Chapter 525 - Chase (3)
Chapter 525: Chase (3)
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Fan Xian extended his arm and grabbed the black chest from among the silver ingots scattered on the floor.
A slightly rough but textured sensation came from his finger. This familiar and marvelous feeling seemed to pour an endless amount of courage and zhenqi in his body. In an instant, it made him throw off all his timidity and shock. Full of confidence, he didn’t care at all about the ship that was about to crash into him.
He leapt into the cabin. This series of actions were so quick that he didn’t realize there was someone beside him.
As he carried the black chest with 100 times his courage and prepared to charge out of the cabin onto the mainland to terrorize the world, he abruptly found a person wearing Overwatch Council robes next to him and involuntarily paused.
He only paused for a moment because it was Hong Changqing, his trusted aide in the Qinian Unit that he had given a heavy responsibility. There was no time to talk about anything. Fan Xian only gave him a meaningful glance. Its meaning was very clear: I fired the arrow banner of command, so why are you not running?
Hong Changqing returned his looked dazedly. The meaning in his eyes was also clear. How could he leave 130,000 liang of silver and run? Surely he has to watch it a bit longer for him?
Their gazes met and immediately separated. Hong Changqing moved with incredible speed to stand behind him. While Fan Xian’s dragon-like hand left hand, which was difficult to escape from, ruthlessly grasped the back of Hong Changqing’s neck.
With a zing, an arrow pierced with unerring accuracy into Hong Changqing’s waist, spraying out countless blossoms of blood. Hong Changqing’s face immediately became pale. Although a step earlier he had been courageously stepping in front of Fan Xian to block the arrow, he never thought that the arrow would so easily break through his knife wind and pierce his body.
The movement of the arrow did not stop. It ruthlessly plunged into the silver ingots scattered on the floor. Coincidentally, it pierced into an ingot and looked like it was wearing a bun-shaped iron label. It was cute and terrifying.
With the chest in one hand and a grasp on the back of Hong Changqing’s neck with the other, Fan Xian dashed toward the tail of the boat. Behind him, arrows fell like rain as it followed his footsteps and chased after his spirit. It didn’t trip him up or slow him one bit.
“Find the Black Knights and then regroup!”
Fan Xian stepped onto the railing at the tail end of the ship. He slapped one palm against the chest of the weak and unable to speak Hong Changqing. Injecting a sliver of Tianyi Dao’s gentle zhenqi, he temporarily helped him seal the blood meridian. However, he had borrowed the energy from this slap and rose into the air like a big bird.
In the next instant, he had landed on the shore. He didn’t turn his head to glance at Hong Changqing, who tragically fell into the ocean. Although he didn’t know what degree of injury that arrow had brought, he persisted in believing that Hong Changqing would not die. Since he was able to make it out alive from the island that was hell on earth, he would certainly survive this time.
Perhaps this was a kind of psychological self-comfort, a kind of blessing, or maybe Fan Xian truly believed in Qing Wa’s ability to play dead on the sea.
Xu Maocai covered the half of his face that was bleeding and said in a sinister and ruthless voice, “Reverse the oars!” The navy battleship beneath his body began to turn with great agility, leaving behind the massacre on the shoreline. At this moment, there was a layer of thick smoke on the surface of the ocean. Combined with the white fog, it made one’s line of sight even worse. Xu Maocai knew he had to treasure this opportunity and leave this forsaken place far behind. He had to follow the young master’s plan and begin to wander on the ocean. When it was necessary, he would rush back to Jiaozhou.
The boat reversed quickly in the water. Xu Maocai stared at the white-sail ship beside the shore. His pupils constricted slightly. He was no longer able to help Fan Xian. He worried in his heart that Fan Xian would not able to escape this.
A giant boom rang out.
The only completely undamaged ship of the three had charged onto the shore like a killer whale catching a sea lion. Ferociously and unstoppable, it crashed into the Overwatch Council’s boat.
Affected by the powerful crash, the water at the shore seemed to roll. Waves half the height of a person rose up. With the shore as the center, it spread powerfully in all directions. A series of snapping sounds rang out. It seemed the Overwatch Council’s official boat was falling apart from the attack.
In the moment of the collision, six or seven shadows leapt into the air from the naval battleship using the great power of the crash. In the air, they maintained their perfect postures. With barely a whisper, they landed on the tail of the strongly shaking Overwatch Council official ship.
Of the six or seven people, the most soul-assimilating one was the person in the middle. Yan Xiaoyi in light-black armor. Like a respected god, he was up high above and steadily landed as steadily on the deck at the rear of the ship as a rock. After landing, he didn’t move at all.
At his side were five ace personal guards from the Northern expedition camp.
Yan Xiaoyi arrived quickly. However, Fan Xian and his subordinates in the Qinian Unit ran even faster. At this moment on the ship, other than the ground full of silver ingots and wood shavings, there was not a single person.
Yan Xiaoyi stood at the tail of the ship. Coldly watching the shore, he stared at the black dot rapidly moving away. Turning his wrist back, his right hand shook.
At some unknown time, the gold wrapped soul-stealing bow appeared in his hand. He nocked an arrow and adjusted the string. The whole series of movements were done in a single breath, as smooth as flowing water.
The distance between the tail end of the ship and Fan Xian’s body was not too far or too close. It was the perfect distance to make the best use of the longbow’s ability to kill. The black arrow flew from the string. Its power exceeded that of lightning and thunder.
The arrow had already condensed Yan Xiaoyi’s peak spirit and power. It seemed to have secretly broken through the so-called speed limit and traveled through the barrier of space like a ghost-like enemy. In the previous moment, it was still on the bowstring. In the next, it had arrived behind Fan Xian.
Fan Xian did not have the time to turn his head and could not turn it. Even though under Wu Zhu’s training he had become the person with the quickest dodge technique in the world, after going through a night of killing and escaping, he still did not have a way to dodge it.
…
…
The point of the arrow ruthlessly pierced into Fan Xian’s back without mishap. No, it should have shot into the black chest Fan Xian carried on his back.
A muffled huff came from the fog on the shore. The black dot seemed to stagger and was almost pushed to the ground by this shot. For some reason, he immediately pushed up from the ground and rapidly ran into the distance.
He didn’t die? He didn’t die!
With the cover of the thick fog, the people on the boat could only faintly see Fan Xian’s figure. Even with Yan Xiaoyi’s powerful eyesight, he didn’t see clearly the details of the arrow piercing the other person. A glimmer of fear and doubt appeared on the faces of Yan Xiaoyi’s five trusted aides and aces. Having spent a night chasing after Fan Xian, everyone’s confidence had gradually ebbed away.
There was actually someone in this world who could slide down from a smooth precipice hundreds of meters tall! There was actually someone in this world who could be shot, full strength, by the Governor and only stumble slightly!
The trusted soldiers and aces suddenly thought of the origin of the person they were chasing after. They thought of the legendary Tianmai Being and many stories related to Fan Xian.
It was inevitable that surging emotions would rise in Yan Xiaoyi’s heart. However, he wore a cold expression. The change in his heart could not be seen.
He slapped the railing of the ship. The person was already floating on the shore. The faint sound of cavalry came from the woods near the shore.
The five trusted aides and aces at the tail of the ship met each other’s eyes. They swept onto the shore with unswerving determination on their faces.
In a moment, a group of riders came through the woods and gave up their steeds to Yan Xiaoyi and his group.
It could not be said that Yan Xiaoyi’s preparation was not sufficient. When carrying out the Danzhou killing, he used both the sea and land. How could Fan Xian escape?
The sound of hooves rang out as the group chasing after Commissioner disappeared into the fog on the shore. After the white-sail ship was heavily attacked, it began to slowly sink into the icy cold sea. Bodies and debris floated on the surface of the water.
Hong Changqing jumped down. Fan Xian jumped down. Yan Xiaoyi and his trusted aides also jumped off. One-hundred and thirty-thousand liang of silver also sank down.
The chase continued.
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…
A day later, behind a large tree amidst the dense primitive forest north of Danzhou, Fan Xian, in black clothing, was sitting on the moss and breathing heavily. Periodically, he stretched out to wipe the blood leaking from the corner of his lips.
He gently stroked the little dot on the surface of the chest in his arms with a chill in his heart. Ever since he was young, he knew how strong that chest was. He wasn’t even able to leave any marks with the black dagger that Sir Fei had given to him. Who would have thought that Yan Xiaoyi’s arrow could be able to leave a mark on the chest.
From this, one could see just how powerful Yan Xiaoyi’s shot was.
Presumably, they had not expected him to meet that shot directly. A small smile rose to the corner of Fan Xian’s lips. With such a chest as this, he would be stupid to not use it as a bulletproof vest.
However, he knew that although the chest had stopped the tip of the arrow piercing into his body, it was not able to stop the powerful force of the arrow. Thus, he had received additional internal injuries. There were signs of his Genuine Qi becoming unstable.
That was why he would be trapped in a circle with a 10 li radius in the dense woods to the north of Danzhou by Yan Xiaoyi’s group.
However, Fan Xian was not worried. On the contrary, a faint excitement welled deep in his heart. He forcefully subdued his slightly panting breaths. Lifting his fingers lightly, he opened the long and narrow chest.
The plain and unadorned metal shaped objects in the chest appeared to be simple. Fan Xian knew that this object, which could not compare in beauty with the gold wire longbow in Yan Xiaoyi’s hands, was actually the most terrifying weapon in this world.
He closed his eyes and rested for a moment. Then, his hands began to move quickly in the chest. With a series of simple and beautiful clicks, a weapon that originally did not belong to this world had calmly appeared in his hands.
The last time this weapon had appeared in this world, it had directly caused the strange deaths of two of Qing Kingdom’s Princes and allowed Prince Cheng to take the throne. It gave the present Qing Emperor a chance to sit on the dragon chair. In some ways, it could be said that the destruction of Wei Kingdom, the great changes under heaven, power of Qing Kingdom… The origin of all of this was the assault rifle in Fan Xian’s hands right now.
M82A1, a simple code name, a black chest, and a legendary weapon.
After dealing with everything, Fan Xian closed the chest properly. Holding the gun in his arms, he rested for a bit. It was impossible for him to enter a true meditative state. Yan Xiaoyi was like a crazed tiger in the woods behind him, bound to him tightly. Plus, the metal texture in his arms caused his attention to be a bit scattered.
He felt that he was not in Qing Kingdom, not in this world. It was as if he was in the old world he had left many years ago, in the woods in Yunnan, fighting to the death with the evil mercenaries.
This absurd feeling twisted his entire state of mind. It was only extreme exhaustion and an excited anticipation of the future that stopped him from throwing down this gun.
Escaping from the seaside to here, Fan Xian never had the chance to counterattack. Perhaps it was his innate sense of cautiousness taking hold again, but he only carried the chest and wormed into the dense woods. When he passed Danzhou, he was afraid of bringing unknown disaster to his grandmother and the people in the city. So, he could not go ask for help. He drew a distant arc and lured Yan Xiaoyi and his people to the woods behind the precipice.
The earlier scene when he assembled the gun already proved that Fan Xian had not lost his training after all these years. Remembering when he was first married in Cang Mountain, he had practiced every night with this assault rifle on the snowy mountain. Thus, he was full of confidence.
If Yan Xiaoyi was a warrior who exploited the power of physics-based long-distance weapons to their limit, then Fan Xian was an amateur who trained hard and was about to attempt his first long-distance kill.
This was a duel between the peak of weapons and the culture of fire powder. From the beginning, this kind of comparison was not fair.
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…
Thud!
An arrow ruthlessly thudded into the large tree Fan Xian was leaning again.
His eyes didn’t even open. He also didn’t make any defensive actions. He knew the people Yan Xiaoyi had brought were also master archers. Listening to the sound of the arrow, he knew that Yan Xiaoyi was midway up the mountain opposite, staring fixedly for any movements. The two places were separated by a large distance.
He was not stupid enough to reveal himself because of this little test.
After adjusting his breathing for an indeterminable amount of time, Fan Xian opened his eyes. He knew that his body would not be able to receive sufficient rest in this complicated and dangerous woodland attack. It would be very difficult to recover his essential energy. He could not waste too much time here.
He re-tied the black rests on his body and used his dagger to cut down some branches as a disguise. Then, he carefully checked the five small traps he had left around the tree. With his right hand holding the heavy assault rifle and using the large trees as cover, he carefully headed up the mountain.
Thinking of the people who had died tonight, Fan Xian licked his dry lips as he climbed.