Death Scripture

Slave Huan was recognized by his peers as the top dog of the killer apprentices again, since he was the first one to find a client outside the fort by himself.

Before assassinating Pot-bellied Buddha, he had killed the horse-faced man with his mentor outside the fort. However, it was his mentor’s secret plan and merely used his apprentice as a weapon, and no one in the fort knew it.

Unlike the secret assassination of the horse-faced man, the prince murder case drew everyone’s attention. The apprentices did not care about the prince or Pot-bellied Buddha at all. They just wondered how Slave Huan, who had visited the city only twice, had found a client for himself without his mentor’s help.

During his 10-day confinement, many killer apprentices, his friends and even some casual acquaintances, sneaked to his door to visit him. After warm greetings, they all asked him the same question through the door. “How did you find the client?”

Gu Shenwei told all of them that it was just a coincidence. He said that he had spared Xu Xiaoyi’s life before and this boy just had suddenly appeared in front of him, asking him to kill a person.

Gu Shenwei told the truth all the time, but this could not stop the rumours about him from getting more and more exaggerated. At last, Slave Huan was widely perceived as a know-it-all, who had many connections and resources in South City. No matter how many times he denied this rumor, the apprentices still firmly believed that he could introduce clients to them. Once they had chances to go to the city with their mentors, they would come to Slave Huan, asking him to introduce clients to them. They even told him that they just wanted to accumulate experience and did not mind how much they would earn.

After turning down a dozen of apprentices, Gu Shenwei finally dampened their enthusiasm.

On the last day of his confinement, Maid Lotus came to see him with two other apprentices. After a while, the two apprentices left, letting Maid Lotus and Slave Huan have a private conversation.

Gu Shenwei kept his promise and told Maid Lotus what Doctor Sun had said about the qigong deviation. According to the doctor, there were only two ways to cure this deviation, one was becoming Buddhist to read the Exorcism Manuscript in Four Truths Temple, and the other was going to the land of fragrance about 2,500 kilometers away to seek for treatment.

In his view, neither of these methods were feasible. Maid Lotus did not make any comments after hearing the doctor’s suggestion. She could not stay here for a very long time, so she briefly informed Slave Huan of an important finding.

“We’ve found out who was behind Shangguan Yuxing.”

Shangguan Yuxing had hired some killer apprentices to kill Slave Huan during the monthly tests, but none of them had succeeded. After that, he had followed Slave Huan for many days and hired Cloud Panther, an important member of the Snow Mountain Gang to assassinate Slave Huan at the Giant Rock Cliff. Unfortunately, the giant red-crowned roc had suddenly appeared and killed both Shangguan Yuxing and Cloud Panther, and the latter’s death had caused a series of assassinations afterwards.

“Who?” Gu Shenwei asked.

He had assumed that the person behind Shangguan Yuxing must have been Shangguan Yushi or Luo Ningcha, but Maid Lotus said something that was totally beyond his expectations.

“Someone in the Whiterobe Academy. His surname is Guo. Do you know who he is?”

“Mister Guo?”

Gu Shenwei was stunned and at the same time, very puzzled. He had met Mister Guo only twice, once in the torture chamber of Heart Cleansing Yard and once when he had been caught with Shangguan Ru in a room after they had stolen Black Jade Palm. Gu Shenwei was pretty sure that Mister Guo did not remember the slave boy in the torture chamber. As for the theft case, Mister Guo still had no reason to blame a young attendant who had just followed his master’s order and had not even said a word during the whole process. He could not figure out why Mister Guo wanted him to die.

“Wildhorse has heard Shangguan Yuxing brag about how easy it is for the Whiterobe Academy to kill a killer apprentice.”

Given Maid Lotus’ good people skills, Gu Shenwei was not surprised at all when hearing that she had contacted Wildhorse, their former enemy, to investigate the matter. He was just completely bewildered by the fact that it was Mister Guo who wanted to kill him.

“I heard that you’re going to be sent to the Whiterobe Academy. Be careful.”

With these words, Maid Lotus left. Gu Shenwei racked his brain, but still failed to get the answer. He knew Mister Guo did not like Shangguan Ru and Shangguan Yushi, but that could not explain why he took so much trouble to take his revenge on a humble slave boy.

That evening, Gu Shenwei was released from the confinement and returned to his mentor’s yard. Tomorrow, he was going to work at the Whiterobe Academy. He felt unsettled and turned to his mentor for help.

Tie Hangfeng and his apprentice were not close, but after the murder case, the relationship between them improved a lot.

Gu Shenwei told his mentor the whole thing about Mister Guo and asked for his advice. Tie Hanfeng, who knew Slave Huan had helped Mama Xue stealing the wooden saber in Six Kill Temple, had some idea about this matter but he did not reply to his apprentice immediately. He went out to ask information from some of his friends in East Castle and returned at midnight.

“Mister Guo can’t publicly announce that he wants to kill you, since the fort will never allow such private rivalries. That was why he took so much trouble to hire other apprentices to kill you in the monthly tests,” Tie Hanfeng explained.

Seeing the puzzled look on Slave Huan’s face, he added, “Do you remember the dog training theory I taught you? To pick out the fierce dogs and eliminate the weak ones, you have to encourage all the dogs to fight each other and bite each other when they’re little. However, once you pick out the ones you want, you have to keep every dog on a leash and make them learn rules. Killer apprentices were just like those puppies. Now that the fort has already picked out the good ones, it’ll ask you to follow the rules. Mister Guo knows the rules well, so he won’t kill you directly in the mission. Likewise, you can’t openly kill him. In this fort, you’re only allowed to kill me to take my red belt and my waist token. If you succeed, it’ll be a great honor for you. If you succeed of course, hah-hah.”

Gu Shenwei did not want to try it anymore. He knew he was no match for his mentor.

“As for the reason why he hates you so much, according to my survey, it’s because of the wooden saber. At that time, he concentrated too much on Black Jade Palm and failed to notice that you gave him a fake wooden saber. You made him lose the lord’s respect. That’s why he wants to kill you.”

Gu Shenwei finally understood why Mister Guo hated him so much. He guessed that Shangguan Nu must have made up a story to explain to his father why the wooden saber had been broken. Given the bad relationship between Shangguan Nu and Mister Guo, he believed Shangguan Nu had not said any good words for Mister Guo.

The Whiterobe Academy was situated in the northmost part of East Castle, but was not part of the castle. Inside the academy, there were 36 seperate houses, and each house had a very specific role. It was a horizontal organization. The leaders of all the houses, who were referred to as chiefs, directly reported to the Supreme King.

Mister Guo was a chief of a house. Gu Shenwei did not know what exactly Mister Guo was in charge of since it was a secret, but he guessed his responsibility might have something to do with the security of the fort.

Serving in the Whiterobe Academy was part of Gu Shenwei’s punishment, but Tie Hanfeng told him that it was more a reward than a punishment. “The Whiterobe Academy is an important organ of the fort. You can learn lots of things there, which you can never learn from East Castle and me. Rela. You’ll get out of it soon.”

When Gu Shenwei came to the academy, he sighed that his mentor had been too optimistic. He was asked to help in the Archives Library, a place preserving the historical records of the fort. There were only around 10 servants working in this library, and all they needed to do everyday was dusting, killing pests and rats to protect the books. Some of the archives were more than 100 years old. Gu Shenwei believed no one had read these detailed and boring records except their own authors.

He thought that he was not going to learn anything in this library and worried that he might even forget his saber moves during these days.

Tie Hanfeng knew his apprentice’s temper and had repeatedly reminded him not to act against Mister Guo or take revenge on such a powerful person. He strongly advised Slave Huan to keep a low profile and let Mister Guo cool down and forget about this thing.

Gu Shenwei did not want to further irritate Mister Guo either, but Mister Guo was secretly plotting against him.

Soon he noticed a sign but he failed to realize what it meant during the moment.

Servants of the Whiterobe Academy all ate together in a large cafeteria. Although they seldom talked to each other, they still had their own ways to deliver information.

One day, when Gu Shenwei was having lunch in the cafeteria, a boy beside him suddenly touched him and whispered, “Are you Yang Huan from East Castle?”

Gu Shenwei was surprised to hear someone call him by this name here. It took him a few minutes to recover from the shock. He nodded to the boy and then the boy nodded back to him.

When he went to fetch some food for himself, he found a group of teenagers pointing at him while whispering to each other. He had never met anyone of them in the library, so he guessed that they were from some other house.

He did not consider it an unusual thing, since many slaves had heard his name and were interested in the leader of the former Tattooed Arm Gang, a gang of slaves.

The next day, which was the 15th day of his service in the Whiterobe Academy, he went back to his mentor’s place.

Later on that day, he went to meet with the core members of the former Tattooed Arm Gang. According to his agreement with them, the 15 core gang members would meet every three days to stay in touch. Although the gang wars among the apprentices were over now, they still needed to stay alert. The meeting place was not fixed. Maid Lotus would choose a place and inform everyone before each meeting.

Likewise, the Snow Mountain Gang still existed and had even more members. It was said that they still had more than 20 or 30 people.

During the meeting on that day, Maid Lotus told everyone the latest rumor that the Pyrowork Academy was about to organize a real assassination and the target was someone outside the fort.

This was an unusual thing. Normally, only red-belt killers could join a real assassin mission, but by now, none of the apprentices had gotten a red-belt. Among all the killer apprentices who had killed their every opponent with one strike during the first five monthly tests, only Slave Huan had survived the gang wars. However, Slave Huan had willingly lost to Maid Lotus during his sixth monthly test and thus had failed to get a red belt.

This year’s apprentices were considered to be the best batch of apprentices in the fort’s history. Only 20 or 30 percent of them had survived the slaughter, and thus all the remaining apprentices were strong. Given that, East Castle decided to break the tradition and let the apprentices join a real assassin mission, but it had not published any detail about the mission.

The apprentices were excited to hear this news and every one of them wanted to be selected. They were eager to prove themselves and thus their killing desire was extremely strong. They would rather be killed in battle than wince in fear.

The killer mentors also heard about this thing, but none of them knew any detail about it.

The next morning, Gu Shenwei found out that the teenagers who had pointed at him yesterday were servants of the Document Library.

There was not just one-word difference between the Document Library and the Archives Library. The former one was in charge of handling all the documents for the Supreme King and its staff could often meet the lord in person. The latter would never be able to see any of those documents until the lord died.

Just like the yellow-belts in East Castle, servants in the Whiterobe Academy would also sell information secretly, as long as it was not a top secret.

Gu Shenwei had raised 100 taels of silver, hoping to bribe a yellow-belt to put him and Liuhua in the same test room. His plan had failed, but Maid Lotus still kept the money. As the plan for the killer apprentices’ assassin mission was not the most confidential document, Gu Shenwei managed to buy a copy from a servant of the Document Library.

According to the copy, 20 apprentices were chosen for the mission. He saw many familiar names on it, such as Maid Lotus, Wildhorse and Liuhua, but he did not see Slave Huan. This copy still did not mention any details about the mission either, such as the target, the time and the location.

Although he was quite disappointed not to be selected, he still felt happy to see some of his friends get this chance. However, the text of the document somehow made him feel uneasy. He read it again and again, but still failed to figure out the reason for his anxiety.

He spotted Mister Guo’s seal among the seven or eight seals at the end of the document and wondered, “Is this mission a trap set by Mister Guo?” On second thought, he believed he was just being too suspicious. After all, he was the one Mister Guo wanted to kill, but he was not chosen to join the mission. He tore the copy into pieces and then went to bed.

Somehow, he still dreamed about the contents of the document at night. In that dream, they were all written in blood.