On the woodland path of Baiji Ridge, the pair stepped forth and laid their cunning schemes.
The battle at Zouma Stronghold—by now, Sun and Huang had already won nine-tenths of it.
Yet, as the saying goes, a journey of a hundred li is only half over at ninety. The final tenth, now before them, was the hardest to cross.
Ma Si, though hardly a first-rate master in the jianghu—perhaps not even second-rate—was still undoubtedly stronger than the greenhorns Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai.
A veteran of the jianghu who had killed without number and lived the knife’s-edge life for years, Ma Si was long accustomed to such life-and-death struggles.
Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai, meanwhile, had only just begun walking the jianghu. Even if their mental maturity might exceed Ma Si’s, they were far behind him in experience of desperate fighting.
After a single exchange, Ma Si judged that these two were no match for him.
Not to mention they looked barely seventeen or eighteen and had no reputation in the jianghu—just from the scene before him, Ma Si understood their martial arts were nothing special.
For a true master would never need ordinary villagers to help them kill…
Not to mention someone of Shen Youran’s caliber—even he, Ma Si, was confident he could single-handedly wipe out the fifty-odd small fry of Zouma Stronghold.
Put plainly, these Zouma Stronghold bandit underlings weren’t much better than ordinary villagers; how could someone like Ma Si, who had slaughtered his own master’s entire clan, teach these worthless hooligans any real martial arts? He had taught them nothing but superficial scraps.
But Ma Si’s own martial arts were worlds apart from these people. He was confident that with just himself and one horse, he could utterly slaughter Sun Yixie, Huang Donglai, and all the villagers present.
Moreover, with Zouma Stronghold already destroyed, Ma Si had no need to remain on Baiji Ridge, so he had no more scruples about how many he killed—at worst, he’d finish the killings and flee, establishing a new stronghold elsewhere.
In this very situation, Ma Si, furious beyond restraint and brimming with killing intent, spurred his horse down the slope.
“Scatter! Hide back in the woods!” Reacting swiftly in the face of danger, Sun Yixie bellowed at once to drive off the villagers, and he himself leapt and rolled, slipping behind a rock.
They were lucky, for many bandit corpses lay on the ground, forcing Ma Si’s horse to slow as it approached, and Sun Yixie’s warning had indeed been timely, so the villagers all escaped his attack range.
As a result… only Huang Donglai remained in the middle of the road, still standing there to face the enemy.
Seeing this, Ma Si snorted coldly, reined in his horse to a sudden halt, and using its momentum leapt from the saddle, descending from the sky with his “Hundred-Jin Saber” like a thunderbolt striking the ground, straight at Huang Donglai’s left shoulder.
Though the move was fierce, Huang Donglai handled it with relative ease. After all, his Huang family’s lightness skill was renowned throughout the world, and the first of the “Three Absolutes” he had practiced since childhood was lightness skill, so such an aerial attack that could not change direction was easy for him to deal with.
As it happened, Huang Donglai lightly shifted his right foot, channeling qi to the Dadu acupoint, tapped the ground with his toe, and his figure flickered, flashing one zhang (about 3.1 meters) to the right; as he dodged, a cold glint appeared in his hand, and a hidden dart shot out against the direction of Ma Si’s descent.
Clang!
Unexpectedly, Ma Si was quick-eyed and quick-handed, changing his move mid-battle, blocking with a horizontal saber to easily knock aside that hidden dart.
Clearly, Huang Donglai’s hidden-weapon skill had not yet reached its level of attainment; whether in throwing force or variation, he was far behind. In the same situation, a hidden-weapons master would launch three darts in an instant, on three lines and nine transformations, impossible to defend against.
“Hah… with just that bit of skill, you dare come meddle?” The moment Ma Si landed, he felt he had roughly gauged Huang Donglai’s ability from the previous exchange, and thus deemed victory in hand.
While speaking to provoke, Ma Si had already leaned forward, dragging his saber, and strode swiftly ahead.
Within a breath, he had closed to Huang Donglai’s front, and with just the first flash of his blade, he had Huang Donglai hard-pressed, dodging and retreating.
This was unlike before when Huang Donglai met a masked underling of the Grain Transport Gang outside Hangzhou; then, the other side had thought Huang Donglai was merely a talkative scholar, approached him carelessly at close range, and was taken down by Huang Donglai’s casual flick of a poison dart.
But now Ma Si was concentrating fully on him as an opponent, and Huang Donglai was suppressed by Ma Si’s saber technique, having no chance to strike.
At this critical moment, suddenly…
Whoosh—
A sound of strong wind arose, and a trident’s shadow abruptly appeared.
Ma Si was also alert, quickly sensed the danger, hurriedly twisted his body to dodge, and narrowly avoided Sun Yixie’s ambush from behind.
“Hmph…” Ma Si next turned his head with a fierce expression, thinking inwardly, “A brat with almost no internal force dares to play dirty with me?”
Thinking this, he spun and changed his move, the saber tracing an arc in midair, slanting toward Sun Yixie’s neck.
Sun Yixie was not Huang Donglai; with his current body technique, he could not fully evade such a fast saber technique. He only had time to tilt and turn his body, using his back to receive the blade’s edge… but… this was enough.
Clang—
When Ma Si’s blade struck Sun Yixie’s back, the sensation transmitted to his hand seemed strange—not like a blade striking flesh, but like a wooden stick hitting cotton, with a lump of iron hidden beneath the cotton.
How would he know this was the effect of the Sun family’s “Body-Protecting Armor”? This Sun Clan armor was not only impervious to blades and spears but could also disperse the force of impact to a degree, and the fatter the wearer, the better the defensive effect.
Of course… seventeen-year-old Sun Yixie was not exactly fat, so this blow still hurt plenty, making him grimace with pain.
But pain was pain; anyone who had hung around the Hangzhou fish market knew that Sun Yixie never took a blade strike for nothing…
The instant Ma Si’s blade struck him, Sun Yixie seized the opening of Ma Si’s guard slackening after his successful attack, and fiercely thrust his trident toward Ma Si’s ankle.
This time Ma Si truly did not expect it, for Sun Yixie’s weapon was unusual, and unlike martial-arts masters who fought by martial routines, he was extremely hard to guard against.
As a result, with saber and trident crossing, Sun Yixie was hardly injured, while Ma Si had his ankle pierced through.
“Hahaha! Is your lower half feeling cool now!” Seeing his dirty trick succeed, Sun Yixie immediately rolled and leapt away, distancing himself from the opponent, and spoke mockingly.
Ma Si really wanted to chase him down and hack him to death, but Huang Donglai on the other side timely threw two more hidden weapons. With his foot injured, Ma Si dared not make a big move, so he had to turn back and block toward Huang Donglai’s side.
“Say! Slowly kite him!” Then Sun Yixie came out with this line. And while speaking, he casually picked up a stone from the ground and threw it at the horse Ma Si had ridden in on.
The stone happened to hit the horse’s rump, startling the horse into bolting.
Only now did Ma Si belatedly sense something was wrong… he had injured one foot, stood on a woodland path full of corpses, his horse had run off, and his weapon was a great saber; his opponents, not counting the villagers, one wielded a long weapon, the other excelled in lightness skill and hidden weapons—if they opened the distance and pincer-attacked him from front and back, he’d be done for.
However… as the saying goes, what you fear is what comes.
“Good!” Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie were in perfect accord; hearing it, he knew what was meant. He simply gave up hidden weapons and turned to small pebbles from the ground. Anyway, for someone like him trained in hidden weapons, a pebble hitting a person could still cause injury, and in a war of attrition there was no need to waste limited ammunition.
Sun Yixie, meanwhile, picked up his trident, kept his distance from the opponent, and used the advantage of a long weapon to provoke Ma Si: “What’s that glare for? Got the guts to come over here~” After saying this, he raised his voice and shouted, “Folks! Ma Si can’t move now! Everyone hurry and throw stones to smash him to death!”
Such a ruthless and shameless scheme—even Ma Si was filled with admiration, his eyes bloodshot with rage, thinking: “This brat is trying to drive me to a dead end!”
But his anger was useless; soon he was submerged in the flying hail of stones, only able to raise his saber and wave his arms, pathetically protecting his head and vital spots.
The stones thrown by the villagers couldn’t kill, but being hit hard would hurt, and a direct hit could injure; the key was their great number, and they concealed Huang Donglai’s more powerful attacks among them.
Ma Si knew that if this continued he was likely doomed, and in a sudden flash of wit he bellowed: “Stop! You surnamed Sun and you surnamed Huang! You are also people of the jianghu—do you feel no shame using such methods? Got the guts to come over and settle this in martial arts? Relying on a bunch of mountain villagers to injure people with stones—what kind of heroes are you!”
His words really worked; after speaking, the villagers gradually stopped and looked toward Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai.
Sun and Huang exchanged a glance from afar, and then Sun Yixie stepped forward half a pace: “Good! Then I’ll give you a chance: throw away your saber, I won’t use my trident either, I’ll come over and fight you barehanded. If you win, today we’ll let you go with your life.”
“Is that true?” Ma Si, as if finding a lifeline, quickly said.
Actually… such a stupid question, Huang Donglai would certainly never ask, because Huang Donglai understood Sun Yixie too well—these words were certainly false.
“Hah… we hold all the advantages now; do I need to lie to you?” Sun Yixie said.
“Good! Come on.” Ma Si casually tossed his saber aside, wiped the blood flowing down his forehead, and responded with aggressive spirit.
Seeing this, Sun Yixie also left his trident in place and walked toward Ma Si with empty hands.
Ma Si thought to himself: “This brat underestimates me too much. Even using only one leg and one hand, I could never lose to someone like you with practically no martial arts.”
He was just thinking this when Sun Yixie had already come to within about a meter of him. Just as Ma Si was about to assume a stance, without any warning… a handful of lime powder was thoroughly scattered onto his face.
This trick… he truly had not guarded against it.
Ma Si never expected that nowadays, those who upheld justice were even dirtier in their methods than they, murderers and robbers.
One second after he lost his sight, two poison-coated hidden weapons silently arrived and struck his back. Before he could wait for his body to be completely paralyzed by the toxin, Sun Yixie in front of him kicked out again, striking him in the solar plexus and knocking him down.
“Fuck your mother, you mountain bandit who robs men, bullies women, and oppresses the common people—you come talking to me about honor and shame? I’ll fucking kill you and that makes me a hero! What business is it of yours how I do it?”
Sun Yixie shouted this righteously and indignantly, then continued, “Folks! The chief of Zouma Stronghold is right here! Everyone, repay grievances with grievances, avenge your grudges!”
Actually, there was no need for him to say it; those villagers were already barely able to restrain themselves.
Over the years, not to mention the money and grain plundered away, how many innocent men and women of Nanyuan Village had been killed by Zouma Stronghold’s people? How many village women had they seized to abuse, leaving not even a corpse to be found? They had not even spared children… Such bandits—the villagers wished they could eat their raw flesh. Now that Ma Si had fallen into their hands, how could things go well for him?
Before Sun Yixie’s words had faded, the villagers swarmed forward, grabbing hoes, pitchforks, and clubs, and giving Ma Si—already lying on the ground, face covered in lime powder, and covered in wounds—a thorough beating.
“Ah—” In his final moments, Ma Si issued howl after howl filled with anger and fear, but that obviously availed nothing.
...
At dusk, the noisy Baiji Ridge had once again returned to calm.
The men, women, old, and young of Nanyuan Village were busy carrying back the money and grain the mountain bandits had moved out, while Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai casually selected two of the bandits’ horses, refused the villagers’ efforts to detain them, and continued on their journey.
At the same time, a human figure appeared at the already deserted Zouma Stronghold.
This person was about forty years old, dressed in Taoist garb, with a long sword on his back and a horsetail whisk in hand.
This Taoist priest did not have the appearance of ethereal immortality, but rather bore the mien of righteous chivalry—apparently an “engaged-in-the-world” Taoist.
“This…” He came into the stronghold, looking at the corpses on the ground and the already extinguished firewood, stroking his beard and frowning, muttering thoughtfully, “What a coincidence… someone actually got here first and leveled this stronghold?”
He paced a few steps and examined the corpses on the ground: “Strange… these people don’t look like they died at the hands of martial-world masters; rather, they look like they were beaten to death by ordinary people with clubs. And… that evil scoundrel Ma Si isn’t among them.”
Out of caution, the Taoist priest searched the stronghold once more, checking for secret chambers or hidden passages, and after confirming no one was really left, he walked out of the stronghold gate, preparing to visit nearby villages.
Chapter 10