Chapter 19: - Scrambling for Merit

“Acaidu!”

The death of his master-archer companion drove the huge Barbarian almost mad. He and Acaidu had been the two great warriors serving their chieftain, following at the man’s side for years. Their bond had long since become that of brothers.

“I... I’m going to kill you!”

The huge Barbarian raised his saber and charged toward Liang Cheng, whom he had just kicked away.

Liang Cheng lay on the ground with an arrow through his left arm. Perhaps his injuries were simply too severe, because he made no attempt to stand.

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

And at that moment, Zheng Fan, who had been hiding in the corner until now, came charging out with his saber raised and a scream ripping from his throat.

He had hidden earlier because he did not want to become a burden. But if he stayed hidden now, Liang Cheng was going to be chopped apart by that Barbarian.

Liang Cheng remained on the ground. He watched Zheng Fan come charging from the other direction, yelling all the way, and a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He shook his head.

On the night before their departure, Blind Man Bei had secretly gathered the others for a talk.

The Blind Man had said, “I know that, deep down, none of us thinks all that highly of Master yet. But whatever else happens, never forget this: every one of us was created by him. If the real world was a cage, then Master spent his old life shackled inside it. All we need to do now is give him an environment where he can develop freely. As the creator who brought people like us into existence, sooner or later he will grow into a leader capable of guiding us, and someone truly worthy of our loyalty.”

Right now, Zheng Fan really was throwing caution to the wind.

He knew how terrifyingly strong the huge Barbarian was. Even if the bastard had not glowed at all, Zheng Fan still would not have been his match. But to keep trembling in a corner while Liang Cheng was hacked to death, doing nothing except praying the enemy would fail to notice him so that he could cling to his own life...

That was not Zheng Fan’s nature.

He had already died once.

In this world, every extra day he lived was profit.

He did not want to crawl through that borrowed life carrying regrets.

So even if Zheng Fan’s entire damage output came from screaming, at the very least, he still charged.

And he screamed damn loudly.

“Ugh... cough...”

The huge Barbarian suddenly shuddered in mid-charge and came to an abrupt stop.

Bewildered, he lowered his head and looked at his palm.

It had already turned pitch-black.

“Puh!”

A mouthful of foul, corrupted blood sprayed from his lips. His entire body began trembling uncontrollably.

He had been poisoned.

And not by any ordinary poison.

The poison had come from that Yan man’s fingernails.

By now Zheng Fan had already charged right in front of him, but the huge Barbarian merely raised his head blankly and stared as the distance between them closed.

He tried to lift his saber.

Clang!

The weapon fell from his hand.

He tried to raise a fist.

Instead, his body began tipping helplessly backward.

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

There was no room left in Zheng Fan’s head for thought. Once he reached striking distance, he used every ounce of strength in his body and brought his saber crashing down.

Thud!

Thud!

The first impact was the huge Barbarian hitting the ground. Blood kept spilling from the corner of his mouth. The corpse poison had already strangled every trace of life out of him.

The second impact was Zheng Fan.

Because the Barbarian had fallen first, Zheng Fan’s saber cut nothing but air. With all that desperate momentum carrying him forward, he pitched straight onto the ground as well.

Farther away, Xue San, his face still smeared with shit, did not forget to cheer:

“Master is mighty!”

Zheng Fan stared in disbelief at the dead Barbarian lying beside him.

Hoo...

There was not even the slightest regret in his heart that he had failed to kill the man with his own hands.

There was only the overwhelming relief of having survived.

Not fearing death did not mean not wanting to live.

Liang Cheng got back to his feet. He grabbed the tail of the arrow with his right hand and yanked it free from his left arm.

No blood flowed out.

Only a through-and-through hole remained, with wisps of black baleful aura coiling around the wound.

He tore a strip from his clothes and wrapped the injury several times to conceal it, then walked over and extended a hand toward Zheng Fan, who was still lying on the ground and panting hard.

Zheng Fan smiled a little sheepishly, took the hand, and let Liang Cheng pull him upright.

“Holy freaking shit!”

Xue San suddenly cried out nearby.

“Master, we caught ourselves a big fish!”

Zheng Fan and Liang Cheng immediately walked over.

On the ground where the two Barbarians had charged from earlier, an old man was leaning against the wreckage. Two arrows protruded from his body, and several other terrible wounds covered him.

His armor was already battered and dented, but its quality and expense were still obvious.

Among the Barbarian tribes, being able to care about whether armor looked beautiful was already an extravagant luxury.

Clearly, the two Barbarians from earlier had been trying to escort this old man out of the encirclement. They must have placed him here first so they could quickly dispose of Zheng Fan’s group.

The old man was still conscious.

His eyes burned with fury as he glared at the three of them.

Old though he was, one could easily imagine that before being injured, he must have been a troublesome opponent himself.

“Master, if we take this old bastard alive, wouldn’t the merit be even greater?”

Zheng Fan bit his lip.

“Kill him.”

“Huh?” Xue San did not understand.

Liang Cheng, standing beside Zheng Fan, spoke as well.

“Kill him. He probably saw everything that just happened.”

They already possessed some understanding of this world, but not nearly enough.

Who knew whether Liang Cheng’s method of fighting just now would appear unusually strange here?

“Tsk, tsk. True enough.”

Xue San agreed.

At that moment, perhaps realizing what fate awaited him, the old man suddenly stared at Liang Cheng and roared:

“Devil... devil!”

“Heh. Correct answer.”

Xue San’s dagger swept down.

...

Yan cavalry had already taken control of the battlefield.

The large-scale slaughter was over.

All that remained was a thorough search of the camp to make sure no Barbarian had slipped through the net.

One cavalry patrol discovered an extraordinarily strange sight.

Five riders sat mounted before a pile of wooden carts.

Every one of them stared in open shock.

A neat row of Barbarian heads had been laid across the carts.

Barbarian hairstyles were completely different from those of Yan. Although the Central Plains states mocked Yan as a land of barbarians simply because it lay in the north, that was no more than regional prejudice.

The actual Barbarians wore bizarre hairstyles and liked tattooing or scarring patterns into their faces and scalps.

Their severed heads were extremely easy to identify.

A dwarf crouched atop one cart.

A man with his left arm bandaged stood on the other side.

And in the center stood a man whose face was covered in blood.

He held an old man’s severed head in one hand.

At his feet lay the corresponding headless corpse.

The File Leader narrowed his eyes.

For one instant, he had the powerful urge to order his men to charge.

Those Barbarian heads were certainly valuable. Every one could be exchanged for either military merit or reward money.

But what he truly wanted was the old man’s head.

He had already more or less guessed who the dead man was.

The reason the central command still had not ended its search was precisely because they were looking for that old man.

And these were only civilian laborers.

Three laborers.

What kind of obscene luck did they have to enter this battle as sacrificial bait, survive the chaos, collect so many enemy heads, and even end up holding the greatest merit of the entire fight in their hands?

Xue San chewed on a blade of grass.

He despised the smell still clinging to his own body.

What he despised even more, however, was the killing intent radiating from the five Yan cavalrymen in front of him.

It was directed at the three of them.

Xue San rolled his neck.

His lips moved faintly as he whispered:

“Master, they’re planning to rob us and kill the witnesses.”

Fighting over military merit, even to the point of attacking one’s own comrades, was something no army had ever managed to eliminate completely.

Especially when, in the eyes of these regular Yan soldiers, Zheng Fan and the other two were only civilian laborers.

The warhorses began pawing at the ground.

The riders were already struggling to hold themselves back.

The battlefield was still chaotic enough for them to act now.

If they delayed until the search ended and more eyes appeared, it would become much harder.

The File Leader finally made up his mind.

He raised his saber.

“ROAR!”

A low beastly roar suddenly sounded behind the five riders.

The File Leader shuddered.

They knew perfectly well who that roar announced.

The riders immediately wheeled their horses around, bowed their heads toward the approaching figure, and struck their right fists against the armor over their left chests.

“Another demon beast?” Xue San muttered.

Liang Cheng, beside him, silently straightened.

Zheng Fan saw a strange beast slowly approaching.

Two horns grew from its head, and its face looked vaguely tiger-like.

Its appearance was peculiar, but if one absolutely had to compare it to something, it looked even more like a Pixiu than the mount ridden by the Pacification Commissioner in Tiger Head City.

A young man in red armor sat atop the beast.

His face was very fair.

Behind him walked an elderly swordsman in purple robes, a sword cradled in his arms.

The beast passed through the five cavalrymen and came directly before Zheng Fan.

The young general in red armor wore a faintly meaningful smile.

First he swept his gaze across the severed heads.

Then across Zheng Fan and the other two.

When his eyes passed over Xue San, his brows drew together slightly.

A battlefield and military camp could hardly be expected to smell clean or fragrant.

But when someone carrying a stench this concentrated stood directly in front of you, it was still difficult to endure.

A moment later, the red-armored general leaned slightly forward and stared at Zheng Fan, who stood at the front of the group.

“You killed all of them?”

Zheng Fan nodded and met his gaze.

“How?”

“Got lucky.”

The young general straightened in the saddle.

His expression was difficult to read.

He tugged the reins.

The demon beast turned around and walked back to the File Leader.

“Do you know your crime?”

The red-armored general’s voice was calm.

The File Leader froze.

Then he immediately dismounted and knelt.

“This subordinate officer knows his crime!”

Within an army, arguing excuses was rarely useful.

Nor was everything handled according to the civilian standard of catching someone red-handed.

Because you could never know whether you were the particular chicken your commander had decided to kill in order to warn the monkeys.

“Good. Then you know.”

The red-armored general nodded.

The File Leader’s face went white.

Terrified, he raised his head and shouted:

“But they’re only civilian laborers! They were only bait!”

Meaning:

People at that level could be killed without consequence.

The young general answered calmly:

“Right now, they are comrades-in-arms.”

Then he spoke softly.

“Seventh Uncle.”

Humm!

A red glow suddenly erupted from the elderly swordsman.

His sword flashed from its sheath, then returned.

Thud.

The File Leader’s head rolled across the ground.

The other four cavalrymen immediately dismounted and dropped to their knees, trembling.

The red-armored general seemed to have no intention of punishing those common soldiers any further.

Instead, he turned and looked back toward Zheng Fan’s group.

“Wash yourselves. Then come to my command tent.”

Zheng Fan hesitated.

At that moment, the elderly swordsman’s gaze swept toward him.

A cold, cutting pressure followed it.

“This subordinate officer obeys!”

Zheng Fan copied the form of address used by the File Leader whose head had just rolled away, clasping his hands in salute without even considering whether he ought to kneel.

“Hehehe... A civilian laborer calling himself ‘this subordinate officer.’”

The red-armored general laughed.

Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he added:

“One more thing. That dwarf is not permitted inside my command tent, even if he scrubs off an entire layer of skin.”

With those words, the young general slowly rode away on the demon beast.

The sword-bearing elder followed.

The crisis was over.

Zheng Fan released a long breath.

Xue San, however, muttered unhappily:

“Stinking bitch. How dare she complain that I stink...”

[End of Chapter 19]