Chapter 563: - Together?

Starlight spilled through the leaves of the dense grove, falling in faint mottled patches.

The Swordsmith sat on the ground.

A sword leaned diagonally across his knees.

Its sheath was black, covered in strange patterns.

The sword was called Moshi.

The swords forged by the Swordsmith had always been fiercely coveted throughout the jianghu.

Unfortunately, he never gifted swords to nameless men.

As a result, imitations were everywhere.

The sword copied most often was Longyuan.

People of this age did not yet possess the modern concept of artwork, but they pursued something similar.

Every sword made by the Swordsmith supposedly contained a piece of emotion.

A sword was like a person.

A good sword needed to be nurtured by its owner.

Sayings like these had all come from the Swordsmith.

Heaven knew how many young swordsmen of the jianghu had heard them and afterward carried their swords everywhere, through eating, drinking, shitting, and sleeping, hoping to nurture spiritual awareness into their blades as soon as possible.

But the Sword Saint had once explained to Count Pingye that when the Swordsmith spoke of “nurturing a sword,” he did not mean keeping the weapon constantly at one’s side.

He meant that a sword needed the person who wielded it to nurture its standing.

Imagine a beggar who, by some stroke of fortune, picked up a treasured dark-iron sword and held it in his hand.

Now imagine an emperor wearing a plain, ancient, damaged sword at his side.

The latter sword’s value would naturally exceed the former’s by an unknowable amount.

So-called “nurturing a sword” was really about using a person’s identity to elevate the sword’s identity.

When Count Pingye heard the explanation, he had offered only three words:

“Very realistic.”

And now, the Swordsmith whom Count Pingye had called “very realistic” sat there with his eyes closed.

One fingertip gently tapped the sword’s body, producing clear metallic notes.

Behind him, faintly, one could hear controlled breathing and see wisps of white vapor.

Clearly, a force was hidden there.

Ahead, Fan Li’s iron-tower figure emerged.

Behind him, ranks of soldiers slowly pressed forward.

Shield-bearers in front.

Spearmen behind.

Archers and crossbowmen in the middle.

There were experts in this world capable of fighting a hundred men alone.

Their strength was astonishing.

But in the end, whether it was Sha Tuo Queshi dying before the Marquis of Zhenbei Residence years ago or the Sword Saint fighting desperately at Snow Sea Pass, outsiders saw the spectacle and marveled at how powerful they were.

Experts understood something else: whether man could defeat Heaven was uncertain, but one man found it extremely difficult to defeat a hundred men, or a thousand...

A well-drilled army with practiced coordination could hunt down those so-called experts with frightening ease.

The only question was what price the army was willing to pay.

The Swordsmith had never drawn a sword in public, yet still ranked among the Four Great Swordsmen.

He deserved this degree of caution.

Because sometimes the unknown was the true source of terror.

Fan Li raised his axe.

The formation behind him shifted again, opening into a pair of pincers, then resumed its advance.

The Swordsmith remained seated.

His eyes remained closed.

It seemed that tonight, he was destined to finally use his sword.

The jianghu now generally believed that among all swordsmen beneath Heaven, the Sword Saint stood foremost.

Over the past several years, the Sword Saint’s brilliance had already eclipsed the other members of the Four Great Swordsmen.

Whether Li Liangshen, who had spent years in the army without sparring against anyone again, or Baili Sword, who had once retreated before Great Yan’s iron cavalry, both had seen their former splendor almost completely covered by the Sword Saint’s in recent years.

Yet there were still jianghu figures who prided themselves on being the “only sober ones.”

They believed the only person now capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with the Sword Saint in the Sword Dao might be the mysterious Swordsmith.

Because the Swordsmith had never fought publicly, perhaps he truly did not know how to fight and was merely a fraud stealing fame.

Or perhaps his realm was so high that he no longer cared to compete over superiority with ordinary mortals.

The Blind Man had people under him specifically responsible for monitoring jianghu rumors.

When they learned of this particular debate, they jokingly called it:

“Schrödinger’s Swordsmith.”

But until his head actually fell, no one could afford to lower their guard.

Look.

Even the most simple-minded of the Demon Kings had become this cautious.

At last, the Swordsmith opened his eyes.

He did not see the Sword Saint.

Yet he showed no surprise.

He raised one hand.

Moshi gave a soft hum.

The next moment, a group of black-armored cavalry emerged from behind him.

The Yan revered black.

The Chu preferred brighter colors.

So although many Chu nobles possessed private troops, and the styles of their armor varied wildly, black armor was rare.

Within Chu culture, black represented the Great Marsh.

And the Great Marsh represented ill omen.

Cavalry were especially precious in Chu.

They were the face of every great noble house.

Naturally, even fewer clans would dress those treasures in ominous black armor.

The black-armored riders now slowly emerging from behind the Swordsmith radiated a bone-chilling coldness, from man to horse.

This was genuine elite cavalry.

Their numbers, however, were not large.

Under the starlight, a rough count suggested a little more than four hundred riders.

To a Yan army that could casually organize ten thousand iron cavalry for battle, that truly amounted to very little.

But in this narrow terrain, infantry facing an equal number of cavalry usually meant slaughter.

What was strange was that these riders could clearly have charged straight out of the darkness and launched a surprise attack.

By revealing themselves openly like this, they had already thrown away the initiative.

The Swordsmith might know nothing of warfare.

But the elite cavalry behind him could not possibly all be ignorant.

Fan Li raised his axe again and swept it through half a circle.

The armored soldiers around him stopped advancing.

Shield-bearers smashed their shields into the ground, dragged their bodies backward, leaned diagonally against the shields, and braced them firmly.

Spearmen advanced and formed two ranks.

At the same time, the flanks rotated and long spears rose into position.

Archers and crossbowmen pushed forward as well, ready to prevent the enemy cavalry from circling around and cutting into the rear.

The Swordsmith still did not move.

The black-armored cavalry behind him did not move either.

They looked less like men who had come to fight than people who had come to watch a performance.

And yet they were clearly one of the principal actors inside this grove.

Outside, rustling sounds began to spread.

The second body of armored troops led by Jin Shuke had arrived and was closing the encirclement.

Crossbowmen quickly found positions.

The remaining soldiers formed small groups of three and five into battle formations.

The Swordsmith and the black-armored riders still did nothing.

They simply watched as the encirclement took shape before their eyes.

At this point, the cavalry had already fallen into a dead end.

The night wind passed through the grove.

It was not a large patch of woodland.

Yet the tension inside it felt drawn tight enough to snap.

Then, at last, the Swordsmith spoke.

“I want to fight Yu Huaping.”

Given the situation, it sounded almost like a man driven into humiliation and anger, asking for one final shred of dignity.

Fan Li frowned slightly.

He felt that things were not this simple.

Jin Shuke immediately sent someone back to the camp to report the message to the Count.

...

“I think he wants to ask me for mercy,” the Sword Saint said. “He still does not want to use his sword. He still wants to avoid it. And now that his cavalry force was detected in advance and has already been surrounded, he has even less reason to fight.”

Some people seemed to stand impossibly high above the world only because you were looking up at them from below.

The Swordsmith was one such figure.

Even if one ignored his status as one of the Four Great Swordsmen, his birth in the Dugu Clan alone already placed him above the overwhelming majority of people.

But the Sword Saint stood on the same level as the Swordsmith.

When looking at him straight on, there was nothing mysterious left.

The Swordsmith’s reluctance to spend even a single sword strike was famous.

Before the Yan army shattered the main Savage force and surrounded Yupan City, the Swordsmith had taken the Eighth Prince and fled early.

He had never suggested remaining behind to help defend the city.

When the Regent and Fifth Prince Xiong Tingshan drew experts into a match against each other, the Swordsmith had merely sat behind them sipping wine.

He had never volunteered to step forward and take one position himself.

Now, the Regent was surrounded.

The situation of Great Chu was extremely poor.

The Swordsmith might genuinely be willing to use his sword for the Regent’s sake this time.

But after his scheme was detected in advance, the five hundred elite cavalrymen who could originally have been used for a night raid lost their purpose.

The night attack could no longer happen.

So the Swordsmith had very cleanly chosen to put the sword away.

That was perfectly normal.

To the Sword Saint, who knew the man well and had once sat at the same table with him, drinking wine while admiring swords, this former friend was exactly the sort of man who would make such a choice.

As for the so-called duel, it was merely a way to see the Sword Saint, invoke Longyuan as a debt of favor, and ask to be released.

Count Pingye shook his head.

“I don’t think so. He looks more like someone who deliberately placed himself in that exact position.”

Count Pingye pondered for a moment.

Then he said:

“How about this? We meet him. I’ll go with you.”

“What use would you be there?” the Sword Saint asked.

Count Pingye replied:

“Perhaps you’re only the decoy.”

The Sword Saint’s gaze sharpened.

...

“Three hundred zhang west.”

Jin Shuke sent men forward to shout the location.

The Swordsmith stood.

Then he began walking west.

The five hundred black-armored cavalry who had appeared with him remained motionless where they were.

The Swordsmith walked quite far, enough to put some distance between himself and the two forces facing one another inside the encirclement.

Then, from beside him, a voice sounded.

“Good.”

It was the Sword Saint.

The Swordsmith shook his head.

“Not yet. Eleven zhang short.”

With that, he resolutely continued west for another stretch.

Only after reaching the exact final position did he stop.

Watching this, Count Pingye silently muttered in his heart:

Severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The Sword Saint stepped out.

The Swordsmith looked at him.

Then turned slightly sideways, as though trying to see behind the Sword Saint.

The Sword Saint realized

Zheng Fan had guessed correctly.

Count Pingye walked out from behind the Sword Saint, but did not move beyond him.

Behind the Sword Saint, Count Pingye was confident the man could protect him.

Take one step farther forward, and things became difficult to say.

Who knew whether the Swordsmith opposite him might suddenly decide to force some extreme one-for-one trade?

The Swordsmith raised one hand and pointed toward the northwest.

Juyang City lay in that direction.

“Count Pingye intends to capture our sovereign of Great Chu?”

Count Pingye nodded.

“Exactly.”

He had not attacked.

He had already decided that in a few days he would withdraw and retreat into the Great Marsh.

But how should one put it?

When asked this question, answering yes was perfectly correct.

Who could have imagined that the Swordsmith’s next response would consist of only two words, simple beyond belief?

Count Pingye’s mind loosened instantly.

For one moment, he suddenly felt as though the entire world had been filled with the absurdity of black comedy.

The Swordsmith smiled.

“Together?”

[End of Chapter 563]