Chapter 121: The Merchant Caravan
Chapter 121: The Merchant Caravan
In a ruined mountain temple on a bitter, wind-lashed night.
Lü Huaijin leaned against a wooden pillar, carefully gnawing at dried rations and sipping plain water.
Beside her was her younger brother, Lü Woyu, thirteen or fourteen years old and still half a child.
Both wore expressions of quiet grief and worry. Vast as the world was, it seemed to hold no place for the two of them.
Their mother had died young. To make ends meet, their father had often traveled to Qisong Prefecture searching for Pinelongevity Stones to sell, and had left the two siblings in the care of their maternal grandmother in Guangning Prefecture. Then, not long ago, word came back from Qisong: their father had died suddenly of illness. They were to go and collect his belongings and his body.
Unwilling to let their father die a stranger in a distant land with his soul unable to return home, the siblings quarreled with their uncle and aunt, amassed the money their father had regularly sent them, and placed themselves under the protection of the Chen merchant caravan to travel to Qisong Prefecture.
Not two days into the journey, the caravan was attacked by bandits outside Sunset Ridge on Lion-Felling Mountain. Fortunately, the escort bureau they had hired at great cost was both capable and willing to fight, and managed to drive off the enemy and keep everyone safe.
Even so, the delay meant they could no longer clear the ridge before sunset, and they were left with no choice but to stop in this stretch of nowhere and wait for dawn.
After handing her brother a strip of dried meat, Lü Huaijin’s gaze drifted to the escort leader surnamed Yu, sitting by the fire.
The escort leader was around forty, with a slightly protruding mouth and a birdlike face. The skin exposed on his arms and neck was mottled with patches of red, yellow, and green. His martial arts were formidable, reportedly at the fourth rank, Mortal Surpassed. It was his display of power earlier that had kept both the caravan and the escort from losing anyone.
Lü Huaijin pulled her gaze away from the escort leader sitting with his sword in his arms and felt somewhat reassured.
She only hoped the two of them could reach Qisong Prefecture safely, and bring their father’s spirit home.
She cast a fond glance at her brother eating his dried meat in big bites and gulping down water, then heard two escort guards who had just finished their watch walk toward a nearby fire, talking idly.
"That Young Master Xie from Flame Capital had his moment of glory and left us with all this mess. When the Three Fiends of Xiao City were around, you just paid the toll and passed through. Now you’ve got multiple gangs of bandits fighting over this stretch of road and none of them give us any face!"
"Good thing the escort leader is skilled with a sword and stands by his men. Otherwise we’d really have a few brothers dead."
"If Young Master Xie is so capable, let him come back and finish off the rest of the strongmen on Sunset Ridge. Then I, Old Chen, won’t say another word."
Lü Huaijin and Lü Woyu only half understood, but gathered that a Young Master Xie from Flame Capital had killed the three most fearsome bandits on Sunset Ridge, only resulting in making things worse for caravans passing through.
Listening to the cold winter rain patter softly on the tiles, the siblings gradually grew drowsy.
Just then, the doors of the ruined temple were pushed open. A cold, damp gust swept in, and the entire caravan and escort shivered in unison, jolted wide awake.
The two guards posted at the door jogged inside and called out from a short distance, "Leader, there’s a man and a woman coming!"
"Neither looks old, and there’s nothing unusual about their appearance, but they can project a little true qi outward to keep out the rain. They should be at the early-stage Great Proliferation Realm."
The escort leader’s half-lidded eyes snapped wide open. He thought for a moment and said, "Question them before letting them in."
The two guards went to carry out the order, and before long reported back that, "The duo says they’re from Dingjiang Prefecture, but they didn’t name their sect. They only wish to head south through Sunset Ridge."
The escort leader thought it over and nodded.
"Let them in, but they must keep at least twenty meters from us."
Lü Huaijin and Lü Woyu looked toward the door with a mix of worry and curiosity, and saw a man and a woman lead a pair of brown horses inside.
The young woman wore a blue-green dress and had her hair swept up in a simple topknot. She was tall and graceful with a beautiful face that wore a clear and serene smile, resembling a fairy from a painting. Her presence seemed to draw moonlight and starlight into the ruined temple, brightening it just a little.
The escort guards, the caravan members, and even the Lü siblings all stood a little transfixed.
The same thought crossed all their minds at once: So this must be what those listed in the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu look like...
Then they saw the young woman point toward a corner far from the caravan.
"Junior Brother, let’s go over there."
Junior Brother... Only then did Lü Huaijin and the others remember there was a man beside her.
The young man was also young, around twenty. He wore a cyan robe and a loose scholar’s headscarf with well-defined features and a clear-eyed bearing. Under ordinary circumstances he would have drawn plenty of attention, but the young woman beside him was so remarkably striking that everyone had simply overlooked him.
"A man and a woman, both using swords. Could they be disciples of the Self-Revering School?" Lü Huaijin heard Escort Guard Chen say in a low voice to his companion.
The Self-Revering School’s Twin-Wing Sword Art was renowned throughout the world, but it could only be performed by a man and a woman together.
The pair would begin cultivation together from around fourteen or fifteen and were not considered fully trained until their minds were in perfect attunement and their coordination came naturally. Such partners always ended up married. The most famous pair was the Gold and Silver Twin Swords, a husband and wife who had both reached the Heaven-Man Realm. When they used the Twin-Wing Sword Art together, even a Sage at the Spirit Platform Realm could not defeat them quickly.
This was the fearsome thing about the Self-Revering School. For two people who had cultivated the Twin-Wing Scripture and bound themselves in marriage, whenever one broke through to a new realm, the other would closely follow behind. It was strange and wondrous.
But if one of them had an affair and was unfaithful, or tried to enjoy multiple partners, the technique would destroy itself, leading to qi deviation, or a complete ruin of body and spirit.
In other kingdoms and provinces, a man and woman traveling together with swords could be any number of things, but within Ning Province, any martial artist with even a passing knowledge of the jianghu would first guess Self-Revering School disciples.
"Doesn’t seem like it," the escort leader said quietly to Guard Chen. "The Self-Revering School doesn’t have a woman this remarkable among its current generation of disciples."
The Self-Revering School was responsible for assisting with patrols in Guangning Prefecture, where they operated.
Watching the duo feed their horses, settle quietly into their corner, light a small fire, and help themselves to their own rations and water, the escort guards relaxed somewhat, though they kept their guard up.
The winter rain had thinned to a drizzle, but mist grew thick and crept in through broken holes and cracked windows, thinned only by the firelight.
Gradually, Lü Huaijin felt herself growing more and more dizzy, more and more drained. With some effort she turned her head to look at Lü Woyu, and saw that her brother looked equally weakened.
The clatter of metal rang out as multiple escorts and caravan guards let their weapons fall to the ground.
Shing! The escort leader drew his sword.
A pure radiance spilled forth, illuminating the threads of black miasma lurking in the surrounding mist and dissolving them completely.
"Why hide yourself?" the escort leader called out loudly.
He was the only one in the entire caravan left unaffected.
His technique had special properties that countered toxic miasma, but he had noticed too late. Whoever was hiding outside the temple seemed to know him well, and had deliberately steered the miasma concealed in the mist around him to affect the others first.
"Haha!" With a loud laugh, a figure walked in.
The newcomer was in his mid-thirties, dressed in a black training outfit, his skin tinged with a faint blue hue. He had an ordinary yet vicious and menacing face.
"Miasma Poison Saber Yan Peng..." the escort leader said in a low, heavy voice, naming the man.
Yan Peng’s saber work was only passable, but he could command a variety of toxic miasmas. He always worked alone and had the nerve to prey on merchant caravans.
He preferred to weaken his targets with miasma first, then make his move once they were incapacitated or poisoned. Though only at the fifth rank, Profound Discerned, his hands were covered in blood and a bounty of 1,500 taels of silver on his head.
Yan Peng smiled.
"Escort Leader Yu, hand over that item and I’ll cure your people of the poison. You can’t beat me quickly, and they can’t hold on that long."
As he spoke, Yan Peng cast a careful glance around the temple, alert for surprises.
Then his gaze fell on a face as radiant as the full moon, and his mind nearly sank into those eyes lit with candleflame and scattered stars.
"Such a beautiful woman... When did a girl like this appear in this ruined temple?" Yan Peng was first dazzled, then alarmed.
He hadn’t noticed at all. Even while deploying his miasma, he had completely failed to detect two people hiding in that corner.
Then he heard the young man beside the woman say with a quiet laugh, "Senior Sister, do you want to go first, or should I?"
The young woman said gently, "Be quick. People poisoned by miasma can’t wait long."
Isn’t that my line? What do you mean, be quick? Yan Peng watched in bewilderment as the young man in the cyan robe drew a sword that gleamed like an ice crystal with a sharp ring and walked over to him in a few strides. The escort leader at the far end watched with a furrowed brow and an air of expectation, making no move to intervene.
The next moment, the crystalline blade filled his vision.
In terror he tried to draw his saber, but his body wouldn’t move, as if caught in a nightmare.
He strained with everything he had and finally broke free of the dream, only to find the sword tip drawing closer still, his body still layered in invisible bonds.
Yan Peng watched helplessly as the sword moved toward him with strange, unhurried slowness and touched the center of his brow.
Thud. He slumped into a deep sleep.
The escort leader’s pupils widened sharply, as if trying to see more clearly.
Then he watched Miasma Poison Saber Yan Peng roll to his feet. Eyes half-shut, he made his way over to the caravan, took out pills from his clothes, and fed them one by one to the stricken.
The escort leader’s instinct was to stop him—who knew whether Yan Peng’s pills were poison, or what state the man was in right now?
But the thought that without the pills, the others wouldn’t last much longer made him hold his tongue.
By the time Yan Peng reached the last few escorts, Lü Huaijin and the others had already regained their clarity of mind and their strength.
Throughout the entire process, the young man kept his back to everyone.
Yan Peng walked briskly back to where he had stood and froze in place.
He felt as though he had lived through a vivid but pleasant dream, in which he had obtained the item and then, true to his word, helped Escort Leader Yu cure everyone of the poison.
He opened his eyes reluctantly, just in time to hear the woman with her ice-pale complexion say to the young man in front of her, "Junior Brother, what was that?"
The young man laughed.
"Senior Sister, I accept your lecture. Saving people is like fighting a fire. We can’t afford to delay."
The young woman’s lips curved faintly at that, her dimples just showing.
"When have I ever lectured you?"
On instinct, Yan Peng drew his saber and stared blankly at the pair in front of him.
What have they just done?
What do they want?
What has just happened?
Wasn’t I here to rob them?
Yan Peng didn’t understand what had happened, but he could tell the situation was extremely bizarre. He quietly released his miasma, readying himself to turn and flee the moment an opening appeared.