Book 53 Chapter 7 – Mountain and River Exhausted
Translator: Foxs' Wuxia
Dauntlessly Kou Zhong led his men in bitter struggle, advancing to the west, proceeding by a cun and pursuing by a chi. The officers and soldiers following him were collapsing continuously, all around were densely packed enemies, which they had no way of killing them all.
On his left side, Shang Xiongxin suddenly cried out in fear, he was thrown along with his warhorse rolling on the ground. What happened was due to its many injuries and excessive blood loss, finally the horse was not able to endure.
Kou Zhong cried, ‘Bad!’ inwardly, but he could spare the time to help, more than a dozen enemy troops immediately had Shang Xiongxin surrounded, saber, sword, lance and hatchet moved together, thereupon Shang Xiongxin was finished.
Watching this, Kou Zhong nearly split in anger; enraged, fast as lightning the Moon in the Well chopped, one after another the enemy riders fell down. It was like Kou Zhong was losing his mind, he only knew to charge forward to kill, disregarding his own body, he only wanted to hurt the enemy, to open up a bloody path from within the enemy ranks.
‘Dang!’
The Moon in the Well was jolted back forcefully by the other side, while at the same time he felt sharp pain on his back, boring into his heart. Automatically he generated reaction force, the long halberd originally stabbing the vital part on his back were swayed by the impact of his true qi and his body that it slipped to the side, dragging a deep, nearby to his bone – gash.
Kou Zhong came to his senses.
It was like he was waking up from a nightmare, only to find himself got stuck in another nightmare.
All around him was entirely the enemy’s malevolent, terrifying faces. Under the illumination of the torches, he was heavily surrounded by the enemy, none of his men were by his side, accompanying him. Sabers, swords, halberds, were coming incessantly to greet him from four sides, eight directions, while he was nearing the lantern-with-dried-up-oil stage.
The forest area on the eastern bank of the Luo River was just over a hundred steps away, but how many layers of enemy lay between them? How far could he charge out?
Someone ahead shouted loudly, “Kou Zhong! Your time of death has arrived! Let Laozi cut your bird head to set up meritorious deed.”
The Moon in the Well spun in a circle, blocking four or five weapons attacking him and sending them flying away. Focusing his attention to look, to his surprise, it was Yuwen Bao, the high-ranking military officer Li Yuanji’s trusted aide, no wonder he had the ability to block Kou Zhong’s saber strike. Moreover, the opponent’s long spear quickly came back, splitting the air and stabbing straight toward his face.
A thought welled up in Kou Zhong’s heart, which was that he must not die at this moment! He was about to raise his saber to parry, suddenly he discovered that his entire right arm went numb and lost its strength. As it turned out, when a sword grazed his shoulder just now, because his body had already received too many injuries, there was no usual feeling, it was by purely relying on the true qi protecting his body that the enemy’s sword did not go deeper to harm his muscles and bones.
When he was crying in his heart, ‘My life thus endeth!’ the opponent’s long spear unexpectedly split the air only a hairsbreadth above the top his head, while he continued falling down. His beloved horse Thousand-Li Dream collapsed to the left, while all around the enemy swarmed in, all kinds of weapons attacked him from above, to stab him and do everything they could to make him minced meat sauce.
Kou Zhong understood what happened; all along he has been using the man-and-horse-as-one technique to support his beloved horse’s life, therefore, although the Thousand-Li Dream suffered many injuries, it could still hold up to this point. However, just now his true qi stopped, he could no longer use his true qi to attend to the Thousand-Li Dream, thereupon his beloved horse could not go on, it was immediately killed on the spot.
He also recalled the tragic scene when Shan Xiongxin fell off his horse and met with a violent death just now. The sad call that the Thousand-Li Dream uttered just before its death was like calling him from another world. Fire of hatred was burning in Kou Zhong’s heart, his left palm pressed the ground, ‘Li!’ he cried, and flew forward, to avoid the seven, eight different kinds of weapons coming down at him, but also to move toward under Yuwen Bao’s horse’s belly.
Yuwen Bao was shocked; although Kou Zhong was blood-soaked from head to foot, with injuries everywhere, but if a centipede could be dead without showing no signs of rigor mortis, much less the Shaoshuai Kou Zhong, whose name shook the world? If he had just a bit more guts, staking everything, disregarding injury or death, striking his spear down, he would definitely be able to render great merit to Shimin, Yuanji by striking Kou Zhong to death. However, when he was occupying such an ultimate advantageous position, how could he be willing to take a risk? Unexpectedly he jumped away from his horse.
Kou Zhong cried inwardly, ‘Heaven helps me!’ Disregarding everything, he used all his remaining strength to push his back against the ground, and then using one hand and two legs he tightly clamped himself onto the horse’s belly. He also used the Moon in the Well to ruthlessly stab the horse’s buttock. Feeling the pain, the warhorse neighed and stood on its hind legs. From the horse’s belly, Kou Zhong secretly carried out the man-and-horse-as-one technique, Yuwen Bao’s mount immediately charged straight ahead.
The surrounding air thickened, as if it had substance, heavy like a boulder pressing down on his body. Forget about brandishing the sword to counterattack, even shaking his head or blinking his eye, such actions were difficult to do. It was as if his entire being has been ‘petrified’ by Yang Xuyan’s evil, strange and terrifying black-hand-demonic-power, which came from the ‘Yu Jin Wan Fa Gen Yuan Zhi Jing’.
While Ba Fenghan was shocked, Xu Ziling’s incantation arrived. Hearing it, Yang Xuyan was shaken; Ba Fenghan seized this instant to free himself from this demonic hand. This originally black-hand filling the heaven and earth changed back to a slowly slapping-down pitch-black palm.
‘Qiang!’
Xu Ziling soared into the air, his long lance clashed with Li Yuanji’s Splitting Horse Spear stabbing down from high up in the air.
Ba Fenghan’s Stealing the Heaven Sword poked up, it looked like it was about to pierce the hollow of Yang Xuyan’s palm!
Yang Xuyan laughed aloud, his palm returned to its original color, he pulled it back, while brandishing the Shadow Sword in his right hand down to parry the Stealing the Heaven Sword, creating another clear ringing noise, almost at the same time as Xu Ziling and Li Yuanji’s two spears clashing against each other; the sound intimidated the whole arena.
Ba Fenghan was hacked by Yang Xuyan that both the man and the sword were nearly thrown off the horseback. He cried, ‘Bad!’ inwardly, knowing that with his present condition of body weary, strength exhausted, he definitely would not be able to pass Yang Xuyan, this hurdle, who had been waiting at his ease for the exhausted enemy.
The Ten-thousand-li Spots let out a sad cry; under the enemy’s to kill people, one must kill the horse first – vicious attack, it met with a violent death.
High in the air, Xu Ziling’s blood was boiling over his beloved horse’s death, but time did not allow him to think too much. With a loud shout, he released spiraling energy, and launched another lance attack toward Li Yuanji.
Actually, high in the air, Li Yuanji’s true qi was already depleted, so that he had to set his foot on the ground to take a breathing, hence he intentionally did not evade Xu Ziling’s spear, but used his remaining power to brandish his spear to poke, while borrowing the impact force to carry out the thousand-catty-fall to drop down to the ground, with the intention of stabilizing his footing first before launching another round of violent attack.
Who would have thought that the way Xu Ziling applied his strength in this spear strike was so ingenious, unexpectedly, Li Yuanji, both the person and the spear, was poked and thrown faraway, while he himself borrowed the reaction force to move across, behind Ba Fenghan, while throwing the long lance toward Yang Xuyan’s face. “Fenghan!” he shouted loudly.
Ba Fenghan has been cooperating with him for a long time, naturally he understood what he meant. It could be said that this moment was their only chance to run away. If they let Li Yuanji and the other martial art masters surround them again, there was no doubt that they would die. Fiercely sucking in a mouthful of true qi, he sprang off the horseback.
Taklamakan collapsed to the ground. Only by entirely depending upon Ba Fenghan’s true qi did it manage to hold up to this moment; as soon as it lost its master’s support, immediately its remaining life was gone.
Carrying Ba Fenghan in his arm, Xu Ziling soared across the seven, eight zhang space above the enemy’s head in the direction of the dense forest.
Yang Xuyan’s Shadow Sword easily struck the long spear Xu Ziling threw at him aside, and then with astonishing speed, like a clump of light smoke, he overtook Xu Ziling and Ba Fenghan, who were only about two zhang away from the dense forest, and raised his palm to strike on Xu Ziling’s back.
Once again his hand turned into an evil, terrifying black color.
This was not the first time Xu Ziling encountered such a strange, evil demonic power. That day in the You Lin Xiao Gu, Xu Kaishan struck him across the stream, he only made the water of the stream become like ten thousand catties huge rock pressing down on him, but Yang Xuyan’s demonic power was obviously a notch better than Xu Kaishan’s.
Even in normal situation, at his best condition, blocking Yang Xuyan’s palm strike was not easy, much less in his dried-up-lantern stage right now.
Xu Ziling launched a backhanded palm strike.
‘Bang!’
Shocked by Xu Ziling’s strike, Yang Xuyan made a somersault in the air and fell to the ground, meanwhile, like a kite with cut string, Xu Ziling and Ba Fenghan were thrown into the forest.
The instant two palms collided, Xu Ziling’s sparkling-and-translucent-like-jade’s hand and Yang Xuyan’s pitch-black evil hand struck each other, apart from the two men involved, Ba Fenghan was the only one who understood what was going on.
Xu Ziling’s entire body shook severely, the enemy’s evil, yin and cold true qi, linked in countless ways, no hole remained unentered, invaded the meridians in Xu Ziling’s whole body. The muscle-weary-strength-exhausted Xu Ziling practically was unable to seal and block Yang Xuyan’s palm, which was the fusion between Shi Zhixuan’s demonic power and the ‘Yu Jin Wan Fa Gen Yuan Zhi Jing’, two great secret methods from inside and outside the Great Wall. Furthermore, it made Ba Fenghan both grateful and grieved. When counterattacking, he already made decision to sacrifice his life, to help him accomplishing his immutable aspiration, by concentrating all the barely remaining true qi in his body into the Treasured Vase Qi and released it from the hollow of his palm, creating a huge reaction force, not only to shoot down Yang Xuyan, but also to accelerate their momentum to enter the forest.
Blood seeped out of Xu Ziling’s eyes, ears and nose at the same time, he lost consciousness. All Ba Fenghan could do was to hold him tight in return, to exert himself to protect Xu Ziling’s heart meridian. The only thing in his mind was to run away as far as possible, to find a place where there was no enemy, and then try to save Xu Ziling with all his strength.
But how could the enemy be willing to let them get away?
In Ba Fenghan’s current condition, even if he was alone, he had no confidence he could outrun Yang Xuyan who knew Huan Mo Shenfa, not to mention he had to carry the close-to-death Xu Ziling.
Both feet stepped onto a tree trunk, he borrowed the elastic potential energy to catapult himself, carrying Xu Ziling along, to soar high into the air.
Behind him, he heard the sound of a wind gust, Yang Xuyan also rushed over high in the air.
A powerful determination grew in Ba Fenghan’s heart, he stirred up all his remaining strength to flee in the direction of Luo River.
The warhorse neighed miserably.
Kou Zhong woke up from a semi-conscious state, and found himself rolling down a slope. Before he figured out what was going on, suddenly his body was hanging in the air again, as he plummeted down. He discovered that at the end of the slope, unexpectedly there was a dangerous, steep cliff. With his current condition of excessive blood loss and weak, falling down from a dozen zhang or so height would be enough to have his body torn, his bones crushed.
While Kou Zhong cried inwardly that he would die an unjust death, ‘Splash!’ water splashed everywhere, unexpectedly he was falling into a deep rapid, which he did not know where it came from and where it flowed to. The flowing water spun and washed him out of the pool, along with a rapid waterfall, it threw him down into layer upon layer of turbulent stream.
Kou Zhong relaxed his limbs, he strived to gather whatever little true qi he still had, to circulate it and reconcile his breathing.
‘Splash!’
Flowing along another short waterfall, Kou Zhong fell into another pool at the bottom of a series of waterfalls. The water here was flowing slower. Opening his eyes, Kou Zhong saw that he was still inside a dense forest.
At the end of the pool was a brook meandering through the forest; it was extremely hidden.
Kou Zhong let the current carried him up and down for more than a dozen zhang, until his strength was recovered somewhat, and then he crawled up to the shore, before he really could not move anymore.
The sky was gradually turning bright.
The miserably long and dark night was finally over.
Ba Fenghan, with one hand carrying Xu Ziling, who lost his consciousness – by his waist, and the other hand holding the Stealing the Heaven Sword, flew down from an old tree, in the darkness before dawn, arriving at the eastern bank of the Luo River.
Far behind him, the pursuing troops were getting nearer, their torches flickered as they were moving in the forest. Yang Xuyan’s long laughter was heard, before he showed himself on top of an old tree. Laughing coldly, he said, “Ba Xiong is indeed out of the ordinary, unexpectedly you can escape to this place, this moment the two of you gave me some delight.”
Inwardly Ba Fenghan was proud of himself, he utilized the dense forest as his cover, many times he misled the enemies, confused the enemies, so that Yang Xuyan groped the wrong path, otherwise he would have been caught early on.
Ba Fenghan unleashed his skill of looking deep into himself; he knew that with his current condition, he practically did not have any qualification to decide life and death against Yang Xuyan, to say nothing of a large number of pursuing troops about to arrive; he was even less able to withstand. Thereupon he laughed aloud and said, “I hope Yang Xiong’s water skill is as good as your qinggong!”
Still standing on top of the old tree, Yang Xuyan pointed the Shadow Sword from a distance toward Ba Fenghan standing by the shore; laughing involuntarily, he said, “How could Xiaodi be unduly humble? Ba Xiong, please throw yourself into the river and see.”
Right this moment, they heard the sound of a boat on the river, a small boat shot out from the dark place on the opposite bank.
Stunned, Ba Fenghan and Yang Xuyan looked up.
A man was steering the boat to approach speedily, he shouted loudly, “Ba Xiong, get on the boat ...”
Yang Xuyan shouted angrily, the man and the sword became one, he glided down from the top of the tree, swiftly striking at Ba Fenghan on the edge of the shore.
Ba Fenghan shouted loudly, “Xibai Xiong arrived just in time!” His right hand returned the sword into its sheath, his left hand carried Xu Ziling under his armpit, he soared one step ahead toward Hou Xibai’s sailing-speedily small boat, and landed safely on the boat.
Yang Xuyan landed at the edge of the shore, he could only watch the boat rapidly sailed far away to the south, the murderous aura in his pair of eyes flared up greatly, but there was no way he would be able to catch up.
After regulating his breathing for nearly half a sichen, the true qi within Kou Zhong’s body gradually condensed, he recovered thirty-, forty-percent of his power. Thanks to the efficacy of the Long-Life Qi, more than a dozen wounds on his body, big and small, have more or less healed, but the excessive blood loss still made him feel weak.
However, this was not the problem; the problem was that both his confidence and willpower have suffer serious setback and blow. The resentment and helpless feeling of witnessing his men meeting with a violent death before his eyes one by one, the anxiety of not knowing whether the other brothers were alive or dead, these were the hard-to-express-and-to-resolve heavy burden in his heart.
He moved to the edge of the creek, kneeled down dejectedly, and plunged his head into the rapid flow of water; after drinking two mouthfuls of water, he pulled his head up. Looking at the reflection of his face in the water, he felt like crying bitterly, but he had no tears left to shed.
The sun sprinkled its light from among the forest tree, making his body felt warm, but his heart was as cold as ice and snow.
How did it all start, and how did it all end? How did he reach this stage?
The breaking-out-the-siege battle was a complete failure, Li Shimin destroyed and crushed his main forces with brilliant strategy.
Ever since he decided to contend for hegemony over the world, this was the first time that he thought of regret. If Ba Fenghan, Xu Ziling, and the rest of his men all died in battle, how would he face this cruel fact? As for Song Que’s expectation, Pengliang’s Shao Shuai Army, this moment it all felt distant and unrealistic, he no longer had either the mood or the energy to take them into consideration.
There was a sound of flapping wings overhead.
Kou Zhong, in his near-numb mental state – immediately reacted. Looking up in horror, Wuming dove down and landed on his shoulder. She rubbed his hair with her eagle beak to show her affection and that she missed him.
The hot tears that Kou Zhong painstakingly held up finally burst out of his eye sockets.
Wuming soared into the air again, she circled above his head.
Kou Zhong shivered inwardly, a faint hope grew in his heart. Could it be that Wuming wanted to lead him somewhere?
Under Hou Xibai’s control, the small boat swiftly sailed toward the southern end of the Luo River. Xu Ziling was lying on the bow, with Ba Fenghan working hard to treat his injury using his true qi.
“How’s Ziling’s condition?” Hou Xibai asked anxiously.
Ba Fenghan let go of his hands pressing tightly on Xu Ziling’s hands, his gaze was fixed to the front, he spoke in heavy voice, “If I don’t kill Yang Xuyan, I swear I am not a human.”
Severely shaken, Hou Xibai blurted out, “Ziling!”
Ba Fenghan sighed and said, “Nothing to worry about Ziling’s life yet, however, his internal injury is so serious that I am afraid it will never be fully healed. Depending on his good luck, I hope with his own fresh and pure true qi, he will be able to create a miracle for himself.”
Staring blankly, Hou Xibai asked, “How serious is it?”
Ba Fenghan replied, “Yang Xuyan’s black-hand-evil-power, overbearingly pressing and malicious, invaded Ziling’s five viscera and six bowels, as well as his eight extraordinary channels, which makes me unable to expel. Ay! How did you arrive so timely in this critical moment of life and death and help us?”
Hou Xibai replied, “I went to Liangdu to look for you guys, and found out that you were still in Luoyang, thereupon I immediately rushed over, but came upon Shen Luoyang on the way, and obtained information about the situation from her. Waiting for an opportunity in advance on Luo River was precisely her plan, only because it is not suitable for her to show herself, I came alone to come to your rescue.”
Ba Fenghan suddenly understood; no wonder Hou Xibai came so timely.
Muttering to oneself irresolutely for a moment, Hou Xibai said, “There is one person in the world who can heal Ziling’s internal injury.”
Greatly delighted, Ba Fenghan asked, “Who?”
“Precisely Shi Qingxuan,” Hou Xibai replied, “She has received her mother’s authentic teaching in the art of healing, plus she is deeply familiar with Shi Zhixuan’s demonic power, only she has a way to harmonize and regulate Ziling’s internal injury. Fortunately Ziling has told me the place she is currently living in seclusion. It is only about ten days journey from here, I am going to immediately send Ziling there.”
Delighted, Ba Fenghan said, “I am coming with you.”
Shaking his head, Hou Xibai said, “Leave this matter to me. Ba Xiong need to find a way to look for Kou Zhong, and then you guys rush over to meet with us.”
Ba Fenghan nodded and said, “As long as Kou Zhong is not dead, I will definitely find him. Xibai must be careful in everything, based on Yang Xuyan and Li Yuanji’s conduct, they will definitely not let you get away.”
Hou Xibai laughed aloud and said, “If they want to harm Ziling, they must ask my Fan of Beauty first.”
Ba Fenghan rose to his full height, he let a long whistle, and flew toward the left bank, and in the blink of an eye disappeared into the forest.