U | Chapter 6

A sudden evening breeze swept over the dirt slope, blowing dust into Luan Qiu’s eyes. He and Li Shu stared at each other, wide-eyed, until Luan Qiu was the first to turn away and start digging.

He decided that, unless absolutely necessary, he would never speak to Li Shu again.

Digging was hard labor. The landslide covered a vast area, and there was no way a tiny fan could simply be dug out. Luan Qiu himself thought this was pointless, but seeing the still-injured man come over with a pale face and dig away so desperately, he guessed that whatever he was looking for must be extremely important.

He also knew that helping Li Shu search for it was a form of escape.

People seeking Luan Qiu at Haoyi Manor came one after another. His face had gone numb from talking, and since he had never been good at smiling to begin with, the successive rounds of persuasion from his elders in the martial world had left him unable even to put on a pleasant expression. Seeing that a dozen or so people still remained beneath the Pear Tree, Luan Qiu could take it no longer and quietly escaped through a back window.

He went around Haoyi Manor, crossed the side peak of Silang Peak, and threaded his way through the greenery, so lush it dazzled the eyes. When he saw Jiangzhou City just ahead, he barely managed to stop in a tree.

A question seized his heart: Was this really all right?

He was the bastard who had bewitched Qu Er, the vile creature intent on swallowing up Haoyi Manor’s property. He was also Haoyi Manor’s second senior disciple, Qu Tianyang’s last disciple.

Could he abandon those elders of the martial world and leave on his own? Would that be disrespectful? Would it be too improper? If this brought a bad name upon Haoyi Manor, his master, or his junior brothers and sisters, how could he answer to his late mistress? Would Haoyi Manor’s reputation become even worse because of this? Could he still make amends if he went back now?

As Luan Qiu hesitated, he spotted a familiar black horse on the dirt slope not far away, along with someone he very much did not want to see.

Night fell, and Li Shu grew hungry. He called for Luan Qiu to come home for dinner. Luan Qiu straightened up, only then realizing that, while he had been busy digging, those strange questions that constantly troubled him had not crossed his mind even once.

He led the black horse, with Li Shu sitting astride it, and slowly made his way toward Silang Town. Li Shu had picked several fruits from somewhere. They were a sickly green, and he apparently found them unpleasant, because he threw them to Luan Qiu one by one.

Luan Qiu remembered that he still had not answered his own question. Looking at Li Shu’s face, he also recalled how Li Shu had described his relationship with his “best friend.”

“What are you thinking about?” Li Shu suddenly asked. “A taste for men?”

Luan Qiu: “……”

As though knowing he would not answer, Li Shu continued on his own. “You’re always thinking about me. You can turn something that isn’t there into something that is.”

He had cared for Qu Er and Qu Miaomiao for more than a decade and believed he had seen the faces of countless good and evil people, but Luan Qiu truly could not predict Li Shu’s next action or next words. To him, Li Shu was a bizarre person he could not understand at all.

Li Shu chattered the entire way. After finishing the story of himself and his best friend, he told another story about himself and a beautiful girl from Pinglan City. He had once told all these stories to Qu Miaomiao. There were handsome young heroes, beautiful women, people yearning for what they could not have, and all kinds of love, hatred, and resentment.

Luan Qiu let it all go in one ear and out the other. There was only one thought in his mind: How could he talk so much?

They finally returned to Silang Town. Dusk had settled in, and lanterns were being raised one after another throughout the town, casting a murky yellow light over the wanted posters pasted to the walls. The bearded man drawn on the paper looked even more terrifying. The old horse was breathing hard, so Luan Qiu stopped and stared at the wanted poster for a long time.

“You recognize him?” Li Shu asked.

“I’ve never seen him before,” Luan Qiu said. “But he’s very different from what I imagined the Kulian Sect Leader to look like.”

Li Shu dismounted, curiosity stirring in his heart. “You imagined him? Are you interested in him?”

“We have a blood feud. Naturally, I keep an eye on him at all times.”

“He only became Sect Leader a year ago. He isn’t the same person who killed your master.”

“You do know how to tell them apart.”

Li Shu muttered, “You people are too careless. He wasn’t the one who killed him. What use is there in blaming him?”

“That debt is charged to the Kulian Sect, so naturally he must repay it,” Luan Qiu said. When he finished, he suddenly found it strange. He was actually standing with Li Shu on this quiet street, discussing a question that was not worth discussing at all.

As soon as he said it, inspiration struck. He instantly guessed how Li Shu would react, and sure enough, “Despicable!” Li Shu muttered indignantly.

After muttering that, he looked up and saw that Luan Qiu was smiling.

“What are you smiling at? Laughing at me? Damn you, you’re despicable too.” Li Shu continued badgering him until the two of them sat down in a teahouse.

Luan Qiu was unusually generous that day and actually treated him to noodles. The vegetable and shredded-pork noodles contained only three slivers of pork, which together were thinner than Li Shu’s little finger. But after a full day of traveling, Li Shu was so hungry that he wolfed down half the bowl in one breath.

Across from the teahouse stood a stone wall. A young man dressed as a scholar passed in front of it, the lantern in his hand illuminating the children’s graffiti in the corner.

Li Shu very, very slowly slurped up a noodle. He had seen the Kulian Sect’s sign for people they were searching for.

“Do you know how Ying Ze became the Kulian Sect Leader?” Luan Qiu suddenly asked.

Li Shu had no attention to spare for him. He responded with distracted murmurs while staring intently at the stone wall. The young man carrying the lantern stopped in front of the wall and looked into the distance, as though waiting for someone. The lamplight clearly illuminated two overlapping circles painted on the wall. An arrow ran across both circles, pointing toward a dark alley not far away.

Luan Qiu followed his gaze. “Your best friend?”

Li Shu improvised, “There’s a fifty or sixty percent resemblance.”

Luan Qiu: “Weren’t you determined to have only him?”

Li Shu: “That doesn’t stop me from looking at other people.”

After confirming the sign, he looked up and found Luan Qiu watching him with a complicated expression.

For a moment, Li Shu could not think of how to deal with it, so he hurriedly picked up the thread of their earlier conversation. “Ying Ze killed five elders before becoming Sect Leader. Qu Er told me about it.”

“Do you know how he killed them?”

Li Shu swallowed his noodles and eagerly assumed the role of a student. “Of course not.”

The five elders who died at Li Shu’s hands had perished in a single night.

The previous Sect Leader had fallen gravely ill, and the elders began discussing his successor. Someone proposed Li Shu’s name. The Kulian Sect had ten elders in all, and a successor had to receive the approval of all ten before taking over as Sect Leader. Of those ten at the time, five believed Li Shu was unsuitable.

He was too young. He was difficult to control. His temperament was perverse. He was ruthless and vicious. Five against five, Li Shu lost the vote. Yet none of the other candidates could obtain a unanimous vote either. The elder who had proposed Li Shu vetoed everyone except Li Shu.

After two months of discussion, the old Sect Leader was visibly closer to death than recovery. One elder proposed that, since no Sect Leader had been chosen, the elders might as well manage the Kulian Sect collectively. They only needed to choose two or three trustworthy and reliable people from among the ten and primarily follow their decisions.

That very night, Li Shu took action. He infiltrated the homes of the five elders and cut off each of their heads.

“To enter the Kulian Sect, first pass through the Snowchime Gate. Six hundred steps up the Godseeking Stair, head bowed before the dust of the world,” Luan Qiu said. “The entrance to the Kulian Sect has a six-hundred-and-ninety-nine-step Godseeking Stair, as well as a Snowchime Gate forged from blood-red stone.”

Li Shu: “Impressive, impressive.”

“After killing the five elders, Ying Ze hung their heads on the Snowchime Gate. They remained there for a full ten days, until birds had pecked away all the flesh, leaving only five skulls.” As Luan Qiu said this, his brow creased faintly again, and he made no effort to conceal his loathing and disgust.

Li Shu smiled faintly. “I hear the wind is especially strong in Kulian territory. I wonder whether wind chimes made from bones sound good?”

The displeasure he had directed at the never-before-seen “Ying Ze” shifted onto Li Shu.

Li Shu obediently added, “That must be what those villains in the Kulian Sect thought.”

Luan Qiu lowered his eyelids. “That wasn’t all. He also cut open the five elders’ abdomens, stuffed them full of stones, and sank them into the river, leaving them to be gnawed by fish and shrimp. The families of those five elders were scattered as well. Severed hands and feet, blinded eyes, slit noses, all of it was Ying Ze’s doing.”

Li Shu suddenly asked, “The Kulian Sect is so far away. How do you know all this so clearly? Could there be a martial hero from the Dayu jianghu acting as a hidden spy inside the Kulian Sect?”

“A blind man from the Kulian Sect made his way to Dayu and claimed to be Elder Songta’s son. He was the one who told us all this.”

“He said it, and you believed him?” Li Shu was still smiling.

“What is there that people from the Kulian Sect wouldn’t do?” Luan Qiu said.

Li Shu suddenly lost his appetite. A little soup remained before him, along with two strips of pork he had been reluctant to eat and had saved for last. All of it suddenly made him queasy, including Luan Qiu tonight.

“Perhaps there were reasons behind it,” he said. “Maybe those five elders had cruelly humiliated Ying Ze when he was young. Maybe they practiced some evil technique and used Ying Ze as a cultivation vessel, torturing him until he wished he were dead. Maybe they had once tried to kill Ying Ze to cover up their own crimes. The people of the jianghu are always saying that debts of gratitude must be repaid with gratitude, and grudges with vengeance. You don’t know what the truth was.”

“……You’re making excuses for that demonic cult’s poison?”

Li Shu did not answer. Instead, he slapped the table. “We have nothing to say to each other! In any case, I, Li Shu, have no part in the jianghu. The Kulian Sect, the Zhuxie Alliance, none of it has anything to do with me!” With that, he strode out of the teahouse.

Luan Qiu had no idea what had caused this strange fit of temper. When he saw Li Shu heading toward an alley nearby, he hurriedly left six copper coins on the table and went after him. Li Shu turned back and told him not to follow. “I don’t feel like talking to you right now.”

“Where are you going?” Luan Qiu asked. “If you want to look for the fan, I’ll help you dig tomorrow.”

Li Shu was annoyed that Luan Qiu was obstructing his investigation of the Kulian Sect’s sign. He was about to speak when several people approached from far down the road.

At the very front walked a girl of fifteen or sixteen, her hair tied into a single bundle and a lantern in her hand. As she walked, she examined the things pasted to the walls, her voice loud and clear. “It’s hideous! It’s hideous! Yue Lianlou’s drawing is hideous! He just can’t stand anyone being better-looking than him……”

Li Shu’s heart jolted. He instinctively hid behind Luan Qiu and stood utterly still.

“……She’s Ruan Buqi, the Yin Hunter of Mingye Hall,” Luan Qiu said, recognizing the girl. “The Hall Master of Mingye Hall has the Twin Hunters of Yin and Yang under him. They possess extraordinary martial skills and strange personalities. You know her?”

When Li Shu had infiltrated Jiangzhou City that day, he had entered Ruan Buqi’s mansion.

Ruan Buqi was young, but she owned the largest and most luxurious residence in Jiangzhou City. Several hundred beauties, both men and women, lived there. Li Shu had acquired a reputation as Jiangzhou’s foremost scholar and caught Ruan Buqi’s eye, so she had invited him to stay as a guest. He had assumed she was licentious, but she never laid a hand on her guests. In her daily life, she most enjoyed watching beautiful men and women flirt and amuse themselves. It seemed that simply looking at pretty people put her in a good mood.

Li Shu could not understand this peculiar habit. But Ruan Buqi had seen him many times, and when his identity was exposed, he had even exchanged several blows with her head-on. The girl’s martial skills were formidable. With his injuries, if she discovered him now, he would have no chance of escaping.

“……She took a liking to me once and wanted to drag me back to her mansion, but I resisted to the death,” Li Shu quickly came up with an excuse. “If she spots me now, I’m afraid she’ll……”

The explanation was absurd and flimsy, yet Luan Qiu believed him. “So you, too, have……”

Kindred sufferers! Li Shu hurriedly gripped Luan Qiu’s hand. “Come on, come on!” Taking advantage of the moment, he pulled Luan Qiu into the alley.

The Kulian Sect’s sign also appeared at the entrance to the alley. There were no lights here, so Li Shu could only talk to Luan Qiu while feeling along the wall with one hand and deciphering the meaning of the sign.

At a certain time, in a certain place, rendezvous. Six-petaled snowflakes had been carved beside the sign. Li Shu’s heart relaxed sharply. It was someone he trusted.

The voices of the Mingye Hall members drew closer and closer. Ruan Buqi was asking whether anything strange had happened in Silang Town. At last, the light of her lantern appeared at the mouth of the alley. Sensing someone’s presence, Ruan Buqi raised the lantern and peered inside.

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Author’s note:

Li Shu: Damn jianghu people, despicable righteous martial artists!

Luan Qiu: Then don’t eat.

Li Shu, devouring the noodles: Damn you! Despicable! I’m going to eat you out of house and home!

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Thank you to all the martial heroes of the jianghu who sent tips and nutrition potions! Please enjoy some delicious vegetable and shredded-pork noodles!

(Paid for by the Kulian Sect)

(Li Shu: Why? On what grounds?!)