Born for the Martial World

Li Qiang was right. The world these days was hardly peaceful.

Pan Long and Han Feng soon saw that for themselves again.

They had set out from the nameless little village, and dusk was approaching before they reached the next one. Just as they were about to look for a patch of ground beside the road where they could rest, Li Qiang, who was driving the cart, suddenly shouted, "Someone's blocking the road!"

At those words, Pan Long and Han Feng, who had been dozing inside the carriage, sprang awake.

They had spent the whole day sitting in the carriage, apart from an hour or so wandering around during their midday break. They were bored out of their minds. Now someone had actually come looking for trouble. Han Feng, a husky in human form who wanted to stir things up even when nothing was happening, was delighted. Even the steadier Pan Long perked up, excitement coursing through him.

The cart soon stopped. Before the two could rush out, someone up ahead yelled, "Stop! This is a robbery! You're being robbed!"

What the hell? That's awfully plain... Shouldn't he be shouting something like, "I opened this mountain, I planted this tree. If you want to pass this way, leave your toll behind. Refuse, and we'll kill you without even burying you!"?

Pan Long pondered that without slowing down. He and Han Feng burst through the carriage curtain, one on each side, and landed beside the shafts. They drew their sabers and watched either flank.

As for Li Qiang, he had no saber, but he reached beneath his seat and pulled out a long, gray-white staff. With a flick of his wrist, its tip whistled through the air. It was the waxwood staff, a well-known weapon in the Martial World.

The weapon had an unflattering reputation as a "performer's staff," but in practiced hands, its blend of flexibility and firmness made it ideal for small-scale fights among ordinary folk. As long as an opponent wore no armor, it could hold its own against anyone.

There were plenty of robbers blocking the road, well over a dozen. More figures lurked in the woods nearby, probably lying in ambush. They had laid a large tree across the road. Someone on foot could easily step over it, but it would stop any horse and cart. Their leader stood atop the trunk with a saber in hand, flaunting his might as he looked down at them.

One sweep of Pan Long's gaze put his mind at ease.

None of them carried bows or crossbows.

At medium to long range, bows and crossbows had an enormous advantage. Even a Martial World expert could not withstand seven or eight powerful crossbows firing at him.

Of course, hitting an expert with a bow or crossbow was no easy task. The army's method for surrounding and killing one was to send men willing to die to grab his legs, then loose a storm of arrows without regard for their lives. Anyone who had not mastered formless protective qi could generally be killed that way. Even someone who had mastered it could be worn down eventually, unless he had attained the Innate Breath Mystery and possessed an unending supply of True Qi.

Put bluntly, it meant trading lives for a life. Killing one expert often cost several brave Warriors their lives. If he broke through the encirclement even once, the dead could number in the double digits or more...

Before Pan Long and Han Feng left home, their elders had repeatedly warned them to check whether an opponent carried a bow or crossbow before fighting. If one did, they should avoid the battle if at all possible. If they could not, they had to seize the initiative and never let the enemy lead them by the nose.

With their skills, they could at least escape ordinary Martial World fighters even if they could not win. Bows and crossbows were what they feared!

That was why, in their last fight, Pan Long had flung throwing knives one after another without caring whether they struck. He had needed to keep his opponent from using his short crossbow. Their elders had taught them that too: against an enemy with a bow or crossbow, killing him outright was best, but if they could not, they had to keep him occupied so he could not take his time aiming and shooting.

This time, though, their enemies had no bows or crossbows.

They came out to rob people without even a few bows? Were they here to rob us or get themselves killed?

Staff in hand, Li Qiang gained a little courage. He shouted at the robbers, "What road do you follow? Which mountain do you pledge yourselves to? If you dare come out robbing people, surely you have some affiliation!"

His shout startled the robbers for a moment. Then their leader roared, "What's with all the crap? Hand over your money and we'll spare your miserable lives. Otherwise—"

"No need for 'otherwise'!" Han Feng cut him off. "There are sixteen of you here and six more in the woods. Twenty-two altogether. Our Brother Long is generous and doesn't like needless killing, so we'll give you a chance. Move that tree out of the road right now, and we'll let you go."

Li Qiang looked at him in astonishment, then at Pan Long, his face plainly asking which side was supposed to be the robbers.

Pan Long smiled and raised his brows.

The kid had probably been waiting ages for a chance to put on a show like this. He had finally found one.

The robbers knew nothing about them. Seeing a pair of half-grown boys act so arrogantly, they flew into a rage. Even the men hiding in the woods rushed out, waving sabers, clubs, forks, and all manner of weapons as they charged.

Li Qiang leaped down from the cart, swept his waxwood staff forward, and met them first.

He really was skilled. He thrust the long staff down between the feet of the first robber charging at him, then flicked it upward. The man screamed like a pig being slaughtered, dropped his saber, and fell to the ground, clutching his crotch and rolling about.

Li Qiang stepped back, drew in his staff, and thrust again. It struck another robber square in the face, right on the bridge of his nose. The man fell flat on his back without a sound, knocked unconscious by the blow.

In the time those two moves took, Han Feng had charged in as well. His attacks were far more vicious than Li Qiang's. One sweep of his curved saber sent blood spurting from a robber's neck; another sent a crimson spray from a second robber's chest. Every stroke was meant to take a life.

Pan Long charged in after him. His saber technique was less nimble than Han Feng's, but even more savage. Most of his strokes went straight for an enemy's neck, and every one took a head! Wherever he passed, blood surged upward in jets, then fell like rain.

The robbers had never imagined the three could be so formidable! Li Qiang was one thing. His staff work was masterful, but he lacked killing intent, merely knocking his enemies down or unconscious. Pan Long and Han Feng, though, were two stars of slaughter. Every slash was meant to kill, and almost every slash claimed a life!

Anyone willing to become a robber was naturally unafraid of killing. Living with blood on the edge of a blade also meant accepting that someone might kill them. The robbers had experienced all that, but when had they ever seen people so vicious, or a way of fighting so brutal?

This was no Martial World brawl. It was a one-sided slaughter!

A little while later, more than ten bodies lay strewn across the ground, and the blood had nearly formed a stream. The remaining robbers suddenly came to their senses. With a chorus of terrified screams, they turned and ran.

Han Feng laughed wildly. "Run? Go ask around Dingfeng Town whether anyone can outrun a member of the Han family!"

His family came from a line of scouts. Besides deft skills such as reconnaissance and tracking, they placed great emphasis on running and leaping. He would not claim to be particularly strong at shifting position or leaping and doubling back, but when it came to running, most people could not outrun him even on horseback, let alone these greenhorn robbers!

So he chased after them, shouting all the way. Every time he caught one, he cut him down with a sweep of his saber.

He pursued them relentlessly. The last few robbers realized they could not escape and turned to fight in despair. It did them no good. With slashes to the left and right, he killed every last one.

By the time he returned, covered in blood, Pan Long and Li Qiang had moved the tree out of the road. They had not carried the whole thing away, of course. They had shifted one end while using the other as a pivot, inching it to the side.

"Ah, that felt good!" Han Feng said happily. "Coming out to roam the Martial World with Brother Long really was the best decision I ever made!"

Pan Long shook his head and checked the robbers' bodies one by one. The lot of them were dirt-poor. They carried only bits of silver, and some had nothing but copper coins. Only their leader had two silver ingots, weighing roughly ten taels altogether.

"Did you deal with the bodies?" he asked.

Han Feng froze, then shook his head.

"You left all those corpses lying on the road?" Pan Long sighed. "At least bring them back and pile them together."

"Do we really need to go to all that trouble?"

"This is a main road. We don't want to frighten people."

So they went back for the bodies, dragging each one over from wherever it had fallen. They heaped them beside the tree and covered them with branches, weeds, and whatever else they could find. Pan Long used the sharp short knife Crossing-Mountain Tiger Wang Biao had given him to cut a piece of wood into a board. He planted it in the ground nearby and piled stones around it to make sure the wind would not knock it down.

On the board, Han Feng gleefully wrote a line in human blood.

[The Two Heroes of the Northlands wiped out a band of brigands here]

He did not spare the robbers Li Qiang had knocked down, either. He finished them off one by one, saying as he went, "Brother Long says a family should stay together, every last one of them. I don't know if you're family, but you came out to rob and kill together, so you must be as close as brothers. I'll make sure you all stay together. Consider it my tribute to your brotherhood."

Li Qiang watched, shaking his head again and again, but did nothing to stop him.

He did not want to kill anyone himself, but that did not mean he would stop someone else. Not one of these highway robbers could be called innocent. Killing them all would wrong none of them!

"Too bad we never found out where they came from," Pan Long said regretfully. "If they had a Mountain Stronghold or something behind them... we could go there and Eliminate Evil Completely, wiping them all out and ridding the area of a blight."

Li Qiang gave a wry smile and said nothing.

Pan Long and Han Feng could not tell, but he could. These people were probably much like the villagers they had met earlier: farmers at home, bandits when they went out. The difference was that these men had gone further down the road of banditry, and their luck had been worse.

"If we'd fought last night, things in that village would probably have ended much the same way..." he muttered after staring for a while. "Good thing I talked them out of it!"

"What are you muttering about, Old Li?" Pan Long and Han Feng had finished cleaning up the scene of the fight. They had stripped off their clothes and were washing the blood from their bodies with water. Hearing Li Qiang talking to himself, Han Feng called out, "Sorry we didn't leave a couple for you to try your staff on? Don't worry, we'll save some for you next time."

"Right. The world really isn't peaceful these days. There are so many robbers on the road!" Pan Long said. "Maybe when we reach the next city, we should buy more spare clothes and bring a few extra sabers. We wouldn't want ours getting too dull to use."

Li Qiang looked at the two half-grown boys. They had just fought and killed, yet seemed utterly unconcerned, washing themselves naked in the cold while cheerfully discussing bringing more sabers next time. He smiled helplessly.

"Perhaps they were born for the Martial World..."

Whenever I watch Martial World films, I've always wondered: after the fighters kill their enemies and get covered in blood, do they just walk around in public like that? That's why I included the scene of Pan Long and Han Feng washing up after the fight and changing out of their bloody clothes.

(End of chapter)