Chapter 282: Waylaid

The carriage stopped behind a caravan inn by the roadside.

There was no village ahead and no settlement behind, yet this was still an important stop along the trade routes used by merchant caravans. A caravan inn existed precisely for people like them.

Those who wandered the jianghu and traveled north and south might dine on delicacies one day and squat inside a rough mountain inn the next.

There were guest rooms, if one could call them that—rooms roofed with straw awnings where travelers wrapped themselves in a mat or their clothes and made do for the night.

There was food as well.

Even meat.

And it smelled wonderfully fragrant.

At that moment, the Blind Man sat in front of an enormous pot of “meat and vegetables,” holding two large flatbreads.

Ding Heng and Cui Linfeng each held one of the ladles provided by the innkeeper and were eating from the pot with tremendous enthusiasm. Both also held enormous flatbreads in their other hands.

Two mouthfuls of stew.

One huge bite of bread.

They ate with astonishing relish.

This was caravan food.

But it was absolutely nothing like the caravan dishes the Blind Man remembered...

“What? Not used to it?”

The Sword Saint sat down beside the great pot and asked the innkeeper for a ladle. He also took a flatbread in one hand.

As expected of a swordsman, the Sword Saint’s hand was both fast and precise.

With a single swish, he scooped an enormous meatball from the pot, popped it into his mouth, then followed it with a bite of flatbread.

“Ahhh...”

The Sword Saint released a long, satisfied sigh.

He looked utterly content.

It was the expression of someone from Sichuan who had spent years away from home without tasting proper hotpot, then finally returned and got his first authentic meal.

The Blind Man swallowed.

The ladle was already in his hand.

Yet he simply could not bring himself to lower it into the pot.

It was not because he minded everyone eating from the same cauldron without serving chopsticks.

The Blind Man was not that particular.

They were traveling hard, after all. Having something hot to eat was already a considerable luxury.

If you were rushing along the road, you could hardly calculate in advance where you would sleep tonight and where you would eat tomorrow.

The problem was the stew itself.

The innkeeper deliberately collected leftovers from restaurants and inns in a small city more than ten li away, hauled them back here, mixed everything together, and boiled the whole lot into one enormous hodgepodge.

That was the caravan stew of the Jin lands.

People who made their living with their legs generally did not have good living conditions. But they still craved something oily and filling, so this was exactly the sort of food they relied on.

Sometimes some of the leftovers inevitably went sour.

The innkeeper had a solution for that too.

Much like mutton-skewer vendors in later generations, he simply threw in more spices.

The sour smell disappeared beneath them.

Only the fragrance remained.

Even the pricing method was interesting.

You paid by the ladle.

However many scoops you took, that was how many you were charged for in the end.

It was rather like counting bamboo skewers at a chuan-chuan restaurant in later generations.

Which meant every scoop mattered.

If your ladle came up full of meat, you felt like you had made a profit.

If you dredged up nothing but a few leaves of vegetables tsk, tsk...

The Sword Saint was enjoying himself tremendously.

Watching him, the Blind Man could not help wondering whether the Sword Saint’s master had brought him to places like this as a child specifically to train his swordsmanship.

All methods ultimately returned to the same root.

Master one principle, and ten thousand others followed.

There was logic to it.

Who said you could not practice swordsmanship with a ladle?

As long as there was no sword in the hand but a sword in the heart, anything would do.

With all that nonsense running through his mind, the Blind Man still did not dare eat from the pot.

He asked the innkeeper for a bowl of hot water instead, squatted off to the side, and slowly gnawed on his flatbread.

Eventually, Ding Heng and Cui Linfeng finished eating first.

The Sword Saint continued fighting.

The innkeeper’s young son stood nearby, eyes stretched wide as he stared desperately at every movement of the Sword Saint’s ladle.

The Sword Saint’s technique was becoming increasingly outrageous.

He was no longer satisfied with scooping once.

Instead, he swept sideways, hooked upward, and when the ladle finally emerged, it carried seven or eight times what a normal scoop should have held.

The boy looked on the verge of tears.

If this man kept dredging the pot like that, the entire cauldron of caravan stew would lose money.

Anyone arriving later would glance inside, see no meat floating anywhere, and refuse to sit down and pay for a scoop.

The innkeeper himself was an elderly man, but hale and full of spirit.

He watched all of this without becoming angry.

Instead, he quietly brought over a bowl of rice wine.

“I didn’t order wine,” the Sword Saint said.

“It’s on the house. Please take it, sir.”

The Sword Saint nodded, accepted the bowl, and drank.

Then he finally set down his ladle.

Shaking his head, he sighed.

“It’s been many years since I tasted this flavor.

“I really did miss it.”

“Indeed,” the old innkeeper replied with a smile.

The Sword Saint reached out and rubbed the innkeeper’s son on the head.

“How many scoops?”

“Twenty.”

“It was clearly eighteen,” the Sword Saint corrected.

The boy pouted at him.

The Sword Saint felt around in his pocket and said, “Count the other two as well.

“Oh, and that blind man didn’t take a single scoop.”

“Here you are.”

The old innkeeper handed him a bamboo toothpick.

The Sword Saint paid, accepted the toothpick, and walked back toward the carriage while picking his teeth.

Behind the carriage lay a man.

His face was covered in blood.

His right arm had been broken.

He was not dead, but he was already barely breathing.

“My lord, this dog thief tried to sneak onto our carriage and feel around while we were inside eating,” Ding Heng reported.

The carriage had been parked right beside the inn.

Never mind that Ding Heng and Cui Linfeng were both experienced jianghu veterans.

The Blind Man practically came with his own radar.

And there was even a genuine Sword Saint sitting nearby.

For a thief to choose this particular carriage to rob... his luck truly could not have been worse.

Inside the carriage, the child began crying again.

Ding Heng hurriedly picked him up.

The instant he did, the child stopped crying.

“Heh-heh.”

The Sword Saint laughed and looked at the Blind Man.

“Tell me.

“That Marquis’s son really is strange.

“Anyone else holds him and he cries endlessly.

“But put him in the arms of this sweaty, ugly brute covered in murderous-looking flesh, and suddenly he stops crying.

“He even smiles.”

The Blind Man replied, “A Marquis’s son likes killing aura.”

“What about me?

“I’ve killed far more people than this Ding fellow.”

The Blind Man shook his head.

“My lord carries only extraordinarily pure sword qi.

“There is no killing aura left on you.

“You refined it away long ago.”

“You used to tell fortunes for a living, didn’t you?”

“My lord truly has divine insight. You saw straight through me.”

“I’ve wandered beneath Heaven for quite a few years.

“There truly aren’t many people as good at talking as you.”

“My lord praises me too highly.”

The Blind Man was helpless inside.

These days, he genuinely survived by flattering people.

And there were six others just as miserable as he was.

“Everyone full?

“Then let’s get back on the road,” the Sword Saint called.

The carriage set off once more.

As before, Ding Heng sat inside holding the child.

Cui Linfeng remained nearby, ready to nurse the baby whenever necessary.

The Blind Man and the Sword Saint drove the carriage.

“You really didn’t eat a single bite?”

“My mouth was spoiled when I was young.

“A sin. A sin.”

The Blind Man sounded genuinely apologetic.

When someone shared a “childhood delicacy” or “local specialty” with you and you refused to touch even a bite, it really was somewhat disrespectful.

The Sword Saint chuckled.

“You simply haven’t been hungry enough.”

“That is true.”

“People beneath Heaven are bored. They love ranking things and naming Four Great Swordsmen.

“To tell the truth, among the four, Li Liangshen could eat that stew.

“The other two couldn’t.”

“It is common knowledge that the Marquis of Zhenbei’s household eats plainly.

“I heard that on the day the Marquis of Zhenbei entered the capital, he devoured four or five ducks in a single sitting.”

“Heh.

“True.

“But do you know that even Li Liangshen merely ate more plainly than most?

“And that ‘plainness’ was only plain compared with the delicacies enjoyed by the truly powerful.

“He was adopted into the Marquis of Zhenbei’s household when he was young.

“No matter how badly he lived, how bad could it truly have been?”

“That makes sense.”

“Then there is Baili Feng of Qian.

“The world believes he only rose to prominence after sailing into Shangjing dressed in white and being appointed martial tutor to the Crown Prince by the sovereign of Qian.

“In truth, the Baili Clan was already a great Jiangnan family.

“They owned tens of thousands of mu of good farmland.”

“So that was his background.

“I truly didn’t know.”

“And then there is that fellow from Chu.

“He was born into one of Chu’s great noble clans.

“His family’s fief is hardly small.

“That is why he had the leisure to spend decades obsessing over swordsmithing.”

The Blind Man immediately supplied the ladder.

“So among the Four Great Swordsmen, only my lord truly rose from common origins?”

When someone wanted to become sentimental, you had to help them along.

“Common origins would still be putting it too generously.

“My surname is Yu, the imperial surname of the State of Jin.

“But everyone saw what kind of life the Yu emperors had been living these past years.

“As for a collateral branch like mine...

“To speak plainly, my father and mother died when I was young.

“My younger brother and I often could not even fill our stomachs.”

“That is why, among the Four Great Swordsmen, I have always admired my lord the most.

“Your life is truly inspiring.”

“Heh.

“That is why the world says the swords of the four of us each have their own fate, their own path, their own excellence.

“But what they do not understand is that the road taken by my sword and the roads taken by those other three are fundamentally different.”

“My lord, this humble one dares...”

“Dares?

“Your courage is hardly small.

“You chopped off my younger brother’s head.

“Then you still dared chase after his elder brother’s carriage.

“And you’ve dared sit beside that elder brother for days.”

“...”

The Blind Man.

“Afraid now?”

“That happened on the battlefield.

“We each served our own masters.”

All trace of fawning disappeared from the Blind Man’s face.

Only calm remained.

“That expression suits you better.

“You know, you’re actually rather handsome.”

A chill abruptly ran down the Blind Man’s back.

The tastes of people from the Jin lands really were...

“After the Yan army withdrew, before I went to Litian City, I returned once to the old capital region.

“Didn’t you eat a bowl of meat soup there?

“At one of the old century shops?”

The Blind Man thought for a moment.

Then he said, “As expected, being picky about food truly does invite trouble.”

That night, the Yan army had finished pacifying the Jin forces in the former capital region.

The Blind Man and the other Demon Kings had joined forces to kill Yu Huacheng.

Liang Cheng had taken the man’s head to claim the military merit.

The Blind Man, meanwhile, had knocked on the door of an old meat-soup shop inside the city.

The place was supposedly more than a century old.

He had gone inside and drunk a bowl.

Still carrying the lingering scent of blood while sipping a dish with a century of history behind it that matched the Blind Man’s fondness for petty bourgeois sentiment perfectly.

“I used to visit that shop often myself,” the Sword Saint said.

“How was it?”

“Genuinely excellent.”

“Ai.

“Then let us do this.

“I accept what you said about each of us serving our own masters.

“My grudge, and my younger brother’s death, I will put on Tian Wujing’s account.

“I have no interest in hunting down everyone else involved.

“Otherwise, I would have to kill tens of thousands of Jingnan Army soldiers one by one.

“That is not realistic.”

“Many thanks, my lord.”

“But since you delivered yourself to my doorstep, I will not be polite.

“You must answer one question.

“What is different about my sword compared with those other three?

“Answer correctly and all is well.

“Answer incorrectly, and leave your life behind.”

The Blind Man drew a deep breath.

He hardly thought at all.

Then he slowly answered, “The Swordsmith of Chu’s sword carries too much of the craftsman.

“The Baili Clan’s sword carries too much nobility.

“Li Liangshen’s sword carries too much ferocity.

“Only my lord’s sword...”

“What does mine carry?”

“Earthiness.”

“Oh?”

“This is not flattery.

“The reason the Marquis of Jingnan’s wife dared entrust her child to you was obvious.

“A gentleman can be deceived through his principles.

“But that is also exactly what makes my lord worthy of respect.

“To be trusted by an enemy is itself proof that something about you is genuine.”

“All right.

“You say it isn’t flattery, but hearing that feels even better than being flattered.

“Smell that.”

“Hm?

“Smell what?”

“You really can’t smell it?”

“What am I supposed to smell?”

The Sword Saint raised a hand and pointed ahead.

At the same time, he brought the carriage to a stop.

“An overwhelming air of nobility.”

A woman stepped out from the side of the road.

She wore a dark yellow dress and held a sword in one hand.

“Baili Xianglan?” the Blind Man said.

“Oh?

“You really do know quite a few people.

“Interesting.”

“I saw her once before.

“I know her.

“She doesn’t know me.”

The Sword Saint pointed toward Baili Xianglan ahead and said to the Blind Man, “Look at us.

“We’ve been rushing along for days without bathing.

“And then look at someone coming out to rob the road.

“She still had time to burn incense, bathe, change into a clean dress, and then step out.

“Now look at her shoes.

“She walked through mud to get here, yet there’s barely any mud on them.

“They must be newly changed too.

“Now that—that is an overwhelming air of nobility.”

Baili Xianglan held her sword horizontally before her.

Then she said, “Baili Xianglan greets the Sword Saint of Jin.”

The Sword Saint leaned slightly backward.

Then he waved a hand.

“Miss, you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

Baili Xianglan replied, “I never expected the Sword Saint of Jin to enjoy joking with women.”

“I’m not joking.

“Where would a Sword Saint of Jin come from?”

“Are you not him?”

“But the State of Jin... fell long ago.”

————

[End of Chapter 282]