The Story Of Dusk

"We don"t know sir." He shook his head vigorously. "We don"t know. Usually they will leave us alone after they take our money, but this time they wanted our children also…"

The man started to wail while knocking his head on the hard ground.

"There are only old people and children in our village, we don"t have someone who will stand for us. It is fine if they only took the money and left, but this time they took our children as well." He sobbed fervently. "Please show mercy on us, sir, miss…" He cupped his hands together.

"Hey, you helped me before, why don"t you help them also? Don"t you care about children?" Senja thought that Gong Xu was someone who cared about children, that was why he fought the bandits to free Senja and the rest.

The thing that Senja didn"t know, Gong Xu didn"t care about the children, he only wanted to give Modama hard time, knowing that those children would be sent to Mountain Sui Sword Sect for the benefit of his and the Emperor"s plan.

"They took your children?" Gong Xu asked, maybe what Senja said was right, those bandits had same intention with the one before, then it would lead Gong Xu to Modama.

"Yes, yes… please sir…" The man cupped his hands, pleading for help.

Gong Xu didn"t get the part where the village man informed them that those bandits were looking for Senja, in the other hand, Senja also didn"t say anything about that.

"You will help them right?" Senja looked at Gong Xu expectantly.

"Do you think I can kill them all?" Gong Xu raised his eyebrows while glaring at Senja, however instead of coward away, Sonja was looking at Gong Xu straight in the eyes and smiled.

"Of course you can!" She said proudly. "You have done that before, so what the different now?" She grinned, knowing Gong Xu was on the verge of giving in.

With a small grunted and furrowed, Gong Xu said begrudgingly. "Tie your horse to the tree nearby and jump onto mine."

"Why?" Senja tilted her head questioningly.

"With your current speed of riding a horse, we will arrive when those children already being sold." Gong Xu said in mocking tone.

"All right." Senja yielded.

The man helped Senja to tie her horse on the tree and helped her to get down, but before Senja could approach Gong Xu and jumped on the back of his horse, he had rode alone toward the direction of the village.

"Hey!" Senja yelled. "Why do you leave me behind!?"

No matter how loud she screamed Gong Xu wouldn"t be able to hear her complaint, not to mention he was already too far from Senja was standing now.

"Miss, you can ride with me." The man also flabbergasted because Gong Xu left the girl, who he called as sister, behind. Seemingly they were not a sibling after all. "Come, I will help you."

Senja sullenly received the helped from the man as both of them followed after Gong Xu.

***   

It didn"t take long time for Gong Xu to arrive at the dilapidated village again. He could see how much damage that had done by those bandits.

It was only five hours since the last time he was here, but the situation now was totally different.

The sun was almost set when he dismounted his horse and walked inside through the entrance of the village.

From his spot, he could see there were indeed a few people, who weren"t the people of this village, as they were too bulky and arrogant.

 Those faces didn"t show any politeness neither they bothered with Gong Xu sudden appearance.

The bandits was making a big bonfire in the middle of the village by using the woods from the hut that served as the villagers home, while the villagers were standing at the side, wailing and weeping for them to leave.

One of the bandits approached Gong Xu and prevented him from walked closer.

"Who are you?" The man sheathed his sword as the tip of the blade touched Gong Xu"s chest, made him stopped immediately.

"I will like for all of you to leave." He said calmly. Actually, he wasn"t in good condition to fight because his wound had just closed, but if he used excessive strength there would be a possibility that the wound would reopen again.

In spite of that fact, Gong Xu still came. His determination to ruin whatever plan that his father was planning was solid.

"Who are you ask us to leave?" The bandit gave him a mocking smile as he asked his other fellow. "We come here to find a girl named Senja. If you can give the girl, we will leave. How is that? I heard someone brought a girl with the same description as her here, not long time ago." He asked.

"Senja?" Gong Xu caught Senja"s name among his sentences. "What do you want with a girl named Senja?"

"Oh, so you know her!" The bandit clapped his hand happily. "We are sent by her father to bring her back home. Where is she now?"

Gong Xu was squinted his eyes, he had heard about Senja"s step mother who had sold her, but he heard nothing about her father, didn"t her father suppose to be in the northern fortress? Gong Xu heard about that when he was still following Modama, he was quite update with the position of the higher ranks of Azura"s Military people.

w.a.n.g Yu and Commander Dam should be in the northern fortress to maintain that area from the revolt of the remaining Xinghe"s people.

Gong Xu glanced through his shoulder, apparently Senja and the man from the village couldn"t catch up to him, they still left behind.

That was a good thing, so Gong Xu wouldn"t be distracted if the fight broke. However, if it was Senja who they were looking for, then it had nothing to do with Modama.

"Where is her?" The man"s voice dropped as his expression turned cold. "I know the girl who was sick a few days ago is her, though those stupid people said her name is not Senja. What a lousy trick that you have for changing your name."

Gong Xu didn"t have anything to say as he drew his own sword. If those people weren"t Modama"s people, he didn"t have time to waste on them, much better to kill them first and left immediately.

The bandit was caught out of guard as he was too late to ward off Gong Xu"s sudden attack, the moment he realized his predicament, his hand had dropped on the ground and blood spurted out from his cut hand.

"AAARRRRRGHHHHH!!!!" The bandit wailed in agony while holding his hand, he dropped on his knees and rolled on the ground, didn"t stop screaming.

Immediately, all of the bandits surrounded Gong Xu and put him on the center of their attack.

Gong Xu clicked his tongue annoyingly as it would be another fight one against many. He was sure he could stand to fight them all, but wasn"t sure how much injuries that he would suffer in the process.

Once again he glanced at the entrance of the village, but Senja and the village man was still nowhere to be seen.

Why there were so late? No matter how slow they were, they should be here by now.

But, for now Gong Xu couldn"t afford for his mind to wander carelessly, because there were around ten people around him who needed his fully attention now.

One of the bandits stepped forward to initiate the first attack.

Gong Xu saw his movement and easily ward off his sword, but he couldn"t hear the movement from behind him, only when the other bandit had moved to close to him, he could feel his presence and avoid the fatal attack.

And then blow after blow came toward Gong Xu as he moved swiftly to defense himself and returned the attack.

However, even during the fight, he could feel something fishy. He felt something was wrong with all of this, but couldn"t point out what was that.

Gong Xu frowned and tried to not think about this further, as it could distract his concentration and for now he couldn"t afford that, he could lose his life if he made a wrong move.

But the feeling grew stronger when from the corner of his eyes he saw someone approached the leader of the bandit and whispered something to his ear.

Not long after that, the leader signaled to his men to back off.

"I am sorry to cause you trouble, but we will take our leave." The leader smiled mockingly while staring at Gong Xu right in his eyes, his words held something more than that.

Gong Xu sheathed his sword when all of the men had moved back. He knew something was off and they left even without getting what they wanted.

Or, they had had what they wanted.

Gong Xu stood still on the same spot and looked at the bandits mounted their perspective horse while the man, who had been injured by Gong Xu, was helped by his fellow.

"I hope we will never meet with each other again." The leader of the bandit waved his hand before he kicked the horse to move faster.

Gong Xu"s expression was so hard to read as he stared at the dust that those bandits left, impa.s.sively.

Gradually, people from the village moved approaching him and knelt before him with grat.i.tude.

"Thank you sir." The women cried.

"You have saved our life!" The men praised him.

But, Gong Xu couldn"t see the man, who had asked him to come and saved the people from this village. He couldn"t ask about him also because he didn"t know his name.

"Who the person who had sent someone to come to catch up with me?" Gong Xu asked, looking at their expression carefully.

However, those people looked confused as they looked at each other while mumbling something incoherently.

"I come here because there is one of you who came to find me for help, he said those bandits had your children as a captive." Gong Xu felt stupid as the understanding down on him. But, he still tried to solidify his guess.

"No, sir… those bandit didn"t hold our children captive, they even didn"t ask for money." One of the elder from the village explained. "They only locked our children away inside that house." He pointed the only hut that was still untouched while the other had burnt with the ground.

Gong Xu"s prediction was proven right. He was being tricked by this lousy schemes. He sighed incredulously, how he could fell so easy on this?

He must not have taken Senja"s words to seriously and stuck to his original plan, ignored the call for help.

Gong Xu clicked his tongue annoyingly.

"The man who had called for a doctor when I was here with my sister is the same man who asked for help." Gong Xu"s patient started to run out.

"Oh!" Three people slapped their head and looked at each other in understanding, this action made Gong Xu almost killed them instead because they had wasted his time so much. "That man is only a merchant who will get our livestock and sold it to the bigger village. But, he is not always around." One of the men explained and the other villager immediately understood the situation.

"He is not a man from this village, sir." An old lady chimed in. "He will come every three months or so. Fortunately when you and your sister were here, he was here as well, so we asked him for help, because he knew the road to the other village better than us."

Hearing the old lady long explanation, made Gong Xu wanted to hit himself hardly.

He was the one who had impulsively left Senja behind with that man, he thought, it would be faster if he moved alone, so they wouldn"t waste much more time.

But, who would have thought something like this happened?