any experience in fighting a true spiritual master. After all, even a spiritual master of the first rank held an exalted position and could easily earn a comfortable living. They weren’t many rogue spiritual masters at all.
Greywolf put the blade of his sword to Ethane’s throat, even himself terrified by the level of power those two boys displayed. He had thought them to be at the level of martial masters of the first rank, but they were actually much, much stronger! They were freaks of nature!
He wanted to threaten the boys to stop attacking in order to buy himself some time… but suddenly a surge of lightning flashed past him. “Eh…?” He blinked a few times, not knowing what happened. Then, he saw the scene before his eyes moving in a very strange way, as if everything was turning sideways and rising up. “Eh…?” He blinked again after everything shook, then looked up at his own headless body and saw the blood spurting from his neck.
“Oh fuck,” he thought helplessly, his mind growing more clouded and incoherent with each second. He really screwed up, didn’t he?
“Now!” Yin shouted, pulling the heedless corpse off their unconscious guard and allowing Laien to easily grab him. The two of them exchanged a quick look, then Laien secured his grip on Ethane’s clothes and the moment he saw where Ruan emerged from, already speeding into a full gallop, threw the unconscious man.
This development was so ridiculous to all the bandits in the camp that they forgot, or perhaps couldn’t even figure out what they were supposed to do. One of their leaders had been killed by some monstrous kid and five martial practitioners of the eighth rank were instantly slaughtered by the other. They couldn’t find any capacity in their brains to think about the hostage, not with how fast everything was happening. Only when Ruan grabbed a hold of Ethane and began rushing out of the camp did Blackwolf and Whitewolf return to their senses.
“Surround those boys! Don’t let them escape!” they cried out simultaneously, the death of their friend, one with whom they were as close if not closer as with a brother robbing them of any rational thought. They led the assault personally, and thus their direct subordinates followed and with a few dozen of them attacking, so did the rest; the six hundreds of them were dead set on preventing those two kids from leaving… but Blackwolf and Whitewolf themselves couldn’t help but feel flabbergasted when the two boys sent their horses away and remained in place.
“Those two look like leaders,” Laien said casually and smiled. Now that they saved their comrade all the pressure went away; he could once again relax and take it easy.
“There aren’t any martial masters here,” Yin commented with a chuckle. “We compete to see who can kill more like always?” he asked, his question sending shivers down the spines of all six hundred people surrounding the two of them. Like always? So this whole headhunt… it wasn’t done by those martial masters with the two ‘young masters’, but by… by those two monsters?
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“Sure,” Laien laughed, he and Yin charging into the ranks of bandits at the same time. They targeted the strongest bunch first, wanting to make sure they had gotten rid of the leaders just in case.
Laien thrust with his spear lightly and quickly, effortlessly avoiding the clumsy guard of the terrified woman; a practitioner of the eighth rank. He pierced her heart through and pulled his weapon back. As her lifeless body began falling, he took a step forward and made another thrust, killing a man who was glaring at him with intense hatred in his eyes. Finally, he waved his hand and released a splash of ice water. The seven of those in the front who received the spell head-on stopped moving, their bodies growing pale-white as they solidified into ice statues and fell to the ground, crumbling into a bunch of large pieces.
Additionally twice as many bandits began crying out in pain, part of their body freezing over all the way to the bone; some of them had portions of their chests crack and they feel, bound to die a long and painful death, others hand their limbs frozen, which would then break away after they attempted to pour their Qi inside them.
To the left, on the other hand, Yin had simply charged into the ranks of the bandits, not caring about any retaliation from their side as he was way too fast and his body was way too sturdy for them to hurt him. He slashed with his twin swords, cutting people into pieces one after another at an astonishing rate. The two leaders of the bunch were, in fact, one of his early casualties, having fallen without showing any ability to resist. The difference in strength was simply too huge.
“K-kill them! Kill them!” one of the remaining vice-leaders shouted, his voice filled with fear and desperation. His plea resulted in everybody reigning in their fear just for a little bit as their group had been quite united to begin with, but the spirit to avenge their fallen comrades wasn’t enough to make up for the disparity in power. They all crowded around Laien and jumped at him, only to be swept by the waves of water and turned into a broken statue of ice; they tried to hit Yin, but all they did was swing emptily into the air.
Despite their overwhelmingly superior numbers the simple truth of a crowd of mortal realm practitioners being generally unable to as much as touch an expert in the Realm of Heroes once again proved its validity. The only difference from the usual circumstances was that the one they were facing wasn’t a middle-aged man at the second or third Realm of Heroes, but two freakishly powerful kids who wielded the power of a martial and a spiritual master.
When the number of corpses began counting in over a hundred and the remaining leader figures of the group’s fell, the already wavering morale of theirs collapsed. It was hard to say who turned around and started running away first, but it took but a second for all four hundred of them to turn to a mad stampede as they began fleeing for their lives.
“Don’t let any of them run!” Ruan called out, riding into the camp on horseback with Jin, Liza and Dinne. He directed Jin to ride to the left and the other two to the right, himself proceeding forward at a steady pace. He had had a chance to see how military dealt with large numbers of weak deserters and knew that when the battle turned into a crazed flight the mass mentality would take over rational thinking and barely anyone would be able to figure out what should be done.
Laien and Yin had no problem with visualizing the results of what their guards were doing; it was just like flocking over a herd of sheep. When scared from three directions by guard dogs, the herd would naturally turn whole to run in one way. Thus, the two of them separated and began pursuing the bunch from the back-lines of theirs while running along in the linear direction.
As Ruan intended, the bandits who had lost all their leaders and were then scared silly by the two monstrosities attacking them didn’t try doing anything giving a large number of them a chance to survive. They didn’t turn back and try running in all directions and instead were being steadily cut down by the four of them on horseback who got rid of the strugglers, or those few small groups or individuals who realized what was going on and turned, but did so alone and just died while trying.
The chase lasted for about six or seven minutes and it left a thick trail of blood and corpses in the forest. A few of those who had been wise enough to go get their horses in the very beginning of this stampede managed to get away and disappear, but virtually everyone who chose to flee on foot was killed. Their group while in their prime could have been considered to be quite strong as far as the standards of the Anarchic Lands went, but now it was no more; it was totally and utterly annihilated.
“Looks like we are done here,” Yin said with a light smile while looking around to see if they didn’t leave anyone half-dead on the ground. “How many did you get?” he asked, having pinpointed a few of those who were still alive and were unlikely to die. He began walking up to them one by one and piercing their necks through with one of his bloodied swords.
The scene of him doing so looked surrealistic; his white clothes were sprinkled with blood, while the sleeves of his shirts and the blades of his twin swords were flowing with it. His face was incredibly beautiful and handsome, yet he was killing off the strugglers without blinking an eye. Any normal person who saw what had happened here would have probably assumed he was seeing some kind of freaky nightmare; the contrast between the looks and the casual behavior of Yin, and also of Laien, was so apparent it was pretty much grotesque.
“I’m not sure if I counted properly, I could be missing or adding a few,” Laien said with a light shrug of his shoulders as he pierced a dying woman’s heart with his spear. “I think I have three hundred and eight. And you?” he inquired curiously, knowing that their scores would be pretty similar this time around.
“Two hundred and ninety-seven,” Yin replied with a laugh. “It looks like you won this time,” he added cheerfully, adding the more ridiculousness to the current circumstances.
“Yay,” Laien chuckled, heading back to the camp with Yin and steadily killing a half-dead person here or there. The two of them were feeling a bit guilty about putting one of their guards in mortal danger, but they didn’t need to look behind themselves to know the valuables and interspatial rings of those dead guys were being taken by Jin, Liza, Dinne and Rishe. This little fact was making them feel better about themselves; Ethane was successfully saved to so overall they didn’t worry much about their past decisions and choices.
“That should be about it,” Laien mused aloud about fifteen minutes later when they returned to the encampment. He glanced at Yin who nodded in agreement; he also couldn’t find anymore living bandits. They were done. “Good.” Laien chuckled and drew upon a bit of his spiritual energy and washed his and Yin’s bodies out of the dust and blood. Their clothes would likely need more than just that to get rid of the blood stains, so they swapped them for identical ones from the many sets they had in their interspatial rings.
“His wounds had closed thanks to that fire, but I should heal him soon too,” Laien recalled that one of his guards was still in a pretty bad state. He had spiritual energy to spare; he had used up only about a half of it. With the endless strength coming from his insights into the Aspects, the Profound Mysteries of the Elemental Laws and the Principle of Energy, he could afford to use very little spiritual energy to deal with practitioners in the seventh and sixth mortal realm. Unlike an average spiritual practitioner, he was very hard to tire out.
“Yeah,” Yin agreed and joined Laien as he headed out of the camp. The two of them knew there was a considerable amount of wealth just laying around, but they didn’t give those items as much as a single thought. They had gotten what they wanted; they practical experience of fighting many people who wanted to kill them all at once. To them, this headhunting trip was a success.
“You got them good, right?” Ethane asked with a smirk the moment he saw the boys approaching, then coughed up some blood and his expression changed a little in a painful wince.
“A few of them ran on horses, but it was five people or something like that,” Laien answered, impressed with the man’s vitality. His stomach had been pretty much skewered and yet he was already conscious after being tossed around over a horse’s back for two hours of a crazy ride. The martial art he practices much have had some self-healing properties or else there was no way he would be looking this good after what he had gone through.
“Good!” Ethane stated with a very satisfied, a bit evil smile. “I imagine the spoils this time around will be considerable, too. When we add that to the reward for this mission I will finally be able to provide a good, peaceful life for my family. Ha, maybe I will even send my second son to a Great Martial School,” he thought aloud, by the looks of it not concerned with how close to death he had been.
“You don’t hold it against us?” Yin asked the question he and Laien were wondering about. They were prepared for the man to be angry with them, and he would have been perfectly justified in his anger too. Instead, however, he was being nice to them and was acting happy and content. They were glad, but at the same time, they found his attitude somewhat baffling.
“No need,” Ethane raised his hand and smiled at Laien when the boy approached him. “I can heal those wounds on my own, they aren’t critical. Healing your body with magic robs it of the chance of getting stronger in the process of regenerating the wounds on its own,” he explained with a smile. He was the youngest out of the three of their bunch and still had his eyes set on reaching the Realm of Heroes one day. Although he hadn’t been too happy with this headhunt at first, he came to appreciate it after seeing how strong Laien and Yin were. Just like them, he wanted to use this opportunity to hone himself and unlike them, he also looked forward to earning some easy money.
“As for your question,” he brought up after a few seconds, having lost himself in his own thoughts for a little too long. “I was too weak to care for myself in battle. I didn’t protest the idea of hunting bandits, so me being wounded is entirely my responsibility. It has nothing to do with you,” he said amiably and very much honestly. He had a short temper, but he wasn’t a hypocritical person who pushed the responsibility for his actions onto others.
“Right,” he said with a weak, helpless smirk. “I’m sorry for how we acted back then, young master,” he apologized while glancing at Laien with a troubled look on his face. “The Family Leader was very angry with us back then for failing to bring Master Shire to him, but it doesn’t make it okay that we didn’t even thank you for lending us a hand in asking him,” he finally forced the words out after a few weeks of traveling with Laien and when he did, he began feeling a lot lighter at heart.
Laien raised his eyebrows, then laughed merrily. “Apology accepted,” he said with a cheeky smile. If the other two felt similar about this old incident then the atmosphere in their group would turn for much better. Until now it was him sticking with Yin and sometimes exchanging a few words with Ruan or Liza, so it would be a nice thing to have more people to chat away with when resting on the road.