Chapter 110: Hero Chen

Fighting was a very entertaining thing.

At least, judging by appearances, Xue San was having the time of his life.

The “four mares” had already dived down.

The fierce mare in front gripped a huge axe and brought it down toward Xue San.

Xue San reacted extremely quickly and dodged with ease. At the same time, he twisted his body, clicked his heels together, and abruptly changed direction, darting behind the fierce mare.

In the next instant, his little hand flicked.

Another dagger appeared.

He slashed downward behind the fierce mare.

“Buzz!”

An extremely thin thread was severed.

Xue San landed gracefully.

He even seemed ready to imitate A’Ming and perform a Western aristocrat’s bow.

But halfway through the motion, the fierce mare swung her axe down at him again.

Xue San’s eye twitched.

This puppet wasn’t controlled by strings!

A trap.

Goddammit, another trap!

Xue San kicked off the ground and shot backward.

But the other three mares, which had been circling at the perimeter, moved in to encircle him.

The slender mare thrust out both hands.

String after string crossed into a huge net and dropped toward Xue San.

The noble mare opened both arms and charged forward.

She intended to embrace Xue San.

But throughout all of this, the Blind Man remained standing where he was.

He had not moved.

He had not acted.

A trace of contemplation appeared on his face.

Zheng Fan was standing a little too far away.

At this moment, Xue San seemed to have played himself into a dead end, and even if Zheng Fan, his Master, wanted to intervene, he would not make it in time.

Yet no one expected that the instant the net of strings covered Xue San, his body suddenly contracted.

It was as though he had used some sort of bone-shrinking technique.

Already a dwarf, he became even smaller.

The stress points of the string net had been arranged according to Xue San’s original size.

The moment Xue San abruptly shrank, the entire net seemed to lose its aim.

Xue San tucked his head and rolled.

Like a little meatball, he slipped directly out from beneath the net.

The noble mare embraced nothing but air.

At that very moment, the Blind Man suddenly opened his eyes.

Zheng Fan felt as though a gust of wind had swept past his face.

The noble mare’s body abruptly trembled.

It was as though some unknown force had completely invaded her.

“Bang!”

The noble mare exploded.

A pungent, foul-smelling, highly poisonous liquid sprayed in every direction.

That substance had clearly been intended for use only after the noble mare successfully grabbed Xue San.

Instead, the Blind Man had forcibly triggered it early.

The slender mare and pretty mare standing nearby were drenched from head to toe.

Their puppet bodies immediately began corroding violently.

Even the internal formations seemed to have been destroyed.

The two puppets dropped directly to their knees and stopped moving.

Of the four mares, only the fierce mare remained.

The Blind Man still stood there.

Calmly.

Watching the final surviving fierce mare before him.

The fierce mare opened her mouth.

But the voice did not come from her mouth.

It emerged from her abdomen.

“I have heard that among the magicians of the West, there exists an extremely rare type capable of doing what you just did.”

The Blind Man raised one hand to his mouth and covered a yawn.

His guess had been correct.

The true controller had hidden herself inside her own puppet.

Perhaps somewhere in the unseen order of things, old schemers really did possess a strange sympathy for one another.

Because from the very beginning, the Blind Man had already seen through the other side’s trick.

The voice came from the fierce mare’s belly again.

“I should have attacked you first.”

The Blind Man nodded.

“Yes.”

That truly had been a tactical mistake.

Allowing a dual-specialist in mental and spatial abilities to stand comfortably in the back line and keep casting freely was simply asking to lose.

In a team battle, if you did not understand the importance of diving the back line first, you were bound to lose miserably.

Truthfully, Xue San had worked hard this time.

Among the Seven Demon Kings, quite a few were actually better suited to pair with the Blind Man.

A’Ming had high regeneration.

Liang Cheng had high defense.

Fan Li had a huge health pool.

But for some reason, the Blind Man personally seemed to prefer teaming up with Xue San.

Zheng Fan rather darkly suspected that perhaps the Blind Man simply found it amusing to watch Xue San hop around in front of him attracting enemy fire.

“You were too greedy.

“Four puppets.

“You couldn’t truly control them all.”

The voice came from the fierce mare’s abdomen again.

“Because I had never met someone like you before.”

The Blind Man smiled faintly.

“Much obliged.”

“You’re too polite.”

With that said, the fierce mare took one step backward.

Xue San advanced one step.

The fierce mare’s abdomen suddenly shouted, “Hero Chen! If you still refuse to act, they’re going to kill me!”

Clearly, she was calling to another person.

Barring any surprise, that person had probably been responsible for guarding the back entrance earlier.

Xue San narrowed his eyes.

His ears trembled slightly.

Yet what confused him was that he could not sense the approach of anyone whatsoever.

The Blind Man remained where he stood.

He still had not moved.

But Zheng Fan believed the Blind Man had actually been guarding against this other assassin the entire time.

Unfortunately, there was no wall clock here.

Otherwise, this would have been the perfect moment to cut in the sound of a second hand ticking forward.

Three minutes passed.

The first floor of the relay station still contained only their group.

Xue San licked his lips.

He was starting to lose patience.

The fierce mare seemed surprised as well.

She called out again, “Hero Chen, are you truly going to stand by and watch me die?”

The panic in her voice was now obvious.

The first time Zheng Fan heard “Hero Chen,” he had been too busy remaining alert to their surroundings to think much about it.

But the second time he heard “Hero Chen,” a rich, old-fashioned martial-arts-drama flavor suddenly rose in his mind.

Whenever he heard the word “hero,” his mind instinctively filled with the slightly greasy imagery of old wuxia films.

The term itself felt almost retro.

And in all the time Zheng Fan had been awake in this world, this was the first time he had ever heard “Hero” used as a personal form of address.

But clearly, Hero Chen did not appear to be online.

This time, the fierce mare truly panicked.

She shouted again, “Hero Chen!

“Save me!

“Save me!!!”

Three calls.

Not a single response.

Xue San moved.

Once a puppeteer already at an absolute disadvantage was reduced to only one remaining puppet, her fate was essentially decided.

The instant Xue San moved, the Blind Man’s psychic force and telekinetic power pressed down on the fierce mare at the same time.

A muffled groan came from the fierce mare.

She still raised her axe.

But her movements had slowed considerably.

And even under normal circumstances, the fierce mare’s fighting style did not offer much advantage against Xue San.

Now, with the Blind Man standing nearby and stacking every possible debuff onto her, she had even less chance.

Xue San easily found an opening.

The dagger in his hand stabbed into the back of the fierce mare’s neck.

Then he cut downward.

The fierce mare finally became a truly split mare.

From inside the sliced-open puppet, the body of a naked woman was revealed.

The woman was visibly deformed.

She was roughly the same height as Xue San.

But Xue San was merely a dwarf.

His height was unusual, but otherwise his body was proportioned normally.

Without any object nearby for scale, if you took a photograph of him, you might not even realize there was anything unusual.

This woman was different.

Her head was that of a normal human being.

But her torso and limbs were severely atrophied.

She barely looked human.

She resembled a spider instead.

The instant her real body was exposed, the woman began trembling.

She appeared deeply unaccustomed to letting others see her true appearance.

That instinctive inferiority and fury twisted her expression into something vicious.

“Who are you…”

Before the Blind Man could even finish the question, the woman let out a shriek and seemed ready to throw herself at him in a desperate attack.

But what she had lost was not merely the puppet itself.

The puppet had hidden the defects of her body, yes.

More importantly, the formations built into the puppet and her method of controlling it were the true basis of her combat ability.

Without her puppet, aside from her appearance, there was truly nothing frightening about her anymore.

After screaming, the woman attempted to lunge forward and immediately collapsed onto the floor.

Her severely atrophied limbs thrashed wildly against the stone tiles.

Her eyes were filled with poisonous hatred.

“Kill her.

“I’ll tell you who she is.”

A man’s voice suddenly entered the room.

Shock immediately appeared on the Blind Man’s face.

This was the first time Zheng Fan had ever seen such an expression on him.

Because normally, regardless of circumstance, the Blind Man always adhered to his personal three rules of conduct:

First, I have style.

Second, I have a lot of style.

Third, I have an extraordinary amount of style.

Zheng Fan did not believe that at a moment like this, the Blind Man would deliberately act startled merely to frighten him.

Xue San’s expression became ugly as well.

And when he saw the Blind Man’s expression, his own grew even worse.

It was bad enough that his assassin’s “sensitivity” had failed to detect the speaker’s location.

But even the Blind Man’s psychic perception had failed to find him.

The implication of that was extremely serious.

Even so, Xue San walked over and drove his dagger into the female puppeteer’s body.

The dagger was poisoned.

The woman’s body quickly turned black.

Then she died.

Motionless.

“She lost.

“She deserved release.”

That voice sounded again.

Only this time, the speaker appeared.

He had been sitting behind a table in one corner of the first floor.

A bowl of tea sat before him.

He seemed to have been sitting there for a very long time.

Yet absolutely no one had noticed him.

He put down the tea bowl, rose, picked up the sword resting on the chair beside him, and walked over.

He stopped beside the female puppeteer’s corpse.

Then said, “I promised you I would answer on her behalf.

“Ask.”

His features could not be called handsome.

In fact, they could only be described as utterly ordinary.

The kind of face you could throw into a crowd and never notice again.

On the marriage market, he would definitely be treated as a spare-tire model.

Nor did he possess any particular bearing.

So there was no question of using charisma to compensate for his appearance.

Yet his arrival placed enormous pressure on Zheng Fan and the others.

The Blind Man’s voice sounded inside Zheng Fan’s heart.

“Master, you ask.”

Zheng Fan replied mentally, “You want me to attract his attention so you and Xue San can make a move?”

“I’m hoping Master can seize the opportunity to say as much as possible while you still can.”

“…”

Zheng Fan.

At that moment, Xue San made a “seven” gesture toward the Blind Man.

Meaning:

This bastard is at least Seventh Grade.

The Blind Man shook his head slightly.

Then he made a “five” gesture.

In his judgment, the man before them was probably Fifth Grade.

“Who was she?”

Zheng Fan pointed toward the dead, deformed female puppeteer.

Hero Chen answered, “I don’t know her name.”

“Then what do you know about her?”

“She was from Jin.”

A Jin person?

Why would someone from Jin come all the way to Yan to kill him?

“Why did she want to kill me?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t know, yet you came with her?”

“Yes.”

“How many of you came altogether?”

“I’m the only one left.”

“You acted together, but you weren’t from the same group?”

“Three groups.”

Zheng Fan asked one question after another.

Hero Chen answered one after another.

“She was one group.

“You were one group.

“And those assassins who first charged into the courtyard were another.

“Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Who were those assassins?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why were all of you together?”

“I needed them to guide the way.”

“Then why didn’t you help her just now?”

Before the fierce mare died, she had called Hero Chen three times.

He had not acted.

He had simply watched her be killed.

“She deserved to die.”

“Why?”

Hero Chen raised a hand and pointed toward the more than twenty relay-station corpses lying on the floor.

“She killed these innocent people.”

Hope suddenly rose inside Zheng Fan.

People always liked making friends with honest and kind-hearted people.

Because friends like that were easy to screw over.

“You don’t know why they wanted to kill me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what about you?

“What are you here for?”

Hero Chen looked directly at Zheng Fan.

Then answered, “To kill you.”

“You know who I am?”

Zheng Fan pointed toward his own face.

“Zheng Fan.”

“There should be plenty of people named Zheng Fan in this world.

“You may have found the wrong—”

“Garrison Commander Zheng Fan of Willow Fort, under Nanwang City, Yinlang Commandery, State of Yan.”

“Well.

“That really is me.

“What a coincidence.”

Zheng Fan gave an awkward laugh.

Then continued, “You’re from Qian?”

Since waking in this world, Zheng Fan had certainly killed people and schemed against people.

But if he thought about the forces he had harmed badly enough to send a master of this level after his head, there was really only Qian.

“Yes.”

As expected.

A Qian man.

“Hero, listen to me.

“There’s a saying: every grievance has its source, every debt its debtor.

“I led troops into Qian because I was following the Marquis of Jingnan’s orders.

“How about this?

“If you truly want to benefit Qian and eliminate a great threat to Qian, I can help you enter Nanwang City.

“I can help you approach the Marquis of Jingnan.

“I’m only a Garrison Commander.

“A slightly bigger foot soldier, nothing more.

“You should understand the principle of capturing the king before the bandits.”

The Blind Man had already made it perfectly clear that none of them were a match for Hero Chen.

So out of sheer survival instinct, Zheng Fan immediately tried to redirect the disaster elsewhere.

Of course, another reason was that Hero Chen looked as though he might not be especially bright.

“I cannot defeat Tian Wujing.”

Tian Wujing was the Marquis of Jingnan’s name.

“A man always needs to try things.

“He should always seek out a challenge or two.

“That’s what gives life meaning.”

“I am not Tian Wujing’s match.”

“…”

Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan discovered that people whose brains did not work too well were sometimes even harder to fool.

Because this reasoning was impossible to break.

I can’t beat him.

So why would I go fight him?

“We can take our time and plan it out,” Zheng Fan suggested.

“I can help you strategize.”

If selling out the Marquis of Jingnan ten more times could save his own life, Zheng Fan would not suffer the slightest psychological burden.

“I don’t want to kill him.”

“Then can you also not kill me?

“I know you’re a good person.”

“I came here specifically to kill you.”

“No, listen.

“When two states are at war and I am a soldier, fighting and killing are simply my duty.

“You can’t possibly decide to kill every single person who fights against Qian, can you?

“Right.

“I heard that not long ago, Zuo Jiqian, Garrison Commander of Jitui Fort, also went into Qian and killed quite a few Qian soldiers.

“I know him.

“I can introduce you.”

“I won’t kill him.”

“No.

“You really singled me out?”

“Yes.”

“Why won’t you kill them, but you insist on killing me?”

“Revenge.”

Hearing that answer again, even more questions appeared inside Zheng Fan’s mind.

He asked, “Revenge for whom?”

“For those who died.”

“Which person?”

Zheng Fan was genuinely curious.

After him, plenty of people had followed his example and led troops into Qian to raid.

Why was this bastard determined to target him alone?

“A group of people.”

“Which group?”

“Wronged souls who died unjustly.”

Hero Chen seemed to feel he had already answered enough questions.

He raised his sword.

His left hand closed around the hilt.

Then he said, “I draw my sword.

“You draw your saber.”

At that moment, Xu Wenzu stepped out from behind Zheng Fan.

His expression was stern.

He stared at Hero Chen and gave a cold snort.

“Do you know what consequences will follow if, even as a powerful Martial Artist, you kill an official of Great Yan inside Great Yan’s own territory?

“You ignorant fool.

“Do you truly think Great Yan has no one capable of dealing with you?

“Today, if you wish to imitate the fury of a common man and spill blood within five paces, then tomorrow, when Great Yan’s iron cavalry storms deep into your Qian, we shall leave corpses across a thousand li to repay today’s grudge!”

Hero Chen seemed completely unmoved by Xu Wenzu’s threat.

He simply said in the same calm voice, “I never harm the innocent.

“Every grievance has its source.

“Every debt its debtor.

“Today, the only person I came to kill is Zheng Fan.

“The rest of you may leave.”

“Hmph!”

Xu Wenzu glared furiously at Hero Chen one more time.

Then, turned around.

And walked away.

Xue San and the Blind Man did not leave.

They remained where they stood.

Hero Chen continued calmly, “You may stand off to the side and watch me kill him.

“As long as you do not interfere, you do not have to die.”

Xue San said nothing.

He simply stepped silently in front of Zheng Fan.

The Blind Man said nothing either.

He lightly yawned.

Seeing this, Hero Chen said, “Then you must die as well.”

The Blind Man’s voice sounded inside Xue San’s heart.

“Why do I suddenly feel rather excited?”

“Me too,” Xue San replied mentally.

“Last month, Liang Cheng took Master into Qian to run around playing war games.

“They nearly made all of us suddenly drop dead at home for no reason.

“Even thinking about it now gives me chills.

“Now it’s their turn to experience that feeling.”

“Exactly.

“At least before we die, we can get beaten to our hearts’ content first.”

“Disgusting.”

“We’re almost dead.

“Bear with me.”

“I think there’s something wrong with what this man is saying,” the Blind Man continued mentally.

“It seems Master must have killed his family while he was in Qian.”

“I think the thing that’s wrong is his brain.”

At that moment, Zheng Fan spoke again.

“Hero, I have one final question.”

A trace of hesitation appeared in Hero Chen’s eyes.

But he still nodded.

“Ask.

“Once you finish asking, I draw my sword.”

“If I’m going to die, I should at least die knowing exactly why.

“What is your name?”

Hero Chen frowned slightly.

Then said, “Haven’t you been calling my name this entire time?”

“…”

Zheng Fan.

(End of Chapter)