782 Spectators (2/2)
Dog Butcher spotted the contradiction yet he was too embarrassed to point it out. Old Man Mu angrily said, ”Right, I'm also crazy. So be careful. Some day when I'm in a terrible mood I might bite a chunk of meat off of your ass. Bah, off of your thigh, not ass.”
Dog Butcher giggled yet didn't say anything. His body involuntarily leaned to the side, trying to get further away from Old Man Mu.
The tangled battle lasted for about a quarter of an hour and both sides suffered casualties. It was at this moment that two more newcomers suddenly joined the fight.
Nobody knew when they had managed to maneuver their way in, but both of them were holding a narrow saber, and they had each found an adversary for themselves. As they fought, they gradually moved closer to the leaders of the two sides.
Luo Qibai had firmly gained the upper hand in the battle, and he was sparing some attention to observe the situation around him, so he was the first to notice that one of the men was acting suspiciously – that man was fighting with an opponent from the Heavenly Mountain Sect and yet he was not among those Luo Qibai knew.
”It was you who's been playing us!” Luo Qibai let out a yell and leaped besides the mysterious newcomer.
The two sneaky newcomers had extremely quick reflexes. They stopped attacking their current opponents and immediately turned to attack Luo Qibai, one from the front and the other from the back.
Li Tongsheng discovered that Luo Qibai was attacking the enemies of the Heavenly Mountain Sect. He was very surprised, but after hesitating for a short while, he pounced on the other newcomer and thrust out with a palm attack.
”Are they disciples of Waning Moon Hall?” Dog Butcher contemplated the two new men carefully even though he was unable to see their faces clearly.
”No,” Old Man Mu said positively. He was more familiar with the Waning Moon Hall than even the Dragon King. ”This is Golden Roc sabermanship, but… Son of a bitch! They're killers trained by the little bastard Wild Horse!”
Dog Butcher didn't even know whether Wild Horse was a man or an animal, but he knew one thing for sure. ”Their sabersmanship's just average.”
”Ha, give it a minute. They'll show you how men of the Western Regions fight.”
Dog Butcher became even more confused. In his view, the two newcomers would be defeated soon, and they might not be able to make it out alive.
It seemed that his speculation was about to come true - the sneaky newcomers parried with several consecutive saber attacks, and then turned and tried to escape towards the north. Their lightness skills were pretty good.
Luo Qibai pursued them closely and Li Tongsheng followed right behind. Both of the two leaders already knew that there was a third party playing them off of each other. Even though neither of the two had enough time to order their men to stop fighting, some of their men still noticed their leaders' movements and followed behind after disengaging.
The two sneaky newcomers leaped onto the wall of the courtyard. Luo Qibai was in the air less than five feet behind them, ready to launch an attack. Li Tongsheng was slightly further behind, yet he had already struck out with his palms, and the wind generated by them was so strong that the newcomers started quivering involuntarily.
Meanwhile, twenty to thirty men from the Central Plains and the Heavenly Mountain Sect had also leaped onto the wall. The targets would be solidly surrounded even if they managed to survive the palm attacks.
It was right at this instinct that Dog Butcher's speculation was proved wrong, and he finally saw with his own eyes what Old Man Mu called ”how men of the Western Regions fight.”
Abruptly, two figures shot upwards from the outside area of the wall like two frightened birds, only quicker.
One was holding a sword, and the other a saber, each of them having already killed a man on the wall. One move, one kill, all without excess movements.
”Ambush!” someone cried. More than thirty figures vanished from the wall at the same time.
Old Man Mu broke the window and rushed out without saying a word – on no account would he allow himself to miss such a fantastic show.
Dog Butcher had forgotten all about the Dragon King's suggestion to ”call the shots” long ago and he followed Old Man Mu without even thinking.
Most of the men on both sides were still fighting intensely in the courtyard and hadn't noticed the shift in the situation around them. Old Man Mu and Dog Butcher used their lightness skills to evade several people who were trying to obstruct them. They leaped onto the top of the wall and saw four bodies on the ground, all the others gone.
Old Man Mu looked around for a short while before pointing in a direction and saying, ”This way.”
The two old men sprinted out and soon lose their pursuers.
Without the leaders, the fighting continued for a long time and after both sides suffered heavy casualties, the surviving fighters stopped fighting, horrified. After retrieving some of their companions' bodies, they confusedly started searching for their respective leaders.
Old Man Mu, followed by Dog Butcher, was searching the circuitous streets and alleys. He was tracking the targets as if he were a bloodhound. Every couple of streets, they would find another one or two bodies on the ground, confirming that they were on the correct route. Obviously, the people ahead of them were fighting while running, and yet their moving speed were still amazingly fast.
Dog Butcher began to admire Old Man Mu. If he were Old Man Mu, he would have been completely bewildered by now.
The houses were growing sparser, and it had two or three miles that they saw the last body. Yet Old Man Mu kept progressing in a fixed direction without wavering.
Another two bodies appeared ahead, each holding a narrow saber – they were the two killers who had initially sneaked in.
Old Man Mu paused here for a short while, and soon Dog Butcher also figured out the direction of their targets: some noises rang out from a small hill not far away, where numerous crows were flying around disturbed on this quiet night.
Flocks of crows were circling in the sky, almost completely blocking out the moonlight. Under the shadows of the crows, a dozen figures were fighting fiercely, and each time someone went down, the cries of the crows grew even more excited.
Old Man Mu proceeded to a position about a dozen steps away from the battlefield, chased away the crows, leaned on a rock, and watched enraptured. The longer he watched, the more fascinated he became. Without turning his head around, he said in a low voice, ”Look, this is what you call swordsmanship. The Death Scripture, its name is even apter than the Grand Enlightenment Sword Sutra.”
Greatly thrilled by the fight, Dog Butcher asked a string of questions. ”Who is fighting with whom exactly? Is that the Dragon King in the middle? Should we help?”