102 Swordcraft Practicing (2/2)

When one of them was attacking, another one would hide nearby to observe. They would offer their comments on the gesture, move, and speed of the attack to help each other make progress.

They found out many problems as they were practicing, and the first one was the difference between the sword and the saber.

In a letter, Zhang Ji elaborated the characteristics of the two weapons. The saber was heavier than the sword, and it could slice as well as stab, while the sword only specialized in stabbing targets. Besides, the way people stabbed with them was also different. When stabbing, a saberman would concentrate his strength on the blade, but a swordsman would distribute his strength all over his body. Therefore, saber skills were fierce and swordcrafts were agile. While there were both normal sabers and treasured sabers, there were only treasured swords.

In Zhang Ji's view, those ”steel sheets” used as decorations and in juggling and dancing could not be called swords.

The sabers in Golden Roc Fort were lighter than ordinary sabers, but still heavier than swords. Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus respectively whet a saber, thinning the back part and sharpening the point. They hid them away and never showed them to others unless during a killing.

After several assassinations, the two mastered the method of improving their speed in the swordbook. They also discovered that the method of transforming energy into strength could be applied to machete skills. To avoid being found, they applied the swordcraft to machete skills. Though the force would be weakened correspondingly, it could protect them from being suspected and help them deal with the next few monthly tests.

After each assassination, they did not touch the belongings of the corpses and just moved the bodies to the cliff. By leaving the boots and the socks of the dead there, they made the cliff a scene of a roc attack.

Those were real assassinations. They took great care in covering their tracks, attacked every other week, found good reasons to leave their Master Shifu, and often met the apprentices they were familiar with so that they could get alibis from them when necessary.

During nearly three months from the winter to the spring, they killed 12 people in total, six for each. Among the dead, there were servants with no martial arts, apprentices shopping for their masters, and even one real killer. But not even once had they been suspected of being involved. The black market ran as usual with the location moved inwards.

In his thirties, that killer was still serving his masters. Like the other people, he wore a night suit while he was hanging around the black market. The two teenagers thought he was an apprentice due to his short height.

Maid Lotus killed him with one stab. They did not realize that the man was a killer until they carried the body to the cliff and found his killer waist token when they were disguising the scene.

By that point, the two teenagers understood that they had made achievements in their swordcraft practice and there was no further need for them to practice inside the Fort.

When they were practicing, they were friends as well as teachers to each other. As for Zhang Ji, who helped them a lot, he would never know what kind of killers they had become under his guidance.

Focusing on ”killing”, Maid Lotus' killing intent became more obvious. Gu Shenwei saw an apprentice being scared stiff while talking to her. She changed so much that someone even compared her to Wildhorse.

Meanwhile, focusing on ”self-deconstruction”, Gu Shenwei's killing intent became weaker and weaker. Tie Hanfeng was confused and furious about his change. He criticized him as he usually did, hoping he could reignite Gu Shenwei's killing intent. It was not until Gu Shenwei successively killed his opponents with one stab in the monthly tests that Tie Hanfeng grudgingly accepted Gu Shenwei's change. After all, none of those opponents was weak.

”What happened to you? You were a natural killer who was as vicious as a dangerous dog. Sometimes even I was scared of you. But now, you're as spineless as a pug. Alas, I prefer to see the man you used to be.”

Tie Hanfeng repeated these again and again. He missed the apprentice in his memory.

After Maid Lotus had successfully killed a real killer, Gu Shenwei had thought about turning his aim to Tie Hanfeng. By killing Tie Hanfeng, he would be given the title of killer. But after several times of preparation, he eventually gave up because Tie Hanfeng was much better at kung fu than ordinary killers.

Gu Shenwei was anxious. He was eager to challenge a real killer to prove that his swordcraft was as good as Maid Lotus', and maybe even better than hers.

Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus decided to carry out the last assassination in the Fort.

They waited another seven days before they discovered a man who seemed to be a killer in the black market. This killer came late. After drinking several gulps of wine that he had bought, he peed at a wasted yard. When he came out, there was nobody around.

The killing went very well. Gu Shenwei stabbed the killer at the neck with his special ”sword”. Then the killer felt a mosquito bite, raising his hand to his neck, but he stopped dead in mid-motion. As he was falling down to the ground, Gu Shenwei caught his wine-gourd.

They finally mastered the swordcraft, but they had not reached the point of perfection. When they did, they would be able to kill before the victim had noticed anything.

As shown by a killer waist token on his body, the dead man was a real killer.

The accident occurred on the cliff at the end of Woodensaber Alley, where Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus were going to dump the dead killer.

What they did not know was that Golden Roc Fort had changed its tactics as the roc had not been caught during the last three months. Having analyzed the place and the time of the roc's attacks, someone had found out where the roc visited the most frequently and had set their traps there.

The cliff was an important place to set up traps because 12 people had been killed there by the roc. A few killers were hiding there, ready for the prey.