Chapter 597: - Men

The tiger carried the mountain.

Then naturally, there was no fear of someone luring the tiger away from it.

The logic really did make sense.

But the Blind Man could only smile bitterly.

“Does that not put him in even greater danger?”

Tian Tian’s identity was precious.

Not merely because he was Tian Wujing’s son.

Truthfully, even if Prince of Jingnan ceased to be Prince of Jingnan, the fact that their own Master was the boy’s godfather meant there absolutely could not be any accident involving him.

If this were merely a matter of weighing gains and losses, there would always be some price one could discuss.

The problem was that once personal affection entered the equation, there was no price to discuss at all.

“Without crossing a sandstorm... a wolf cannot be made.”

It was an old proverb from the desert.

And also part of the Barbarians’ philosophy of raising children.

In truth, letting Tian Tian experience certain things was not something even the people who loved and protected him most could openly reject on principle.

Because he was Count Pingye’s godson.

And he was Prince of Jingnan’s legitimate son.

His birth stood there like a fact carved in stone.

If this were the West, then even after Tian Tian grew up and wore rags, he could still shoulder a saber and proudly declare:

“I am the heir to the Tian Clan, a century-old aristocratic house of Great Yan. I am the legitimate son of Great Yan’s Prince of Jingnan, the adopted son of the Marquis of Pingxi of eastern Jin, Guardian of the Snowfield, and Imperial Son-in-Law of Chu.”

Still... the Blind Man could only say somewhat helplessly:

“He is simply too young.”

The child was too young.

Far too young to need anything resembling real tempering.

At the very least, he should first be able to swing a saber.

Then assign a Demon King to accompany him.

Add a demonic beast beside him.

Put a magical artifact in his arms.

And ideally, within fifty li there should also be three thousand Snow Sea iron cavalry ready to respond.

Under circumstances like those, then it would finally be suitable for him to go out and gain experience.

Sha Tuo Queshi’s response was direct and simple.

With one hand he lifted Tian Tian and held him out in front of the Blind Man.

Tian Tian looked confused.

The Blind Man pursed his lips.

He did not take the child.

Instead he said:

“After the tiger is lured away from the mountain, there should still be a few cockroaches left inside the house.”

There were still cockroaches in the house.

Ever since Snow Sea Pass was established, every side had constantly tried to mix sand into it.

The Blind Man had identified some.

He had cleared out some.

But he did not dare claim there were none left.

If Sha Tuo Queshi left the city and Tian Tian remained with him, then unless the Blind Man immediately summoned eight hundred armored soldiers to stand guard around this courtyard without moving an inch, he would have no confidence at all.

The safest solution was still for Sha Tuo Queshi to remain here and meet every change by remaining unchanged.

No matter how powerful the newcomer’s cultivation, surely one person could not attack an entire city alone?

The problem was

Sha Tuo Queshi clearly had no interest in responding in such a passive manner.

Or perhaps he simply wanted to go outside and take a look.

After all, the mighty Left Guli King of the Barbarians had already spent far too long lying inside a coffin.

With no better choice, the Blind Man stepped forward and placed a small purple flag into Tian Tian’s hand.

Then he retreated half a step.

“I will follow shortly.”

Sha Tuo Queshi placed Tian Tian back on his shoulder.

The boy happily wrapped one arm around Sha Tuo Queshi’s neck and giggled.

With his other hand, he waved the little flag the Blind Man had given him.

Back when the Savage King had been imprisoned next door to Sha Tuo Queshi, the sinister aura leaking through every night had nearly tormented him to death.

Tian Tian, however, had never reacted to it at all.

Sha Tuo Queshi kept his eyes closed as he faced southwest.

Bang!

His entire body launched into the air like an arrow leaving the string.

Every time he landed, he came down on a roof edge or wall.

His movements looked forceful and heavy, yet were actually ghostlike.

Naturally, this kind of movement alarmed hidden sentries and patrolling soldiers throughout the city.

But the moment they saw the child waving that flag, the soldiers lowered their crossbows, bows, and sabers.

Back in the courtyard, the Blind Man turned toward the Princess and Liu Ruqing.

“Your Highness and Miss Liu, please remain here.”

At that moment, a unit of armored personal guards rushed into the courtyard and formed several rings facing outward.

The Princess and Liu Ruqing stood at the center.

The green python slithered over as well and coiled around them, adding another layer of protection.

The Blind Man ordered:

“Anyone nearby who dares turn around is to be killed without mercy!”

Meaning: if the comrade beside you dared turn and face inward toward the women of the household, draw your saber and cut him down immediately.

It was not that glancing at the women inside represented some unforgivable crime.

It was simply a matter of caution.

No one knew whether some planted spy from another faction might exist even among the personal guards.

No one could possibly make an absolute guarantee about something like that.

The Princess had seen enough major situations before.

She neither asked questions nor panicked.

She simply sat down.

She opened her left hand.

“Tea.”

Liu Ruqing, who had been somewhat flustered, finally steadied herself.

She picked up the teapot, poured a cup, and offered it to the Princess.

“Mr. Bei, go handle what you need to handle. The heir is more important.”

The Blind Man dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment.

Then he turned and left.

The Princess was right.

The heir was more important.

She had not tried to compete with a small child for favor or importance.

Not because she was an adult.

But because... she could not possibly win.

Fortunately, she understood one principle.

It was something the Empress Dowager had taught her long ago.

Ordinarily, a woman acting spoiled and coquettish could add flavor to life.

But she had to know the right time.

The Princess looked at the tea Liu Ruqing had poured for her.

She pursed her lips.

There was no unnecessary emotion in her eyes.

This should be the final disturbance.

Once her husband returned victorious, once his frontier domain was established, once the Marquis Residence was raised, everything should finally enter the proper track.

She closed her eyes and drew a breath.

Then the Princess handed the teacup back to Liu Ruqing.

Liu Ruqing accepted it and asked:

“Has the tea gone cold?”

The Princess shook her head.

She smiled.

“I was simply wondering what he would do if he were the one sitting here now.”

The “he” could only refer to Count Zheng.

Liu Ruqing said nothing.

The Princess answered her own question.

“He would have you sing one of those little tunes, then sit there leisurely stroking along to the rhythm.”

“Would Your Highness like to hear one?”

The Princess shook her head again.

“He genuinely possesses that kind of leisure. I do not. If I forced myself to imitate him, I would only be a monkey wearing a crown. There would be no point.”

Then the Princess swept her gaze across the personal guards standing around with their backs toward her.

She called out:

“You brothers have worked hard today. After this is over, I will use money from my private treasury to treat all of you to wine and a visit to the red tents.”

The Princess had money.

Her own money.

At the beginning of the year, when Zheng Fan took her to Yanjing to receive formal investiture, Chu had quietly sent an unofficial envoy party to Snow Sea Pass.

They delivered some of the Princess’s personal belongings.

Naturally, silver and money were included.

The surrounding personal guards immediately shouted:

“Thank you for the reward, Madam!”

“Thank you for the reward, Madam!”

...

Outside the city, the masked figure in green escaped one pursuit by Snow Sea cavalry.

His movement art was extremely fast.

At the same time, he clearly knew the surrounding terrain very well.

He had obviously put effort into studying it beforehand.

Most importantly, his cultivation should have been at the upper end of the Fourth Grade.

An expert at this level had already earned the right to move “as though strolling through a quiet courtyard.”

Meaning you could no longer capture him using ordinary methods.

Either send the trained scouts under Xue San to track and encircle him.

Or assign a fixed-position expert to pursue him.

Or mobilize even more troops and conduct a broad search.

In short, the response had to suit the problem before it would truly work.

If he could not win, surely he could still run?

Unless his luck was terrible enough to have him surrounded in open country, capturing an expert of his level casually was extraordinarily difficult.

The biggest problem was still that Count Zheng had taken the main strength of Snow Sea Pass to the front.

The defenses left at home were already weak.

There was simply no way to mobilize more than a thousand cavalry at once merely to plow the countryside in search of one man.

Once the masked man in green confirmed the pursuers behind him had been shaken off, he sat down.

He removed the cloth covering his face.

A man’s face appeared.

The left side was reasonably handsome.

Across the right, however, ran a terrifying scar like a long centipede crawling over his skin.

Beside him lay a saber and a sword.

After sitting, he opened his waterskin and took a drink.

Then he narrowed his eyes.

Cracking sounds came from the bones throughout his body.

He was effectively massaging his own muscles to ease fatigue.

This was an extremely particular kind of expert.

A man who treated himself like a siege crossbow or a ladder built to climb Heaven, constantly maintaining every detail of his body as though he were a weapon of war.

The jianghu did not produce experts with this kind of characteristic.

That was also why the Sword Saint had once been so obsessed with his defeat at Tian Wujing’s hands.

Jianghu duels were usually either one-on-one fights to the death or many men bullying a few.

The methods were extreme.

And besides, jianghu people naturally needed the airs of the jianghu.

Those airs showed themselves through one word: style.

Sometimes a swordsman would deliberately flourish several extra sword flowers, leaving the watching heroines intoxicated.

Sometimes a man would deliberately throw two extra palm strikes and blast holes into something nearby, making the crowd gasp and cry out in admiration.

That was the jianghu.

The people actually killing one another were often only a small minority.

Most people were watching the excitement.

A man like this figure in green, who treated himself as a weapon of war, usually came from one of two places.

Either an assassination sect with more than a century of inheritance.

Or some court yamen belonging to one of the states.

And even the former, despite calling itself a jianghu sect, usually had the shadow of some government office behind it.

The jianghu was also glue.

How could it ever be that cleanly separated?

Take Xinian Manor of Chu, for example.

While the man in green was regulating his body, a depression appeared in the ground ahead.

The earth sank as though becoming quicksand.

Then an old man in hemp clothing rose from within it.

“Which family are you from?” the old man asked.

The man in green did not answer.

“Maybe we are from the same family,” the old man added.

The man in green remained silent.

“Since we came on the same day, chances are the patron behind us is the same. And even if our immediate patrons differ, there is probably one larger patron standing behind both.”

The old man spoke almost like he was reciting a rhyme.

The man in green’s gaze darkened.

“Too noisy.”

“Fine. You are proud. But breaking in this stiffly, then running this stiffly... do you truly think the subordinates Count Zheng left inside Snow Sea Pass are fools? Even this old man can barely stand how clumsy your attempt to lure the tiger away from the mountain is. You think they cannot see through it?”

The man in green fell silent again.

“We both know there should still be hidden agents inside Snow Sea Pass. But who handles things the way you do?”

The man in green stretched out his left hand and picked up the sword.

“Oh?”

The old man stepped backward several paces.

Clearly, he had no desire to fight this man.

Especially since they had most likely come for the same objective.

“I think I can guess where you came from. Carrying both saber and sword... Wenming Mountain of the State of Liang?”

On Wenming Mountain in the State of Liang stood a sect.

Its disciples cultivated both saber and sword.

At least, that was the outward appearance.

The deeper purpose of the sect was to create warriors who combined a swordsman’s sharpness with a Martial Artist’s physique, producing experts with almost no weaknesses.

Unfortunately, most disciples of the sect ended up mediocre.

The school had never made much of a name for itself in the jianghu.

But its founder had been the younger brother of the founding emperor of Liang.

From childhood, the man had been obsessed with martial arts and could not be bothered competing for some damned throne.

So he went to Wenming Mountain and established a sect.

Liang might have been a small state, but it was still a state.

With that layer of connection to the royal house, the sect survived from generation to generation.

At the beginning of the year, Count Zheng stole the Princess and fled.

The pursuing Chu army was tricked toward the Qi Mountain region.

Liang had only just undergone a coup, deposing its emperor of Chu imperial blood.

Because of a misunderstanding, Liang struck first and ambushed the Chu force originally sent to pursue Xue San.

So when future historians recorded the Yan-Chu War, its starting point should not actually be the Chu assassins disguising themselves as musicians to assassinate the Emperor of Yan.

It should be that ambush fought in the Qi Mountain range.

Because immediately afterward, Xue San’s Yan force began helping Liang fight the Chu.

Then another Yan cavalry force descended south through South Gate Pass into Liang to assist against Chu.

As for the whole thing having started from a misunderstanding?

Even if later generations saw that explanation, they probably would not believe it.

They would naturally assume Liang, as a vassal state of Yan, had understood the suzerain Great Yan’s intent and deliberately provoked trouble at the border first, opening the curtain on the Yan-Chu War.

Xue San had even been appointed a general by Liang’s new sovereign there.

At the time, quite a few jianghu men had come down from Wenming Mountain to help Liang resist the Chu army.

Xue San’s assessment of those jianghu men had been simple: neither fish nor fowl.

Use them as a spearhead?

They were not sharp enough.

Use them as ordinary soldiers?

They did not understand battle formations.

Their only advantage was that every man who came down from Wenming Mountain carried both one saber and one sword.

That was useful.

Each could hand over either the saber or the sword to one of the Liang laborers who lacked a weapon.

Seeing his origin exposed, the man in green looked at the old man.

“Sand Dune rats from Beifeng Commandery have actually run all the way here.”

The old man came from the Sand Dune Sect of Beifeng Commandery.

Its position was actually rather similar to Xinian Manor in Chu.

On the surface it was a jianghu sect.

Behind it stood official power.

Members of the Sand Dune Sect specialized in movement arts and escape techniques.

Outsiders commonly believed the Marquis of Zhenbei Residence stood behind the sect.

For generations, members of the Sand Dune Sect had served as scouts within the Zhenbei Army.

“Tsk, tsk. So neither of us should really be appearing here,” the old man sighed. “If our identities are exposed, our sects will suffer because of us.”

Experts did not spring from cracks in stones.

More precisely, in any profession, the closer one approached the peak and joined the foremost ranks, the more one relied on accumulated foundation.

Secret manuals.

Cultivation arts.

Famous teachers.

Experience.

And so on.

Only with a sect behind them could experts be piled up using the sect’s resources.

Among the Four Great Swordsmen, Li Liangshen was the adopted son of the Marquis of Zhenbei.

Baili Sword came from a great family of Qian.

The Swordsmith came from a great Chu noble house.

The only one truly born from the grass roots, raised by a single master, was the Sword Saint of Jin.

So ordinarily, experts above Fourth Grade almost always possessed origins, sects, and backgrounds unless they happened to be an extreme exception like the Sword Saint of Jin.

Once the identities of these two men were exposed, the trail leading from them would inevitably reach the sects behind them.

The campaign against Chu had ended in great victory.

If Prince of Jingnan became angry, the ruler and ministers of Liang would probably immediately dispatch troops to attack Wenming Mountain themselves.

The Zhenbei Army would likewise move at once to exterminate the Sand Dune Sect.

Jianghu sects looked impressive.

But before armored cavalry and drawn blades, they ultimately could not stand on the main stage.

That was also why the Sword Saint could freely kill the old Situ patriarch.

He was an exception.

He had no sect.

No school.

So he had no weakness.

Nothing to fear.

Nothing binding him.

The man in green smiled.

“Would that not be perfect?”

“Tsk, tsk.”

The old man smacked his lips.

“So you really are like me. A traitor to your own sect?”

A sect traitor naturally did not care whether the sect lived or died.

If the sect were destroyed instead, even better.

But at that moment, a black figure fell from the sky like an enormous boulder.

Boom!

It smashed into the ground less than twenty zhang from the two men.

When the dust cleared, Sha Tuo Queshi stood there in black.

The man in green rose.

Sword in his left hand.

Saber in his right.

The old man stared in that direction and narrowed his eyes.

“Interesting. Interesting. His aura keeps fluctuating between Fourth and Third Grade. Feels like someone whose realm fell after injury, yet he does not look injured.”

“There is no blood-and-qi fluctuation from him,” the man in green said. “Only aura.”

How could a corpse possess ordinary blood and qi?

Living people drove themselves with blood and qi.

A corpse like this relied on baleful qi.

“Hoo. Everyone says Count Pingye’s residence hides dragons and crouching tigers. Even the Sword Saint of Jin was recruited by him, not to mention countless other experts. The Sword Saint should be in Chu fighting alongside Count Pingye right now. So how is it that, in Count Pingye’s household, a mighty Third Grade expert is like cabbage at the market? Pull one up, and there is another underneath?”

Even before a monarch, a Third Grade expert was entitled to a measure of dignity.

Count Pingye had not even formally become Marquis yet.

Even after he did, without the century-deep foundation of the Marquis of Zhenbei Residence, by ordinary logic there was no possibility he should be able to gather and cultivate so many Third Grade experts.

And besides, the Sword Saint of Jin was no ordinary Third Grade.

The man in green said:

“That is fine too. We have drawn one out. The people inside should have an easier time succeeding.”

The old man smiled.

“True. I refuse to believe Snow Sea Pass still has another Third Grade expert sitting inside. Hehehe...”

“Mm...”

At that moment, a small head poked out from behind Sha Tuo Queshi’s shoulder.

Tian Tian struggled upward.

His left arm wrapped around Sha Tuo Queshi’s neck.

His right leg climbed over the shoulder.

His arms and legs were short, but fortunately they were sturdy.

And because Demon Pill often played tumbling games with him when present, the boy actually managed to climb back up and sit on Sha Tuo Queshi’s shoulder.

“Huff... huff...”

The chubby child panted heavily.

At the same time, his black-agate eyes examined the two men ahead.

“...” The man in green.

“...” The old man.

Look at the child sitting on the shoulder of this terrifying expert.

Look at the quality of the child’s clothes.

Look at the spiritual aura practically spilling from him.

A bold guess appeared in both men’s minds.

So the two of them had been busy outside drawing Snow Sea Pass’s attention in order to create an opportunity for the hidden agents they did not know personally but were certain existed inside the pass to seize that child.

And yet the hidden expert inside Snow Sea Pass had actually brought the child with him while coming out to hunt them.

Sha Tuo Queshi extended one hand and pointed toward the two men.

“Which... one...?”

In that instant, both the man in green and the old man sensed a vast killing intent descend upon them.

Tian Tian sucked on the index finger of his left hand.

His gaze wandered between the two men.

Finally, it settled on the saber in the green-robed man’s hand.

When his godfather was home, Tian Tian liked sitting on the steps with Demon Pill and watching his godfather practice the saber every day.

After practice, his godfather, sweaty and stinking, would pick up Tian Tian and Demon Pill and take them to soak in the bath together.

So the little fellow was deeply fascinated by sabers.

Because his godfather used one.

For the same reason, he had once rejected the Sword Saint’s offer to take him as a disciple.

Because once, after his godfather finished practicing the saber, Tian Tian had watched him spit disdainfully toward the neighbor next door and say:

“What is so impressive about practicing the sword? Swords are for women.”

Tian Tian did not know what “women” meant.

He was not old enough to need to know.

But he understood what his godfather’s words meant.

The saber was the bestest!

So

Tian Tian stretched out one chubby little hand and pointed toward the man in green.

“The one with the sab...”

Clang!

The man in green dropped the saber.

He switched to holding only the sword.

His face remained calm.

Completely composed.

“Mm...”

Tian Tian fell into thought.

The man who had been holding a saber was no longer holding one.

The child suddenly faced a difficult choice.

Then he remembered all the times his godfather had teased him by holding out two different snacks and asking which one he wanted.

Every time, Tian Tian had hesitated.

Because he wanted to taste both snacks.

And he wanted to save both for later too.

Whenever he had trouble choosing, his godfather taught him the same answer.

Parents were a child’s first teachers.

They were also the people children imitated.

Now

Tian Tian suddenly clenched his little meat fist.

Imitating his godfather’s tone, he declared:

“A man wants bof!”

[End of Chapter 597]