The Crossroads

Gu Shenwei sprang to his feet. For a moment, he was so overwhelmed by the urge to charge out and fight his enemy to the death that he nearly did just that. But reason soon won out. Whoever those killers were, his father, Gu Lun, his master, Yang Zheng, and his two older brothers had been powerless to fight back. He was even more helpless. Just surviving was already a small miracle.

New whistles joined in from every direction, some long, some short, rising and falling like a flock of screeching raptors fighting over food. Before long, they poured into the manor's ruins. Hooves clattered everywhere; it sounded as though hundreds, even thousands, of people had rushed in.

Gu Shenwei crouched low. He had just hidden behind a broken wall when a torch arced through the air, tumbling over his head.

Before Gu Shenwei could make sense of what was happening, a huge hand seized him by the back of the neck. Its owner urged his horse into a leap, and Gu Shenwei's feet left the ground.

Before the horse's hooves had even landed, the hand suddenly let go. Gu Shenwei hit the ground hard, cried out in pain, and rolled twice before getting back to his feet. He found himself surrounded by mounted bandits, every one of them staring greedily at the tiny prey like a hungry wolf in the glow of all those torches.

That was often how things went in this world: after an earthquake came a downpour, and after the rain, a gale. Misfortune was like an animal under attack. The blood it spilled always drew more predators, then scavengers, then prowlers of the night, then flies, then even smaller creatures, until every last scrap of flesh, sinew, and bone was gone.

The Gu Family's annihilation had left a fatal wound. The first wave of killers had eaten their fill and left. In their wake came a pack of jackals and crows.

They were filthy bandits and thieves, and there were far fewer of them than Gu Shenwei had imagined: only five. The whistles, hoofbeats, and torches had made the scene seem much bigger.

Gu Shenwei had no way of knowing who these people were. He took them for his enemies. Like a young beast cornered in a den, he let out a low growl and bared his blunt claws.

A whip lashed soundlessly out of the darkness. Gu Shenwei hit the ground again, and the bandits burst into delighted laughter. One of them bent down, grabbed the boy, and laid him across his horse before roughly searching him. He found the small packet of silver in the boy's clothes, raised it high, and shouted:

"Hey, this kid's one of us! He got here before we did!"

Now Gu Shenwei understood who they were. Fury surged through him. "Let go of me!" he shouted, struggling to snatch back the package.

The bandits laughed even louder, treating the boy like he was nothing. One pocketed the silver, then slammed a hand down on the boy's back and pulled out the little oilcloth bundle.

Gu Shenwei's back felt as if it had been broken; pain pierced his bones. But even worse was the terror of losing the manual of Internal Force. It was the most precious relic of the Gu Family, more important than his own life.

The bandit whistled, tore off the oilcloth, and then stopped short. Inside was a thin book. He flipped through a few pages, but couldn't read a single character.

"What the hell is this?" he snapped angrily.

"Give it back!" Gu Shenwei surged against him.

The bandit punched him in the face, nearly knocking him out. He tossed aside the book, pulled out a rope, and bound Gu Shenwei tightly. Then he dismounted and followed the others into the ruins to search for valuables.

Gu Shenwei's hands and feet were tied. He could only squirm like a worm, thrashing with all his might until he finally fell off the horse onto the ground. Then he strained every muscle and crawled toward the book.

Just as he was about to reach the manual, a powerful gust swept along the ground. The torch a bandit had tossed nearby flared and flickered like a serpent's tongue. Its flames touched the fluttering pages, and the book caught fire at once.

The fire burned Gu Shenwei's heart along with it. More than anything, he regretted not having properly practiced the Gu Family's martial arts. He couldn't even beat an ordinary bandit.

He rolled onto the book, smothering the flames, then hurriedly rolled away to escape the torch beside him. He clamped the book between his teeth and dragged it farther away. In the end, he had saved the family manual, but only part of it; nearly all the first few pages had burned away.

He stared at the book in anguish, then noticed the writing on its pages and froze. He recognized every character, but together they clearly made up a ledger. Not a single line had anything to do with Internal Force!

The "manual" he had struggled to find and save wasn't the secret method for quickly mastering Hehe Jin after all. Gu Shenwei felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over him. In his simple plan for revenge, this manual had held a crucial place. Without it, he would have to spend at least thirty years painstakingly training with his meager skills before he might be ready to avenge himself.

The secret method for quickly mastering Hehe Jin came with serious side effects. The successive heads of the Gu Family had always hidden the manual with great care, forbidding their descendants from looking at it. One ancestor was said to have practiced the method. His Internal Force had advanced by leaps and bounds, doubling his strength. Combined with the Gu Family's Dual Mastery of Blade and Spear, he had become famous for a time. But after only three years, he had suddenly died for no apparent reason, his death agonizing beyond description.

Gu Shenwei wanted only revenge, so he had never cared what happened three years later. Now even that hope of dying together with his enemy was gone.

The bandits were practiced at looting the ruins. In less than the time it took an incense stick to burn, they had all returned to the courtyard with bundles of loot, whistling as they prepared to leave.

The bandit who had captured Gu Shenwei returned as well. He put two bundles on his horse. His haul was smaller than the others', and he was in a bad mood. He walked over to the boy and kicked him hard.

Gu Shenwei curled up in pain. The bandit grabbed the rope around him and started to haul him back onto the horse.

At that very instant, Gu Shenwei suddenly realized something. The oilcloth that had wrapped the book lay right before his eyes, one corner of a white silk cloth showing. Before the bandit could lift him, he bit down on the corner of the silk. By the time he was lying across the horse, he had swallowed the cloth.

The bandits mounted up and rode down from the manor.

There was another bandit near a small village at the foot of the mountain, guarding more than ten captives and over thirty cattle and sheep. Their arms were tightly bound, and a rope linked them together in a line. Gu Shenwei was thrown to the ground and bound again, then attached to the very end of the captives' line.

The six bandits drove the captives and livestock eastward. Gu Shenwei struggled to keep up, unable to spit out the white silk in his mouth.

Dawn was approaching when the bandits stopped at a T-junction. Gu Shenwei thought his home could not be far away, but he had seldom left the manor and did not recognize the road.

A dirt road ran north to south through a narrow mountain pass. After winding along for several miles, it joined the main east-west road. More than a hundred people had already gathered at the crossroads.

Most wore old leather and felt garments that looked as if they had never been washed. Greasy and glistening in the rising sun, they all carried weapons and wore savage expressions, like a pack of beasts forced to huddle together.

The bandit groups were clearly divided into factions. They stood in several clusters, keeping one another under watchful sidelong glances. Their hands stayed near their weapons, as if they were ready to fight at any moment.

Strangely, the ferocious bandits were all crowded on the west side of the crossroads. Across the road lay a broad, empty patch of ground, yet not one of them would go near it, as though ghosts were hiding in that vacant space.

Even stranger, the bandits all craned their necks toward the northern pass, looking anxious and restless, as if they were waiting for someone.

Two hours earlier, Gu Shenwei had thought Divine Will was guiding him. Now he was a bandit's captive, mixed in with a group of filthy, terrified men and women.

Of all the captives, Gu Shenwei was actually the dirtiest. Sweat, dust, and ashes caked his entire body until he looked like a human statue molded from mud.

While the bandits weren't looking, Gu Shenwei spat out the white silk he had been holding in his mouth and slipped it into his clothes without examining it. He had already been searched once and hoped there wouldn't be a second time.

The person they were waiting for still hadn't arrived, and the bandits grew increasingly restless, cursing under their breath. They weren't used to being so close to their fellow bandits. Two groups had already fought over it, leaving several injured, though thankfully no one had died.

Gu Shenwei still couldn't understand how he had been captured. So many bandits had gathered near the Gu Family Manor, even though people said they should have been wiped out years ago. He looked up at the bandit who had captured him, hoping to get some information from him.

Like the others, the bandit wore leather and felt even in the height of summer. He was powerfully built, with a thick beard and a filthy face. A scar ran across his left cheek.

The scarred bandit noticed the boy looking up at him. He glanced down at his young captive, his gaze cold and merciless. "Go on, run."

Gu Shenwei wasn't stupid enough to try. He was surrounded by bandits, with the endless Gobi all around him. Running away would mean certain death, especially with his hands bound and a line of captives tied to him.

"You got the money. Why haven't you let me go?"

His voice was hard, but Gu Shenwei had already begun to understand. To the bandits, he and the other men and women were no different from the livestock. They were all money.

The scarred bandit spat on the ground. The glob of phlegm skimmed Gu Shenwei's scalp. He didn't even consider answering the ignorant boy's question.

An old-looking bandit cast a gloomy glance over the newcomers and their captives, then suddenly spoke. "Doesn't look like you got much, Flying Eagle."

The scarred bandit called Flying Eagle spat again. "Tiger doesn't leave anything behind."

Gu Shenwei's heart gave a sudden thump. Tiger had to be the one who had slaughtered the Gu Family. The bandits clearly knew what had happened. Gu Shenwei had thought the killers had gone to ground and would be hard to track down.

Perhaps something showed in his eyes. The old bandit looked at him again but said nothing, turning his gaze back to the northern pass.

Gu Shenwei waited a while, but no one said anything more about Tiger. At last, he asked, "The Tiger you follow must be a big one."

Flying Eagle pressed his lips together as if he hadn't heard. After a long while, he said coldly:

"Obviously. Is there any tiger bigger than the Unrivaled King?"

The Unrivaled King.

There was no one in the Western Regions who had not heard of the Unrivaled King.

Gu Shenwei's heart, which had been fluttering with hope, plunged. His enemy was far more powerful than he had imagined.