Chapter 159
Chapter 159: The Grand Swordmaster in the Bandit Gang (Part 2)
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Lex was also reminiscing about Saleen’s fight. He had produced the offensive power of a mid-level spell using a low-level spell. That was not anything novel, a sorcerer could also do that, but Saleen had just become a Grade 4 mage.
If Saleen could achieve that, then Lex would be able to do so too.
Lex had thought that she possessed a solid foundation with her magic, but when she saw Saleen’s skills, she realized that she was sorely inadequate. At least in terms of her grasp of Water Magic, she was lagging a great deal behind Saleen.
The rain in the northern regions came as quickly as it disappeared. Everyone in the shop did not want to linger in the shop any further so they left. The horses belonging to Saleen and his team were also cleaned and brought out. The four of them then continued traveling south with the protection of the mercenary group.
It would have been a perilous event for six transport carriages and forty mercenaries to travel like this in any of the duchies. However, the Qin Empire had enjoyed peace all this while, hence why the businessmen had been willing to travel with small mercenary groups for protection. This small mercenary group had been scared out their wits when they had seen those forest businessmen being pursued by bandits.
If they had been the ones to be attacked, they might not even have been able to escape.
No one could guarantee that there would be no more bandits along the way, so when Saleen had said that he wanted to travel with the mercenary group, the mercenaries were so excited they nearly cried.
Of course, Lex and the others would not be able to empathize with the mercenaries. The four of them rode on horseback and followed behind the mercenary group, the convoy travelling at top speed. During times of war, the road they were travelling on permitted war carriages to travel at full speed, and the convoy’s speed was not too slow either.
The convoy traveled until noon before it stopped and everyone took a break. Due to the scare in the morning, the mercenaries were vigilant and surrounded the carriages. In addition, a crossbowman was deployed to scout their surroundings.
To Saleen, all of these precautions were meaningless. The mercenaries were simply too weak. A heavy cavalry group consisting of ten men from the Bitter Water Prefecture could easy obliterate the entire mercenary group.
Saleen’s team went to an open area by themselves. Lex used a Burning spell to dry the area before spreading oilcloths and blankets across the ground. She needed to eat some food.
“Lex, if we walk approximately one hundred miles each day, when will we be able to reach Alchemy City?” Saleen did not understand why Lex did not want to increase their speed of travel. At their current speed, they would require roughly three months to reach Alchemy City provided there were no unexpected situations along the way.
If Lex used magic to proceed full speed ahead and travelled about five hundred miles each day, she would be able to reach Alchemy City within one month.
“Saleen, my heart is in a great deal of confusion. This is not beneficial to a mage, and I need the time to recover.” Lex used a small blade to cut up some bread before handing it to Saleen.
“Would it not be good if we rented a carriage and hired a team of mercenaries?”
“I might as well deploy some troops from the Bitter Water Prefecture then. It would make me feel more at ease. Saleen, I will have to relearn many things. One example is the way you handled matters back there. I have never come across that in my life.”
Saleen began to understand Lex’s intentions, but he still asked doubtfully, “Then what about our matters? Aren’t they urgent?”
“Alchemy City is very complex. We cannot rush this matter. The Bitter Water Prefecture will need at least a year to settle down, so I must be completely free from other worries before I can execute the next step.”
“The Loulan…”
“It has been a year, but the Holy See has not gotten the Cloudflow Empire on their side, which is their mistake. At least three to five years will be needed to conquer the entirety of Loulan. The nobles in the Qin Empire possess quite strong forces too. Right now, there must be at least a million soldiers in eastern Loulan. Also, the Holy See is seriously injured and the sorcerers from Alchemy City have infiltrated Tanggulasi, so the Holy See will not be able to do much anyways.”
Speaking of that, Lex became very relaxed and felt at home. Aside from learning magic at a tender age, Lex had also learned about politics.
As Lex was speaking, a business convoy was approaching from a road in the distance. The size of the business convoy was not small, as it was made up of more than twenty carriages. Such a large convoy required about one hundred mercenaries to defend it.
The leader of the mercenary group tensed up. He asked his underlings to take the bows and arrows that were hidden in the carriage and asked them to hide behind the carriages while he went to talk to Saleen.
“Great mage…”
“Is there a problem?”
“There is a convoy coming from the front, but the carriages are empty.”
“Hm?” Saleen and Lex released their perception at the same time and discovered that something was wrong about those carriages. The carriages were not totally empty. At least two men were hiding inside, and there were no goods inside. A normal business convoy would not have these characteristics, unless they were…
Bandits!
This road was one the most vital ones in the Qin Empire. However, within a single day, Saleen had come across two powerful bandit gangs. Something was not right. Bandit gangs were just appearing out of thin air. Perhaps some people were disguising as bandits.
“Go back and take care of the carriages,” Saleen dismissed the leader of the mercenary group. Then, Saleen turned around and asked Lex, “What’s happening?”
Lex thought for a moment before saying, “Nothing much. Someone must be trying to control the transport of items. Now that Loulan is at war, the profits must be huge. But for a noble to have such power, the noble must at least be a marquis.”
“Marquis?” Saleen frowned upon hearing that. In the imperial capital, a marquis was not a big deal, but in a place like this, the status of a marquis was nearly equivalent to Lex’s. A marquis controlled hundreds of miles of land and owned at least three to four cities.
“Can a conflict be avoided?”
“That won’t be a problem. Since they are in disguise, that means they don’t want to expose their true identities. Once their identities are exposed, Holy Rock City will begin investigating.” Lex’s words were filled with malevolence. The number of nobles in the Qin Empire had only doubled in the past one thousand years. Excluding the occasional conferment of new nobles due to difficulties in inheriting titles, the empire still possessed many laws to control the nobles.
For example, if a noble committed a crime, then it would be an uphill battle to try and retain the honor and glory of the noble’s family.
“Let me do it then.” This time around, Saleen prepared his scrolls. If he met with trouble again, he would not preserve those scrolls anymore. Saleen’s Icicle spell could not kill more than one hundred people now that the rain had stopped, so it would be hard for him to replicate that moment of elegance again.
The mercenaries relayed the current situation to their employers, and those businessmen followed the mercenaries and hid behind the carriages. The mercenaries had prepared their bows and arrows. The main road was about fifty meters away. If the people rushed over, the mercenaries would fire their arrows in order to buy the mage some time.
The business convoy had also spotted the six carriages by the road, but they did not have any special reaction. The more than twenty carriages coming from the main road went past the spot where Saleen and the others were resting, and continued traveling west.
Saleen was very nervous. He could feel something in those carriages. In each carriage, aside from the two people, there was also an alchemy crossbow.
This alchemy crossbow had not been produced by the Qin Empire, and it could not fire alchemy arrows. However, its complex structure still allowed this crossbow to fire arrows which could do real damage to mages.
Which noble had the Williams family offended? The noble had deployed such massive powers to kill them.
The convoy then disappeared into the distance. Just as Saleen began to unwind, the sound of a horse’s hooves could be heard coming from the west. A white war horse had turned around, and it was charging in the direction of Saleen.
Riding on the horse was a middle aged man. He had a short mustache and brown hair bundled at the back of his head, and his expression appeared gloomy. This man was not wearing any armor, only wielding a Qin eight-sided sword.
In a flash, the man reached the center of the road and held onto the reins of his horse. From afar, he shouted to Saleen, “Mage, have you seen a batch of swordsmen passing by?”
“Yes, there were around forty people. They went west.” Saleen’s expression did not change, but he was already holding onto a Grade 5 scroll in his sleeve. This middle aged man caused Saleen to feel unsafe. The feeling was not as dreadful as those caused by the four black metal grand swordmasters working for Lex, but it was definitely worse than a high-level swordmaster like Tenesee.
Could this man have been a zun grand swordmaster? Such a fighter was also known as a bronze grand swordmaster.
The sword aura alone from a zun grand swordmaster could break Saleen’s ice plate armor. Even though Saleen had enjoyed the backing of Lex, he had never clashed head-on with a fighter at the grade of a grand swordmaster before. Hence, Saleen gingerly cast an ice plate armor, and cast one water shield on top of the armor.
Seeing that Saleen was so nervous, the middle aged man burst out into laughter. He waved his sword in the air a few times, raised the reins on the horse, and prepared to leave.
Lex suddenly interjected, “The people you are referring to are all dead.”
The middle aged man swiveled his horse around and looked at Lex, feeling extremely skeptical. He observed Lex in great detail, and realized that Lex was around the same age as the young mage. She was wearing a grizzled robe and had a calm demeanor. Could she have been a mid-level mage as well?
A person needed to know that the two of them were least fifty meters apart. Lex had not shouted nor whispered, and yet the man could still hear her easily.
Saleen noticed that Lex had the intention of killing this middle aged man, so he came to a decision in his heart. If this grand swordmaster attacked them from behind, Lex would be fine, but Saleen would not be. Since the carriages were not around, it would be better for Saleen to just execute him on the spot. Those twenty odd carriages contained heavy crossbows, and in such open terrain, it would potentially be difficult for a magic shield to protect Saleen.
Saleen did not want to experiment now. If this grand swordmaster trapped him, he would definitely be turned into a hedgehog beneath the barrage of arrows.
The man bared his teeth, his smile bringing a chill along with it. The man did not continue probing. He simply tugged on the reins and charged down the road. With only a distance of fifty meters, which even a swordsmen did not need much time to cover, the man reached them in seconds. The horse sprinted with astounding speed. Saleen quickly opened the scroll, and a gust of wind welled up from the ground. It was coincidentally at a point that the middle aged man would pass through.
The man pointed his sword forward, and the wild wind was destroyed. His Qin eight-sided sword gave off a blinding light, the indication of a bursting sword aura. The Grade 4 wind was dispersed with a single stroke of the sword. Such was the power of a grand swordmaster.
It was impossible for Saleen to deal with this middle aged man alone. By the time the second scroll was opened, Sika’s boomerang had reached the man’s throat. The second scroll contained a Grade 4 earth spell – Quicksand.
The front legs of the horse sank into the ground and the horse face-planted into the ground. Sika’s boomerang was already in position. The middle aged man was not flustered in the least. He vibrated the sword in his hand and the sword aura shot directly upwards, deflecting Sika’s boomerang. By then, the man’s feet had left the stirrups. With a single jump off of the saddle, the man flew into midair and lunged at Saleen.
Saleen grinned from ear to ear. Saleen had continuously opened scrolls in order to dull his enemy and trick him into thinking that he was merely a Grade 3 mage. Grade 3 magic was not able to break the protection of the sword aura, thus the man had become bold enough to make the jump. Saleen’s plan had been to force the middle aged man into abandoning his war horse, thus preventing him from escaping. Following that, Saleen opened his third scroll. At this point in time, Sika also charged towards the man with her cudgel.