Chapter 673: Siege
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The wing guards were not killers, so none of them launched a sneak attack and neither did they attack altogether after showing up. They merely stood at the four corners of a square formation to prevent the Dragon King from escaping.
Killers were not ashamed of running away, and they were very good at avoiding fights when the situation was not favorable.
Gu Shenwei was no exception. It was thanks to these escaping skills that he had lived to see this day.
But this time, he couldn’t escape easily.
There were only four men besieging him but the area controlled by each was more than that of ten ordinary sabermen. Although it seemed like there was a huge gap between them, their formation was actually airtight. Gu Shenwei already felt the pressure before he had even made a move.
He actually had no intention of running away this time.
He was trying to change his killer’s instincts, and this face-to-face kind of fight was one of the habits he had to pick up.
Five people, four scimitars, and one narrow saber; no words, only gazes.
Silver Condor was the first to act. He was the one who had lured the Dragon King here and was also the only one here who had ever fought with the Dragon King and thus knew how strong the young man’s kung fu was.
The two weapons no longer collided frequently. The two were competing with their bodily movement techniques, swiftly moving back and forth before touching each other as if they were dancing. No one wanted to strike before they found a flaw.
On his eleventh retreat, Gu Shenwei attacked a wing guard behind him. The fact that he wanted to eliminate his instincts of a killer didn’t mean that he would completely give up on all the killer’s means, such as surprise attacks. It was a tactic that he had been using for years and was already engraved into his body.
The Dragon King’s ‘sneak attack’ was indeed a little bit out of the wing guards’ expectations, but they were not fl.u.s.tered by the move.
Gu Shenwei turned around the moment he landed, swinging his saber to block Silver Condor’s attack while also striking the wing guard in front of him with his palm. The other side instinctively received Gu Shenwei’s blow with his fists.
The frosty Qi immediately took effect. The wing guard unsheathed his saber and adopted a defensive posture while retreating, giving off a steady feeling even though he couldn’t stop moving back. As a result, a small hole had appeared in the encirclement ring.
Gu Shenwei would never let such an opportunity escape him. Before the other three wing guards could react and fill the gap, he had already rushed out of danger.
He was very experienced in fighting against larger numbers. His most basic principle was to bait several enemies into following him run around so that the enemy’s formation would break apart, and then he could take advantage of the chaos to defeat them one by one.
But it was very hard to apply this strategy to the four wing guards. Gu Shenwei had attacked three of them in a row but wasn’t able to break their cooperation. Although he had escaped the encirclement, the ‘net’ was still in hot pursuit behind him.
The internal energy of the wing guard who had taken Gu Shenwei’s palm strike wasn’t bad. He got rid of the effect of the frosty Qi and returned to normal in the twinkle of an eye. Perhaps feeling that he had made a mistake that let the Dragon King escape the besiege, his offense was fiercer than the others’.
The hands of the four wing guards combined were like a hard boulder, and Gu Shenwei’s was by comparison only a small hammer, the strike of which could merely shake off a few grains of dust.
Gu Shenwei felt a bit overwhelmed but the other four were appalled at heart. With their martial arts skills, any of them was able to dominate the martial arts world of the Prairie. But now, after having exchanged over a dozen moves, they were actually in a stalemate with the Dragon King. The young man’s kung fu was much more powerful than what Silver Condor had described.
Silver Condor was even more astonished than all the others. The Dragon King’s kung fu seemed to have improved a great deal in only a few days.
Gu Shenwei’s martial arts skills had actually not improved much. These days he had been busy almost all day and night, and when his coma was taken into consideration, he did not even have time to practice the Three-in-One Power much. What he had been inspired by was potential.
He was treating the four wing guards as a singular combatant with four heads and eight hands and feet, each hand and foot of which was unique. In response, he pulled at a string in his heart. This string of tension was wound tighter and tighter, but had not broke.
His saber was faster than ever and his steps were swifter than ever as if he were flying on the gra.s.s.
However, the string of tension could not, after all, last long. Gu Shenwei gradually reduced the frequency at which he waved his saber and began once again relying on his swift moves to avoid being surrounded. The fight, therefore, turned into a pursuit.
The wing guards, who were obviously on the upper hand, suddenly came to a halt and watched the Dragon King retreat ten paces away without pursuing further. The distance was exactly the key as to whether they could kill the Dragon King or not. Their plan had failed when it was on the verge of success.
‘It’s really a pity,’ thought Gu Shenwei. Not only were these four people highly skilled in martial arts, but they also extremely alert and cautious. It was very difficult to lure them into a trap.
The five teenage killers were lurking nearby. As long as the enemies moved four or five more steps forward, the killers would have an ideal opportunity to make a move. Even if they couldn’t kill the wing guards, they would ‘dismember’ the integrated ent.i.ty, giving the Dragon King a chance to break through.
This opportunity would not come again, but the teenage killers were still lurking there.
The nerve-racking tension of the duel vanished. And even before Silver Condor opened his mouth, Gu Shenwei knew that the other side had given up on tonight’s mission.
Silver Condor felt disappointed that such a good opportunity had slipped away from his hands, but he couldn’t afford to take risks. “Very good moves, Dragon King. But even if you escape tonight, you can’t run away from the entire prairie.”
“The wing guards of the Khan do live up to their reputation. But may I ask why? I don’t remember bearing a grudge against you.”
“So the Dragon King plans to deny that he killed the Khan?”
Gu Shenwei shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
“Heh, the Dragon King can trick the Kings into trusting him because their minds are all focused on fighting for the throne, but you can’t fool us. Even if the whole world forgets about how the Khan died, we, his wing guards, will avenge him.”
“I admire your loyalty, but I don’t understand why you would think that I am the murderer.”
Silver Condor revealed a faint smile but soon his face turned cold. “Because I saw you go into that tent, I saw those enchantresses come and go, and also saw you leave with them. That was the biggest mistake of my life. I thought that you’d be grateful for the Khan’s summons. I didn’t expect that you would take the opportunity to kill him and even want to frame the wing guard.”
On the night of the murder of the Khan, Han Fen had put a few pills into the wing guard Green Falcon’s mouth. When he came to his senses he would go on a rampage of killing, but Gu Shenwei hadn’t heard of his whereabouts afterward. And neither had he appeared tonight.
“So it was you who took the head of the Khan.”
Gu Shenwei finally realized the truth. The Khan liked to conceal his whereabouts from everyone except for one person. Silver Condor was actually near the tent that night. Neither the Dragon King and the disciples of the Waning Moon Hall had found him.
Silver Condor did make a mistake. The mistake was that he knew too many things about the Khan. He knew that the Dragon King had been summoned that night and also knew that Lotus and several others were the new favorites on the Khan’s way to immortality so he had relaxed his guard.
He had actually grown suspicious when the disciples of the Waning Moon Hall had carried three captives into the tent but he hadn’t recognized the hooded Green Falcon and his suspicion soon disappeared. In order to pursue immortality, the Khan had tried many strange methods, some of which were quite b.l.o.o.d.y. Silver Condor was disgusted with these things, but it was the Khan who was doing this so he could only turn a blind eye to those activities.
It was exactly because he turned a blind eye that had caused him to lose his one and only chance to protect his lord.
As time pa.s.sed, Silver Condor finally couldn’t bear it anymore. He had walked into the tent and beheld the thrilling scene.
“Yes, I took the head because I knew that once the Khan was buried, the n.o.bles of the Norland will quickly forget their hatred and will be busy fighting for the throne and divvying up the land. The missing head is a wake-up call and signifies that they still have an unresolved vengeance.”
Gu Shenwei could understand Silver Condor’s eagerness for revenge. He turned his head towards the distant bonfire and found that the compet.i.tion seemed to be over and could vaguely hear the voices of the crowd. “Is this a trap set by you?”
Silver Condor shook his head, “No, I’d like to know how they got their head.”
“King Riyao. He guessed that the person who took the head would come and check, and he was right.”
Silver Condor didn’t say a word. He didn’t believe the Dragon King. Besides, Red Kite would soon find out both the truth and the mastermind behind the Dragon King.
The four wing guards started retreating. Silver Condor was a cautious man. He would do whatever it took to avenge the Khan but would not take unnecessary risks. The wing guards were the core force behind the Khan’s vengeance and he couldn’t afford to lose any of them.
“Those slave girls were killed by you?” asked Gu Shenwei.
“They committed suicide. I only put the Khan’s body in the middle.” Silver Condor said as he retreated. The Dragon King’s calmness made him a little confused.
“But you killed Green Falcon.”
“He was driven crazy by you.” Silver Condor didn’t directly admit it as Green Falcon was his colleague. Forcing him to personally kill a wing guard was one of the reasons why he wanted revenge.
“Not me.” Gu Shenwei raised his voice. He had to say this no matter if the other side believed it or not. “The Waning Moon Hall has a bigger plot. If you want to avenge the Khan, then you should ally with me. What you saw wasn’t the whole truth.”
Gu Shenwei thought of Zhong Heng’s famous saying: Solving problems and discovering the truth were two different things.
But in the eyes of the avenger, the two were the same thing.
The other three wing guards had disappeared by now. Silver Condor stopped and shook his head again. “You can’t fool me. The Waning Moon Hall was loyal to you before and they still are now. The so-called breakup and betrayal are just tricks of yours. You can’t-fool me.”
It was really hard for Gu Shenwei to explain the complicated relations.h.i.+p between him and the Waning Moon Hall, especially since the Hall Leader Han Wuxian was fighting for him and the disciple Han Fen had just escaped from his hand. Anyone who saw this would believe that there was no real break between the two sides.
“Believe it or not, but in order to prove that I am not lying, I’ll give you three chances. You can use any means to kill me but I will spare your life. You and your colleagues all have this right.”
Silver Condor was so angry that he smiled instead. The Dragon King had just escaped with his life by a prearranged ambush and in the blink of an eye, he was boasting without shame that he would have mercy on his life. “You can’t fool me and you are not invincible throughout the world.”
Silver Condor left with a deeper hatred, and Gu Shenwei began to consider how to ‘spare his life’ three times in a row.
The five teenage killers came out of the ambush position without saying a word. They all bowed to salute the Dragon King. They had seen the Dragon King’s sabersmans.h.i.+p and it had filled their hearts with admiration.
In the distance came the triumphant voice of Shangguan Fei. “Idiot, how dare you seduce me with your looks? Haha, Fairy Han is matchless and can kill and catch at will. Sending this wing guard to the Dragon King will be a big contribution.”
Then Han Wuxian’s sweet voice could be heard. “I don’t care if I’m making a big contribution or not. I just want to see the Khan’s head. Baldy, you are not lying to me, are you?”
“I dare not, I dare not. Let’s go get the head right now.” Dhuta Kingkong’s voice was trembling.
Gu Shenwei didn’t expect that his ‘plan for mercy’ would be realized so soon.