Early summer, one day.
The sun was sinking toward the west, and on the main road through the outskirts of Hangzhou came a carriage and a horse.
The carriage was a fine one—stout axles and firm hubs, a broad frame and an ornate cabin. The horse was a fine one too—bright of eye and glossy of mane, powerful of limb and strong of body. Even the man driving it was burly, with the back of a tiger and the waist of a bear, his gaze sharp and burning; one look was enough to tell he was a martial artist.
Needless to say, whoever sat inside that carriage had to be either rich or noble—or else a figure of some standing in the martial world.
The carriage rolled swiftly along, and before long it came near a tea stall.
The tea stall was a crude affair. The tea things were none too clean, the tables and chairs were broken and worn, and the thatched roof overhead was riddled like a sieve—never mind keeping out the rain, it couldn't even keep out the light.
By now it was dusk, the city gate was about to close, and there were few people left on the road, so there was only one customer in the tea stall. He sat there alone, sipping his tea without the least hurry.
The stall owner, meanwhile, glared at that customer with a look of disgust as he packed up his things, all but ready to tell him outright to leave.
"Boss, give me another refill." Huang Donglai—that customer—paid it no mind, and, shameless as ever, asked the owner for more water.
This "Huang Donglai" was no one else but that Mr. Huang who had transmigrated together with Mr. Sun.
He had transmigrated at the same time as Mr. Sun, but the day he was born in this world differed from Mr. Sun's by a few months, and the place was different too. Mr. Sun had been born in Hangzhou Prefecture in Jiangnan, while he had been born in Fushun County in the land of Shu—that is, Zigong.
Of course, Mr. Huang had not been born into an ordinary family either; he too was born into a prestigious house.
In the Da Ming, the Huang Clan of Shu—which was Huang Donglai's present home—had always been a renowned martial family, long famous throughout the land for the "Three Wonders of the Huang Clan." These three wonders were lightness skill, hidden weapons, and use of poison.
In its heyday, the Huang family had relied on these three skills to run rampant across the land, and whenever people of the martial world spoke of the Three Wonders of the Huang Clan, none could hear of them without turning pale. In those days, whether in fame, in power, or in wealth, the Huang Clan ranked among the very first in the Ba-Shu region.
Sadly, by the generation of Huang Donglai's father, the family's fortunes had already declined, and the splendor of years past was gone.
Still, as the saying goes, a starved camel is bigger than a horse; at least Huang Donglai's childhood had been a rather comfortable one.
As for his given name, "Donglai," it was taken from the phrase "Purple Qi Comes from the East," for on the night before his birth, his parents in this world had both dreamed of a great cloud of purple (poisonous) mist drifting in from the east, all the way until it hung over their house. Taking this for an auspicious sign, they gave him the name as a matter of course once he was born.
A few months ago, Huang Donglai had been sent by his father's command to come to Hangzhou to pay a visit to a Master Sun, and to deliver a letter along the way. Only then had Huang Donglai learned that the Huang clan head and Master Sun had been good friends in their youth; but since Western Shu and Jiangnan were so far apart, visiting back and forth was truly inconvenient, and with both men having family estates to look after, they had always kept in touch only by letter.
This business of delivering a letter had not really required Huang Donglai to make the trip himself—he could simply have had their local Flying Pigeon Gang branch deliver it for them. But the Huang Clan was, after all, a martial family, and Huang Donglai had turned seventeen this year, so the Huang clan head had wanted some excuse to send him out from home to see a bit of the world and gather some experience of the jianghu.
And so it was that, today, at this dusk, Huang Donglai had turned up here.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
Quick as words can tell! At the very moment the tea stall owner was about to drive Huang Donglai away, a sudden, unexpected change came over the main road before the stall.
Amid a burst of shrill wind-splitting sounds, dozens of sharp arrows abruptly appeared in midair, pouring down from all directions onto the advancing carriage.
In an instant the carriage's rumbling came to a dead stop, the horse's hooves fell into confusion, and it neighed.
The driver, however, was not thrown into any panic. He leaned and pushed off, leaping up onto the horse's back; with one hand he steadied the reins, and with the other he drew a single-edged saber from beside the saddle. Raising his arm and whirling it in a flourish, he easily beat down that rain of arrows coming from the front.
He was not struck.
The horse was not struck either.
But the carriage cabin behind him had been shot full of a dozen or so holes... And yet, judging by the driver's easy expression, he did not seem the least bit worried that anything might have happened to the person inside.
"Aah!" Only after that volley of arrows had stopped did the tea stall owner belatedly come to his senses. He let out a startled yelp, grabbed his head, and darted behind a water vat at the side of the stall to crouch down.
The common folk of this world had seen a good deal of the fighting and killing among jianghu folk, so they all knew that at such times one should hide if one could and run if one could, so as not to be caught up and hurt as an innocent bystander.
"Whoa~ From the looks of this, there must be at least seven or eight men lying in ambush." Huang Donglai, for his part, did not react half so much. Not only did he not rise from his chair, he even casually picked up the big teapot the owner had just tossed on the table and topped up his own bowl with a little more tea.
"Brat! Do you have a death wish? Why aren't you hiding farther off?" Seeing that Huang Donglai was still sitting there as leisurely as could be, the tea stall owner, meaning well, reminded him in a low shout.
"Ah~ Boss, don't panic. These arrows aren't aimed at us, you know." As Huang Donglai spoke, he took another sip of tea.
In the time it took the two of them to trade those words, just as Huang Donglai had guessed, eight masked men leapt out from the woods on both sides of the road, and in a flash they had encircled the carriage in the middle of the road.
"Hmph... Just what kind of lowly vermin are you?" Seeing himself hemmed in, the carriage driver still showed not the least fear, and gave a cold snort. "Do you know who is in this carriage?"
A breath later, one of the masked men stepped forward and answered with a cold laugh. "Heh... What do you think?"
So it seemed this man who answered was the leader of these ambushers.
As the saying goes, to catch the bandits, first catch their king—and the carriage driver naturally understood this too. He did not deliberate long. Almost the very instant the other finished speaking, he sprang up from the horse's back, channeled his strength into his wrist, and hacked down from midair in a move called Power Splitting Mount Hua, driving straight at the crown of the leader's head.
"Fine saber technique~" Watching from the side, Huang Donglai could not help but cheer aloud. "Simple as the move is, it's really not something those second- or third-rate types can catch."
Before his voice had even faded, the masked ambush leader had already caught the driver's saber—and not with a weapon of his own, but by the method of "Empty Hand Enters the White Blade."
"Whoa! He's actually got some skill." Huang Donglai marveled. "That's the internal strength of the Yin Three Roads, built on a foundation of soft kung fu, I'd say."
While he spoke, the driver and the leader had already traded several more blows. The former's saber work was fierce and forceful; the latter's fists and palms drifted and wove, hard to pin down. The two men's martial skills looked about evenly matched—within fifty moves it would probably still be hard to tell a winner.
Meanwhile, the remaining seven masked men paid their leader no mind at all, but closed in on the carriage cabin instead... It seemed they wanted to make sure whether the person inside was truly dead.
"Aiya~ What are you all so nervous about? Even if the one inside is still alive, with so many of you, finishing him off would be easy as pie." Seeing how cautious that bunch was, and how they still hesitated to step up and lift the carriage's bamboo curtain, Huang Donglai could not help muttering from the side.
"Hey! Brat! Are you crazy? What are you butting in for? What business is it of yours? Do you have a death wish!" This time even the tea stall owner could not bear to watch any longer; lowering his voice again, he barked at Huang Donglai from several meters away.
"No—I'm just doing a bit of commentary, what's wrong with that?" Huang Donglai turned to look at the tea stall owner and said, in perfect self-justification, "I'm just the sort who likes to throw in a word on whatever he sees. What's the harm in that? I'm not going to jump in and fight, so is there a fine for stirring up the crowd or something?"
At this he seemed to warm to it all the more. He turned his head back again, looked at the masked men over by the carriage, and raised his voice. "Hey, why don't you lot just go for it! Seven against one—tell me, how could you possibly lose? Just rush him head-on and the win is yours. How could you lose?"
"Shut up!" At last, one of the masked men, annoyed past all bearing, could take no more. He turned and glared viciously at Huang Donglai, snarling in fury.
"What?" Huang Donglai was not the least bit afraid of him, and went on. "Damn it, I'm a professional commentator, all right? You can't even read the situation, so I'm giving you a bit of analysis..."
"Fuck!" The masked man, provoked beyond endurance, cursed savagely, then simply turned and charged at Huang Donglai. "I'll teach you to run your mouth!" As he spoke, he had already raised a hand, meaning to slap Huang Donglai dead with a single palm.
However...
"Pfft—"
Before his hand could fall, a mouthful of blood had already spurted from his mouth, spraying across the black cloth that covered his face.
The next moment he toppled over flat on his back, and never rose again...
"Heh... You wanted to kill me? In your dreams." Huang Donglai had not shifted from where he sat, and the masked man died at his hands without ever knowing how Huang Donglai had struck.
Chapter 3