Book 15 Chapter 11 – Beating the Enemy at Their Own Game
The sun’s last twilight disappeared on the western horizon. The city of Luoyang was ablaze with light. The ships and boats moored along the river looked like a coiling dragon of lights stretching continuously along the banks.
Perhaps it was because of the rain earlier, but the night sky was especially clear that the light appeared particularly bright, and the air was fresh and clean.
Although there were still people unloading cargo under the lantern light, most of the waterfront area was blanketed in tranquility that came after the busyness of the day.
The sound of hoof beats broke the quietness of the night. Several horses and one carriage were speeding along the river. Arriving at one of the piers, the riders reined their horses.
One of them pursed his lips to let out a whistle; obviously he was calling the friends on the boat moored at that dock.
Kou Zhong, who was closely watching this particular area, spoke cheerfully, “Xiao Ling, our old friend is here! Unexpectedly in time like this we still bump into acquaintances.”
Xu Ziling took a glance, and was stunned, “Isn’t that Dugu Ce?” he asked.
Song Shidao said, “The man on his left is known as the ‘Mad Scholar of Henan’, Zheng Shiru, who has quite a reputation. The rest are descendants and disciples of local famous schools and influential families.”
Kou Zhong was dumbstruck. “Turns out it’s him,” he said, “I knew his voice well, but this is the first time I see his appearance.”
That day he was hiding inside the painting cabinet, eavesdropping the discussion between Li Mi and his men, and Qian Duguan, who was reaching out to him [see Book 12 Chapter 1]; unexpectedly today he was finally able to see his real ‘Mount Lu’s face and eyes’.
This martial art master, who was known for both his madness and wisdom, wore a rather out-of-place attire; outside his scholar attire, he wore a set of warrior overalls complete with a cape.
His age seemed to be around thirty, with square-ish, bulky and wild appearance. On the looks department, he was not bad. Except for his goatee, the hair on his head was unkempt, exuding some kind of don’t-care-about-appearance charm.
“Why would he hang around Dugu Ce?” Ba Fenghan wondered.
Xu Ziling commented, “Looking at Dugu Ce’s expression, he does not seem to know that his uncle was murdered.”
While the four men, from their higher vantage point, were discussing and pointing at the people below, like a spiraling wisp of smoke an outstanding beauty [orig. national grace, divine fragrance] appeared from the ship’s cabin; merely her looks and gait were enough to move and weakened the men’s heart.
Two pretty maids followed behind her walking off the ship.
Ba Fenghan and Xu Ziling looked at each other, and then both men blurted out together, “Bai Qing’er!” [ibid.]
Surprisingly it was Qian Duguan’s beloved concubine Bai Qing’er. Earlier, from her disposition, which was similar to Wanwan’s, Ba Fenghan made a deduction that she was a Yin Gui Pai’s female demon.
As soon as Bai Qing’er entered the carriage, Dugu Ce, Zheng Shiru, and the others immediately thronged around the carriage, and then with a mighty roar they left.
Seeing the maids returning to the ship, Ba Fenghan was shaken, “What a close call! We nearly made the mistake of jumping into the wrong vehicle.”
Kou Zhong and Song Shidao looked at him in bewilderment.
Xu Ziling nodded and said, “This ship is the real thing [orig. the Son of Heaven receiving true command; but I don’t think in this context it refers to the Emperor].”
Bai Qing’er’s ship was several hundred paces apart from the three suspicious ships, with more than a dozen ships and boats moored in between. Supposing Bai Qing’er was indeed Yin Gui Pai’s female demon, this arrangement could not possibly be coincidental.
Ba Fenghan briefly explained, “As a matter of fact, all along my heart has been uneasy, because those three ships moored together like that is indeed too conspicuous, so unlike Yin Gui Pai’s usual style. Now I am certain that those three ships are empty. They must be Yin Gui Pai’s carefully laid out trap, to see whether someone would actually fall into it. Or perhaps the trap is set up for us.”
Song Shidao’s heart was moved; he said, “We might as well try to beat them at their own game; perhaps it will be wonderfully effective instead.”
Ba Fenghan laughed and said, “If Yin Gui Pai found out that we can infer so many things from Bai Qing’er, they would surely be very upset. Brothers! It’s action time! Maybe we’ll even have enough time to catch a good show as well.”
※ ※ ※
Ba Fenghan and Xu Ziling sat on a fast boat that was nimbly weaving across the water in between the boats; they seemed to know exactly where they were going.
These days, in order to push Wang Shichong to act against Li Mi, Kou Zhong was so busy that he did not have time to spare. The remaining two would need to act as circumstances dictate; so now only two men went into action, which would not provoke the enemy’s vigilance.
Moreover, without Kou Zhong, their strength weakened, which would make it easier to lure the enemy into making their move at them.
Frowning, Ba Fenghan said, “Yin Gui Pai people are surely as cunning as a fox; they have avoided the river, and still playing this kind of trick? If we were not lucky, we would definitely fall into their trap.”
“Are we going to charge aboard?” Xu Ziling asked, “All three ships are without any light. Simply this fact is enough to make it so noticeable. At least it will attract thieves; now is not the time of peace and prosperity.”
Ba Fenghan laughed and said, “If we charged randomly anywhere in Luoyang, there is a possibility we might come across a martial art master. The tactful people are all lying low until the fuss dies down, nobody dares to make any move at this time. Uh, we are here! Just straight ahead. Let’s proceed, while acting cautious and solemn!”
Suddenly lowering his voice, Xu Ziling said, “Someone is watching us over there.”
Pressing down the urge to move toward Bai Qing’er’s luxurious ship, Ba Fenghan said delightedly, “That is the best! Let’s go up and smash around the ship a bit, see if they react. If no Yin Gui Pai people make appearance, that would mean they do not have enough strength in their ship to fight against us. As long as Junyu is really on board, we will rescue her immediately.”
Finished speaking, he rose up to his full height.
The three-mast ship ahead was looming larger and larger.
Pulling the oar, Xu Ziling also stood up.
Ba Fenghan gave the signal. Both men soared up at the same time, leaving the small boat behind, and as light as floating feather they landed on the deck on the bow, in front of the cabin.
The two pretended to act quickly; they broke the door and entered in, and then rushed into one of the cabins, just in time to look at Ba Qing’er’s big ship through the window.
They saw shadows flashing on the ship; about seven or eight people soared and leaped from ship to ship, coming swiftly in their direction. As the shadows were coming nearer, from their shape it appeared that the majority of them were women. The two men smirked inwardly, since their tactic of luring the tigers out of their mountain seemed to be working.
From the incoming people, Xu Ziling recognized one of them as the Yin Fa Yan Mei ‘Silver-haired Amorous Demon’ Dan Mei [in Book 9 Chapter 1, it was Yin Fa Mo Nu (Silver-haired Demoness)]. He spoke heavily, “Although there is no Zhu Yuyan or Wanwan, even Bian Bufu is not one of them, they are still coming with torrential momentum as if they are determined to destroy us. There must be two or three senior-level martial art masters from Yin Gui Pai, who arrived here just recently.”
Murderous aura was flashing continuously in Ba Fenghan’s eyes; he spoke calmly, “We are absolutely not going to be lenient. One less Yin Gui Pai demon on the earth means less people will be harmed by them. Let’s have them taste the hidden capability of the Jade Annulus of He Clan!”
Six women and two men, with ghost-like shenfa [motion in martial art], landed on the deck. One of the women was particularly tall; her long, luscious hair was draped loosely on her back, its length reached her butt, jet-black and shiny, extremely captivating.
Her beauty was not far behind Wanwan, her skin was fairer than the snow, her eyebrows deep black, her eyes bluish-green, her cheeks like a pair of peaches in the springtime. No matter how you look at her, she could not be more than twenty-five years old.
The pupils of her eye were like rippling water full of unbounded affection, her gaze hooked the spirit and absorbed the soul, with a hundred charms and a thousand enchantments.
Among the incoming people, this woman’s rank was obviously the highest, because as soon as she signaled with her hand, the other five women, including Dan Mei, spread out immediately. Some leaped onto the cabin’s roof, while others moved toward the stern, to guard all strategic points.
The two men remained standing behind the woman, one on her left the other on her right; both looked dignified and handsome, their age could not be more than thirty. Both had a long saber hanging on their backs; they looked quite imposing.
From inside the pitch-black cabin, Ba Fenghan stepped out, upright and unafraid. With his hands behind his back, he spoke coldly, “Where’s Zhu Yuyan? Why did she only send some minions to throw away their lives?”
A look of surprise, which quickly went away, flitted across the woman’s face. Evidently her intelligence was extraordinary; from Ba Fenghan’s cold and calm appearance, she knew the situation was not at all ordinary. Also, even though Ba Fenghan was looking down at her, she was not angry; instead, she smiled sweetly. After showing off her seductive appearance, from her slightly opened vermillion lips her soft voice came out, “When I made my debut in Jianghu, I am afraid you were still learning how to talk. Therefore, you not knowing that I am Wen Caiting would make more sense.”
Ba Fenghan smiled slightly, his eyes swept the two men standing behind her; he saw the jealous expression on their faces. His heart moved, he said, “Since you have your gigolos following you to serve you left and right, your position in Yin Gui Pai must not be low. Therefore, before we fight, there is favor Ol’ Ba wants to ask you; would you, Senior, please tell it to Zhu Zongzhu [head of a clan]?”
Although Wen Caiting was a crafty, hundred-scheme, person, she was caught off guard by his switch of demeanor from arrogance to deference; she was even at a loss of trying to guess what he wanted to say.
The Mo Gong [devil skill] cultivation path she took was different from Zhu Yuyan and Wanwan; she was specializing in ‘mei gong huan shu’ [lit. charming skill fantasy method]. Usually, when men looked at her, they would be enchanted by her that they would forget everything, and than she would seize that opportunity to ruthlessly take the opponents’ life. It has never failed.
But Ba Fenghan’s will was as strong and solid as a rock; he was not in the least bit falling under the influence of her charm.
Wen Caiting lightly hook her hair; the movement was subtle, but her posture was very pleasing to the eye, making people felt that her charm was increasing infinitely, so that they could not refrain themselves from pulling her into their embrace, and showing her their unrestraint affection.
Very faintly she let out a sigh, and then said, “Why can’t we just sit down together and talk about it?”
The tone of her voice revealed some kind of pure, seemingly evolved from heartfelt, sincere feeling; it was so gentle and considerate to others’ need. Her demeanor was so suave and pleasant. Unless the opposite party was a man with the heart of stone, how could he not be moved by her?
The two men behind her already showed signs that their jealousy has grown beyond their control.
Ba Fenghan was still completely unmoved by her; he spoke word-byword, “Please tell Zhu Zongzhu, we already rescued Fu Junyu; you have fallen into the trap!”
Even with her level of cultivation, Wen Caiting still could not stop her countenance from changing.
‘Qiang!’
Right the moment her mind differed from its usual state, Ba Fenghan pulled his sword from its sheath, turning it into a long rainbow lashing toward this senior-level Mei Gong [charming skill/power] martial art master of Yin Gui Pai.
Actually, from the moment Ba Fenghan stepped out of the cabin door, the two have formally started the battle.
It could be said that Ba Fenghan grew up in the battlefield; in terms of insight and experience, he was incomparably rich. Just in one glance he was able to tell that this seemingly young woman with jade appearance was actually the Devil School senior figure martial art master of Zhu Yuyan’s generation; her Mo Gong [devil skill/power] was very deep.
Fighting under normal circumstances, victory and defeat would be difficult to guess. What’s more, the opponent still had seven martial art masters accompanying her; although their martial art skill was under Wen Caiting’s level, they should not be underestimated. Especially under Wen Caiting, this kind of cunning, sinister and deceitful female demon head’s leadership, it would be difficult for him plus Xu Ziling to get the desired outcome. Therefore, he must inflict serious damage to Wen Caiting first using the ten-thousand-catty-thunderbolt momentum, so that the many-men-with-great-force enemies could not unleash their true power.
From the two men’s jealous look, he was able to infer that Wen Caiting has not fought with anybody for quite a long time; if they frequently saw it, they would not be irritated and displeased in seeing Wen Caiting was unleashing her Mei Gong against him.
Hence the reason he resorted to everything he could think of to make her showing off her unfathomable interest, and then mentioned Fu Junyu to disturb her mind, before making the first move.
The two men roared in anger, drew their sabers and charged forward to meet Ba Fenghan’s attack head-on. But they were a fraction of a second too late.
It was the first time that Wen Caiting came across a man without the slightest amount of tender, protective feelings for the fairer sex, who was able to act in such a vicious manner to attack her. The worst part was that it suddenly dawned on her that she has changed from being the hunter to become the prey. This kind of sudden change, plus the feeling of uselessness, made her heart even more scattered and her mind slackened, it made it more difficult to her to unleash her usual level of power.
Ba Fenghan’s hacking sword appeared deceptively simple, but it has, actually, reached the highly-skillful-appeared-to-be-clumsy realm; it has completely sealed her counterattack, as well as her retreat, paths. The changes hidden within it has made her unable to see and understood its head or tail.
However, on the surface she was still smiling coyly, without revealing the horror in her heart the least bit. Her delicate hand slightly waved, she revealed a dagger, resplendent in golden light. Her body floated, the golden blade appeared to be attacking, yet it was not really attacking, making the opponent completely unable to fathom whether she was going to strike hard at the opponent with the sharp tip of her blade, or she was going flash back to evade.
‘Bang!’
At the same time, crashed through the ceiling of the cabin roof, and flew above the four women guarding the top of the cabin. In an instant his palms struck four times, separately attacked the four enemies.
On two different fronts, the two battles have begun.
‘Ding!’
Wen Caiting’s golden dagger poked the edge of Ba Fenghan’s sword. Her tender body was severely shaken; she pulled back abruptly.
This move has already been anticipated by Ba Fenghan.
He had seen through Wen Caiting, this kind of female devil head; her natural disposition was ‘everything for self and selfish profit’, she would gladly sacrifice others for her own success.
But she was more brilliant than he thought. Just now, her amazing lower body shenfa has already reached perfection; even he felt it hard to pin down, so that although he had gained the upper hand, it was difficult to carry out the momentum, hence he lost the good fortune of making her suffer losses.
Two streaks of blade separately came from his left and right, blocking the path of his attack toward Wen Caiting.
On the cabin’s roof, the four women were all Yin Gui Pai’s new generation of martial art masters; each one was beautiful and captivating.
They were just about to go down to besiege Ba Fenghan, when suddenly they were stuck inside Xu Ziling’s powerfully dense cold, incomparably bizarre, spiraling palm wind. They could not even take care of themselves, so they could forget about paying attention to the battle situation on the deck.
This moment Dan Mei was rushing forward from the stern.
Enemies met, it was beyond furious; without saying a word she simply joined the melee, attacking Xu Ziling with killer move.
On the deck below, Ba Fenghan suddenly withdrew.
By the time the two men’s saber qi rose up dramatically, Ba Fenghan suddenly dashed forward, charging toward the gap between the two blades.
This kind of change, aside from magical footwork, it also required the perfect match of the true qi and the changes of the blade path; it absolutely defied common sense.
Before obtaining the extraordinary capability of the Jade Annulus of He Clan, perhaps by exerting himself Ba Fenghan would be able to accomplish. But there was no way he could do it in such a natural and rapid way like he did just now. The two men were immediately caught in dangerous situation.
When martial art masters exchanged blows, they put emphasis on judgment.
The two sabers hit empty air.
Letting out a cold snort, Ba Fenghan moved his Beheading Mystery Sword at lightning speed, chopping down on the devil man on the right, while his shoulder crashed onto the man on the left’s chest and flank.
In the eyes of outsiders, his body only moved a little, but his shenfa was fast and nimble beyond believe.
The devil man on the left screamed; bumped by his shoulder he fell headlong about a zhang forward, dropped out of the deck and down into the river below.
The other man screamed. Under the flash of the sword, he dropped down tragically and was no longer able to budge.
Ba Fenghan seemed like he never stopped; the Beheading Mystery Sword in his hand turned into a ball of sword shadow, following his mysterious, strange and profound footwork, pursuing and attacking Wen Caiting.
Wen Caiting had never expected that her two men could not even block one move from Ba Fenghan, while the opponent still had enough power to seize the victory, and it kept increasing without letup. Even from a distance of ten paces, his astonishing sword qi assaulted her that she felt as if she was inside an icehouse, so cold that it felt as if her blood was freezing.
She was well aware that in the qi and momentum contest, she already failed and was wiped over the floor; hence she did not dare to show off. Letting out a shrill whistle, she met Ba Fenghan three feigned stabs, before floating backward and in graceful posture she landed on the deck of the neighboring ship.
Their shout, as well as the sound of battle, had already alarmed the people on the adjacent ships, but everybody was only peeking out their cabin’s window, some even managed to extinguish their lantern, for fear of getting implicated [orig. bringing disaster to the fish in the moat].
Ba Fenghan brandished his sword to block the three sword qi being shot by her. Inwardly he was quite astonished. Letting out a long laugh, he said, “Please forgive Wanbei [junior, younger generation] for not sending you off!”
Wen Caiting let out a tender humph, her eyes shot incomparably venomous sharp look; without a word she turned around and flashed away toward Bai Qing’er’s ship.
Returning the sword into its sheath, Ba Fenghan turned his gaze toward the cabin’s roof.
With his hands folded in front of his chest, Xu Ziling smiled and said, “How’s the battle this time?”
When Dan Mei and the bunch of female demons heard Wen Caiting’s sharp whistle, they immediately dispersed and ran away. In his cheerful mood, Xu Ziling did not wish to give them trouble. The fact was that, with multitude enemies, few friends [this is actually an idiom from Mencius], Xu Ziling did not stand too much of a chance.
Shaking his head, Ba Fenghan replied, “Not delightful enough. I hope Qu Ao will not let me down!”