Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 97 - Hunter and Prey

Chapter 97 – Hunter and Prey

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“…The kid fights well.”

Ju-seong watched Chun-mong, who was thrashing around like a fish in water, for a moment before turning to face his own opponent.

He had to make a visor with his hand at his brow and tilt his head way back.

Because the man had leapt up to the top of the mast.

Perched precariously on one foot at the mast’s peak, he stood ramrod straight… like a lofty crane.

“Come down. Let’s have a proper match.”

The man gazed down quietly at Ju-seong and then spoke.

“I am Forget-Sorrow Arrow, a Night Guest of the Assassination Curtain. I’ve eaten jianghu’s rice for twenty more years than you. Show some manners.”

Ju-seong tilted his head and asked.

“How many years have you eaten jianghu’s rice?”

“I’m forty-five, and I learned martial arts at fifteen… so thirty years.”

“When did you join the Assassination Curtain?”

“I hunted people so much in Jiangnan that both the government and martial world were after me. So I threw myself into the Assassination Curtain.”

“Why did you hunt people? People aren’t animals.”

Forget-Sorrow Arrow sighed as he answered.

“If I could understand animal speech and read animal expressions, why would I have harmed people?”

“…What the hell does that mean?”

Forget-Sorrow Arrow looked genuinely regretful.

“The fear and pain of hunted prey… their anxiety and impatience… When King Yama’s cold breath grazes their heels, that’s when life blazes most fervently.”

Ju-seong narrowed his eyes and waited for him to continue.

“To feel all of that purely, it has to be humans, who share language and expressions. That’s why it’s regrettable. If I had understood animal speech, I would have just lived as an ordinary hunter. I wouldn’t have gotten into this tiresome business of being chased and ending up chained to places like the Assassination Curtain…”

Ju-seong let his arms hang and stared at Forget-Sorrow Arrow.

“Are you done talking?”

“Going to charge me? Sorry, but today you won’t reach this mast.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a fierce whoosh accompanied an iron arrow plunging down.

-Crash!

Ju-seong evaded with White Phoenix Nine Heavens Movement and glanced at the hole in the deck.

“If you put a hole in the boat, you won’t be safe either.”

“Don’t worry. I may not be able to cross the river by floating a reed like Bodhidharma of old, but I can cross by stepping on floating planks.”

He seemed to have honed his qinggong in lieu of close-combat ability.

If he could cross the river by stepping on floating planks, he was exceptional even among those renowned for their footwork in jianghu.

The way he’d leapt to the top of the mast in a single bound had already been unusual.

Ju-seong pulled out Heavenly Silkworm Silk, intending to cut down the mast itself, but arrows kept raining down, preventing him from approaching.

-Clang! Claaang!

Two arrows struck straight down and hammered against the Heavenly Silkworm Silk. The thread was tangled around the arrows and pinned to the deck.

‘Damn it, why are his eyes so good… Crazy. What the hell?’

Ju-seong suppressed his curses and glanced upward, only to be struck with horror.

Forget-Sorrow Arrow’s eyeballs had been squeezed into a bizarre, flattened shape.

Blood vessels bulged around his eyes, and his flattened eyeballs had a tawny glow in the whites.

It was a truly grotesque sight. Sensing Ju-seong’s gaze, Forget-Sorrow Arrow smiled slightly and said.

“It’s a martial art that enhances eyesight. A secret technique that flattens or elongates the eyeballs.”

“…What kind of…”

“It’s useful for pulling distant things close, or for seeing nearby things in detail. I can also see at night like day… Interested in learning?”

“No thanks.”

Shaken by that hideous appearance, polite speech escaped Ju-seong’s mouth despite himself.

Forget-Sorrow Arrow smiled slightly and said.

“I wasn’t planning to teach you anyway. Using this martial art excessively means I have to pluck out someone else’s eyes and swap them in. Right now I’ve got my eye on yours.”

“…”

“What’s the point of teaching eye arts to someone who’ll be blind soon? It would be no different from mockery.”

“The more I listen… ”

Ju-seong raised his left foot, then powerfully stomped off the deck and leapt high.

There were two masts on the pirate ship. Forget-Sorrow Arrow stood on the main mast; Ju-seong aimed for the foremast.

-Bang! Paang!

Forget-Sorrow Arrow loosed arrows continuously. He was trying to keep Ju-seong from climbing up via the foremast.

“Damn!”

The deck shattered, and even the splinters carried dangerous force as they scattered.

Ju-seong dodged arrows and splinters by weaving in the air with his tumbling techniques.

Ju-seong’s eyes flashed sharply.

‘I’ll apply the principle of White Phoenix Nine Heavens Movement in a new way.’

To deal with an archer on high ground, he had to evade attacks while going upward.

To evade attacks, he had to use footwork… but the problem was that footwork normally assumed fighting on flat ground.

In other words, footwork was movement across a plane.

He needed to convert that two-dimensional movement into three-dimensional movement through space, including up and down.

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

Ju-seong’s mind whirred furiously, and the incoming arrows seemed to slow as if submerged in viscous liquid.

White Phoenix Nine Heavens Movement.

The white phoenix traverses the nine celestial bodies.

‘How could the stars in the heavens be stuck on the ground?’

They floated in the round sky at their own heights.

Ju-seong stared at the large mast and the sail attached to it.

‘Focus.’

It was the blink of an eye… an extreme immersion that heated his skull and caused the blood vessels in his eyes to burst.

Imaginary dots appeared on the mast and sail as the palaces of the nine… Qian, Kun, Dui, Kan, and more. Shining stars danced and roamed freely upon those points.

Ju-seong realized in this instant that he had ascended to the next level of his movement technique.

He surrendered his body to wherever his feet led.

-Tak, tok, tatak!

Feather-light footsteps tapped the mast and sail. Though a man had stepped on the canvas, the sail merely swayed slightly without tearing or being pushed aside.

‘In qinggong terms, this is the level of Treading Snow Without a Trace.’

In fact, well-trained disciples from famous orthodox sects often achieved Treading Snow Without a Trace even at first-rate level.

-Thwack! Thwack!

Iron arrows kept tearing through the sail, grazing Ju-seong… but he was no longer prey.

Ju-seong’s eyes flashed as he stared straight at Forget-Sorrow Arrow.

“Hmm!”

Forget-Sorrow Arrow furrowed his brow and let out a quiet grunt. Weren’t those fierce eyes shining in the young man… weren’t those the eyes of a predator?

He was more of a hunter than a martial artist by nature.

A hunter doesn’t choose a disadvantageous fight if he can help it; if there’s any chance of injury he backs off even when winning; and when hunting a beast, he strikes only after it’s weakened.

Now this punk had somehow become nimble-footed in a split second.

A wild boar turning into a tiger… he couldn’t target him just yet.

-Flutter.

Forget-Sorrow Arrow’s robes made a loud sound as he dropped.

He landed softly on the deck, then moved like the wind and arrived instantly before Huang Fang-yi.

Huang Fang-yi wore a bewildered expression and hesitated.

“Uh, um, Senior? What is… ”

“Chief Huang, lend me your eyes.”

-Crack! Crunch!

Like a chicken pecking for grain, Forget-Sorrow Arrow’s fingers ruthlessly plucked out both of Huang Fang-yi’s eyes.

“GYAAAAAAH…!”

Huang Fang-yi let out a horrific scream as his world plunged into darkness.

Forget-Sorrow Arrow’s own eyes had all their blood vessels burst, bubbling and melting away.

With bloody tears flowing from his eyes, he grinned at Ju-seong.

“See you next time. Once I’ve set my sights on someone’s eyes, I never let go.”

Forget-Sorrow Arrow carefully tucked away the plucked eyes, then shattered the ship’s railing with tremendous leg strength.

Sizable planks of wood splashed onto the water’s surface.

Forget-Sorrow Arrow’s figure hopped away like a leaping frog, stepping on the planks and vanishing into the fog.

“Th-that crazy bastard! Young Hero! Shouldn’t we chase him?!”

“You want to chase him?”

Ju-seong sighed and poked Chun-mong’s side.

“Did you finish off the pirates?”

“Oh, yes. The pirates aren’t really strong enough to stake out the Yangtze… they hold out through other means.”

“Interesting. I heard mountain bandits tend to have quite a few strong fighters.”

“The Yangtze is tangled up with too many interests. If some master tried to stake claim here and seize the logistics, the government would be the first to step up and beat him down.”

“By the way, I told you to call me Eldest Brother. Why aren’t you?”

“You were serious about that?”

Ju-seong nodded.

“The way you fight, you qualify to join us as the youngest. Now we’re three brothers.”

“…What, like a sworn brotherhood?”

Ju-seong shrugged.

“In storybooks, heroes always call each other ‘brother.’ Let’s do that too. Between capable men with human decency.”

After speaking, Ju-seong gazed at the fog where Forget-Sorrow Arrow had vanished and said.

“By the way, maybe we should travel by land from here.”

“Why?”

“If we get cornered on the water, we can’t run.”

Ju-seong was sure that man would return. Judging by his words, he seemed to have a nature that never let go of prey he’d marked.

‘That’s what I want too.’

Ju-seong likewise wanted the man to come back. That way he could end his life.

He reflected on what the man had said, eyes darkening.

This man enjoyed the fear and pain of others by hunting people. Ju-seong murmured quietly, “Beneath such a tranquil-looking jianghu surface, demons of the evil way were growing like water weeds.”

Chun-mong tilted his head beside him, resting a hand on the railing.

“Demons…? Who practices that outdated nonsense in this day and age?”

As Chun-mong said, those who proclaimed themselves demons… those who boasted of cultivating demonic arts… had been crushed and wiped out long ago.

Ju-seong was well-versed in martial history, so he nodded and agreed.

“Seems those kinds still exist. Unfashionable bastards. Behind-the-times bastards…”

Long ago, after the fall of the Tang Dynasty.

During the chaotic era when fifteen different men strutted around calling themselves emperor. A time when demon cultivators who practiced all manner of bizarre sorcery ran rampant.

Back then, the White Path Alliance… precursor to the current Martial Alliance… had waged war under the banner of eradicating demons.

Warlords fought warlords, the martial world fought its own… rivers of blood flowed.

The White Path Alliance of that era was uncompromising and cruel to the point of harshness. Compared to the modern Martial Alliance, they too were hardly different from demons.

They left not a single infant alive among the religions, sects, schools, and families that transmitted demonic arts.

“Since then, just hearing the word ‘demon’ makes jianghu folk convulse and back away. Now people just scoff and say ‘Who practices that?'”

The White Path Alliance itself was purged and disappeared due to its excessive politics of terror, uncompromising leadership, and conflict with the newly-risen Song Dynasty.

Chun-mong stroked his chin and said.

“Centuries have passed since the fall of the demons… three dynasties have risen. It wouldn’t be strange for them to start growing again.”

Ju-seong nodded.

“Right. Deep in the human heart, in a boarded-up shed, monsters always crouch…”

He was also speaking to himself. Wasn’t Ju-seong himself someone who lived with a terrible monster in his head?

“Brother, those guys are leaving without us.”

The merchant ship they’d arrived on was urgently disappearing into the fog, leaving them behind.

“Let them. I deliberately waited for them to go.”

“Ah…”

Ju-seong tapped the pirate ship’s railing and smirked.

“We can take this. Go below and tell the oarsmen. Say we’re heading for the nearest port. Tell them we’ll set them free.”

“Ah, yes.”

Chun-mong nodded and went through the hatch down below deck.

The joyful murmuring of the oarsmen below reached his ears.

Ju-seong closed his eyes and felt the mist clinging coolly to his heated body and mind.

The cold moisture helped to cool his blazing body and heart.

Ju-seong tried to calm his mind without reciting the Stillness-Bright Incantation… using only wind and mist.

The White Lotus Stillness-Bright Incantation was an excellent mind technique. Just reciting it brought peace of mind and created a seal in the upper dantian.

But the seal the Stillness-Bright Incantation created in the upper dantian was ultimately no different from an external aid rather than his own willpower.

If he relied only on that, someday the monster in the shed would kick down the door and burst out.

So he had to tame the monster in advance.

“Huguang Province has many lakes, doesn’t it? We should travel by land and wash ourselves in a quiet lakeside.”

Ju-seong murmured.

Perhaps if he cleansed his body by a quiet lake, his rage-stained heart would become clean too.

‘Catching that crazy archer also works better in an empty place.’

He toyed with the Heavenly Silkworm Silk dangling from his hand.

If the man was a hunter, he intended to set a trap to catch the hunter.