People of the jianghu could smell their own kind from miles away.
It was an old saying, meaning that the little tricks and dodges used by men of the rivers and lakes might fool ordinary folk, but they could never deceive someone in the trade.
For Li Yan, however, that smell was literal.
After that night, his sense of smell had grown far sharper.
Though the riders were still a hundred paces off as they galloped down the official road, the thick reek of blood on them could not escape his nose.
It was the stench of human blood.
Not only that, but it carried the faintest trace of putrefaction.
Fortunately, Li Yan could tell that these smells belonged to the mundane world. They were distinctly different from the bizarre auras clinging to the Chang soldiers or the Earth God Temple.
He watched as Sha Lifei, being a veteran of the jianghu, proved even more vigilant. The man sprang up at once and hissed to those around him, "Something’s wrong. Stay sharp..."
Sha Lifei shifted his feet into an off-T stance, neither square nor spread, his elbows slightly crooked and his palm resting barely three inches from his saber hilt.
It was the classic guard of a blade-man.
When crossing paths with unfamiliar wanderers, keeping your steel sheathed prevented misunderstandings, yet left you ready to draw at the first sign of trouble to seize the upper hand.
Li Yan’s quick-saber style shared a lineage with Sha Lifei’s, so he recognized it at a glance. What he also noticed was that the old slicker kept his weight shifted back, clearly primed to turn tail and bolt the moment things went south.
When wheat reapers hired a blade-man to lead them, it was partly to find work and partly for protection; Guanzhong was a harsh land with no shortage of highwaymen.
Sha Lifei, however, possessed none of that protective resolve.
The reapers around them grew even more anxious, their knuckles whitening around the hafts of their sickles. A few had trained in martial forms, and while the rest knew nothing of sickle techniques, years of wielding farm implements had made the blades extensions of their arms. Pushed into a corner, they would hack a man down without hesitation. Backed by their superior numbers, they managed to stand their ground rather than scatter in panic.
Hoofbeats drew near, and the riders pulled their mounts to a halt, peering down.
Beneath wide bamboo hats were faces weathered by wind and frost, uniformly grim. In their eyes flickered amusement and disdain.
By now, Li Yan was certain they were bandits.
Regardless of their varied garb or weapons, every one of them wore a loose black cloth around their neck. It was a bandit’s trademark—one swift tug, and their faces were masked for bloody work.
Yet even outlaws had their codes. What kind of madmen paraded so brazenly in broad daylight?
Just then, Sha Lifei took a hesitant step forward, let out a booming laugh, and cupped his hands. "Mountains have the Five Sacred Peaks, waters have the Five Great Lakes, and the Northwest holds its own blade. You gentlemen look unfamiliar—might I ask where you hail from?"
It was jianghu argot, sounding like complete gibberish to the reapers, but Li Yan understood it clearly.
"The Five Peaks and Five Lakes" was cant for all corners of the realm. Sha Lifei could tell these men were strangers, not local Guanzhong cutthroats, so he made a point of asserting his own jianghu status to make them think twice. After all, the mighty dragon does not crush the local snake. Sha Lifei was hardly a dragon, nor was he even a snake, but this was how one traveled the world: whether a bluff worked or not, you bluffed first.
Normally, once Sha Lifei laid down his challenge, the other side would sound out their backgrounds, replying with the mountain they hailed from, the waters they rowed, or the incense they burned. This mutual probing established each other’s footing to avoid accidental bloodshed.
To their surprise, the strangers offered no reply at all.
A few of them merely twirled daggers in their hands, their eyes glinting with malice.
Right then, the leader muttered in a low voice, "Let's ride. Just a bunch of dirt-poor mud-legs. Don't waste daylight."
His accent was entirely foreign to Guanzhong.
*Qilu mounted bandits!*
Li Yan’s heart skipped a beat as he deduced their origin. The greenwoods were rife with outlaws of every stripe: the bandits of Guandong, the blade robbers of Guanzhong, the spear-wielding bandits of the Central Plains, the mounted bandits of Qilu, the water pirates of Lake Tai. All of them belonged to the Blue Gate, making their living off kidnappings, ransoms, and raids. Generally speaking, each faction kept to its own mountains and turf, rarely straying across boundaries.
For them to ride so openly through Guanzhong meant something strange was afoot.
Sha Lifei had noticed it too; his knees were trembling. Luckily, at their leader's command, the mounted bandits spurred their horses onward without another glance, vanishing down the road amid billowing dust.
Sha Lifei waited a moment before striding forward. With a metallic rasp, he drew his saber and shook it at the distant dust, bellowing curses: "Ignorant sons of bitches! If I weren't looking after my village kin today, I’d have carved you into pieces!"
Li Yan rolled his eyes, utterly speechless.
What was the point of talking tough after the men had already vanished?
The reapers, however, hurried forward to hold him back and soothe his temper.
"Hero Sha, cool your anger..."
"Indeed, don't go calling them back on us..."
Sha Lifei kept up his blustering front, sheathing his blade with a foul-mouthed grumble. "A pack of mounted bandits! I, Sha Lifei, wouldn't bat an eye at them if I weren't worried about you folks getting hurt... Hmph!"
An elderly reaper rubbed his chest, fear lingering in his eyes. "Things are not peaceful this year. Shouldn't we get moving quickly?"
"Move where?!" Sha Lifei glared at him. "Those men just left. What if they're heading ahead to chop someone up? Rushing after them is begging for death. We wait a bit to steer clear of them."
Li Yan nodded quietly to himself. The man was a coward, but his practical survival instincts were beyond reproach.
The reapers nodded in agreement. They were only out to earn their bread; no matter who those riders were, steering clear of trouble was best.
Not long after, however, Li Yan kicked up from the ground in a fluid spring. His saber cleared its scabbard with a sharp hiss, and his eyes fixed on the distance with taut wariness.
"What is it now?" Sha Lifei asked, startled, hurrying over.
Li Yan gripped his Guanshan saber tight and muttered, "Something's coming!"
By *something*, he certainly did not mean men.
Shortly after the bandits departed, another scent had drifted into his nostrils—cold, clammy, and reeking of a heavy, pungent stench. It was several times more potent than that of Blind Old Third.
A chill ran through Li Yan. Could it be that unblocking his spirit root had made him an open target for something nearby? What sort of dreadful creature dared prowl under the blazing noon sun?
Sha Lifei jumped in fright, drawing both of his sabers to scan their surroundings. But the land was flat and open in all directions; there was no sign of a man or the sound of a horse. "Lad, have you lost your wits? There's nobody out there."
"What's that!" Heidan shrieked, pointing to their left.
Everyone looked over. In the wheat field to the left of the road, the golden stalks were parting and swaying violently, as though something was racing through them at terrifying speed.
Judging by the wake it carved, the creature was enormous.
Before anyone could puzzle it out, a massive serpent, as thick around as a serving bowl, slowly raised its head from the grain. Its tongue flickered with sharp hisses, its scales gleaming under the sunlight.
Strangest of all, perched atop its head was a fleshy, vibrant crest, exactly like a rooster’s comb.
"A cockscomb snake!"
Several reapers turned deathly pale.
Folk legend held that the cockscomb snake bore a rooster's comb upon its head, and its bite brought certain death. Wicked and baleful by nature, it loved burrowing into graves and ancient tombs; old-timers often spoke of grave-robbing tomb rats meeting gruesome retribution upon unearthing one. Worst of all, it was whispered to be a demonic snake possessed of supernatural cultivation.
A prickle ran across Li Yan's skin. His senses told him far more than the others could perceive: the beast radiated an icy, foul malice stronger even than the incense aura of the Earth God Temple. Worse, its cold, unblinking gaze seemed fixed directly upon him.
Li Yan reached down, fingering the red cloth bundle that wrapped the Three Powers Demon-Suppressing Coins on his saber tassel. At least this creature possessed flesh and bone; with the talismanic coins, he might be able to slay it. He only wondered if cutting it down would invite some lingering curse to haunt him thereafter...
"Nobody move!" Sha Lifei hissed through chattering teeth, staring ahead. "I’ve heard tell that snakes with cultivation will always measure themselves against people! If you're taller than it, the damned thing will scare itself to death! Quick, form a human pyramid!"
Many of the men had heard the same tale.
Even the old chronicles recounted by storytellers bore such records: *Serpents with occult attainment delight in matching heights with men. If the serpent proves taller, it bites; if lesser, it perishes of its own accord. Yet it must measure openly in sight, never in secret. Travelers in the mountains who encounter one should thrust umbrellas aloft, and the serpent, bested in height, shall die.*
Whether truth or myth, they had no other choice. None of them were fools; they had seen how fast the beast moved through the wheat. Running was out of the question.
Without hesitation, the reapers scrambled to stack themselves into a pyramid. It was a game they had played as boys, and the strongest among them planted their legs firmly while the leaner men stepped onto their hands and clambered up their shoulders. Though far from the poise of acrobats, they had hoisted a three-tier human wall in the blink of an eye.
To their relief, the crested snake remained out in the field, watching them with apparent hesitation, making no move forward.
"It worked! What did I tell you!" Sha Lifei grunted with pride, his burly frame shouldering two grown men.
His smugness froze an instant later.
The cockscomb snake suddenly arched its neck and reared straight up, its upper body rising higher and higher until its crested head easily surpassed the top of their pyramid.
"Quick, quick, another man up!"
"Who... which bastard just shat his pants!"
Chaos erupted in the ranks. Li Yan pushed off the trunk of the nearby locust tree with a soaring leap, landing at the very pinnacle of the human wall, his saber drawn and ready.
Facing an unknown beast, he could only place his faith in Sha Lifei’s old wives' tale. Yet for reasons he could not fathom, he felt a strange sense that the serpent was looking up at them with unmistakable derision.
All at once, the snake tilted its head as if listening to something in the distance. It slipped back down into the wheat and tore away like a gust of wind, vanishing without a trace in a heartbeat.
The wind rustled across the golden sea of grain, and from far away drifted the faint, mournful piping of a flute.
The men finally slumped, their legs turned to water as they collapsed onto the dirt.
One elderly reaper cursed through trembling lips, "What kind of evil year is this? First bandits, now a demon snake. Did we step out of our doors under an unlucky star?"
Li Yan gazed into the distance, deep in thought. He had a distinct feeling that the cockscomb snake had not been hunting them at all, but following the mounted bandits.
After two successive frights, the company was badly rattled. Seeing their nerves fraying, Sha Lifei puffed out his chest, spouting another round of boastful promises to rally the men before urging them forward.
They had originally intended to shave off travel time by cutting through a rugged mountain path, but Sha Lifei was so thoroughly spooked that he insisted on sticking strictly to the official road, even if it cost them an extra day.
Fortunately, no further bizarre incidents befell them.
Being an old wanderer of the roads, Sha Lifei made inquiries about the mounted bandits at every tea stall and from passing wayfarers. To their relief, the outlaws had veered off at a crossroads and were not seen again.
Several days later, the walls of Xianyang finally rose into view.
Rather than entering the city, the crew followed Sha Lifei toward an adjacent village.
Only then did Sha Lifei resume his bragging. "The family we’re working for this season is generous beyond measure. Their wages are higher than anywhere else, and their fields stretch as far as the eye can see. If it weren't for me, you lot would never have had such luck..."
Li Yan paid him little mind, glancing around absentmindedly.
Sha Lifei had promised that once the reapers were settled, he would take him into Xianyang to pay a call on Wang Daoxuan.
He could only wonder if this hearth-dwelling Daoist possessed genuine skill, and whether he would be willing to open the door to the occult for him...
Chapter 15