Chapter 68: Feed the Roc
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
For Gu Shenwei, staying in Pyrowork Academy for half of the first month was a nightmarish experience. Gu Shenwei doubted whether he had made the right choice. Ever since most of the over 30 remaining apprentices were taken away by their killer mentors, a few of them gave up on their dream of being killers and volunteered to be servants in West Castle.
The only solace for him was that he had an opportunity to return to Giant Rock Cliff, where Nameless Swordbook was hidden.
There were numerous killer apprentices in East Castle. As it was impossible to let them have contests on the same day, Pyrowork Academy held several martial arts contests almost every day.
The martial arts contest was held in an unusual form. All the apprentices had to wear masks. The overseer would randomly choose a room which simulated various environments, such as an alley, the wilderness, a bedroom, and a tavern. Two apprentices would enter the room from different doors. Without any rules, they would immediately start to fight until one of them fell.
There were rules for apprentices' advancement: If one defeated his opponents in 12 consecutive months, he would become a probationary killer. If one killed his opponents with a strike in 6 successive tests, he would be qualified to be a real killer.
This was an endless and cruel killing game. Few apprentices could become a real killer. It was not because the teenagers were soft-hearted. If they were allowed to attack once more, they would kill their opponents without any hesitation, regardless of whether their opponents were their friends or not. However, it was difficult for them to kill their opponents with a single strike. Those apprentices, who held the desire to kill while entering the room, often found that they were always a step away from instantly killing their opponents when they struck a blow with all their strength.
Those who were slightly injured could continue the game while the seriously injured would be carried to Firewood Yard in West Castle. To Gu Shenwei's shock, lots of apprentices believed that the injured would receive medical treatment in Firewood Yard. He really wanted to tell them the truth. "Firewood Yard wasn't a clinic, but a place for the dead."
No one would listen to him. He still had no friends, just like the time when he was in West Castle.
The apprentices who were killed with a single strike not only became a stepping stone for other killer apprentices, but they also received a sort of strange honor of being thrown off Reincarnation Cliff.
This was the task Gu Shenwei was assigned to do in Pyrowork Academy.
Usually, the overseers with the yellow-belt were responsible for this work. Now that they had the remaining apprentices, they willingly assigned them to do it.
The first person Gu Shenwei carried out was a 12-year-old child. The boy might be become a scary killer after several years, but now he was just a corpse. His only wound was a gash from his forehead to his shoulder, with his mask split in half. His skull could be seen.
The corpse was carried by Gu Shenwei and his partner. When they were close to Reincarnation Cliff, Gu Shenwei spoke to his partner behind him. "I can do it alone. It's inconvenient for us to walk on these steps together. You can just take the stretcher back."
The fearful teenager nodded. He carried the stretcher under his arm and immediately ran away without expressing his gratitude.
Gu Shenwei carried the corpse on his shoulder, but he did not follow the path to Reincarnation Cliff. He walked to the nearby Giant Rock Cliff.
The place was once the twin's territory, but now it was discarded by them. It maintained the previous look as the day the two giant rocs were killed. The filthy, broken net was spread out here and there, mixed with the books and wooden sabers.
Gu Shenwei put down the corpse and found Nameless Swordbook which he had looked forward to reading.
He had already become familiar with the word and drawings in the swordbook, but he still greedily browsed through it one more time. Then he pulled it close to his chest and intended to carefully study it when he was alone in Pyrowork Academy. He thought he had already known something from it.
He held the corpse and wanted to throw it off Giant Rock Cliff. At this moment, he heard a faint tweet from the cliff.
"It might be the skinny nestling who's fond of eating and pecking."
It had been almost one month. Gu Shenwei had never thought about what happened to the helpless nestling without its parents. He immediately felt ashamed because he was the one who had caused the death of giant rocs and he had let the nestling survive alone under the cliff. The nestling could not understand what had happened.
Gu Shenwei immediately realized that he must have heard wrongly. The voice could not be that of the nestling. Supreme King once said that the giant roc would not sing because they would die of it. The sound might be a figment of his imagination.
However, Gu Shenwei could not get rid of the sense of guilt. He held the corpse to the place where he had fallen off. After confirming the position, he threw the corpse down and let it fell as close as possible to the precipice.
The moment he let go of the corpse, he recalled some of the words in Death Scripture, whereupon he recited it in a low voice.
"The soul rises to the Ninth Heaven, and the spirit falls to the Ninth Abyss. The living suffer in grief, and the dead settle in peace."
Was the nestling alive? He did not know.
Would the corpse accurately fall into the nest? He did not know.
Could the giant roc eat the dead? He did not know.
He harbored the sense of guilt and hoped that, by doing so, he would make up the damage that he had caused.
From that day on, whenever he had an opportunity, he would throw killer apprentices off Giant Rock Cliff. Sometimes he would do that in successive days; sometimes he had to feed the nestling once every seven or eight days. He could not find any signs showing that the nestling was alive, but he insisted on feeding the nestling. The little one became the only thing he felt responsible for in this world.
As the number of failed apprentices became fewer and fewer, Gu Shenwei could finally live alone. The first thing he did was to practice Yin and Yang Strength according to the sped-up technique. As a result, he almost killed himself.
The Peripheral Force that Mama Xue had implanted in Slave Huan's Xuanji acupoint was extremely powerful. It prevented him from improving his Internal Strength and from practicing the sped-up technique of Yin and Yang Strength.
Gu Shenwei felt Internal Breath was in disorder after practicing the half of the manual. He fainted after a while. At dawn, he woke up. Fortunately, he had fainted in time. Otherwise, he would not have to wait the three years before he would die from qigong deviation.
Since the sped-up technique did not work, he started to concentrate on studying Nameless Swordbook.
He knew some knowhow about how to read this book. In the book, most of the text about "death" was not concerned about how to kill others, but how to kill oneself.
"Devoting oneself to Tao, one would harm oneself and become weaker and weaker; after one dies, one would find the truth."
Gu Shenwei stared at the words from Tao Te Ching and thought about it for long. He finally understood what they roughly meant: Only by making oneself die could one make others die.
However, he found it hard to practice. It was extremely difficult to have the desire to "kill others", let alone to "kill oneself".
In order to get revenge, Gu Shenwei did not care about his life, but it was hard to be resolute in his desire to kill himself.
Gu Shenwei thought the words might be some sort of metaphor, as it was impossible for him to kill others after he was dead.
He began to secretly practice the 29 movements in the swordbook, but he became more confused after several times of practice.
Each movement of them was used to stab at the enemy's neck, but they were from different angles. There was a movement where one needed to stab from above. Because of his poor lightness skill, Gu Shenwei could not finish it after trying several times.
The verses written below the sword movements were obscure. Even with the notes beside them, Gu Shenwei could only understand a small part of it.
The clearest sentence was that the faster one made a move, the better it would be. However, the book did not mention how to improve the speed.
It mentioned that one needed to stab accurately. Gu Shenwei just understood parts of it, because the object one spotted was not the enemy's neck, but his "Qi". He did know what "Qi" meant, and he was not sure whether it was related to Internal Breath or if it was practiced by practitioners in the martial arts circles.
What Gu Shenwei could not accept the most was that all the 29 movements were used to attack with full strength, which was worthy of a swordbook being about how to commit suicide.
As a child, Gu Shenwei had not studied hard, but his father was a kung fu master who knew several martial arts from different schools. Therefore, Gu Shenwei knew that all the kung fu are comprised of both offense and defense. There were several offensive movements in a set of kung fu, but they must be balanced with defensive movements. He had never heard of a set of kung fu like Nameless Swordbook which gave up on the defense.
After he learned all the 29 movements, Gu Shenwei lost his confidence. This set of swordsmanship was full of loopholes. Once one failed with the first move, his opponent would take the chance to fight back and that he would not be able to block it.
If the last three or four pages of the Internal Strength manual were not helpful, Gu Shenwei would have given up on studying the swordbook.
There were over 4,000 characters written on the last few pages. The font was so small that he could only recognize them up close. Every time he suffered from qigong deviation, or Iron Finger from Mama Xue, Gu Shenwei recited those words to turn the power into his own Internal Strength.
He did not understand the meaning of those words at all. He did not know how it worked because he only memorized them.
Gu Shenwei tried to recite those words at normal times but it did not work. It seemed that it could only strengthen Internal Strength when it was under the pressure of Peripheral Force.
Gu Shenwei had spent more than 10 days on studying the Nameless Swordbook, but he gained nothing except that he memorized the words well. He was delayed in his kung fu practice, so he had made up his mind to hide the swordbook on Giant Rock Cliff again.
The second day after Gu Shenwei hid Nameless Swordbook, a person that would have a great impact on him came to Pyrowork Academy.
The man was named Tie Hanfeng, but he was neither cold nor sharp.
Tie Hanfeng walked with a limp and his face appeared as if it was glowing red. He bowed to every overseer with the yellow-belt in Alchemy Academy. This made his gait stranger, as if he was a scalawag begging for money.
Therefore, when an overseer said he was a killer, the five remaining apprentices could not believe it.
Tie Hanfeng was not only a killer, but also a Master Shifu who was qualified to accept the apprentice. This year, it was his first time that he accepted an apprentice. No one knew why he came over half a month later after missing the day for formally selecting apprentices.
Those overseers ignored him and lied to him, telling him that there was no apprentice left. Tie Hanfeng went into the room where they carried corpses while saying, "Aren't there some left? I'm not greedy. Only one is enough."
The teenagers pretended to be busy. They would like to be a servant in West Castle rather than follow a killer mentor like a scalawag. It was not as important if they could not learn anything. They were afraid that they would be killed in the first monthly test if the Master Shifu taught them irresponsibly.
The overseer shook his head and said perfunctorily, "Well, whoever wants to follow you, you can take him away."
Among the five of them, only Gu Shenwei wanted to be Tie Hanfeng's apprentice. He was willing to take the risk of following a wrong Master Shifu because, at one moment, he felt a scary killing intent emanating from the crippled man.