Editors: Ann and lovelyxday
Chapter 44 Wall Climbing
Shangguan Yushi had separated Gu Shenwei from the twins; that wasn"t a problem he could solve with kung fu. He had to find another way.
The twins’ enthusiasm toward the game didn’t diminish with time. Shangguan Ru said that she would arrange a test for the three teams to compete in after a month of training.
Gu Shenwei thought it was a chance to regain the attention of Shangguan Ru.
He first wanted to know one thing - the content of the test. Shangguan Yushi had helped to set up the test, so he felt that he should not be careless.
The day after Shangguan Ru announced about holding a test, Gu Shenwei found the opportunity to block Shangguan Hongye.
Shangguan Hongye caught a glimpse of Servant Huan from afar, and immediately sent his little bookkeeper away. He just nodded when they met.
“I need you to do me a favour,” Gu Shenwei requested without beating around the bush.
Shangguan Hongye was still waiting for Servant Huan to take something out, so he couldn’t help but become disappointed upon hearing this, “Like the help I gave last time? I can’t help you. Yu Gongzi almost found out that I organized the gambling. I dare not offend her again.”
“No, it"s much simpler this time. You just need to inquire about the contents of Ninth Gongzi"s test a month from now."
“Heh heh, I almost forgot; you were selected as a ‘killer". Are you feeling anxious? I still can’t help you, I have no chance to talk with Ninth Gongzi.”
“The little gongzi must know it.”
“Come on, I made him lose money last time; he hates me to death.”
“Well, it’s fine if you don’t want to. Just give back the items I deposited in your place. I can find someone else to help me."
Shangguan Hongye’s expression immediately changed. He checked his surroundings, then pulled Servant Huan over to the wall, “Are you crazy? I’ll help you this time, but let’s make a deal. Last time we agreed to a fifty-fifty split, but now I want it all.”
“Hmm, okay, no big deal. I can do it again.”
Shangguan Hongye drew close immediately and whispered: “If you can get me the goods again, I can help you exchange them for silver and save it for you.”
Gu Shenwei smiled and turned to leave, neither agreeing or disagreeing. After taking several steps, he reminded him, “As soon as possible.”
Next, he had to seek help from Xue Niang.
“There is going to be a test a month from now. If I can win, the twins will pay attention to me again. They will either call me to their side or treat me as their biggest ‘opponent’. These are all beneficial for me to please them, but if my Internal energy is still like this … “
Xue Niang sat in the chair and looked at the respectful boy in front of her. “You are very smart; sometimes even smarter than that Servant Yao, perhaps a little too smart. Even I have to watch out for you.”
“Little servant serves Xue Niang and Miss wholeheartedly and without hidden motive, and he only hopes Xue Niang and Miss can support little servant one day to avenge his father’s death. Moreover, Xue Niang still holds little servant"s life in her hands.”
To Xue Niang, it sounded like ‘avenging the death of father’ referred to the old servant Yang Zheng of the Gu family.
Gu Shenwei had secretly pressed the Xuan Ji Acupoint on his chest several times and felt the burning sensation intensify. The biggest problem was ever since Xue Niang stopped helping him train the internal energy, his balanced power remained at the second level, without even the slightest progress. At first he thought it was because he hadn’t trained hard enough, then he realized Xue Niang had used a trick on him.
“It’s good you know that; it’s good you know that.” Xue Niang reiterated, but didn’t answer him right away.
On the second night, Xue Niang presented her solution. Shockingly, she ordered Lotus to spend two hours training Servant Huan every evening. As such, that teenage girl suddenly changed from a practice partner into a ‘master’.
Fist technique, sabresmanship, lightness skill, hidden weapons, etc. Although Lotus appeared to be indifferent, she was very obedient and followed Xue Niang"s instructions diligently. She taught him almost all the techniques she had learnt during daytime, except internal energy which Gu Shenwei couldn’t study. The rumours turned out to be true. To learn the internal energy of Golden Roc Castle, one must not have practised any forms of internal energy of other sects.
Gu Shenwei learned the killer"s techniques from Lotus secretly. During the day, he still had to pretend to be a servant who was unfavoured and carry out Shangguan Yushi’s senseless orders.
He anxiously awaited Shangguan Hongye’s reply. He wanted to know what Shangguan Yushi thought his weakness was.
Half a month pa.s.sed, and Shangguan Hongye still hadn’t gotten any intel. Actually, it wasn’t his fault. Shangguan Ru herself hadn’t decided what to test on.
Another six or seven days later, Shangguan Hongye hastily stuffed a slip of paper into Servant Huan"s hands. He had completed his task.
Two words were written on the slip of paper: wall climbing.
Gu Shenwei was confused. Wall climbing? But he quickly realized that it was going to be a compet.i.tion of the lightness skill.
In Shangguan Yushi’s opinion, Servant Huan’s weakest point was his lightness skill.
The Gu family’s martial arts required the pract.i.tioner to stand firmly and fight steadily, so most pract.i.tioners were indeed poor at the lightness skill. Gu Shenwei had often competed with others, so Shangguan Yushi must have seen it.
There was about seven or eight days left before the test, Gu Shenwei explained the situation to Xue Niang and spent the rest of time focusing on learning lightness skill and wall climbing techniques. He had no choice but to cram for the test.
And Xue Niang finally agreed to help him practise balanced power again. All advanced lightness skills were based on internal energy. Gu Shenwei was too late for learning lightness skills so he could only make up for it with internal energy.
The month pa.s.sed quickly; the twins abandoned the school and concentrated on training ‘killers’. Gu Shenwei and the other eight chosen ones went directly to the Giant Boulder Cliff of east castle to check-in every morning, they now had the ‘privilege’ to enter the heavily guarded place of Golden Roc Castle. But after they checked in, the three under Shangguan Yushi had to leave for hidden sentry .
On the day of the test, the school was practically deserted. The students all ran out after the twins to watch the fun. This was all the first time that many of them had ever entered the east castle. Like ordinary people, they were nervous at first, but then felt it was nothing much. As they approached Afterlife Cliff, they grew uneasy. They finally got rid of their fear after they made a turn and arrived at Boulder Cliff. Then all of them started praising that this place was pretty nice.
The subject of the test was very simple, just as Shangguan Hongye had leaked.
On the west side of Giant Boulder Cliff was a stone wall which over ten meters in height. As for why there was such a tall wall constructed, no one knew or bothered to explain.
Nine red silk flowers had been placed on top of the wall.The test takers had to scale the wall as fast as possible and s.n.a.t.c.h those red flowers. The one who to claim the largest number of flowers would be the winner.
This test seemed to have nothing to do with ‘killers’, but it was simple and straightforward, which people loved the most.
The three ‘sabrelords’ didn’t partic.i.p.ate; only those nine teenage ‘killers’ climbed the wall to s.n.a.t.c.h the flowers.
This was probably Shangguan Fei’s idea. He didn’t want to show that he was inferior to his sister and cousin in front of everybody, and he would lose more face if he was surpa.s.sed by one of the servants.
The scene was quite a mess now. Several of the Shangguan family scions felt that since they had trained in Peng Yue Yuan, they could partic.i.p.ate in the test. After some arguing, they increased the limit by five, so a total of fourteen people were competing for nine red flowers.
The three ‘sabrelords’ were the judges, and Servant Qing was responsible for maintaining order. As long as the twins were not in danger, he was glad to partic.i.p.ate in the game.
The test was full of laughter from the beginning. Amongst the three ‘killers’ under Shangguan Yushi, only Servant Huan was able to scale the wall. The other two merely gripped the cracks on the wall and gave up even before their feet left the ground. In the past month they hadn’t learnt anything, so they could only blushingly plead guilty to the ‘sabrelord’ and squeezed their way through the crowd to be ‘hidden sentries’.
Shangguan Yushi didn’t care about the crowd’s teasing at all; she cared only about that Servant Huan.
Gu Shenwei’s first jump was already higher than the others. At first, he was a little bit worried about those five who joined later, after all, they were surnamed Shangguan and might have studied more advanced kung fu in Peng Yue Yuan. It turned out his worry was completely pointless. Those five just came for fun and could not even compare to the ‘killer’ trained by little gongzi Shangguan Fei. They cried with wah wah after only climbing about six meters. Three of them fell off, and the other two climbed down themselves, drawing raucous laughter.
The three teenagers picked by Shangguan Fei had the best foundations, but the ones trained by Shangguan Ru were the most serious. Those six followed closely behind Gu Shenwei and climbed toward the target like agile geckos.
Gu Shenwei grabbed the first red flower, bringing applause from below. A hand tried to seize his ankle, but he kicked it down mercilessly. With a loud scream, someone fell off the wall.
The game became a free-for-all. The six people climbed onto top of the wall, pulled out their sabers, and began a riotous melee.
Sabresmanship was Gu Shenwei’s strength, so he didn’t have to bring his murderous heart into play. He could defeat his opponents easily as long with a normal display. The other teenagers fell off the wall one by one. Two of them even fell inside the wall, and it took them a long time to limp back to Giant Boulder Cliff.
Gu Shenwei overestimated these teenagers. They hadn’t improved much with one month’s training. But he used the compet.i.tion as an excuse to make Xue Niang improve his balanced power again, and he had gained a lot from it.
Gu Shenwei s.n.a.t.c.hed seven red flowers. When he was fighting with others, one of the teenagers grabbed the other two red flowers and jumped down desperately. Luckily he was caught by the crowd and didn’t get hurt.
Gu Shenwei hung the wooden sabre from his waist, picked the red flowers, and slowly climbed down from the stone wall. His lightness skill was not good enough to support him jumping from a place more than 10 meters high without being injured.
He held the fake, silk flowers. When he raised his head, the first person he saw was Shangguan Ru.
Ninth Gongzi was also looking at him. Although her ‘killers’ got nothing, she was not angry at all. Usually, she would have thrown a tantrum for even the slightest failure.
Gu Shenwei turned his head and dedicated the red flowers to Shangguan Yushi, his nominal ‘sabrelord’.
“Yu Gongzi, sabrelord, I picked these flowers for you.”
If Shangguan Yushi was extremely disappointed and angry at this moment, she didn’t show it. She also didn’t accept the red flowers. With her hands at her back, she said casually, “Keep them, they are all yours.”
Shangguan Yushi seemed to have accepted her loss and no longer desired to find a way to send Servant Huan away from Giant Boulder Cliff. But this made Gu Shenwei more vigilant.
The killer training was over. Shangguan Ru reprimanded and expelled the undeserving ‘killers’, and only kept three people, including Gu Shenwei. Together with the three ‘sabrelords’, there was a total of six people who formed a more elite group.
“Everyone thinks this is a game, but I"ll shock them all," said Shangguan Ru seriously, but also with a trace of mystery.
This was the first day of the group’s establishment, and only the six of them were at Giant Boulder Cliff.
“We six are the most formidable kids in the stone castle. The kids in Diao Mu Yuan are all mediocre, not even worth mentioning.”
After saying this, her gaze paused on Shangguan Fei for a while. According to her standards, Shangguan Fei should be among this number, but she could not get rid of her dear brother.
“The killers are not just here to play games. We have something we should do.”
Her tone became even more entrenched in mystery. This time around, she was not influenced by anyone. This was all her idea.
“I’m going to organize an a.s.sa.s.sination,” she said.