Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 149 - The Scent of Sin
Chapter 149 – The Scent of Sin
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Edited by Celestial Knight
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Chapter 149 – The Scent of Sin
When the man didn’t move his blade despite being dazed, Ju-seong acted first.
“How dare you put a blade to a Buddhist’s body!”
A backhanded strike shattered the wrist gripping the curved saber before a lightning-fast front kick slammed into the martial artist’s chest, sending him crashing into a distant paddy field with a thunderous sound.
Pale silhouettes in the thin morning mist raised their heads with interest. The nearby farmers.
When their chief was helplessly taken down, the lackeys looked at each other wondering what to do, then all charged at once.
Ju-seong let out a long sigh and muttered.
“Foolish sentient beings.”
Palm shadows scattered like cotton tufts.
“Benefactor!”
By the time Won-gong arrived urgently, the bandits were already bloody heaps on the ground.
“You used excessive force.”
At Won-gong’s reproach, Ju-seong pointed at the leader and casually lied.
“He insulted Buddha, calling him a donkey.”
“Such a wicked creature… Well done.”
Ju-seong smirked, picked up a fallen curved saber, and spoke.
“Now then… I can’t be the only one bald. Time to conduct the shaving punishment.”
“Benefactor, shaving isn’t punishment. It’s not a bad thing.”
Ignoring Won-gong’s protest, Ju-seong grabbed the hair of the nearest sprawled bandit and started slicing.
However, perhaps due to his clumsy technique, not just hair but chunks of scalp were being carved off along with it.
“GYAAAAH…!”
When he shrieked horribly, the martial artists who’d been playing dead promptly rose and knelt properly in a row.
“Mm, this is my first time shaving someone else, so I nicked a bit.”
Ju-seong shoved aside the blood-headed man and spoke. He’d lost so much blood that he couldn’t hold himself up and collapsed, rolling into a paddy ditch.
“Now… Is everyone ready to be honest before Buddha?”
The martial artists immediately prostrated themselves, each shedding tears of repentance.
“Hwaaah!”
“Of course, Master! We were wrong, so please, anything but the shaving…”
While Won-gong pulled the man out of the ditch to tend to him, Ju-seong interrogated them.
“Which mountain did you say you came from?”
“Th-that… We’re just a roving bandit gang!”
-Smack! Smack!
“Urrrgh… We came from Liuzhou Mountain nearby!”
“Who’s your chief?”
“If I tell you, my life is…”
-Smack! Smack! Smack!
“Ghrk! Thunderclap Axe Ghost is our chief!”
A title he’d never heard of. Ju-seong slowly nodded, then asked.
“A fortress under the Green Forest King?”
The man hesitated at Ju-seong’s question, then asked in a trembling voice.
“P-perhaps you’re from the Green Forest?”
Before his words were even finished, Ju-seong let out a roar.
“How dare you mention Green Forest! Can you not see my shaved head and ragged robes? This won’t do. I must show you my prayer beads.”
What he pulled from his robes was a mallet for striking a prayer bell. But where was the prayer bell that needed striking… just the mallet alone?
Ju-seong raised the mallet.
“Since ancient times, prayer beads were also called wooden fish. This is because, like fish that have no eyelids and always keep their eyes open, prayer beads also awaken sentient beings’ minds.”
Ju-seong had originally known a bit about Buddhist doctrine, plus he’d heard snippets from Won-gong throughout their journey, so he could pass as a fake monk.
“Demons are in your skull preventing quick answers!”
-THWACK!
Perhaps because the bandit’s skull was quite empty, a clear sound rang out. Then he spurted a nosebleed, rolled his eyes back, and collapsed.
“Indeed, flopping like a fish out of water… the worldly attachments must have left him. The prayer beads work.”
When Ju-seong turned his gaze, he saw the martial artists looking even more docile.
After that, it went smoothly.
First, they weren’t Green Forest bandits. They were riffraff gathered by some guy called Thunderclap Axe Ghost, who’d seized the Liuzhou Mountain fortress through his martial prowess alone.
Originally, Liuzhou Mountain was a Green Forest fortress, but under new ownership, it wasn’t anymore.
Won-gong stroked his chin, puzzled.
“Strange. Even if they’re bold, how could they take a Green Forest fortress…?”
Ju-seong shook his head.
“The stranger thing is different. Their fortress was stolen, so why is the Green Forest sitting still? This is practically their front yard.”
When Ju-seong looked down demanding an answer, the martial artist cowered and replied.
“Th-that… Among Guangxi’s martial artists, word is spreading that the Green Forest King is dead.”
“What?”
Ju-seong doubted his ears.
Battle King of the Green Forest, Jang Sa-hyeok.
He was the current Green Forest King, Guangxi’s greatest, and though he hadn’t claimed a seat among the Ten Greats Under Heaven, he was evaluated as infinitely close. Well, with Elder Jeong-hwa’s passing, he’d surely be in the lower ranks of the Ten Greats now.
Such a person was dead?
And his death wasn’t known outside Guangxi? Feeling puzzled, Ju-seong glared at the kneeling thugs and spoke.
“Guide us to the Liuzhou Mountain fortress. I need to see this Thunderclap Axe Ghost or whatever his face.”
Thunderclap Axe Ghost. An alias meaning a ghost who strikes with an axe like lightning… terribly juvenile and corny. The kind of alias that might have been used during the stagnant Yuan dynasty era.
‘What the hell is he?’
Curiosity arose. Ju-seong led the way with the bandits in front, heading toward Liuzhou Mountain.
* * *
Passing the gentle slopes and walking deep in, signs of human passage gradually became more frequent.
Ju-seong casually glanced at the corpses hanging from distant tree branches.
Won-gong’s face had hardened too, having seen the sight.
[Probably the fortress’s original owners.]
Won-gong quietly nodded at Ju-seong’s transmission. The process of seizing the fortress must not have been very peaceful.
Moreover, it wasn’t just the chief who’d been killed… all his subordinates had become corpses hanging from trees.
That wasn’t all.
Ju-seong saw the bodies of women scattered carelessly rotting on the slope below the mountain path.
They wore not a thread on their naked bodies. Only the thorny bushes and fallen leaves in the ravine served as their burial shrouds.
“Hah…”
Ju-seong let out a hollow laugh.
This was land where countless sins had been sown. Even after hundreds of years, could the vengeful spirits of those who’d died horribly here ever find peace?
Looking at Won-gong, he was quietly weeping with hands in half-palm.
“Namo Amitabha…”
Ju-seong was ablaze with fiery rage, while Won-gong was consuming himself inward like smoldering charcoal.
Perhaps this was the difference between a true Buddhist and a commoner.
Ju-seong erased his smile. The fortress’s palisade came into view. He wanted to kill every last one of those bandits in front of him, but doing so would surely be bad for himself and for Won-gong.
Ju-seong grabbed one man’s skull and shoved him aside.
When the man screamed and tumbled down the slope, sentries beyond the palisade urgently poked their heads out at the noise.
Ju-seong’s hands moved at terrifying speed. An attack using the Divine Finger Flicking Technique acquired from the Martial Alliance’s Grand Repository.
-BANG! BANG!
Along with bizarre sounds, two Myriad-Year Cold Iron balls flew at incredible speed.
“Who goes… gurk!”
The upper portion of the palisade exploded, and the four sentries who’d poked their heads out were blown off by the impact.
In name, a hidden weapon, but its destructive power was enough to wonder whether ‘hidden’ even applied.
Without a word, Ju-seong and Won-gong kicked off the ground and leaped up the palisade wall.
-Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
One lackey was frantically beating a hung-up pot lid in the distance. Armed men poured out of the earthen caves and thatched huts like insects.
The fortress interior used the valley’s walls on both sides and was fairly well organized.
Quaintly built thatched huts and tidy small plots. But the crops in the plots had been neglected and withered yellow long ago, and only the stench of violence and debauchery filled the valley.
“…”
Ju-seong slightly pinched his nose and dialed his Celestial Nose sensitivity down to the minimum.
“Monk.”
“Yes, benefactor.”
“Non-killing will be difficult.”
“I know.”
Through their journey together, Ju-seong had learned something.
Won-gong was not a naive, inflexible monk. Though his experience might be shallow, he’d heard much from his master.
The world is a sea of suffering. Evil people are countless, and good people are harder to find than a needle in a haystack.
Even valuing mercy, not all sentient beings can be saved. They were human, not Maitreya.
Won-gong resolved that today, even if his companion ruthlessly took lives, he would not waver, and prepared himself for the possibility that his own hands might end someone’s life.
Won-gong lightly pushed off the ground to step ahead of Ju-seong, then drew a deep breath, expanding his belly. When his belly was maximally expanded, he then fully expanded his chest.
Belly and chest filled with air. Now, clenching his abdominal muscles tightly, he filled his lungs with Shaolin’s mighty internal energy and released it all at once.
-………..!
A thunderous boom that seemed to momentarily erase all sound.
Shaolin’s Lion’s Roar.
At the stern roar of a Buddhist seeking the Buddha, those who’d lived like beasts collapsed all at once. Even Ju-seong, standing behind him, felt momentarily dazed… as if he’d jumped up a ridge and his ears had popped.
Then naturally, the enemies standing in front didn’t need description.
Everyone within about five zhang in front of Won-gong sprayed blood from their noses and ears, rolled their eyes back, and fell flat.
Those beyond were also wetting themselves as their legs gave out. While Won-gong caught his breath after using the major technique, Ju-seong surged forward.
-Tap, tap, tap!
Leaping over the collapsed bodies, he kicked off thatched hut walls, charging through.
“Wha-what!”
Those who’d been unaffected by the Lion’s Roar frantically raised crude bamboo spears and rusty blades, but they couldn’t stop the man who stood at the peak of the Central Plains’ rising generation.
Ju-seong saw a man who hadn’t even finished pulling up his pants. He saw a man wearing clothes far too tight… someone else’s clothes.
The Heavenly Silkworm Silk finally emerged. Silver threads flashed chaotically in the air, and ownerless arms and legs tumbled. A pungent scent of blood burst forth, washing the valley full of sin with the greater stench of violence.
And just as Ju-seong was about to approach the dozen-odd bandits still standing…
A strange whistling sound tickled Ju-seong’s ear, and he quickly retreated.
-KABOOM!
The moment Ju-seong dodged, the spot where he’d stood exploded upward in a cloud of dust.
And before Ju-seong could identify what it was, a man wielding twin axes rushed in madly.
“Who dares turn my fortress into a slaughterhouse… !”
Two-handed axe movements like a madman’s dance, yet each motion was steeped in pungent blood-scent, clearly genuine.
-Crash! Crunch! Thwack!
Following Ju-seong’s footsteps relentlessly, the man swung his axes wildly, smashing and shattering walls and floors.
He was even mercilessly crushing the bodies of bandits groaning on the ground.
Ju-seong quickly realized this was that Thunderclap Axe Ghost.
-KA-BOOM!
Both axes fell toward Ju-seong’s shoulders simultaneously.
Ju-seong raised his forearms and struck hard to deflect the axe handles. Then he floated his body with just his toes, delivering a clean push kick.
But the man casually released both axes, crossed both arms to block Ju-seong’s foot…
Not only that, he borrowed the kick’s force to step back, then sharply yanked with both hands and the axes he’d released flew back into his grip.
Looking now, thin chains connected the axes to his wrists.
And the attack resumed.
Watching the man’s movements, Ju-seong was reminded of someone he’d faced not long ago.
Ju-seong’s eyes gleamed, and an unsettling name flickered through his mind.
‘…Taowu?’