Although Kang Haijiao had charged out eagerly with Third Brother in tow, neither of them actually knew where Fifth Brother had gone.
Dragon King Cave ran deep and branched into countless paths; tracking someone down inside was no simple matter.
Of course, they possessed at least some wit and knew enough to use a process of elimination.
First, Fifth Brother was unlikely to have carried the woman outside: night had already fallen, and out in the open, if the girl started screaming, he risked getting them discovered.
Second, those parts of the cave lacking wall sconces for oil lamps were out of the question as well. Darkness aside, the real issue was that no one—not even this gang that had occupied the cavern for years—knew where those passages led or what the terrain was like. A single slip down a rocky slope into an underground river, and there would be no coming back.
Fifth Brother, therefore, could only have taken her somewhere reached by the lamps' illumination or lingering in the surrounding shadows.
With that in mind, Kang Haijiao ruled out the path Third and Sixth Brothers had taken while hauling goods into the cave, quickly narrowing Fifth Brother's possible whereabouts down to two routes.
His intuition was sharp. The first path he chose to search... was indeed the right one.
His luck, however, was terrible. By this time, Sun Yixie had already extracted all the information he wanted, "dealt with" Fifth Brother, and begun heading back in the opposite direction.
Kang Haijiao's purpose was to hunt down Fifth Brother and demand an explanation. Having no inkling that intruders were in the cave, he strode boldly forward, weapon in hand, but without a shred of mental vigilance.
Sun Yixie was quite the opposite. Operating with the mindset of someone deep in an enemy camp, he moved with stealthy, cautious steps, looking three times with every pace. What was more, he had just tortured the gang's entire situation out of Fifth Brother—down to the color of Kang Haijiao's breeches—knowing both himself and his enemy down to the last detail.
Thus, as the two sides drew near without yet laying eyes on each other, Sun Yixie caught the sound of approaching footsteps long before Kang Haijiao did.
Hearing that there were two people, Sun Yixie deduced immediately that it could not be Huang Donglai. In a flash, he slipped into an unlit side tunnel nearby, concealing his frame behind a protruding stone column and leaving only a single eye exposed to watch outside.
Sure enough, moments later, Kang Haijiao and Third Brother came into view.
Sun Yixie knew that among the six, only Kang Haijiao wielded a wolf-tooth club, while the others used sabers. Having verified his target's identity, Sun Yixie naturally held nothing back. The instant Kang Haijiao was about to pass before him, Sun Yixie burst from the shadows and flung a handful of lime powder straight into the man's face.
Kang Haijiao was caught completely flat-footed, taken entirely by surprise.
By the time he reacted, his eyes were burning so fiercely from the lime powder that he could not open them, and Sun Yixie's vicious chest kick had already planted itself firmly against his sternum.
Kang Haijiao had some foundation in hard qi cultivation, but taking such a blow completely unguarded still dealt heavy damage. For a moment, the blood and qi surged in his chest, and a sweet metallic taste rushed up his throat, nearly forcing him to vomit blood.
In the end, he forced it down, clamping down on that breath of blood without letting his vigor collapse, and instantly swung his arm, sweeping his wolf-tooth club forward with all his might.
Unfortunately, the swing posed no threat to Sun Yixie. When Brother Sun delivered the kick, he had already anticipated the follow-up strike; the moment his foot struck, he used the recoil to vault backward more than two meters.
"Big Brother!" Following half a beat behind, Third Brother still reacted. Crying out, he raised his saber and charged forward to help.
Unexpectedly...
Before he could complete his first stride, three soft thuds rang out in rapid succession as three hidden weapons struck his back.
Heart, lung, gut—each took a dart. The agonizing pain slowed Third Brother's movements, while the venom coursing swiftly into his bloodstream brought him crashing to the floor within a single breath.
"Aaargh!" Realizing he was facing a two-pronged ambush, Kang Haijiao let out a furious, frenzied bellow, swinging his wolf-tooth club wildly as he surged forward.
This put Sun Yixie in a tight spot. The cave passage was narrow, leaving little room to maneuver, forcing him to turn and sprint backward in a hurry.
Over in the other direction, Huang Donglai, who had just released his darts, was also constrained from making another move. Kang Haijiao was right on Sun Yixie's heels; if a throw missed, a poisoned dart could easily graze Brother Sun instead.
And so unfolded a peculiar chase: Sun Yixie sprinting in the lead, Kang Haijiao swinging his heavy weapon and pursuing by sound right behind him, and Huang Donglai racing after them from further back.
The stalemate did not last long, as Sun Yixie swiftly devised an escape. Mid-stride, he threw his upper body forward and planted both hands on the ground, scrambling forward a few meters with hands and feet before launching into a forward roll. As the roll concluded, he spun one hundred and eighty degrees on the floor and, riding his momentum, thrust both legs up from a devious angle toward Kang Haijiao's ribs.
This technique was one of the secret martial arts of the Sun family—a move from the Dragon Dog Fist known as Grounded to Prop Heaven.
The mechanics of its latter half bore a resemblance to the sacrifice throw known as *tomoe nage* in judo, yet it required no hands and applied force with far greater cunning.
Though hardly an elegant maneuver fit for polished halls, it was an exceptionally practical escape when pursued and on the verge of being run down.
Kang Haijiao could not have defended against such an unorthodox strike even if his eyes were open, let alone while blinded.
*Thwack!*
A dull impact echoed the next instant. Kang Haijiao felt a sudden arresting force against his ribs that redirected all his forward momentum into an upward, diagonal heave. His footing was none too steady to begin with; blasted by this upward kick, his feet left the ground and his body flew laterally through the air, sailing straight over Sun Yixie's face as the latter lay flat on the floor.
Unable to visually judge his orientation midair, Kang Haijiao could only discard his wolf-tooth club and curl into a ball to protect his head.
As misfortune would have it, just ahead lay a pitch-black branching path, beyond which was a steep drop. Kang Haijiao tumbled straight into it, rolling head over heels down the incline like someone falling down a flight of stairs... vanishing into the dark depths of the cavern.
By the time Huang Donglai caught up, Sun Yixie was already back on his feet. Exchanging no words, the two shared a single glance, turned together, and briskly approached the junction where Kang Haijiao had plummeted.
Huang Donglai ignited a fire striker and peered down into the opening. Apart from the wolf-tooth club lying near the entrance, there was no sign of a person. He then tossed a small pebble inside, listening closely to its bouncing clatter to judge the depth and steepness of the drop.
"Think he died from the fall?" Sun Yixie asked.
"He ought to be dead," Huang Donglai replied, pointing to streaks of blood on the jagged, uneven stone slope. "A normal person could die just tumbling down a flight of stairs. This slope... it's bottomless, studded with all kinds of jagged, protruding rocks, and the bastard was blinded by your lime powder. Even if he didn't expire immediately, he's shattered all over with internal hemorrhaging. There's no way he's climbing back out to be saved."
"Mm..." Sun Yixie pondered. Huang Donglai was right; the odds of Kang Haijiao surviving were practically nonexistent. "True enough... Let's go deal with the rest of them, then."
With that, trading information as they went, the two made their way toward where the remaining three bandits were stationed.
Little did they imagine at that moment that Kang Haijiao would not only survive the fall, but also encounter a miraculous stroke of fortune in the subterranean river beneath Dragon King Cave. Later, when Sun Yixie came to jest with Kang Haijiao for the second time, the man's martial cultivation would have advanced by leaps and bounds.
Of course, that was a story for later. For now, back to the matter at hand.
Having learned that there were only six bandits in all, and that the strongest among them had been Kang Haijiao, the rest was straightforward.
Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai returned together to the chamber where Second, Fourth, and Sixth Brothers were drinking. Huang Donglai kicked open the door and waded right in, needing neither poison powder nor hidden weapons, subduing the three with his bare fists and feet. Sun Yixie merely stood in the back shouting cheers of encouragement for a brief moment before Huang Donglai had the trio completely handled.
They did not slaughter them all, sparing the group's strategist, Fourth Brother—the weakest martial artist among the six—and tying him up to be handed over to Chen Family Village.
To their surprise, just as Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai marched Fourth Brother out of Dragon King Cave, they ran headlong into a large crowd of Chen Family Village locals approaching with raised torches.
It turned out the young woman they had rescued had fled back to the village after all. Just as Sun and Huang had predicted, the villagers had mobilized in force to deliver her right back...
Fortunately, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai had already disposed of the bandits; otherwise, things might truly have gone awry.
Confronting the bewildered villagers, Sun and Huang kicked Fourth Brother to his knees, forcing him to confess the entire truth regarding the supposed "Dragon King." At this juncture, Fourth Brother knew that all hope was lost; the villagers would understand everything the moment they stepped inside the cave. Knowing full well that the villagers would never spare him, he asked for nothing more than a swift and painless death once he had spoken the truth.
To cut a long story short, that night marked the end of the "Dragon King" that had plagued Chen Family Village for over a year. The villagers entered the cave and reclaimed the unused "tribute" the bandits had amassed.
The young woman originally slated for sacrifice was finally set free. The very next morning, however, she departed Chen Family Village, never to be heard from again. The only certain thing was that she had lost all hope in the village that had raised her.
In any case, such aftermath was beyond Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai's power to manage—at least for the time being.
Nor did the villagers of Chen Family Village offer them any reward. Once the truth about the "Dragon King" came to light, the villagers' prevailing sentiment was pure agony over how much they had lost over the past year; asking them to give away anything more at such a moment was like tearing flesh from their bones.
Naturally, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai had not performed their righteous deed for compensation. They cared nothing for rewards to begin with, so long as the villagers did not repay kindness with enmity.
At noon the following day, the pair packed their bags and, amid the villagers' verbal thanks and farewells, left Chen Family Village behind to resume their journey.
Yingzhou was now close at hand.
Chapter 25