Chapter 101: Swordcraft Practicing
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
To kill and to prevent being killed were once the apprentices' daily routines. However, the former had become very hard after the announcement of the "ban on killing". The only chance to kill without being punished was the monthly test.
Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus were eager to practice the new swordcraft more often. Thus, it was not only rare, but also too risky for them to have an opportunity to test it in a duel.
Every day numerous wandering swordsmen rushed into South City. As they had no significant relations, they were the best targets for practicing the skills by the standards of Tie Hanfeng. But since the last fiasco, he had not taken his apprentice down the mountain even once.
Maid Lotus' Master Shifu was a typical killer. He loved nothing except for his sword and would definitely not take his apprentice into the town.
As a result, Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus had to look for their targets inside the Fort.
Just then, strange things successively happened in the Fort, providing them with an opportunity to practice their killing skills.
One day in late February, an apprentice, the winner of his monthly test, carried a corpse to Reincarnation Cliff, which was a precedent that was created by Slave Huan and had now become a "tradition".
Nobody in East Castle knew exactly what had happened. They only heard a shrill scream from Reincarnation Cliff. The guards followed the sound and found two corpses with four deep bloody holes in their eyes, and the eyeballs were gone. Even the cruellest killer would also feel frightened at the scene.
There were several extremely deep wounds on each body. It looked like they had been stabbed by a row of daggers.
At first, the guards thought that it was done by external enemies. Soon, someone recognized that the murderer was a long-haired, clawed animal instead of human beings.
Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus were the only two that knew what it exactly was.
The giant red-crowned roc had reappeared. Being an expert flyer in the sky, it took a risk and had landed in a place inhabited by humans. Perhaps it was for the purpose of finding familiar food, avenging its parents, or to find someone who was special.
Its appearance shocked the entire Golden Roc Fort and drew the Supreme King's attention. Shangguan Fa led a team to search for it and set many traps there. He even commanded Lightness Skill masters to climb down the cliff to seek its nest.
But none of the masters came back, and except for their dying screams, no valuable information was heard. At the steep cliffside, no one could beat a giant flying bird, not even the most powerful man.
The Supreme King had to change his tactics. In order to catch the swift giant roc in a smarter way, he laid many traps beside the cliff and sent out the bait.
Slave Huan was the first one chosen for the bait, for he had previously encountered the giant roc. He stayed at the cliff all night and all day, worrying that the roc would suddenly appear and fall into the traps. Being surrounded by top killers, he would have no chance to save it.
The giant red-crowned roc turned out to be smarter than they all had expected. Not falling into the trap, it hovered over the peak to seek the weakest part of the defense and attacked them abruptly. No matter who it was, its first step was pecking at their eyes. None had survived the attacks, and many of them were even thrown down into the abyss from the sky.
The giant roc turned the Fort upside down. No one would go outside the wall except for the bravest killers who wanted to achieve great merits. Even when they went there, they went in groups. They did not want to fight the "flying killer" alone.
The Supreme King issued an order. The one who could catch the giant roc alive would be awarded thousands of silver as well as a treasured sword of the Shangguan family.
During the first few days, Gu Shenwei was extremely worried about the giant roc's fate. After finding out that the roc was safe, Gu Shenwei came up with the idea of taking this good chance to practice swordcraft.
He and Maid Lotus targeted those men who were by themselves after the black market had disbanded. After killing them, they threw the bodies down from the cliff to make people believe that they were killed by the giant roc.
The first man killed by Maid Lotus was a slave, who knew nothing about martial arts. He came to the black market to buy some stuff and had died there for unknown reasons.
Maid Lotus stabbed the unlucky guy in the heart. As they could not find a sword, they used a saber.
One of the swordcraft disputes between the two teenagers was that Gu Shenwei thought they should strictly follow the instruction in the book to attack the neck. However, Maid Lotus believed that "neck" was just an analogy of any crucial body part. Otherwise, there would be no need for the Chinese characters to emphasize the significance of Qi.
The Nameless Swordbook attached great importance to the existence of Qi. With Zhang Ji's help, they finally confirmed that Qi was the energy flowing through all living things, rather than Internal Breath. Qi had nodal points, and by cutting off the points, they could make an instant killing. As for where the points were, they could not tell, and neither could Zhang Ji.
Every time they attacked someone, they would check his condition immediately. If the target did not die instantly, it meant they had not performed the swordcraft correctly.
For the first few times, they were too nervous to meet the requirement of killing someone by one strike, and another strike was always needed. Gradually, they became accustomed to practising the moves and performed better and better.
When one of them was attacking, another one would hide nearby to observe. They would offer their comments on the gesture, move, and speed of the attack to help each other make progress.
They found out many problems as they were practicing, and the first one was the difference between the sword and the saber.
In a letter, Zhang Ji elaborated the characteristics of the two weapons. The saber was heavier than the sword, and it could slice as well as stab, while the sword only specialized in stabbing targets. Besides, the way people stabbed with them was also different. When stabbing, a saberman would concentrate his strength on the blade, but a swordsman would distribute his strength all over his body. Therefore, saber skills were fierce and swordcrafts were agile. While there were both normal sabers and treasured sabers, there were only treasured swords.
In Zhang Ji's view, those "steel sheets" used as decorations and in juggling and dancing could not be called swords.
The sabers in Golden Roc Fort were lighter than ordinary sabers, but still heavier than swords. Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus respectively whet a saber, thinning the back part and sharpening the point. They hid them away and never showed them to others unless during a killing.
After several assassinations, the two mastered the method of improving their speed in the swordbook. They also discovered that the method of transforming energy into strength could be applied to machete skills. To avoid being found, they applied the swordcraft to machete skills. Though the force would be weakened correspondingly, it could protect them from being suspected and help them deal with the next few monthly tests.
After each assassination, they did not touch the belongings of the corpses and just moved the bodies to the cliff. By leaving the boots and the socks of the dead there, they made the cliff a scene of a roc attack.
Those were real assassinations. They took great care in covering their tracks, attacked every other week, found good reasons to leave their Master Shifu, and often met the apprentices they were familiar with so that they could get alibis from them when necessary.
During nearly three months from the winter to the spring, they killed 12 people in total, six for each. Among the dead, there were servants with no martial arts, apprentices shopping for their masters, and even one real killer. But not even once had they been suspected of being involved. The black market ran as usual with the location moved inwards.
In his thirties, that killer was still serving his masters. Like the other people, he wore a night suit while he was hanging around the black market. The two teenagers thought he was an apprentice due to his short height.
Maid Lotus killed him with one stab. They did not realize that the man was a killer until they carried the body to the cliff and found his killer waist token when they were disguising the scene.
By that point, the two teenagers understood that they had made achievements in their swordcraft practice and there was no further need for them to practice inside the Fort.
When they were practicing, they were friends as well as teachers to each other. As for Zhang Ji, who helped them a lot, he would never know what kind of killers they had become under his guidance.
Focusing on "killing", Maid Lotus' killing intent became more obvious. Gu Shenwei saw an apprentice being scared stiff while talking to her. She changed so much that someone even compared her to Wildhorse.
Meanwhile, focusing on "self-deconstruction", Gu Shenwei's killing intent became weaker and weaker. Tie Hanfeng was confused and furious about his change. He criticized him as he usually did, hoping he could reignite Gu Shenwei's killing intent. It was not until Gu Shenwei successively killed his opponents with one stab in the monthly tests that Tie Hanfeng grudgingly accepted Gu Shenwei's change. After all, none of those opponents was weak.
"What happened to you? You were a natural killer who was as vicious as a dangerous dog. Sometimes even I was scared of you. But now, you're as spineless as a pug. Alas, I prefer to see the man you used to be."
Tie Hanfeng repeated these again and again. He missed the apprentice in his memory.
After Maid Lotus had successfully killed a real killer, Gu Shenwei had thought about turning his aim to Tie Hanfeng. By killing Tie Hanfeng, he would be given the title of killer. But after several times of preparation, he eventually gave up because Tie Hanfeng was much better at kung fu than ordinary killers.
Gu Shenwei was anxious. He was eager to challenge a real killer to prove that his swordcraft was as good as Maid Lotus', and maybe even better than hers.
Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus decided to carry out the last assassination in the Fort.
They waited another seven days before they discovered a man who seemed to be a killer in the black market. This killer came late. After drinking several gulps of wine that he had bought, he peed at a wasted yard. When he came out, there was nobody around.
The killing went very well. Gu Shenwei stabbed the killer at the neck with his special "sword". Then the killer felt a mosquito bite, raising his hand to his neck, but he stopped dead in mid-motion. As he was falling down to the ground, Gu Shenwei caught his wine-gourd.
They finally mastered the swordcraft, but they had not reached the point of perfection. When they did, they would be able to kill before the victim had noticed anything.
As shown by a killer waist token on his body, the dead man was a real killer.
The accident occurred on the cliff at the end of Woodensaber Alley, where Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus were going to dump the dead killer.
What they did not know was that Golden Roc Fort had changed its tactics as the roc had not been caught during the last three months. Having analyzed the place and the time of the roc's attacks, someone had found out where the roc visited the most frequently and had set their traps there.
The cliff was an important place to set up traps because 12 people had been killed there by the roc. A few killers were hiding there, ready for the prey.