CH 30

As soon as the carriage turned at the street corner, the coachman started to significantly slow down the vehicle. All of a sudden, he felt the coldness against his neck. The coachman quivered, realizing a dagger had already been held to his throat, its blade glistened in pallid light as the person behind him spoke softly: “Stop the carriage.”

The coachman dared not to disobey: shivering in trepidation, he pulled the carriage over and halted on the side of the road. Tracing a circle on the skin of the other person’s neck with his dagger, the finely dressed young man who had been mad drunk to the point of failing to distinguish between men and women just moments ago showed not even a single hint of inebriety. With a beaming face, he kicked the coachman off the carriage — without waiting for the latter to struggle up, several figures immediately leapt out, pushed the man against the ground, and muzzled him. 

Jing Qi gave the coachman an appraising look while playing with the dagger in his hand; then, he turned to some of the imperial guards and said: “Brother Zishu has already found out about the route this man was going to take us. There is no more use keeping him. Just save us some trouble and kill him.”

Heeding his order, one of the imperial guards stepped forward and drew the sword from his waist. With utmost desperation, the coachman immediately struggled to break free, and whether it was coincidental or not, the gag in his mouth fell out amidst all the writhing and floundering. The coachman wailed: “Your Royal Highness, please spare my life! This lowly one was merely hired by that woman. I don’t know anything… Your Royal Highness, please spare my life!” 

The guard halted his steps and looked at Jing Qi as if he was waiting for further command.

Jing Qi gave a few impatient waves of his sleeve: “Who are you trying to fool? You really thought that I was too drunk, didn’t you? That Su Qingluan is Helian Qi’s person — at this point, if she, as his secret informer, was planning to silence us, would she even be able to afford to do this kind of rash and shallow thing like paying for an assassin? Kill him! Make sure that he is not screaming — hearing that only annoys me further.”

The coachman hurriedly added: “Your Royal Highness, you have misunderstood. This lowly one is really not the Second Prince’s person. I originally was a minor Taoist priest from Huai Xu temple. It was Black Sorcerer Master who instructed me to do so…”

“Just now you said that was a woman. Not a single word coming out of this mouth is the truth. What are you all dawdling about? Are you taking my words as a joke? Cut him up!” 

A barrage of overlapping sounds gushed out from the coachman’s mouth: “The Black Sorcerer leader is also a woman ah… Ahhhhhh sir, please spare my life! Sir, please spare my life!”

Even Wu Xi was somewhat caught off guard: he had also never seen this mysterious Black Sorcerer leader, thus motioned to the guard with a wave of his hand: “Let us hear from him first. You are saying, the Black Sorcerer leader is a woman?”

With the blade of the guard hovering less than a palm’s length above his head, the coachman was terrified to the point of nearly peeing in his pants, thus he hurriedly answered: “Yes, yes… Black Sorcerer Master has already begun to doubt His Highness the Second Prince. I eavesdropped on their group secretly discussing how they suspected that the Second Prince had been confining them in the temple due to his fear of them inviting troubles and implicating him. Also… they also said that in the future, His Highness the Second Prince would definitely kill them to cover his tracks. Black Sorcerer Master then came up with a plan, ordering me to deceive Miss Qingluan by borrowing the name of the Second Prince and make her keep a close watch on Your Royal Highness’s and Young Sorcerer’s whereabouts. Then, they would kill both of you and take their leave without any notice so that His Highness would be unable to track them down…” 

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“Kill… us?” Wu Xi narrowed his eyes. 

A faint, derisive laugh emitted from Jing Qi’s lips, Even “came up with a plan”? This Black Sorcerer is seriously a killer coming from a village — as long as they were not making a scene, how would the Second Helian who has been mooning days and nights away about attaining eternal youth, obsessed with trickery and heterodoxy like that be willing to throw everything away and make any move against them? One can be afraid that he will actually be humiliated into rage after this incident.

And that Su Qingluan too — the beautiful face indeed came at the expense of her wits.

“Yes… it’s true. Madam Black Sorcerer had an order for Miss Qingluan, and that was to make sure everyone rode the carriage I operated. Afterwards, I would take your group to the small road outside of Cheng Wu Gate; and with three stripes of my rod as the signal, they would raid on altogether. And… and she even said, this time, since they were going for a full-scale attack, even the heavenly king would not be able to dodge. Then, once the killing was done, they would take advantage of the night and flee.”

Jing Qi and Wu Xi exchanged a glance; the former then drew a deep breath and gave his temples a few rubs before saying with a smile: “It truly is…that man proposes but Heaven disposes. Oh dear, if I had soon known it would turn out this way, I would have not asked you to go find Helian Zhao and make compromises for the greater goals from the first place…”

The coachman looked at them, his body quaking in fear: “Y...y...your… Your Royal Highness, this lowly one I…” 

Jing Qi tilted his head and cast a glance at the man: “You what? I only scared you for a bit and you have already confessed everything. Now I obviously will have to silence you for good.”

As soon as he motioned to the imperial guards with his eyes, one of them immediately went to gag the coachman once again, along with a strike of his blade… 

Without even bothering to look at the pile of rotten flesh on the ground that no longer carried any breath of life, he turned to Wu Xi and asked with a smile: “Young Sorcerer, are you ready to battle the enemy?”

Wu Xi had soon taken his hook out; a wintry smile grazed his lips, and there was not a single utterance. 

Not too long after, the warriors from the Sorcerer’s Residence brought by A Xin Lai arrived to join them.  Jing Qi left a few imperial guards with Wu Xi before taking Ping An along and going back through a different route. 

After all, this was Nanjiang people’s affair — given the sense of pride that Wu Xi embraced, all the meddling Jing Qi himself had partaken here was more than enough.

The Black Sorcerers had been lying in ambush for quite a long time. The autumn night dews had already formed in the air, seeming to almost descend but yet to fall; despite the bitter coldness that was piercing one’s bones, they were still waiting, motionlessly, as if they had not felt any of that. 

It was unclear how much time had passed until the tottering carriage finally emerged into their view from amidst the vast enshrouding fog of the imperial city. Still, the Black Sorcerers had yet to rush and make any move. They continued to patiently wait for the carriage to approach close until they could clearly discern the familiar appearance of the coachman. 

The coachman then raised the whip in his hand, held it poised in the air, and struck it down three times in crisp loudness —

It was time for the hunt.

Twenty-three of the Black Sorcerers synchronously leapt out; the coachman immediately tumbled down from the carriage, his body trembling as he went to hide in the corner of the wall, unnoticed by anyone. The carriage soon turned into a hedgehog, pierced with poisoned arrows, leaving the person inside not even enough time to let out a miserable scream as they went to see the King of Hell right at once. 

It was not until this moment that the twenty-fourth person started to come out from the shadows, whose entire body was swathed in pitch-blackness; however, from that physique, one could still tell that was a woman. She then personally walked over to the carriage and lifted its curtain: the smell of blood immediately assailed her nostrils, and there was only a dead man inside the carriage.

With her heart constricted in apprehension, the woman vaguely felt that something was not right. Thus, she grabbed the dead body by the hair and dragged it out of the vehicle — the assassins nearly screeched in horror, and that was because the dead man was precisely the coachman who had just rolled off the carriage earlier!

Supposing that the actual coachman had been dead, who was the one with his exact same face just then?!

The woman immediately released the corpse from her grasp — but who could have thought that this body would mysteriously sit up all of a sudden, its bloodstained blue hand grabbed onto her wrist! 

Someone cried out: “The Crimson Corpse Poison!”  

At a lightning speed, the woman’s hand turned into the shade of purple — her decision rapidly arrived, and she used the sword to cut off her own hand at once, her blood spattered several feet (1) away. She shrieked: “Go!”2

The footfalls echoed through the empty crossroads as the Nanjiang warriors charged forward from all directions — blended amongst those fighters was the enigmatic “coachman” with an indescribably eerie smile hung on his face, as if that layer of skin was merely a flimsy painted work. 

Cheng Wu Gate — this was the place where the ancestors of Da Qing had beheaded the last emperor of the previous dynasty; when Emperor Taizong (2) staged his overthrow, he had also ended the life of his brother at this same location. Under the reign of the late emperor, the Great General Zheng Si was suspected of plotting treason and assembling his personal army, thereby presenting a threat to his late Majesty’s regime; he then was tricked into arriving at this place, where he and his rebel troops were shot to death by a torrent of arrows firing upon. Zheng Si, albeit with a body full of arrows piercing through, continued treading forward for ten more steps before shouting aloud: “Heaven and Earth are ruthless; benighted ruler caused my ruins.”

Underneath their feet, there were eighty-one slates of three-foot-long and three-foot-wide emerald slabstones, each and every crack in between tainted with blood that could never be cleansed. 

The victor is king, the loser perishes: this was the onslaught where one thrived on another’s death.

From corner to corner, the capital of His Majesty might have sunken in deep slumber, or perhaps they were still reveling in ardor.  

The woman’s blood puddled on the ground, and she knew that she no longer had a path to retreat — everyone else had died, leaving her to be the only one left. Both of her hands had been cut off, one was executed by herself, and the other was slashed off by her opponent during the fight. She helplessly watched the young man whose body was half-covered in blood walking towards her, step by step. He stared down at her, his form towering, then gently reached for her veil and removed it from her face.

Wu Xi said: “Who would have thought that I was fortunate enough to witness the true face of the Black Sorcerer Master.”

The woman let out an anguished laugh. The moment she opened her mouth for words, Wu Xi, without any warning, seized her abruptly and tightly by the neck. The woman’s shrill laughter came to an immediate halt; gradually, her eyes began to protrude from the sockets — the face that was once considered beautiful, little by little, grew into a violet shade, her two legs thrashing convulsively, and her throat trembling with each quackish sound. 

Wu Xi continued, his voice wintry: “I know that inside the body of every Black Sorcerer exists a poisonous insect called 'Mole Cricket of Vengeance'. When the host is about to die, this poisonous insect will come out of their throat, its speed as fast as lightning. Any person who happens to touch it will immediately die by decomposing into mush. The only technique to handle this thing is to grasp its host tightly by the throat, causing the insect to die from suffocation inside, just like this…”

The woman’s eyes widened lifelessly, her body immobile, and a burst of rotten stench gushed out. All of a sudden, her chest began to melt — first was her clothes, followed by her flesh, and finally, revealed was the sight of her white bones, whose decaying speed was even visible to one’s naked eyes. Wu Xi then gently relinquished his hold, letting that woman’s remains fall on the ground before continuing: “So that the poisonous insect and its host will be doomed to the same fate, turning into water together.”

After wiping off the blood on the hook with his robes, he beckoned Nu A Ha and A Xin Lai over: “Clean up this place. Do not leave behind any traces.”

There approached another person driving the carriage. As soon as Wu Xi climbed up, a thought seemed to have crossed his mind, thus he gazed over at Lu Yu who had been disguised as the coachman. The latter had yet to regain his calm from all the brutality and bloodiness of this onslaught by these Nanjiang people as his eyes were filled with awe. 

Wu Xi nodded at Lu Yu and spoke, weariness tinged his voice: “Please send words of gratitude to Young Master Zhou on my behalf. No matter how he is going to settle this with Nan Ning Wang, after all, I will still owe him a favor. In the future, if I can ever be of help, do not hesitate to ask.”

Lu Yu hunched over and gave Wu Xi a very deep bow: it was not until that moment that he had finally acquired his true understanding of the Young Sorcerer — the kind of person this future ruler of Nanjiang was. That person would be the recipient of worship and admiration from more than hundreds of thousands of people as if he was a deity. Even though he was stranded on a foreign land, and still a young man who had yet to become full-fledged, he would absolutely not tolerate a look of contempt from anyone.

The people of the magnificent forests and lofty mountains where leaves covered the sky and blanketed the earth would be the most loyal as friends and the most ruthless as foes.

By the time Wu Xi returned to the Sorcerer’s Residence, it was almost dawn. After a cursory wash to clean off all the remnant traces of blood, wine, and pungent smell of rouge from his body, he retreated to his bed. From underneath the pillow, the little snake slithered its way out, intimately coiled itself up, and rested next to him as if to bring to his side a fragment of warmth. Perhaps it was because exhaustion had taken over, or perhaps the fuzzy feelings of worries had no longer resided in his mind, as soon as Wu Xi’s head and the pillow came into contact, he immediately sank into a deep slumber. 

It was unsure why amidst the haziness, Wu Xi somehow found himself standing outside a carved wooden door — he could only tell that this door felt remarkably familiar to him, yet for a moment, the answer had escaped from his mind. He pushed the door open: there was a large bed inside the room, its curtains down, and in dim outline there sat quietly a person behind. 

All of a sudden, Wu Xi felt his throat somewhat tighten — slowly and steadily, he walked over to one side of the curtains, his heart beating faster and faster. 

He then lifted the curtain, little by little, and found the person sitting behind with a face that he was unable to make clear of — yet, deep in his heart, the only thing he felt was how beautiful this person was. The strange thing was, the other had a full head of white hair, spreading across and covering the entire bed like a snowdrift. Wu Xi leaned down, tenderly picked up a wisp of the other man’s hair, and held it in his hand. All of a sudden, the man reached over and wrapped his arms around Wu Xi’s neck, his faintly cold lips alighting on the tip of Wu Xi’s nose and at the corners of his mouth, a whiff of fragrance rushing into his nostrils. 

Albeit this feeling of somewhat familiarity, Wu Xi still could not recall who that person was — lost in the mind that had grown even more addled, he gave in to his impulses and reached out his arms to embrace the other man’s body, holding him down…3

----- End of Chapter 30 -----

Translator’s notes:

(1) Chinese foot, or Chi (尺) = ⅓ meter = 1.094 ft.

(2)Taizong (太宗) is the posthumous name given to the second emperor of a dynasty.