Chapter 13 – A Silent Song for the Dead (1/2)
Chapter 13 – A Silent Song for the Dead
Part 1
April 18. Night.
As Ingot sat in Big Boss Tang’s luxurious abode dining on delicious food and alcohol, Xiao Jun also was eating. He sat at a roadside stall, illuminated by a single lamp, eating a dish egg and onion stir-fried in lard.
Everyone must eat, regardless of whether they want to or not. If you don’t eat, you die.
There are many things in the world like this, things you have to do whether you want to or not.
***
Xiao Jun was not a picky eater. As long as something was edible, he would eat it. Most of the time, he didn’t notice the flavor of the food, and often, he didn’t even know what it was he ate.
This was because he was unlike most people in the world. Usually, when people’s mouths are in motion, their brains are not.
But Xiao Jun was different.
When he ate, he would think of many things, many questions. Right now, he was thinking about a very strange question.
He couldn’t stop from thinking: “Why am I not dead?”
From the previous night up until this moment, he had thought about this question over and over again, because in truth, he should have been dead.
***
The second time the lanterns had simultaneously been extinguished at As You Wish Gambling Hall, he had been holding a master-crafted, refined steel short sword modeled after “Fish Intestines,” one foot three inches long. [1]
In that fleeting moment, his body had already flown forward approximately three and a half meters. Wu Tao’s throat should have been right there, in the same position as his sword. He had already calculated its precise distance and position.
His calculations were always extremely precise.
The speed of his movement and sword could not be matched by anyone.
Of course, the sword attack contained secondary elements. As it stabbed forth, the power of the sword suppressed the movements of everyone within a radius six meters.
He put all the power, knowledge, experience and skill of a lifetime into this attack.
But the sword was empty.
Everything within the range of the attack was empty, completely empty. There was nothing. No light, no ability, no reaction, no result, absolutely nothing.
In that moment, Xiao Jun felt as if he were falling off of a building hundreds of meters tall, straight into a state of complete despair, a state of absolute powerlessness.
The most frightening thing was…
His own power seemed to have been emptied. It was as if some incomprehensible, impossible to resist force had sucked him dry.
At that moment, even a child could have knocked him over.
He had never experienced such a feeling before.
He now knew that he had encountered an unprecedentedly fearsome opponent, someone more frightening than anything which could appear in a person’s worst nightmares.
Even more horrifying, he could sense that this person had already sent a fatal attack flying towards him.
He could not not resist or evade.
He had developed his power and skill for many years, had gained wisdom and experience through countless life-and-death battles. Yet suddenly, he had become empty, completely ineffective.
In that moment, there was only one thing he could do. Wait for death.
***
But he didn’t die.
As the fatal strike approached, its aura of death completely suppressed his movement and breathing, and he knew beyond a doubt that he would die. And then, suddenly, someone saved him. A hand saved him.
The hand was like wind, a wind from nowhere, a hand from nowhere.
The hand stretched out from an incomprehensible, mysterious direction to grasp his shoulder, filling him with impossible power.
His body flew into the air, avoiding the deadly attack.
When he descended, he had no idea of his position. The only thing he could hear was rushing wind coming from all directions.
—The sound of sleeves rustling, concealed weapons flying, blade edges slashing, and shouts and cries both miserable, shrill and horrific. [2]
No one could possibly describe the sounds he heard.
Unless you heard them with your own ears, you would have no way to imagine what they sounded like.
And if you did hear them, you would never be able to forget them for the rest of your life.
Xiao Jun felt himself about ready to vomit.
But he did not vomit. Because the sounds all suddenly ceased, and then three laughs rang out.
Everything became deathly still. The resplendent, brilliant, bustling hall had suddenly turned into a tomb.
Luckily, Xiao Jun’s heart still beat.
He could hear it: “thump, thump, thump.” It thumped for a long time, and then suddenly a flame bloomed to life in the darkness, a flame booklet.
The flame booklet was in Frogboy’s hand.
He sat in the same position as before. It seemed as if he had’t moved at all, or maybe couldn’t.
There was someone new next to him.
At some point, Old Master Tian had come to sit in the chair next to him. He sat there strumming a sanxian, a sanxian that produced no noise.
A noiseless sanxian, whose strings had been broken.
—A noiseless sanxian, and a fading old man; the sound of a noiseless sanxian is more desolate than any other sound in the world.
His fingers played the sound of a funeral song.
But the melody of the funeral sound could not be heard, because he never had any intention of letting anyone hear.
***
Frogboy lit a lantern, the one that Wu Tao had just moments ago grabbed down.
As the lantern light spread, he caught sight of Xiao Jun.
But Xiao Jun wasn’t looking at him. Xiao Ju was looking at the people on the ground.
Dai Tianchou, Tu Qu’e, and President Jin all lay on the ground, not breathing, their bodies growing cold.
Dai Tianchou’s Thirteen Officials Virgin kung fu, trained over the course of years and years, had been broken. Although, his Golden Iron Bell mail tunic, impervious to blades and spears, had not been broken.
But he bled. Blood streamed from a spot behind his left ear.
That area was his Achille’s heal, the only weak spot on his entire body, and also his greatest secret.
A person who practiced that type of kung fu would never reveal their Achille’s heal to anyone.
How could the secret have been known to the person who killed him?
***
The hall had previously been lit by one hundred and ninety-six lanterns, but now, it was lit by only one.
The gloomy light shone onto Xiao Jun’s face, as well as onto the faces of the eight bodies on the ground.
Other than the three just mentioned, five more corpses could be seen, four of whom Xiao Jun recognized. All of them were top experts of the martial world, including great heroes and great villains.
Every one of them had surely come to take someone’s life, but now their lives had been taken by that someone.
Every one had been killed by a single deadly blow, and all of their faces were twisted with horror.
None of them had ever imagined that they would die in such a tragic fashion.
Frogboy sighed.
“I was counting the whole time,” he said. “From the moment the lights went out until just now when I lit my flame booklet, I only was able to count from ‘one’ to ‘eighty-eight.’”
A kung fu which could take the lives of eight martial world experts in such a short time, was truly terrifying.
The killer had already departed.
Wu Tao had already departed.
A fatal blow, eight heroes dead, three laughs, then, away with the breeze. What kind of skill was this? What spirit?
Frogboy looked at Xiao Jun, then sighed.
“I’m only alive because of my father,” he said. “What about you? I had assumed you would be the first to die, how come you aren’t?”
***
That was the question Xiao Jun just couldn’t figure out the answer to.
—Why wasn’t he dead? Who had saved him? Why had that person saved him?