SS CH29

In the martial arts world, there are three things that can never be counted: the small-fry of the various social strata, the love-hate entanglements of disciples from major sects, and the desperate lives claimed by the Soul-Burial Palace.

The term “desperate lives” refers to two things: the large numbers of dead-loyal assassins under the Soul-Burial Palace’s command, and the people who die at their hands.

Gu Xiao had yet to encounter the former, but he had already seen plenty of the latter.

When he was young, there was a village at the foot of the mountain where he lived called “Taoyuan Village.” It was named because the village nestled against the mountains and rivers, and the villagers rarely interacted with the outside world. For years, the smoke and fire of a chaotic world had not invaded this place. After Gu Qifang cleared out the mountain bandits, the villagers lived in peace and contentment, as if they were in a paradise. But now, it had become a different sight entirely.

After descending the mountain, Gu Xiao had revisited his old home, intending to see the scenery of his childhood and find the villagers and playmates who had looked after him. Instead, he arrived to find the once-peaceful village desolate. Many houses were in ruins, and many new graves had been added to both ends of the village.

Most notably, all the families who had suffered these deaths had once had some degree of friendship with the three of them—the master and his two disciples.

Doctor Niu at the head of the village was benevolent and charitable, running the only pharmacy within fifty miles. Whenever Gu Xiao had a headache or fever as a child, he would go there for treatment and medicine. Yet, such a good man had been beheaded one night five years ago, and not even his family or the guard dog was spared—eight heads were neatly arranged in front of the pharmacy door.

Sister Xu, who sold tofu pudding, was widowed young and served her disabled mother-in-law and seven-year-old son. She especially liked Gu Xiao, and every time she saw him, she would insist on bringing him a bowl of hot tofu pudding. But such a gentle woman was skinned alive, and her skin was pasted onto the mud wall of her home, scaring her young son, who had woken up early that morning, into madness.

Sister Lian, who grew flowers and kept bees at the end of the village, was a timid and gentle woman. Every time she saw Duanqing, she would blush, only daring to send a bouquet of fresh, dew-kissed flowers and steal a glance from afar, only to be glared back by Gu Qifang. She never had a bad bone in her body. Yet, she had her eyes gouged out and her hands chopped off, and was shoved into a thorn-filled thicket…

Twenty-five lives in Peach Blossom Village were slaughtered in a single night. And what grudges could they possibly have had in their daily lives that would amount to anything more than petty squabbles? How could that invite such a disaster?

Moreover, every person who died had once had some connection with the master and his two disciples.

Gu Xiao remembered the siege he and Duanqing had encountered when they first descended the mountain. He remembered that after Gu Qifang moved their home, she had once returned here, only to come back with a murderous expression, the blood on her Jinghong blade not yet dry.

That was also the first time he saw his master truly lose her temper.

Gu Xiao had an intuition: the murderer was targeting them. It was just that they had left a step early, and the killer, unable to find the target, had taken out their frustration on these innocent people.

That day, the sky was overcast. Gu Xiao went to pay his respects at the graves of the deceased, kowtowing respectfully on his knees, and then turned to search their former dwellings one by one.

There weren’t many people in the village, and houses where people had died were generally considered unlucky, so they had remained abandoned for years. Gu Xiao threw himself into the work, turning into a dusty, jumping monkey, before finally finding a dagger left behind in Sister Xu’s home.

The dagger was crafted with blood grooves and barbs; it wasn’t hard to imagine how its owner had gripped it to peel the skin off an innocent woman. Gu Xiao studied it carefully for a while and found a tiny pattern carved into the hilt.

The flower resembled a poppy; it was the Brahma flower unique to the Lost Track Ridge (Mizong Ridge) in the Southwest. Because it grew by drinking blood and fed on dead animals, it was also known as the “Flesh-and-Blood Flower.”

And within the Lost Track Ridge, there was only one power—the Soul-Burial Palace.

Gu Xiao had been tracking the Soul-Burial Palace for half a year. Although he moved slowly, stopping along the way, the other side acted with such bizarre cunning that they rarely left a trail. As a result, he hadn’t formally clashed with anyone from the Soul-Burial Palace yet. He hadn’t expected to seize an opportunity here.

Regardless of what old grudges the Soul-Burial Palace had with his master and shiniang, since they could vent their anger on bystanders to such a degree, then once they found Feiyun Peak, it would probably be another massive disaster. Thinking of this, Gu Xiao finally became serious. “Where did you escape from?”

Chu Yao was young and didn’t remember clearly, so he just dumped everything out like beans spilling from a bamboo tube. It took Gu Xiao a while to find the clues in the rambling words: kidnapped in Mianfeng City, three days on the road, escaped at night in Jinshui Town.

Gu Xiao calculated in his head and found that this group’s route was heading west—which meant they were very likely heading to the Lost Track Ridge.

Having made up his mind, Gu Xiao stopped speaking. Chu Yao waited a while without hearing anything further, so he fidgeted in his arms and asked carefully, “What’s wrong?”

Gu Xiao hadn’t snapped back to reality yet, and a lewd joke subconsciously slipped out: “A hot-blooded youth shouldn’t be rubbing against me, be careful of an accidental discharge… pfft, I didn’t say anything.”

He suddenly remembered that what he was holding was a seven or eight-year-old child. He felt that this lewd remark was truly beastly, and he quickly tightened his grip on the reins.

Chu Yao: “…What did you say?”

“Good children should learn to play dumb.” Gu Xiao patted his head affectionately. “Come, sleep. Or do you need me to tell you a story?”

Chu Yao hesitated for a long time before saying, “Mm.”

Gu Xiao actually didn’t listen to stories much when he was a child. Generally, if he couldn’t sleep, he was either being lulled to sleep by the sound of his shiniang reciting classics, or being dragged up by his master to run riot all night until he was exhausted. The miscellaneous books he read the most growing up were the pulp novels he dug out from his master’s room. But those things, filled with crude slang and tales of the street, were absolutely not suitable for a child to hear. Gu Xiao considered himself a person who hadn’t quite reached the level of a beast, so he couldn’t bring himself to do something so unscrupulous.

So, he decided to draw from life and make it up on the spot—

“In a place far, far away, there lived a ferocious and terrifying female bandit. She was eight feet tall, carried a butcher’s knife at her waist, ate the hearts and livers of children every day, and loved to go down the mountain to snatch men. Later, she snatched a very handsome man up the mountain…”

Chu Yao shivered in his arms: “Was she going to skin him to make clothes?…”

“That’s a ghost story, it’s not realistic at all.” Gu Xiao curled his lips. “Later, this man became her mountain-stronghold wife, the female bandit adopted a child, and from then on, they turned over a new leaf. The family of three was complete. It was a happy ending.”

Chu Yao: “…”

He eventually fell asleep in Gu Xiao’s arms. When he woke up, the sun was high in the sky. He found himself being carried on Gu Xiao’s back. This jerk was accepting a stalk of autumn chrysanthemum from a flower seller with one hand while drinking from a small wine flask with the other.

Chu Yao blinked, surprised to see they were surrounded by the bustle of the marketplace. He couldn’t help but be stunned, nearly thinking he was dreaming.

“…Where is this?”

“Jinshui Town.”

Chu Yao was horrified. He had just escaped from Jinshui Town, hidden in the carts of traveling merchants, bumped along for a whole day to make it out of the city, and then ran through the wilderness for over a day. He never expected that in the time it took to take a nap, he would be back in this place.

Gu Xiao explained, “Not long after you fell asleep last night, the rain stopped. I figured we had to move early, and seeing you sleeping like a dead pig, I just let the horse go and used lightfoot martial arts to bring you here, entering the city at the crack of dawn.”

As he spoke, he put Chu Yao down. The moment the little guy touched the ground, he started burrowing behind him, wishing he could bury his face in his clothes. Instead, the guy pulled him around to the front, exposing his chubby, little face to the light of day, as if afraid others wouldn’t see it clearly.

Chu Yao: “…What are you doing?”

“I’ve been dragging you around Jinshui City for half the day, but far from anyone looking for trouble, I haven’t even encountered a single stalker.” Gu Xiao patted his head and lowered his voice, “Is it that they don’t take you seriously, or is it that… their goal has already been achieved, and a child like you is irrelevant to them?”

Chu Yao didn’t quite understand, but he faintly smelled something unusual in Gu Xiao’s words.

Gu Xiao spoke with a light smile, but his heart felt anything but light.

Chu Yao’s attire was aristocratic, and his manner of speaking wasn’t like an ordinary child; it was a demeanor that couldn’t be cultivated by an ordinary wealthy family. It was clear that he and his brother’s identities were not simple. Furthermore, the Soul-Burial Palace weren’t mere bandits who kidnapped any two rich kids for ransom. Since they had put in the effort to kidnap them both, why, after losing one, did they not delay their journey? They didn’t seem to be in a frantic pursuit, nor did they even leave anyone behind to watch for messages. This was too strange.

Unless… the Soul-Burial Palace’s true goal was his brother alone, and they didn’t intend to take this child’s life, nor were they afraid of news leaking out through him.

Chu Yao watched the smile disappear from his face and was inexplicably afraid. He carefully tugged on his sleeve and asked, “Then… what should we do?”

Gu Xiao looked down at him and asked, “Are there many people who kidnapped you?”

“Not many. My ten fingers aren’t enough to count them twice.” Chu Yao thought about it. “But they drove four carriages. My brother and I were tied in the middle one, but we were only guarded by two people.”

“When your brother let you go, did he say anything or give you anything?”

Chu Yao bit his finger and thought for a long time, forcing himself to recall that night of panic and fragmented memories. Gu Xiao waited patiently.

“He said… ‘The wind has risen in the north,’ and he gave me a little cloth package.” Chu Yao searched his body, but after the bumpy journey, the thing he had wrapped in a scrap of cloth had long since been lost. He had to try his best to recall what was inside. “Inside the cloth package was a pinch of black powder. It smelled very foul, just like… er, just like the smell of setting off firecrackers during the New Year!”

“The wind… has risen in the north?”

Gu Xiao frowned, his thoughts racing. At one moment, it struck his mind like a thunderbolt, and his expression changed drastically!

Jinshui City was a boundary between north and south. Traveling from Mianfeng down to Jinshui was a southern route, so he had previously guessed the Soul-Burial Palace people wanted to return to the Lost Track Ridge, but… there was another possibility: they were abandoning horses for boats here and heading north by water!

Although Gu Xiao hadn’t traveled much during this time, he had heard whispers of the war at the borders. He heard that in the north, a vassal prince had rebelled, colluding with barbarian tribes to launch a massive assault on the passes. Fortunately, the border generals resisted to the death, and the northern garrisons stood like an iron wall, preventing the rebels from succeeding. They had been forced to retreat seven miles, stationing themselves across the river and remaining as dangerous as crouching tigers.

The northern war was critical, and the inner cities were also filled with undercurrents. It was said that the restless had already begun smuggling salt and iron, making exorbitant profits during the chaotic times, going as far as colluding with rebel spies. Some lawless factions in the martial arts world had even started taking on missions to assassinate court officials and looting gunpowder and weapons.

The pungent black powder was very likely gunpowder, and these two children…

Gu Xiao squinted his eyes, looking deeply at the helpless little meatball in front of him—

He had been negligent. There were many people in this world with the surname Chu, but there weren’t many truly worth the Soul-Burial Palace’s great efforts. And among them, the most precious were… those descendants of the Emperor who carried the state as their surname.