Death Scripture

In the east of South City, there was a small area, which was quite different from the rest of the city. Its streets were narrow and tortuous and its buildings were old and shabby, but it had no brothels or taverns. Most of its residents ran their own small business in Jade City. They were hardworking people who woke up early and never moved around with weapons.

While walking through the streets, Gu Shenwei kept his machete down against his thigh to avoid attention. He was going to meet the killer leader in a private house deep in an alley. It was a quiet place standing against the city wall.

Twenty killer apprentices stayed inside the house, waiting for the spy.

The first person Gu Shenwei encountered upon entering the house was Wildhorse, who stayed with his friends and slightly nodded to Slave Huan, like a king greeting an unimportant official.

Maid Lotus and some other friends of Slave Huan were sitting together on the other side of the room, wiping their sabers. They all stood up and nodded to Slave Huan the moment they saw him.

None of them were qualified to freely speak here, except for the killer leader of this mission: Shangguan Yushi.

Noticing her, Gu Shenwei knew that he had to be extra careful during this mission. “Master Yu,” he said.

“Call me killer leader,” Shangguan Yushi corrected.

“Killer leader.”

Gu Shenwei said as he deeply bowed to her.

After that, he reported to her the basic information of the Ten-Dragon Gang, such as the leaders of the gang, the total number of its members, and the number of the members who knew kung fu. He also told her all the details about the gang members’ regular meetings, such as when and where they met, when they would leave, and who would remain in their meeting place after the meetings concluded. Shangguan Yushi had known that Slave Huan would work as a spy during this mission a long time ago and had been waiting for this moment.

After hearing Slave Huan’s report, Shangguan Yushi asked mockingly, “Is that everything? That’s all you’ve found out during the past three days?”

“Yes,” Gu Shenwei replied. In fact, he only had two days to investigate, but he did not want to argue with Shangguan Yushi.

Shangguan Yushi took out a piece of paper and read it aloud, “Tianshan Sect has seven leaders. They gather regularly on the 15th day of each month. None of the sect’s ordinary members are allowed to join their meetings. During each of their previous meetings, there were twelve guards that worked in three shifts to ensure their safety. The guards were usually divided into three teams and the best time to launch an attack would be around or shortly after midnight.” She folded the paper and added, “It seems to me that you didn’t collect any valuable information.”

“I’m sorry,” Gu Shenwei replied while bottling up his anger. He had never been trained to work as a spy before and no one had given him any specific instruction as to what kind of information he needed to collect during this mission.

“Tomorrow is the 15th day of the month. You’ll stay here to guard our belongings. When we succeed, we’ll give you no credit, but we’ll thank you for your hard work.”

Some apprentices chuckled. Clearly, not all of them were Gu Shenwei’s friends.

“Yes, but killer leader, please allow me to go to their meeting place tonight.”

“What for? You’re planning to discover a peerless ace among the members of the Tianshan Sect?”

“I feel that something is wrong.”

Gu Shenwei found it extremely difficult to voice his concerns now, for he had no solid evidence to prove that this mission was a trap set up by Mister Guo. Even he himself had not figured out how Mister Guo was going to frame him when he was not even among the 20 apprentices chosen for the assassination mission.

However, the ambiguous text in the document still made him feel uneasy. Unfortunately, he believed in his sixth sense but was not confident enough to convince the others to trust his judgment.

“Well, alright, you can go. Thank you for your hard work again. However, no matter what you plan to do tonight, you have to come back here early tomorrow morning to clean the room. Oh, I remember: that’s your old job. You must be good at it.”

“Yes,” Gu Shenwei calmly replied, swallowing the insult.

Shangguan Yushi curled her lips into a smile and thought, “This arrogant slave boy thought he could scare me off because he had killed many people, but I’ll let him know that a slave can never compete with its master.” Shangguan Yushi still wanted to take revenge on Slave Huan, not for her useless brother’s death but for the fact that he had outshone her in front of Shangguan Ru.

Gu Shenwei did not have time to think about Shangguan Yushi; he had been contemplating what the Ten-Dragon Gang would do to completely defeat the apprentices. Maid Lotus and some other friends of his would participate in the action so did not want to lose any one of them.

He went to Xu Yanwei’s house and the moment he opened the door, he saw an elderly man inside, sitting by the fire.

Gu Shenwei immediately recognized that the man was Elderly Dragon – even though he did not see his dragon tattoos – due to the cotton-patted clothes he wore.

“They’re upstairs, very safe,” Elderly Dragon took the initiative to speak.

Gu Shenwei looked up, then he put the machete by the door and went to sit by the fire.

“You beat my son last night.”

“Yes, I did.”

“He deserved it.”

“Well.”

“If you dare to come to the courtyard again, I’ll kill you.”

“I see.”

Their conversation ended, but Elderly Dragon showed no inclination to leave.

“Are you ready?” Gu Shenwei asked, feeling that something was wrong.

Hearing that, Elderly Dragon tensed up all of a sudden. His widened eyes looked even more prominent now. He stared at the killer apprentice and asked, “What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the liquor. I discovered that you prepare lots of it, every night, in the courtyard.”

A murderous glint flickered in the elderly man’s eyes as he stretched out his hand to the teenager.

Gu Shenwei took out the black iron sheet and put it in Elderly Dragon’s hand. A moment later, the elderly man turned his hand, throwing the iron sheet into the fire.

After that, he ambled to the door, glanced at his son’s machete without touching it, pushed the door open, and walked into the snow.

Xu Xiaoyi walked downstairs softly and asked, “Are you going to that place again tonight?”

“Yes.”

“And this time… you don’t need me to go with you, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Wow, that’s great. You know, I don’t know kung fu. It’ll be alright if you ask me to steal something for you, but I can’t fight those guys.”

“I don’t need you to steal anything for me.”

“Hah-hah, how about we go out to eat now? You know sometimes my sister’s clients come here during the day.”

“You go by yourself. I’ll leave very soon; I have something to do.”

“Well, I can stay with you for a while; it’s freezing cold outside so I don’t want to go out right now.”

Fifteen minutes later, Gu Shenwei walked out of the house with the machete, but he did not completely leave the area. He hid in a street corner, observing the house. Half an hour later, he saw a tall man walk out of it, wearing a cape and a hood to cover his face. He looked left and right before hurriedly leaving.

In South City, especially in the brothels, there were many sneaky men like him.

Gu Shenwei waited for a while longer. When the cold weather became too unbearable, he left for Southwall Tavern.

The fat guys searched him and asked him to leave his machete at the gate.

After entering the tavern, Gu Shenwei was greatly disappointed; he did not find Tie Hanfeng or Zhang Ji here. Sitting at his mentor’s favorite table, he ordered a cup of wine and asked the manager to put his spendings on Tie Hanfeng’s tab again.

He stared at the red liquid in the white cup and waited for his mentor, but Tie Hanfeng did not show up for the entire afternoon.

When the sun began to set, he knew that he had to leave for the courtyard. He walked out of the tavern and picked up his machete at the gate. This time, the fat guys did not play any trick to try and change his weapon.

A light snow was falling when he left the tavern, but when he arrived at the courtyard, it snowed so heavily that his vision became limited to 10 steps around him.

Evidently, there were not as many gang members as usual. When Gu Shenwei walked around the courtyard several times and even leaped into it, no one came out to stop him.

The cottages were lit up and noisy. He could clearly hear people drinking and shouting inside the warm room, but he still hid outside in the snow, despite the cold weather. Gu Shenwei was not scared by Elderly Dragon; he just wanted to find out what the gang was plotting.

This time, he needed to discover the truth to solve the problem.

In front of the cottages, there were piles of liquor jars. They were covered by the snow and looked like small hills. Gu Shenwei wiped the snow off of them and knocked on them one by one, discovering that they were all empty.

“Hey!”

Someone spotted the sneaky teenager. Gu Shenwei turned around and saw Dragon Tooth run at him, long machete in hand. Elderly Dragon’s son and several machete-men followed behind.

“Do you still remember what Elderly Dragon told you?”

“He said that he wanted to invite me here for a drink to thank me for beating his son, but I refused. The liquor here is of poor quality and you mix it with water. I don’t want such drinks,” Gu Shenwei said, gripping his machete shaft tightly. Although the machete was quite different from a saber, he still thought it was better than a short sword.

The machete-men clamored as Dragon Tooth brandished his long machete and said, “You only get one chance. Piss off.”

Gu Shenwei stared at Dragon Tooth for a moment and then retreated. Soon, he could not see them anymore in the snow but he could still hear them laughing at his cowardice.

They were the 20 killer apprentices’ targets, thus he could not kill them before they launched an attack – especially since Shangguan Yushi was their killer leader.

He returned to Southwall Tavern to find Tie Hanfeng, but his mentor was not there so he could only return the siblings’ dwelling.

When Gu Shenwei entered the house, Xu Yanwei was sleeping upstairs and Xu Xiaoyi was also lying in his makeshift bed on the first floor. The moment the boy saw the killer apprentice, he mumbled, “Latch the door.”

Gu Shenwei sat by the fire alone. He closed his eyes to imagine a piece of white paper. After that, he began to write down the contents of the document on that paper in his mind. While writing the 20 apprentices’ names, he matched them with the faces he had seen in the house this morning. When it came to Liuhua, he suddenly realized that he did not see him earlier.

He saw the light.

He pushed Xu Xiaoyi and asked, “Who hired you to do this job?”

“Ah? What? Bigmouth Liu. Do you know him?”

Gu Shenwei did not know Bigmouth Liu. He grabbed Xu Xiaoyi’s shoulders and shook him harder until the boy finally woke up, sitting up in his bed grumpily.

“What’re you doing?”

“Who came here in the morning?”

“Elderly Dragon.”

“Not him. I mean the man hiding upstairs.”

Xu Xiaoyi smiled embarrassedly. He turned his eyes, seemingly wanting to refute, but then he changed his mind and said, “You found out?”

“Who is he?”

“A client of my sister’s. A normal person. Elderly Dragon came here right after he entered the house, so he could only hide upstairs. I didn’t mean to lie to you, but you’ve already driven one of my sister’s clients away. We were just a little worried.”

Knowing that Xu Xiaoyi was lying and acting again, Gu Shenwei said, “Don’t play tricks. You and your sister can’t afford it. Watch out for your own heads.”

Hearing that, Xu Xiaoyi immediately touched his head to make sure that it was alright. “Relax, who am I? I ran about in South City long before you knew the place.”

Gu Shenwei returned to sit by the fire. He was sure that the siblings would be killed the day after tomorrow if they did participate in this plot, and at that time, he would not be able to protect them. Xu Xiaoyi refused to tell him the truth, which made him feel quite relieved; it did not make him feel obliged to save the siblings.

Xu Xiaoyi sat on his bed, looking at the killer apprentice profoundly. He wanted to say something, but after a while, he swallowed his words and fell back into his bed, snorting loudly.

Gu Shenwei gripped the machete shaft tightly. Part of him longed for killing, and the other part was always sickened by the color and the smell of blood. He was not sure which one was his true self…