60 Chaos in Changsan (1/2)
Chapter 60: Chaos in Chang'an
Translator: TransnEditor: Transn
The five sword blades returned to the Abundant Sword. The fine drizzle within the courtyard of the Chao Mansion seemed more anxious, as if an additional invisible sun hung in the night sky. The rainwater near the Rain-savoring Building unexpectedly began to turn into white smog.
The sword seemed not so much like the Abundant Sword for its innumerable swords contained extremely sharp blades. Chao Xiaoshu gazed at the Rain-savoring Building. With his powerful consciousness, he made the thin cyan-steel sword attack the copper bowl. Then he retracted it at lightning speed, and once again stabbed at a higher speed, thus several hundreds of swords were stabbing in an instant!
Swords stabbed continuously, much faster than a woodpecker pecking a tree, at the central position of the copper bowl, making terrifying ”Tuk Tuk” sounds. No intermittence could be heard between the sounds due to the high frequency in which the sword was stabbing. As a result, the people in the courtyard could only hear the prolonged sound of a muffled strike!
He is losing it! Get close and kill him!”
Shouting in a stern voice, the leader of the Tang troop, was watching Chao Xiaoshu sitting cross-legged in the rain, noticing that his face was becoming paler and paler. At this point, these soldiers needed no discipline or glory to support their actions. They were very clear that they had to kill Chao Xiaoshu immediately. Otherwise, if the thin sword broke open the copper bowl, killing the sadhu from Yuelun Kingdom, they would have no chance of killing their opponent. Or more accurately, they would also die.
A thick rain of crossbows shot out again, and several agile and fierce forms made an attack. This time the elite troop of Tang seemed even more resolute and intrepid, a feeling compelled by their despair.
They had not been able to get close to Chao Xiaoshu's body to kill this fearful Great Sword Master yet. Someone was always standing in front of him.
Ning Que moved incessantly on the blue flagstone accumulating the rain, not nimbly but heavily. The spray splashed every time his boots hit the ground, or when his blade killed a soldier of the elite troop of Tang.
Chao Xiaoshu sat cross-legged in the heavy rain, seemingly entrusting his life completely to him. So, Ning Que all alone defended Chao Xiaoshu by sticking to him, turning himself and the podao in his hand into a net.
Ning Que cut the knee of a Tang soldier by bending back his right elbow, dropping his blade, and then popping his left foot like a flying rock. He kicked at the pudendum of another soldier firmly before drawing out his podao. His two hands grasping the slender hilt, and revolving it once, the blade rose upwards from the bottom, and cut open the belly of a third Tang soldier. Another shadow pounced over violently. He twisted his waist from half-squatting on the floor and scratched firmly with the podao in a single hand, breaking apart several calves as the light of the podao burst out.
His black face mask had long been dampened by the rain, with his gasping being accompanied by a bit of moisture. But the facial features exposed outside of the mask were as calm as before, seemingly even a bit impassible. He acted extremely simply, but had an abnormally astonishing lethal effect, such that the violent elite troop of Tang was cut down and trodden on, utterly routed like blocks of wood under his podao.
No matter how dense the rain of bolts fired or how cold the light of blades shone, he stood in front of Chao Xiaoshu, without retreating a step! Even if his shoulders were abraded by the bolts and his legs lacerated by the blades, he did not retreat even half a step!
An extremely rugged bang came from the Rain-savoring Building, as if an iron pan had smashed into bricks. The copper bowl in front of the sadhu had finally shattered into pieces by thousands of swords!
The rice farmer's hat on top of the sadhu's head cracked along with the breakage of the copper bowl. A resolute complexion flashed on his swarthy face. His mudras changed irregularly once again. The prayer beads that had been defending him stopped rotating, and abruptly became a black serpent, entangling the thin cyan-steel sword toward his face, making the power of the sword pause temporarily.
Chao Xiaoshu looked at the building silently, and with his right hand scratching the accumulated water beside him, he held a handful of rainwater and sprinkled it in front of him. The thin cyan-steel sword within the Rain-savoring Building began to vibrate and buzz suddenly, like a dragon about to break through the clouds, thrusting forward, tough and ceaseless!
The soybean-sized raindrops fell onto the blue flagstone, uttering a light ”Pa Pa” sound. New branches torn off by the wind also made the same sound on the Rain-savoring Building. Suddenly, the beads surrounding the sword burst forth in every direction!
The sadhu bitterly forced a smile and closed his eyes. The cyan-steel sword whistled, penetrating over a hundred shots of prayer beads. It stabbed deeply into the center of his dark brow, resulting in the slow seepage of his blood. His anguished smile thus froze.
At the main entrance of the Chao Mansion, Ning Que saw the enemies not far off, and slowly pulled his podao out from the chest of a Tang soldier.
”Ta-dah, Ta-dah!” The broken prayer beads bumped against the walls and the beam columns, and then fell onto the timber floors.
The living elite troop of Tang felt deeply hopeless at the sight of the smiling middle-aged man sitting cross-legged and the masked man who stood silently in the heavy rain.
The sound of a carriage came from an alley.
Chao Xiaoshu's brow rose slowly.
…
…
In the Southern City of Chang'an, Lord Meng’s most lucrative Star-Picking Casino was in ruins. The smashed gambling devices were thrown all over the street. The chips, ordinarily representing silver coins, were soaked in filthy rainwater which no one dared to pick out. Along the road, his female family members and children were found weeping and wailing. They surrounded the chief steward and more than ten guards of the gambling house, but no one dared to curse at those damnable assailants with a word or even appear to be hateful.
More than 40 gangsters of Spring Breeze Pavilion, with black clothing and black boots, stood indifferently all around to keep order, and simultaneously, declared their garrison to all the people in Southern City. At the very front of the crowd, Qi IV received a blue handkerchief from his subordinate. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with no expression of exultance or arrogance on his face, only anxiety and discomposure. He knew that even though the Fish-dragon Gang had taken the advantage tonight by invading many territories, Big Brother was alone facing the ambush of those powerful enemies at Spring Breeze Pavilion with no one else on his side.