My Hands Had Gone Weak

The Holy Legion's rank and file broke and fled.

Defeat came like a collapsing mountain. They surged backward like a tide, scattering the guard knights who were still locked in battle and leaving them unable to reform their ranks.

Pan Long, who had barely been holding on, seized the chance at once. He shot more than a dozen paces like an arrow loosed from its string and broke free of the encirclement.

His heart finally eased. The enemy had lost their chance to surround and kill him.

Only then did he have time to look back. The Village Chief stood leaning on his spear, white hair flying in the wind, watching him with a stern expression.

When the Village Chief saw Pan Long look back, he smiled and raised his clenched right hand, thumb held high.

Pan Long smiled too and returned the thumbs-up.

Their hearts swelled with pride.

Just a dozen or so villagers had faced two or three hundred regular soldiers. Among them were the Holy Legion's elite, and even Seles himself, the "Most Holy," one of the Empire's four great generals.

Yet despite that vast disparity, they had won.

Of course a victory like that was worth taking pride in!

Anyone who achieved such a feat would have every right to boast about it over drinks, even to pass the tale down to their descendants so that generations would remember their ancestors' courage.

The villagers' fighting was more or less over.

But Pan Long's was not.

The rout had bought him precious breathing room and the space to separate those fanatical knights and kill them one by one.

It was a precious chance that would come only once. He could not let it slip by.

Sword light flashed, and another guard knight took a blade through the throat.

These guard knights were equipped to the teeth, their armor thick and heavy. The Slayer Sword had no iron-cutting or armor-piercing properties, so Pan Long had few places he could strike.

Fortunately, their gorgets and faceplates were not thick enough to stop his blade.

He focused his attacks on two vital points: the throat and the spot between the brows. Every guard knight who had died by his hand had taken a sword thrust to one of those places.

The guard knights were well trained. After several of them died in succession, the survivors caught on. They shielded their faces and throats with their weapons or simply with their hands, leaving Pan Long no opening.

If the fleeing soldiers had not broken up their formation, they might have surrounded and killed him just now.

But the situation had reversed.

Pan Long never stopped moving. Faster than the fully armored knights, he kept his distance and gave them no chance to close around him.

He attacked as he ran. His sword flashed, striking the guard knights again and again. Their heavy armor stopped most blows, but his attacks kept them from reforming their ranks. Now and then, he even found an opening to wound or kill one.

By his reckoning, he would have killed the last guard knight long before the fleeing soldiers had run clear a few minutes later.

In fact, fewer than ten guard knights could still stand.

They no longer posed much of a threat to him.

Just as he considered changing tactics and taking the last few enemies head-on, warning bells rang in his mind.

Without a second thought, he sprang back five or six paces.

Several cold streaks whistled through the spot where he had just stood, missing him by a hair.

That was not the end of it. A trail of frost came winding across the ground, as though an invisible giant ice snake were lunging at him.

Ice Arrow Spell! Soul-Devouring Snake!

Pan Long had seen both spells in the game and recognized them at a glance.

Without a word, he grabbed a fleeing soldier who ran past him and hurled him at the approaching frost trail.

The soldier flew forward screaming. Black smoke suddenly billowed out of what had appeared to be empty air, revealing a snake thicker than a strong man's arm. It bit into him, then coiled around his body and squeezed hard before he could react.

The black smoke burst apart, and the snake vanished. All that remained on the ground was a corpse twisted beyond recognition and covered in frost.

Pan Long's scalp prickled. The Ice Arrow Spell was one thing, but the Soul-Devouring Snake was a skill only a Warlock who had advanced to Demon God Warlock could use. He had not expected Seles to have someone so formidable at his side!

Luckily, Warlocks were not much good at thinking. Otherwise, if that one had sent a Soul-Devouring Snake at him while he was surrounded...

Oh, that would have been fine. With so many people around him, the snake could only have bitten a guard knight.

At that thought, Pan Long almost laughed.

Who would have guessed being surrounded had its advantages?

But jokes aside, he still had to find a way to deal with the three Warlocks.

Warlocks were walking disasters. Wherever they went, destruction followed. The greater their power, the worse the devastation.

Leave a Demon God Warlock free to wreak havoc, and in just a few days, a bustling town could become a dead city overrun by living corpses and ghosts.

That was even more terrifying than some T-virus!

Pan Long glanced around and came up with a decent plan.

He ran several paces to the side and circled a fleeing soldier in heavy armor. Grabbing the man's arm with his left hand, he twisted hard and sent his weapon flying, then slammed the hilt of his sword into his face and knocked him unconscious.

That made a fine shield.

Two layers of Jin, built-in shock absorption, and even some resistance to magic.

A little heavy, though...

Holding up his "shield," Pan Long charged toward the two carriages.

Ice arrows formed in the air and came whistling at him, but he blocked them all with his "shield." The soldier woke from the pain and screamed as the arrows struck him, cursing nonstop in a language Pan Long could not understand.

Pan Long was not about to argue. The man was sacrificing himself as a living shield; a few curses were only fair.

...Besides, Pan Long had no idea what he was saying. Was he supposed to curse back in the Northlands dialect?

So he said nothing and pretended not to hear.

He felt no sympathy, either. From top to bottom, the Holy Legion did not have a single good person. Every last one deserved to die!

With the remaining guard knights pursuing him, he sprinted dozens of paces through the fleeing soldiers. After using his "living shield" to block several waves of the Warlocks' spells, Pan Long finally reached the two carriages.

By then, the heavily armored soldier had become a "dead shield" and was of no further use.

Pan Long hurled the corpse at the carriage holding two Warlocks and lunged straight for the one holding only one.

While he was still in the air, an ice arrow shot straight at him.

There was no dodging it this time. Gritting his teeth, he swung his left arm up to block it. As he tumbled into the carriage, he slashed with his sword.

The Warlock had nowhere to run. He screamed, spat blood, and collapsed. His corpse twitched faintly, but he could no longer contain the cold poison within him. It spilled out, freezing everything nearby into red and green chunks of ice.

Pan Long had already burst out the other side of the carriage. He avoided the weapons thrown from behind him and used his momentum to circle behind the other carriage.

This time, he did not rush in blindly. He took a deep breath, put away the Slayer Sword, planted his feet in a horse stance, and set his hands in the precise position he used in training.

About two seconds later, he roared. A thunderous boom split the carriage in two, and the two Warlocks inside, still casting their spells, flew out wide-eyed and spraying blood.

Two palm prints were sunk deep into their chests.

Pan Long had used the Wind-Listening Positioning Technique to locate his enemies, then struck with his most powerful move, the Iron Palm's Mountain-Splitting Stance. It had worked in one blow.

After sending both Warlocks flying, he did not spare them another glance. He drew his sword again and charged the last few guard knights.

Two fragile mages had taken the Pan Lineage's Iron Palm straight to the chest. It would be a miracle if they survived!

The Warlocks were dead, only a handful of guard knights remained, and the soldiers had scattered in utter disarray. All that was left of the battle was simple slaughter.

Pan Long showed no mercy. Each swing of the Slayer Sword drew a spray of blood.

There was not a trace of softness in him. Every strike was ruthless; when his sword found an enemy, it killed rather than wounded.

Who in the Holy Legion did not deserve to die?

His savage killing drove the fleeing soldiers into still greater panic, scattering them even farther.

The Holy Legion was a heap of scum drawn from every walk of life. Without Seles holding them together through the promise of pillage and his merciless discipline, they could have scattered like birds and beasts at any moment. Now Seles was dead, Pan Long had defeated the guard knights, and even the Warlocks had been killed. Naturally, they fled in every direction. Not one of them dared look back.

Even if this rabble had kept their heads, none could have withstood a single exchange with him. Panicked as they were, cutting them down was like slicing melons and chopping vegetables. Screams rang out one after another, and Pan Long lost count of how many he killed.

Yet after killing so many in one rush, Pan Long felt no unease. In his previous life, he had been a law-abiding citizen, but in this one he was a Northerner, a people known for their ferocity. For more than a decade, he had heard their ways, seen them, and lived them himself: the whole full-blooded martial creed of the Northlands.

Were the people before him enemies? Yes. Then kill them all!

Were the people he killed enemies? Yes. Then however many he killed, it only proved he had grit, skill, and honor!

Northerners did not slaughter innocents, but they never went soft on their enemies. On the battlefield, they were warriors as cold as the Twelfth-Month Cold Wind. It was always the enemy who had cause to fear.

Even Northerners who had embraced Buddhism, who ate vegetarian meals and chanted sutras every day without killing so much as a rabbit, were not weak or easy to bully. Take Pan Long's uncle Pan Meng: in battle, he wielded a pair of thick iron rods two feet long, each with a slightly enlarged head that made it look like a long-handled hammer.

Those weapons might not leave rivers of blood, but they could kill an enemy all the same.

More than once, Pan Long had seen his uncle chant, "Amitabha, how virtuous, how virtuous," while swinging those iron rods until bandits looked like censored mosaics. He had once asked whether that went against the Buddhist teaching of compassion. Pan Meng had answered quite calmly, "I left their bodies whole. I thought that was pretty compassionate."

That was more or less what compassion meant to Northerners.

Strictly speaking, Pan Long was fairly softhearted by Northerner standards. For instance, after his killing spree, he watched the remaining soldiers flee into the distance without any intention of chasing them.

He had killed the last few guard knights. Their bodies lay around him in a pool of blood.

Standing amid it, Pan Long watched the last few dozen figures flee in terror and suddenly felt his enthusiasm drain away.

He had fought a brutal battle today and killed his fill. He was tired of killing, too.

"Only today do I understand why the ancients said they'd killed until their hands went weak," he said with a deep sigh. "I really have killed so many that even my hands have gone weak..."

I thought I'd scheduled the update already. Turns out I hadn't...