Watching Me Perform Comes at a Steep Price

The ruse of self-injury was one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, famous throughout history—or at least throughout historical tales. At the Battle of Red Cliffs, Huang Gai used it to get boats laden with firewood and oil close to the Cao Army's fleet. Yao Li sacrificed an arm and his wife to assassinate Qing Ji. Wu Zetian strangled her own daughter to make the empress fall from favor... From ancient times to the present, countless people had used the stratagem, and successes were everywhere.

Compared with the assassins of history, Pan Long felt his chances were excellent.

The crucial point was that he was not springing the ruse out of nowhere. He had laid the groundwork beforehand.

The day before yesterday, two missionaries from the One God Religion had been beaten and driven out by the villagers of Luna Village. They had fled in disgrace along the main road, so they must have encountered the Holy Legion, and Seles must already have heard the news.

If the villagers of Luna Village could beat and expel official missionaries, then it stood to reason that a distant relative who came preaching would get beaten too.

As the supreme high priest of the One God Religion, Seles would have to summon "John" and praise him for being a devout believer who had taken a beating for preaching, even if it was only for show. He might even give him a reward.

The first part was what mattered, of course. To a devout believer, a spiritual reward meant far more than a material one.

Sure enough, an order soon came from the rear: John was to meet the high priest.

At Seles's command, the Fres Army parted to either side like the sea before Moses, opening a path for Pan Long.

The sight was magnificent and intimidating. "John" looked so overwhelmed that he trembled constantly and could barely walk. Only when a soldier finally kicked him did he come to his senses. His face lit up with excitement, and he hurried forward as fast as he could, limping as he ran.

The soldiers who saw him burst out laughing and hurled one mocking remark after another.

What they did not know was that Pan Long was cursing himself too.

He had never studied acting in either of his lives. He had no idea how far to take it to portray an ordinary believer's excitement in these circumstances, so he had gone with whatever was most exaggerated and humiliating.

He had originally meant to drag things out and make a full show of his bewilderment. But the kick had jolted him awake to the fact that he had overdone it.

His plan had been to collapse and lie limp for a while. If he actually did that, though, two soldiers would probably haul him straight to Seles between them.

He was not afraid of two mere soldiers. He was afraid one of them might be a seasoned veteran who could tell from the firmness of his Muscle that he was no ordinary fighter.

No amount of acting could change the fact that Pan Long was a martial arts master. The Muscle across his body stood out in hard, powerful knots even when he was relaxed. An ordinary person might not notice, but anyone with enough experience of the martial world could feel the Muscle in his arm through his clothes and immediately guess his strength.

Then the whole act would be ruined!

So he could only try to recover, pretending to be so excited he was nearly beside himself as he ran forward.

The army was not all that large, and its column was not long. He soon reached its end and saw Seles surrounded by fully armed zealots.

The man he had come to assassinate!

Seles the "Most Holy" was one of the Frees Empire's four legion commanders, the lowest-ranked of its four generals. As high priest of the One God Religion, he had planned and carried out countless persecutions of heretics and had even personally presided over more than one massacre.

The foremost mass murderer in Sword and Lament looked nothing like a villain. On the contrary, he was strikingly handsome. Though already middle-aged, he remained as tall and handsome as a young man. His white hair was neatly combed, and his fair skin bore not a single spot or blemish. If not for the vivid light in his eyes, he might have looked at first glance like a stone statue carved by a Master.

Even on horseback, he seemed serene, as though he were sitting in a courtyard chatting with someone. An air of peace radiated from him, enough to win anyone over. Whether savage warriors or grief-stricken assassins, all would be drawn into that calm.

For example, the warlocks who had made pacts with the Demon and gave off a cold, poisonous miasma.

Without Seles watching them, without remaining close to him, those warlocks might go mad at any moment and attack the people around them.

The corruption of the Demon's power had long since stripped them of their humanity. Apart from their worship of the Demon and fear of Seles, nothing restrained them. Given any chance, they would do evil, no matter where they were or what was happening.

Take the warlock Pan Long had killed the previous night. He should have joined forces with the assassin against Pan Long. Instead, he had waited until the instant Pan Long killed the assassin before launching a sneak attack.

His thinking was probably no more complicated than the more people die, the better.

Evil energy and toxins had seeped through these people's bodies and soaked into their very brains. They probably could not devise a more elaborate scheme.

That was why they had been placed near Seles and locked inside carriages covered in talismans. There were two carriages, originally with two warlocks apiece—four in all. Now only three remained.

The one Pan Long had killed last night must have been one of them.

Confined near Seles, the warlocks behaved themselves and sat motionless, though madness still flashed through their eyes from time to time.

If even such lunatics were cowed by Seles's presence, "John" was naturally no exception. He had been running forward in a panic, but at the sight of Seles, he slowed without seeming to notice. His steps grew slower and slower. When he was only two or three paces from the zealot knights guarding Seles, he threw himself flat and crawled forward inch by inch, so humble he seemed ready to bury himself in the dirt. He did not dare raise his head.

"O great divine emissary!" he said, his voice shaking yet unable to hide his excitement. "Your believer John awaits your command."

Seles smiled. Seeing someone succumb to the aura of his immense spiritual power always put him in a good mood.

It made him feel as if he stood above all living things, like a god.

He gave a small, satisfied nod and praised John's devotion in a kindly voice that still carried an air of unquestioned superiority.

Little did he know that Pan Long, lying facedown on the ground, was satisfied too.

The problem that had troubled him most was how to get close to Seles.

With his strength, fighting his way through head-on was out of the question. The Holy Legion had around two hundred soldiers, including roughly twenty elite knights and three warlocks. There might also be one or two assassins hidden in the shadows.

Leaving aside the few elites, he thought nothing of the hundred and seventy or eighty ordinary soldiers. That did not mean he could fight a hundred at once. He could kill almost any one of them in a single move, but if four or five rushed in and pinned him down while spears, sabers, and swords came chopping down together, even the greatest master would fall.

To withstand that kind of assault, he would probably need to enter the Innate Realm and undergo a change in his physique.

His father, Pan Lei, for example, could unleash a thousand pounds of force with a swing of his arms. When he had first entered the Innate Realm a few years ago, he had even lifted the thousand-pound portcullis at Dingfeng Town's North City Gate by sheer strength, leaving countless onlookers' eyes bulging.

A master like that could sweep through a thousand soldiers. A hundred and some men would barely count as a warm-up.

Pan Long was not that strong. But the Holy Legion was no band of warriors who would stand firm in the face of death. Its main force was made up of local thugs, scoundrels, hoodlums, and bandits pressed into its ranks. Decent people would never commit atrocities as deranged as slaughtering entire towns and villages at the drop of a hat.

When such a rabble met a true master, perhaps all it would take was for a tenth of them—say, twenty men—to be cut down in one burst. Then the whole force of a hundred and some would collapse.

Pan Long was confident he could charge into a force like that and inflict those losses.

But add a handful of elites and Seles to the ordinary soldiers, and he was far less certain.

Those elite cavalrymen hanging back could serve as enforcers when needed, using their blades to drive the rabble in front of them back into the fight. Pan Long might have to break the Holy Legion's rank and file two or even three times before they finally fled despite the blades at their backs.

That would already be hard enough, and Seles was still on the other side.

However weak Seles might be, he was one of the Empire's four generals. He was level 50 in the game, and judging by his character background and the story, his actual fighting strength might be higher still.

More importantly, Seles's class was "Evil God Warlock"—a Spell class, with extremely powerful area attacks and support abilities, and he could raise dead soldiers as walking corpses to keep fighting.

As long as someone held the front line, Seles could safely cast support and attack spells from the rear. In that situation, not even Pan Long's father might come out unscathed, let alone Pan Long.

Back in the game, even players on a second playthrough could be tied down by the rank and file in this first stage and slowly worn to death by Seles's long-range attacks if they chose a high difficulty and made mistakes.

On top of that, Seles had a teleportation Spell. Give him three rounds to chant, and he could leave the battlefield whenever he wished.

So second-playthrough players on high difficulty usually waited until Seles killed the village chief and left, then charged in and smashed the Holy Legion in one rush. If they wanted to kill Seles, they had to use flying troops or a teleportation Spell to get straight to his side and launch an assault.

Common sense and the game guides pointed to the same choice for Pan Long: find a way to slip in, get close to Seles, then strike without warning and kill him!

Once Seles was dead, there was a good chance the enemy army would collapse without a fight. Even if the elites kept their nerve, the rout of the rank and file would at least give Pan Long some hope of victory.

After all, a slim chance of survival was still different from none at all.

And now the opportunity he needed was right before his eyes!

Enjoying the show, are you? Heh. Watching me perform comes at a steep price!