Soaring Swallows Startle Dragons

Chapter 3

Jianghu Tempest

Part 3 (14)

Cui Wenqi sneered, “You really dare to talk so big, you can train for fifty years and not be able to take ten moves from Chief Li. If you don’t believe me then you can try a few moves out on me first.”

Snakeman Qiu Yuan’s eyes flashed like lightning, glaring at Cui Wenqi. “When you put it that way, it seems Brother Cui can’t take ten moves from the honorable chief neither.”

Stele-Breaking Hands Cui Wenqi sneered again. “None of the five banner altarmen of the Heavenly Dragon Gang are inferior to you, Qiu. Yet we can only take three to five moves from Chief. Don’t tell me that with your few skills you think you’re stronger than me?”

Qiu Yuan’s face sank. He said coldly, “Alright, within half a year, Qiu will go to the headquarters of your honorable gang personally to seek instruction from Chief Li. Right now I don’t have time to jabber and squabble with you. Since we’re old friends, it’s not worth fighting. See you later.” And with that he turned and left.

Once Snakeman Qiu Yuan was gone, Qi Yuantong asked Li Yaohong, “Have you seen Master One Yang’s student?”

Shadowless Girl thought about this for a moment. “I did see him once, but I was unable to stop him, he slipped away from me. Is Master One Yang still at Mystic Metropolis?”

Cui Wenqi shook his head. “That ox nose left long ago. How did you come to fight with Wen Gongtai?”

Li Yaohong knew that of the gang’s five banner altarmen, Red Banner Altarman Qi Yuantong was the most insidious, the most calculating, and Black Banner Altarman Cui Wenqi had the worst temper and was the most vicious, so she was wary of telling them where Yang Menghuan and Xialin went, lest they give chase and Yang Menghuan suffered as a result. But that treasure map was a rare treasure her father longed to obtain, so she didn’t know what to do. She thought for a long time but was still not willing to tell the truth, and with a thin smile she said. “Today I ran into them at the mouth of Dongmao Ridge. Kunlun’s swordplay is ferocious and ruthless. I couldn’t beat him and he broke free and escaped. I chased him all the way to here where I saw those Wen and Qiu people fighting. I stood aside and watched, but when they saw me they stopped fighting and kept saying I was a Kunlun disciple, and that Wen guy and I fought.”

Qi Yuantong turned to Cui Wenqi. “If you ask me, Master One Yang’s already gone off to Mount Kuocang in southern Zhejiang and knows that if he really does get hold of Return to the Origin then his student will be captured. He might not be willing to exchange it for his student. It would be better for us to go back and advise the chief to send all five banner altarmen to hurry to Mount Kuocang to intercept him. Master One Yang is crafty and calculating, he would absolutely never give the treasure map to his student, so it’s no use capturing his student.”

Li Yaohong said, “Altarman Qi is so right, you two had best go back at once and tell Dad, lest someone else gets there first.”

Cui Wenqi nodded. “Then you come with us! There’s masters from all schools all over northern Zhejiang, and you have a bad temper. One false word and and you’re fighting with someone, if something were to happen to you, there’d be no way for Altarman Qi and I to help you.”

Li Yaohong pursed her lips. “I’m not afraid, you all go on ahead! When you see my dad, tell him I’ll be back in half a month.”

Not waiting for them to respond, she picked up the sword that Wen Gongtai had knocked out of her hand and with three bounds was gone. Qi Yuantong and Cui Wenqi knew how obstinate she was knew she wouldn’t listen to them, so they had to let her go.

~*~

Let’s turn now to Yang Menghuan, who was pulling Xialin hurriedly through the forest, using his lightness skill and running flat out, and in one fell swoop they had gone more than twenty miles. Now he slowed down, panting. “Why didn’t you pull me away sooner?”

Xialin looked at Yang Menghuan, soft and gentle. “You were so absorbed in watching the fight, how could I pull you away? I thought if I did you would be unhappy, so I just watched intently too.”

Menghuan said, “I was transfixed by their amazing moves, I wasn’t just enjoying watching them fight.”

Xialin said, “Mm! They really did fight well. They used many moves I didn’t understand.”

Suddenly she thought of something. “Big Brother Huan, I have something to ask you, but I worry you’ll laugh at me.”

Menghuan saw her immeasurably sweet yet sad expression and felt bad fir pulling on her arm. “Ask!”

Xialin said, “Wasn’t that girl in black looking to fight us? Why was she standing next you you so nicely, like you two were friends?”

Menghuan sighed. “If she hadn’t helped us tonight, we probably would have forgotten to escape.”

Xialin went “ah” and said, “That girl in black really is good.”

Menghuan saw she looked so natural when she spoke, without a trace of jealousy. He lowered his voice. “You’re good too.”

Xialin was happy to hear Menghuan praise her. She said sweetly, “I’m not good, because I have to ask you everything. As long as you don’t hate me, I’m happy.” And with that she shot off like an arrow.

Miss Shen must have been insanely happy, running in the moonlight like a wild galloping stallion. She was running too fast and nearly ran into someone when she turned a corner. The young lady stopped in her tracks, but the other person shot a hand out quick as lightning, jade wrist raised, and grabbed onto Miss Shen’s left arm. This roused the young lady’s temper and she shouted and chopped out with her right palm. This person was a twenty-three or twenty-four year old lady of the Dao, a raven cloud of hair piled up in a mallet bun, willowy brows and a fair face, eyes like rippling waves of autumn water, and flaming cherry lips. Though she was a renunciate, she was very good looking. She saw Xialin’s palm shooting out so fast, she didn’t dawdle but turned her left hand and counterpressed the young lady’s “Pool at the Bend” acupoint on her elbow. Xialin’s palm strike was aimed at distracting her opponent, but her full power was actually secretly concentrated in her left arm, so when those paired fingers came at her acupoint, she immediately struck out with her left arm and flung the person’s hand off, then leapt back eight or nine spans, flipped her wrist and drew her sword. Her sword was like lightning, its cold awn of light a cyclone sweeping at her upper body.

This lady of the Dao who was in her wonder years saw that Xialin’s attacks were extraordinary and wasn’t about to get careless. She leapt up to dodge the sword and drew the weapon from her back, and the two swords flashed like lightning, arcing like rainbows, and in the blink of an eye they had exchanged eight strokes, but after those eight strokes they each felt strange, because both of them had been using Split Second Swordplay moves. The lady of the Dao wanted to stop and ask Xialin about it, but Miss Shen’s sword was like hail raining down, not giving her a chance to slow up and speak.

By the time they had exchanged several more strokes, Yang Menghuan had caught up. He saw Xialin fighting with someone and thought that it was a masterhand come to stop them. He was in a hurry to get a move on and didn’t take a good look at the Daolady’s swordplay but drew his sword and attacked with two fast strokes. His skill was advanced and his strength was great, much more so than Xialin, and he used was using two killer moves Earth Smashing, Heaven Shaking and Tide Floods the South Seas of the Soul Seeker Twelve Swordplay. The young Daolady couldn’t take them and was forced back seven or eight spans under Menghuan’s pressing onslaught. It was only Yang Menghuan showing leniency that he didn’t send her sword flying from her hand.

After Menghuan forced the Daolady back, he pulled Xialin along and ran. They had run five or six staves when a figure darted in front of him and a gentle breeze blew on them as a good-looking middle-aged Daolady wearing a Daoist “plumage robe” and a starcap on her head and holding a dust whisk in her hand, and with a sword on her back and a stately look on her face stepped in to block the way. Yang Menghuan was in a hurry to get away and swept out with White Swallow Scissor Tail.

The middle-aged Daolady was angered at the ruthlessness of Yang Menghuan’s attack and used Ride the Dragon, Lead the Phoenix with her whisk to ward off Menghuan’s sword, then used Divine Dragon Wags Its Tail, Approach the Flowers, Whisk the Willows, and Open Up the Mountain to Divert the Stream, swish swish swish, three attacks in quick succession. Despite being just a light dust whisk, in the middle-aged Daolady’s hands it was a immensely powerful. Yang Menghuan felt a jolt that made his right arm go numb and he nearly dropped his sword.

The middle-aged Daolady forcefully blocked Menghuan’s sword and shouted, “Those Soul Seeker Twelve moves you just used, who taught you those?”

Yang Menghuan was stunned that she recognized the rare art of the Kunlun School. He sheathed his sword and said, “Junior is a disciple of Master One Yang of the Kunlun School. Venerable Master, who are you? How do you know Junior’s swordplay?”

The middle-aged Daolady didn’t answer the young Daolady fighting with Xialin shouted, “Since it’s a disciple of Senior Sectuncle, why haven’t you come to pay your respects to Third Junior Sectuncle?”

Yang Menghuan hesitated, but the middle-aged Daolady said, “I’m Master Wise Perfected. Has your sectfather told you about me?”

Yang Menghuan’s mass of doubts cleared off and he threw down his sword and kowtowed. “Disciple was ordered to go west to Kunlun and once there first kowtow and greet you two sectuncles, then I was ordered to give you Shifu’s letters. I never imagined to run into Third Sectuncle here.”

Master Wise Perfected sized up Menghuan, then said, “I never imagined First Brother would teach you the Soul Seeker Twelve. Is that girl in white also a Kunlun disciple?”

Yang Menghuan quickly pulled Miss Shen over to kowtow and took Master One Yang’s letters out from his robe and and presented them with both hands. “When Disciple bid farewell to Shifu, he gave Disciple these two letters and ordered me to deliver them personally Sectuncles. Everything is explained in detail in these letters, Junior Sectuncle, please look these over and you will know.”

Master Wise Perfected took the letters. Sure enough, it was Master One Yang’s handwriting. She couldn’t help but recall that time more than thirty years ago. Back then, Master Wise Perfected was still a young girl in her wonder years, caught between the infatuation of First Brother and Second Brother and finding it difficult to choose between them. After Shifu transcended the world and died, it should have been First Brother Master One Yang took take over the school, but Master One Yang could see how in love Second Brother was with Third Sister, unable to free himself. In order not to hurt the relationship between he and his junior sectbrother, he left a letter yielding the sectmaster position to his junior sectbrother, Master Jade Numen, and drifted away. He was gone for five years, during which time Master Jade Numen and Master Wise Perfected looked all over the place for him, from sky’s end to sea’s horn, but they could not find Master One Yang. Master Jade Numen had no choice but to comply with Senior Brother’s letter and pay homage before a portrait of the founder and take over as sectmaster. Who could foresee that in the second year after Master Jade Numen became sectmaster, Master One Yang would return to Three Clarities Palace on Gold Crest Peak on Mount Kunlun.