Mingde, Part One

Mingde Temple lay south of Feiye City, nestled amid mountain forests, with an endless sea of trees and mountains stretching behind it.

Only one mountain path wound its way to the Great Gate.

At this time, the setting sun hung low, its red light spread across the land.

A sparse handful of worshippers before the temple gates were leaving.

It was already afternoon, and few came to burn incense at this hour.

Because the night in the wild was far more dangerous than the day.

At the mountain gate of Mingde Temple stood a tall, brawny youth.

The youth wore dark green hemp clothes, a large conical hat on his head, and a crude short saber at his waist as he briskly approached the mountain gate.

His features were ordinary, yet his eyes were bright. One glance was enough to tell he was not from some ordinary family suffering from malnutrition.

But who could have imagined that several months ago, he had still been a skinny, scrawny bean-sprout of a boy, weak as could be.

The youth was Wei He, who had slipped away from the group when the opportunity arose.

He had raced all the way here and spent no small amount of effort before reaching Mingde Temple in such a short time.

Step by step, he climbed the gray stone stairs and soon arrived before a broad temple with yellow tiles and red walls.

On the plaque above the temple's main gate were three large characters in red on a black background: Mingde Temple.

Two young novice monks were sweeping fallen leaves outside with brooms, gathering them into a pile.

Standing outside, Wei He looked within. Beyond the Door was a vast courtyard, where a black incense burner wide enough for two people to embrace stood slowly burning a great bundle of incense sticks.

Thin wisps of smoke drifted from the incense, which seemed nearly burned out.

Just then, two worshippers arrived together, crossed through the temple gate, and entered the courtyard.

They bowed toward the incense burner, offered their respects, then entered a side hall.

Wei He did not follow them through the Door. Instead, he turned left and wandered around the temple wall toward the forest.

The two novice monks continued sweeping as they whispered to each other, paying no attention whatsoever to his movements.

Wei He made a full circuit around Mingde Temple and found that the temple had been renovated quite recently. Many places looked as though construction had only just been completed.

Even the novice monks' robes were finely made. Clearly, the temple was not short of money.

When he returned to the temple's main gate, Wei He was just about to enter.

But he happened to see a small squad of soldiers emerge from within the Great Gate.

Every one of these soldiers was broad-waisted and thick-armed, with tall, powerful builds. They wore standardized black leather armor and broad-backed sabers in sheaths at their waists. Their movements were swift and disciplined, clearly well trained.

Six soldiers filed out in single file, guarding a pair of women in their midst.

Of the two women, one wore a green skirt and red shoes, her hair tied in twin maiden buns. She followed the other woman step by step, clearly a maidservant of some sort.

The other woman wore a white veil. Her black hair draped over her shoulders, and silver ornaments could faintly be seen glimmering amid her strands.

Even behind her veil, the gentle and courteous air revealed in her eyes made Wei He unable to stop himself from looking at her a few more times.

From afar, the central woman surrounded by the soldiers wore a spotless white dress, without a speck of dust upon it. One could tell at a glance that someone at home regularly washed her clothes for her.

Otherwise, no one could keep their clothing this clean at all times.

Wei He sighed inwardly. In this ancient age without washing machines, anyone who could maintain this degree of cleanliness had to come from an extraordinary background.

And those soldiers...

He turned his attention to the six soldiers guarding the woman.

Each soldier's leather armor bore the character Hong. The character was not large, but it was exceptionally clear and deeply engraved.

Soon, escorted by the soldiers, the women descended the mountain along the stone stairs. They gradually moved farther away and vanished into the dense forest.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. The private soldiers of Hong Family Fort are clearly nothing like ordinary men. They truly are extraordinary," a worshipper could not help murmuring in praise.

"They are supplied with fine rice and meat every day. I hear Hong Family Fort even teaches its private soldiers External Martial Arts internally for training. With conditions like that, even a piece of trash could be piled into an elite soldier," another man sighed, stroking his beard.

"Isn't that just an elite force built up alive with money? These days, the garrison soldiers are skinny and weak, yet Hong Family Fort secretly maintains such powerful private soldiers. What exactly are they plotting...?"

The worshippers who could still be out and about at this hour were mostly not ordinary commoners. As they chatted idly, they each had their own knowledge and opinions.

At a glance, they saw that something was wrong with Hong Family Fort.

Wei He said nothing. Whatever Hong Family Fort did had nothing to do with him. He had come only to search for clues about his parents' disappearance.

Entering the temple gate and walking into the courtyard, he soon found a white-browed monk passing by.

"Master."

The monk he stopped looked him over from head to toe.

"Greetings, benefactor."

"I would like to ask: half a year ago, did your temple hire some stone carvers to carve Buddhist statues here?" Wei He asked in a low voice.

"Half a year ago?" The old monk thought for a moment. "There was indeed such a matter. But..."

At the foot of Mingde Temple's mountain.

A brawny man wearing a straw hat slowly arrived before the stone stairs leading up the mountain.

He took a dark green bamboo tube from his robes, gently shook it, raised it to his ear, and listened carefully.

The faint sound of wings beating came from within the bamboo tube. The vibrations followed a distinct pattern—three long, two short.

The man twisted open the cap of the bamboo tube. There was a black breathing hole in the cap.

He leaned close and sniffed through the hole.

"There's a scent. There's still one that was missed here."

Over these past days, he had continuously tracked the Black-character Bugs and secretly silenced every living person who had last come into contact with them.

He relied on the Scent-tracking Bug inside this bamboo tube.

The Scent-tracking Bug and the Black-character Bug were natural mortal enemies. They fed specifically on Black-character Bugs. Once they discovered a Black-character Bug—or even people who had come into contact with one—they would naturally emit a fragrance.

The fragrance was like sandalwood, soothing to the heart and lungs, impossible to forget. The closer one drew to the target, the stronger the fragrance emitted by the Scent-tracking Bug became.

The Black-character Bug was even more troublesome. Once it touched someone, if it left behind a dry mark, its aura would take months to disperse.

Using this method, the man had already killed three of the people who had come into contact with the Black-character Bug, disguising their corpses as deaths caused by wild beast attacks.

With his Martial Arts Cultivation, doing that was not difficult.

The man relaxed and naturally stepped onto the stone stairs, walking up the mountain. His expression was leisurely, as though he were no different from the other worshippers who had come to pray to Buddha.

He had the nerve for it, and he had the confidence.

Back then, Zhao Deli had been a street thug who died after being caught in the crossfire, like fish caught in a drying pond. The people he could have associated with were nothing more than ordinary commoners.

Even those slightly stronger than that were merely somewhat sturdier low-ranking members of gangs.

He had been sent here to clean up the people in the surrounding area—to silence them.

To him, such people were only slightly stronger ants, easily harvested.

In truth, throughout all of Feiye City, the only people worthy of his wariness were the older generation of martial arts masters or the experts from the great Lineages of the Inner City. As for the rest, even those weed-like minor gangs were not worth mentioning.

Wei He was still holding the old monk and questioning him about everything, repeatedly pressing him over the disappearance of the stone carvers half a year ago.

"At the time, the stone carvers never reached the temple. They vanished halfway here. Since the benefactor asks about this, this old monk truly does not know how to answer," the old monk said helplessly.

"Were there not even any survivors afterward?" Wei He frowned.

"None were found. All the stone carvers disappeared halfway here. For that reason, our temple ultimately had to hire expensive stone carvers from the Outer City to complete the Buddhist statues," the old monk said, shaking his head.

Wei He asked again and again for a long while, but found no clues. All he learned was that the stone carvers had vanished midway before reaching Mingde Temple.

But Mingde Temple was less than ten li from Feiye City, and passersby often traveled the road. So many stone carvers could not possibly vanish without a trace, leaving behind not even the slightest sign.

The most likely answer was that there had been traces, but whoever found them at the time had been unwilling to make them public.

Wei He felt helpless and released the old monk.

He walked through the temple once. Two of the great halls were blocked off and forbidden to enter, while the rest were freely accessible.

The sky gradually darkened, and fewer and fewer worshippers remained. Most had gone down the mountain.

Wei He asked several more monks, but still received no news. Left with no choice, he exited the temple and headed down the mountain.

The sun had completely sunk below the horizon.

On the temple's descending stone stairs, a piercing chill rose on both sides. The once-clear forest gradually became a deep, shadowy curtain of darkness.

Wei He did not notice in the slightest that a faint figure was silently and slowly following behind him.

He felt slightly cold and quickened his pace down the mountain.

Suddenly, a small black bug quietly crawled out through a gap in the hem of his clothes, then beat its wings and flew away.

The man behind him paused slightly, his brow furrowing.

"The scent has faded." He raised the bamboo tube and gave it a gentle shake, finding that the scent had indeed grown fainter.

"Looks like it wasn't the man ahead." A judgment flashed through his mind. His gaze shifted away from Wei He's back.

The man turned and looked in the direction where the Black-character Bug had flown.

"Hmm?"

"No, this place has only me and that man ahead. If it isn't him, then who is it? Could this be luring the tiger from the mountain?"

The man's guard rose, and his gaze landed on Wei He's back once more.

Suspicion had already taken root in his heart. He quickened his steps and approached Wei He.

"Brother, please wait."

He called out loudly, pretending to be a worshipper.

Pfft!

A handful of white ash suddenly scattered straight into his face.

The man's heart clenched. Caught off guard, he tightly shut his eyes, nearly having them blinded.

But as a martial artist, his reactions were extremely swift. Before the white ash could enter his eyes, he rapidly swept both arms out in succession, striking up a fierce wind that blew the ash away.

He already knew that the other party had most likely realized his identity. A ruthless intent rose from his heart as his right leg flew up and lashed toward Wei He like a whip.

Yet his right leg first struck a blade. The man's expression changed, and he swiftly altered his move, pressing his right leg downward in an attempt to stomp on Wei He's foot.

At the same time, his other leg rose into the air, spinning as it side-kicked toward Wei He's chest.

This was the Life-snatching Consecutive Legs in which he specialized.

This leg technique allowed one to continually alter moves in the midst of attacking. Its changes were unfathomable, feints and solid strikes alternating endlessly, making it difficult to resist.

The man unleashed a chain of kicks, swiftly stomping and kicking more than ten times.

When he opened his eyes and looked, there was no one before him. That man had already run off who knew how far.

"Damn it! How could he be so underhanded...?"

In the brief instant he had closed his eyes, the other party had vanished in the blink of an eye. Could that man have been transformed from a rabbit spirit?

The man resentfully rushed down the steps, pursuing with all his strength along the stone stairway.

Before long, he vanished at the end of the descending mountain path.

At that very moment, someone swiftly emerged from a clump of shrubs to the right of the stone path. It was Wei He, who had just hidden himself.

He glanced in the direction the man had left, stood up, and let out a sigh of relief.

"You do have some cleverness." A voice suddenly rang out behind Wei He.