Chapter 268
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"…ugh…"
Opening my eyes, I found myself staring at a white ceiling. Wincing, I tried to sit up, but red-hot agony flared up inside the upper part of my body, almost causing me to topple back down. Drawing deep breaths and forcing myself to withstand the pain, I straightened my back, took my glasses from the side table and put them on, and glanced around.
I was in a hospital, evidently.
"Hey, Fei Wu! Are you all right?"
A familiar voice called out to me. Blinking in surprise, I turned and caught sight of Tong Xue waving at me. He was accompanied by a concerned-looking Lian Rou.
"Thank goodness, you've finally woken up," she said.
"Oh, hey." I stared at them, still trying orientate myself. "What's up? How long have I been out for?"
"A couple of days." Tong Xue rolled his eyes. "I told Lian Rou this is normal. Actually, I expected you to be out for another two or three days before you finally wake up. The healing experts are pretty good, but your injuries aren't light."
"On the bright side, your wounds should fully heal in two or three days," Lian Rou assured me with a smile. "So you can go right back to beating people up."
"Beating people up?" I repeated incredulously. "Who do you think I am?"
Tong Xue and Lian Rou exchanged a glance. For some reason, I felt annoyed when I saw the flicker of amusement.
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing." Lian Rou shook her head and shrugged.
"Well, you were the one who defeated the Heavenly Venom King." Tong Xue was ogling me. "You kind of caused a huge furor in Duchun Town…no, the entire empire probably knows about this by now. A young martial artist still yet to graduate, actually defeated the most powerful martial artist from the old Martial Arts Alliance. That was insane!"
At first I didn't reply. It took a few minutes for Tong Xue's words to sink in, and I sat there, digesting the implications. Sha Chen was dead. I defeated him. And I managed to survive, and was rescued.
I won. Against the most formidable opponent I had ever fought. I actually survived and won against such a terrifying enemy.
This didn't feel real. I couldn't believe it.
"…I actually did it?"
Then I remembered seeing Sha Chen's corpse. I had obliterated a large chunk of his torso, destroying his heart and the majority of his lungs. As powerful as he was, there was no way he could survive such a grievous wound.
"Did you find his body?" I asked.
"Not us, but the Imperial Guard did," Tong Xue replied. "They were wondering what sort of technique you used to kill him. Several of them were wondering if you are some kind of monster in disguise."
"Nope. I'm just a regular human."
"Somehow that doesn't sound convincing when you say it," Lian Rou muttered with a shake of her head. Glancing at her, I suddenly recalled something important.
"How's Yi Ding Si and Song Ting Yu? Are they alive? Did you manage to get the sample and concoct an antidote?"
"Yeah, thanks to you two, we synthesized a serum that neutralized the Black Venom Toxin. The both of them recovered days ago." Lian Rou smiled, and then narrowed her eyes at me disapprovingly. "You're the one we were more worried about, given how your injuries were so much worse than anything poison could have caused."
Not to mention I was immune to poison, so I didn't have to worry about that. But I didn't tell her that, of course.
Instead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Especially with regards to Yi Ding Si. With a name like that, I thought he was dead for sure, but it seemed that he had defied fate and survived. Hah! Tong Xue and I had defied the heavens! We had denied them their claim on a life of one of our schoolmates! We prevailed against those cruel, sadistic gods and saved someone they had marked as cannon fodder, or a character destined to die!
It felt good.
"That's great." I was smiling genuinely. "I'm glad they are safe."
"Yeah. You're the only one who had us all worried, but it's good to see you up and awake now." Tong Xue sighed in relief, and then clapped a hand on my shoulder. I winced, still feeling pretty sore, and he withdrew his hand apologetically. "Rest well and recover, Mr. Great Hero. We'll need you in the coming days."
"Huh? Coming days? What are you talking about?" I gaped at him.
Tong Xue grimaced and traded an uneasy look with Lian Rou. He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"It's just a rumor for now, but…the demonic sects are on the move. And it seems that their target is Wu Ling City."
*
Well, that news definitely put a dampener on my spirits, you can be sure of that. I wasn't fond of lying in bed the whole day despite my body throbbing all over like a million Orks screaming WAAAGH! Into my ears and bashing me with their choppas, so like the valiant guardsman I was, I picked up my lasgun and crawled out of bed.
Okay, my lasgun was actually a hi-tech shield. Speaking of which, it was still pretty damaged from the fight against the Black Venom Cult. The mobile turrets served me well during the fight against Sha Chen, but ultimately didn't do enough damage to incapacitate him. I probably should recaliberate the output of qi and everything.
They did hurt him, though, so there was that. They provided an annoying distraction that allowed me to avoid some of his lethal strikes and get some cheap shots in. I still hadn't perfected my control over them – in the end, I just forgot about them because I was spending too much qi on Heaven and Earth Strike and Heaven and Earth Reversal, and my mobile turrets were either blown away or I didn't have enough qi to have them hover around, but they made quite a difference at the beginning of the battle, and that was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, thanks to me spending a couple of days without my medicine, the excessive yang qi flared up inside my body again, causing me red-hot agony.
"Ugh…"
Fortunately, I had the Nine Yin Pills at hand, and retrieving one capsule from the storage device of Snow Aegis, I downed it. After resting for a bit, I felt the fiery yang qi calm down, counteracted by the frosty yin qi in the pills and the pain abated.
"Phew!"
That felt much better. After the fiery pain was gone, I stood up and looked around.
"…hmm…"
I glanced around, surprised that there wasn't any hooded guy with a scarred face and a bunch of mercenaries working under him. You know, an old guy who took over Nan San Village or something, and was acting like a benevolent Buddhist priest despite being one of the former Four Heavenly Kings who betrayed my master…
…okay, that was a lie. This wasn't Gosu. My master wasn't betrayed by any Four Heavenly Kings. I wasn't on a mission to avenge my master's death by killing all four former Heavenly Kings. I got rescued by the Imperial Guard, not a former Heavenly King (who I should really be addressing as my senior). Besides, every member of the Heaven and Earth Sect had been killed when the Martial Arts Alliance attacked. Other than me and Tian Yu Di – an ancient guy who came from a distant past centuries ago – Heaven and Earth Sect had been utterly annihilated.
And again, I didn't want to get into trouble for ripping off Gosu. Not that I didn't already rip it off, but I didn't want to cross the line, if you know what I mean.
"There you are."
I turned at the familiar voice and spotted Song Ting Yu approaching me. She was dressed in her usual pink dress, as opposed to the patient gown that I wore. I waved at her and halted briefly to allow her to catch up.
"Good to see that you're alive."
"It's all thanks to you." Song Ting Yu bowed her head. "You saved my life. I owe you everything."
"Nah, I was helping Yi Ding Si as well, so I might as well help you out too. Besides, it wasn't just me. Tong Xue helped tremendously too."
"Yes," Song Ting Yu acknowledged. "I've already thanked your friend. But Tong Xue is right. He said that he owes you his life too. If you hadn't risked your life to stop the Heavenly Venom King and buy him time to escape, he would have been a corpse in the Toxic Marshes."
"That doesn't sound like something Tong Xue would say," I muttered. My friend was smart, but he wasn't poetic.
"I might be dramatizing it a bit, but believe me, your friend insists that you saved his life as much as ours."
Song Ting Yu smiled, and then she suddenly knelt down in front of me.
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"Whoa!" I threw up my hands and gestured for her to rise. This felt so awkward. "Don't do that! Please get up!"
"No." Song Ting Yu took my hand and held it firmly. "From today onward, I will be yours. My life is yours to command."
"HELL NO!" I shouted. "What the fuck are you playing at?! Then is Yi Ding Si supposed to devote the rest of his life to me as well?! Of course not! And I'm not the only one who saved you. Are you going to ask Tong Xue to command you as well?"
"Tong Xue already has Lian Rou."
"And I already have Tang Qi Hong."
"…" Song Ting Yu frowned briefly, but quickly bit her lip before she could say something she could regret. After all, Tang Qi Hong was…dead. Instead, she shook her head and stared at me. "I'll wait however long you need to move on."
"What if I don't intend to move on?" I yanked my hand out of her grasp. "And stop with the bullshit romance thing. Don't go chasing after a guy just because he saved you once. That's the most contrived plot device to run a cliché story, like ever. So are you going to commit the rest of your life to the next person who saved you too?"
"…probably not." Song Ting Yu sighed and rose daintily to her feet. "But I know what you did. you risked your life and put everything on the line to fight the Dark Sage, even though you were completely outmatched and had almost zero chance of winning. You had no obligation to save me, yet you did so at great personal expense. There is no way I can repay you for this."
"You don't have to. You think I helped you because I wanted you to be in my debt?" I snorted. "And besides, I was also saving my friend, Yi Ding Si. What kind of martial artist would I be if I left my comrade to die?"
"I'm not your comrade…and you still saved me anyway."
I shrugged. "Let's just say it was along the way…you were an extra. Since I was helping Yi Ding Si, I might as well help you as well."
"So I was just an extra, huh?" Song Ting Yu giggled. But she leaned closer and stared into my eyes. Despite my lenses shielding my eyes, I could still feel the intensity of her honey-laced pink gaze boring into me. "But why do I get the feeling that, even if if was just me and Yi Ding Si wasn't around, you still would have gone and saved me anyway."
I didn't say anything.
"Isn't that right, Fei Wu?"
Stepping back uneasily, I merely shrugged in reply, refusing to answer. There was no deceiving this girl. Even if I told her, "no", she would just call me out and laugh at my pathetic attempts to lie. Song Ting Yu was a master at deception and persuation, and had a lot of experience communicating with people. She was an excellent judge of character.
Honestly, she was right. Even if Yi Ding Si wasn't poisoned, I still would have gone to help Song Ting Yu. It was partially my responsibility that she and her bodyguards ended up in the predicament that they did. After all, it was my plan to send them to fight the Black Venom Cult. They trusted and listened to my plan, and now…
"I'm sorry about your bodyguards. If I hadn't been too reckless…if I hadn't stupidly sent them to fight the Black Venom Cult, they might still be alive."
"They knew the risks when they took the job. And it isn't your fault." Song Ting Yu shook her head. "No one could have anticipated that the Dark Sage was the real leader of the Black Venom Cult. He had disappeared for so long…everyone thought he was dead. If he hadn't been there, your plan would have worked."
"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy," I quoted Helmuth van Moltke. "I should have prepared for any unforeseen circumstances, such as the arrival of an extremely formidable enemy. I should have contingents in place…"
"That may be true, but you left us to our own initiative." Song Ting Yu sulked slightly. "As much as I hate to admit it, we should have retreated. We should have realized something was amiss. But we got too complacent…and this was the result."
"…"
I didn't say anything, and lowered my head. There was nothing I could say. It wouldn't bring her bodyguards back to life.
"And…I think my guards are more grateful to you than resentful. You avenged their deaths. You killed the warrior who massacred them. They're probably saluting you from the underworld." Song Ting Yu offered me a gentle smile. "They've served me for a long while, so I know them very well. I can guarantee that's what they'll be doing."
"Their families…" I began, but Song Ting Yu shushed me with a finger.
"…will receive compensation. As I said, they knew the risks when they took the job. And the Martial Arts Alliance is generous if not anything. I know…" she glanced at me applogetically. "You haven't seen the best of the Alliance…and there are….dissident elements who attacked your Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. But as with all large organizations, the Alliance is split into factions. You probably know about the three great families."
"What, they're all locked in a power struggle?"
"You really are smart, aren't you?" Song Ting Yu looked impressed, and then she nodded. Turning away, she locked her fingers and stretched. "That is correct. The Song family, the Xie family and the Nie family. The Alliance Chief will be chosen from only one of these families, so there's a lot of politicking, backstabbing, betrayals and dealing under the table. Obviously to gain support from the major sects, they would make promises and backdoor deals, offering them a huge portion of Nine-Tailed Fox Sect's resources and territory if they support them in return. That sort of thing."
"So do you know who was behind the attacks on Nine-Tailed Fox Sect? Who ordered it?" pushing up my glasses, I stared at her with my mouth pressed into a thin line. "Your father, Alliance Chief Song Yu? Xie Jing Lian's father, Xie Yao Yang, perhaps?"
"…I don't know yet, but I can guarantee that my father did not send out such an order. I've investigated him myself after I returned from overseas." Song Ting Yu's shoulders deflated. "I understand that you won't be able to believe me, but that's the best I can offer right now." She then shrugged. "But obviously, since my father is already the Alliance Chief, he has no need to make promises and garner support from the major sects."
"Nonetheless, he approved of the invasion and even provided support for the invading sects." I remembered Song Si Yuan, Xie Zhi Zhang and the Alliance members who attacked. They seemed like pretty swell guys, and admittedly they didn't really do much when compared to the ten invading sects (or thirteen later), but it was an irrefutable fact that they participated in the invasion and played a major role. "That won't absolve him of anything."
"…no." Song Ting Yu sighed. "But I can only ask you to suppress your anger for now and allow me to find the real mastermind. My father was probably manipulated…after all, he can't allow the Alliance to present a divisive front. There would be many who wants to take advantage of that."
I wanted to sneer at that. How naïve. No matter how persuasive or charming Song Ting Yu was, she couldn't convince me to forgive the Alliance. On the other hand, what was I supposed to do about this? Form a coalition of demonic sects and destroy the Martial Arts Alliace or something? That was impractical to the extreme.
I was just one guy. I couldn't possibly go and destroy an entire Alliance by myself. Even Nine-Tailed Fox Sect was aware that they couldn't retaliate against a gigantic organization. We broke off all ties and were wary of them, rejecting deals with them in the future and all that, but we didn't have the power to attack them and destroy them.
"Don't worry. I'm not reckless enough to go attack the Martial Arts Alliance, if that's what you're worried about."
Song Ting Yu seemed to slump down in relief when she heard that. I raised an eyebrow when I saw her expression.
"What? You seem to have some kind of weird perception of me. You think I'm some sort of genocidal martial artist who goes around massacring entire sects or organizations, or even whole kingdoms? I'm not the protagonist of some xianxia story, I don't have that big a plot armor or Deus ex Machina to help me out. If I try to do something as stupid as that, I would die."
"That's understandable. But…" Song Ting Yu lowered her voice. "What if I tell you there's only one mastermind, or at least a small circle of masterminds that you can eliminate without the Alliance retaliating?"
That caught my interest and I nodded, waiting for her to continue. Song Ting Yu smiled, her pink lips curling up seductively.
"I'll help you with that. I'll also protect you from any repercussions. After all…" she was grinning now. "It will benefit my Martial Arts Alliance more to eliminate these bad eggs…as well as future threats and rivals to the Song family's leadership."
Then she paused and held my hand again.
"But I promise you this. The Song family will never raise a hand against you, your family or the Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. We'll always be your allies." She bowed her head. "Father will probably understand. He knows the risks you took to save my life."
"Uh…stop exaggerating. I was helping Yi Ding Si too…and Tong Xue also contributed quite a lot to the rescue effort."
I frowned, not very pleased with this, but Song Ting Yu giggled mischievously.
"Maybe, but a little embellishment is necessary to persuade my father to accept you."
She almost added something else, but stopped herself before she could utter those words. My scowl deepened, and I wondered if I was imagining things. It was almost as if she wanted to say "as my fiancé" at the end.
"For now, just trust me, and we'll both benefit mutually." Song Ting Yu tightened her grasp. "Oh, and one more thing. Do you mind waiting a bit before the whole revenge plan?"
"…why?" I asked carefully.
"…because right now, the Alliance is facing some sort of crisis." Song Ting Yu's expression had turned grave. "The demonic sects are moving in force. Until they have been dealt with, I wish to request that you postpone your vendetta and any plans of revenge against the mastermind hiding inside the Alliance. Right now, we need a united front, or the Great Zhou Empire will be in huge peril."
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"…ugh…"
Opening my eyes, I found myself staring at a white ceiling. Wincing, I tried to sit up, but red-hot agony flared up inside the upper part of my body, almost causing me to topple back down. Drawing deep breaths and forcing myself to withstand the pain, I straightened my back, took my glasses from the side table and put them on, and glanced around.
I was in a hospital, evidently.
"Hey, Fei Wu! Are you all right?"
A familiar voice called out to me. Blinking in surprise, I turned and caught sight of Tong Xue waving at me. He was accompanied by a concerned-looking Lian Rou.
"Thank goodness, you've finally woken up," she said.
"Oh, hey." I stared at them, still trying orientate myself. "What's up? How long have I been out for?"
"A couple of days." Tong Xue rolled his eyes. "I told Lian Rou this is normal. Actually, I expected you to be out for another two or three days before you finally wake up. The healing experts are pretty good, but your injuries aren't light."
"On the bright side, your wounds should fully heal in two or three days," Lian Rou assured me with a smile. "So you can go right back to beating people up."
"Beating people up?" I repeated incredulously. "Who do you think I am?"
Tong Xue and Lian Rou exchanged a glance. For some reason, I felt annoyed when I saw the flicker of amusement.
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing." Lian Rou shook her head and shrugged.
"Well, you were the one who defeated the Heavenly Venom King." Tong Xue was ogling me. "You kind of caused a huge furor in Duchun Town…no, the entire empire probably knows about this by now. A young martial artist still yet to graduate, actually defeated the most powerful martial artist from the old Martial Arts Alliance. That was insane!"
At first I didn't reply. It took a few minutes for Tong Xue's words to sink in, and I sat there, digesting the implications. Sha Chen was dead. I defeated him. And I managed to survive, and was rescued.
I won. Against the most formidable opponent I had ever fought. I actually survived and won against such a terrifying enemy.
This didn't feel real. I couldn't believe it.
"…I actually did it?"
Then I remembered seeing Sha Chen's corpse. I had obliterated a large chunk of his torso, destroying his heart and the majority of his lungs. As powerful as he was, there was no way he could survive such a grievous wound.
"Did you find his body?" I asked.
"Not us, but the Imperial Guard did," Tong Xue replied. "They were wondering what sort of technique you used to kill him. Several of them were wondering if you are some kind of monster in disguise."
"Nope. I'm just a regular human."
"Somehow that doesn't sound convincing when you say it," Lian Rou muttered with a shake of her head. Glancing at her, I suddenly recalled something important.
"How's Yi Ding Si and Song Ting Yu? Are they alive? Did you manage to get the sample and concoct an antidote?"
"Yeah, thanks to you two, we synthesized a serum that neutralized the Black Venom Toxin. The both of them recovered days ago." Lian Rou smiled, and then narrowed her eyes at me disapprovingly. "You're the one we were more worried about, given how your injuries were so much worse than anything poison could have caused."
Not to mention I was immune to poison, so I didn't have to worry about that. But I didn't tell her that, of course.
Instead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Especially with regards to Yi Ding Si. With a name like that, I thought he was dead for sure, but it seemed that he had defied fate and survived. Hah! Tong Xue and I had defied the heavens! We had denied them their claim on a life of one of our schoolmates! We prevailed against those cruel, sadistic gods and saved someone they had marked as cannon fodder, or a character destined to die!
It felt good.
"That's great." I was smiling genuinely. "I'm glad they are safe."
"Yeah. You're the only one who had us all worried, but it's good to see you up and awake now." Tong Xue sighed in relief, and then clapped a hand on my shoulder. I winced, still feeling pretty sore, and he withdrew his hand apologetically. "Rest well and recover, Mr. Great Hero. We'll need you in the coming days."
"Huh? Coming days? What are you talking about?" I gaped at him.
Tong Xue grimaced and traded an uneasy look with Lian Rou. He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"It's just a rumor for now, but…the demonic sects are on the move. And it seems that their target is Wu Ling City."
*
Well, that news definitely put a dampener on my spirits, you can be sure of that. I wasn't fond of lying in bed the whole day despite my body throbbing all over like a million Orks screaming WAAAGH! Into my ears and bashing me with their choppas, so like the valiant guardsman I was, I picked up my lasgun and crawled out of bed.
Okay, my lasgun was actually a hi-tech shield. Speaking of which, it was still pretty damaged from the fight against the Black Venom Cult. The mobile turrets served me well during the fight against Sha Chen, but ultimately didn't do enough damage to incapacitate him. I probably should recaliberate the output of qi and everything.
They did hurt him, though, so there was that. They provided an annoying distraction that allowed me to avoid some of his lethal strikes and get some cheap shots in. I still hadn't perfected my control over them – in the end, I just forgot about them because I was spending too much qi on Heaven and Earth Strike and Heaven and Earth Reversal, and my mobile turrets were either blown away or I didn't have enough qi to have them hover around, but they made quite a difference at the beginning of the battle, and that was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, thanks to me spending a couple of days without my medicine, the excessive yang qi flared up inside my body again, causing me red-hot agony.
"Ugh…"
Fortunately, I had the Nine Yin Pills at hand, and retrieving one capsule from the storage device of Snow Aegis, I downed it. After resting for a bit, I felt the fiery yang qi calm down, counteracted by the frosty yin qi in the pills and the pain abated.
"Phew!"
That felt much better. After the fiery pain was gone, I stood up and looked around.
"…hmm…"
I glanced around, surprised that there wasn't any hooded guy with a scarred face and a bunch of mercenaries working under him. You know, an old guy who took over Nan San Village or something, and was acting like a benevolent Buddhist priest despite being one of the former Four Heavenly Kings who betrayed my master…
…okay, that was a lie. This wasn't Gosu. My master wasn't betrayed by any Four Heavenly Kings. I wasn't on a mission to avenge my master's death by killing all four former Heavenly Kings. I got rescued by the Imperial Guard, not a former Heavenly King (who I should really be addressing as my senior). Besides, every member of the Heaven and Earth Sect had been killed when the Martial Arts Alliance attacked. Other than me and Tian Yu Di – an ancient guy who came from a distant past centuries ago – Heaven and Earth Sect had been utterly annihilated.
And again, I didn't want to get into trouble for ripping off Gosu. Not that I didn't already rip it off, but I didn't want to cross the line, if you know what I mean.
"There you are."
I turned at the familiar voice and spotted Song Ting Yu approaching me. She was dressed in her usual pink dress, as opposed to the patient gown that I wore. I waved at her and halted briefly to allow her to catch up.
"Good to see that you're alive."
"It's all thanks to you." Song Ting Yu bowed her head. "You saved my life. I owe you everything."
"Nah, I was helping Yi Ding Si as well, so I might as well help you out too. Besides, it wasn't just me. Tong Xue helped tremendously too."
"Yes," Song Ting Yu acknowledged. "I've already thanked your friend. But Tong Xue is right. He said that he owes you his life too. If you hadn't risked your life to stop the Heavenly Venom King and buy him time to escape, he would have been a corpse in the Toxic Marshes."
"That doesn't sound like something Tong Xue would say," I muttered. My friend was smart, but he wasn't poetic.
"I might be dramatizing it a bit, but believe me, your friend insists that you saved his life as much as ours."
Song Ting Yu smiled, and then she suddenly knelt down in front of me.
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"Whoa!" I threw up my hands and gestured for her to rise. This felt so awkward. "Don't do that! Please get up!"
"No." Song Ting Yu took my hand and held it firmly. "From today onward, I will be yours. My life is yours to command."
"HELL NO!" I shouted. "What the fuck are you playing at?! Then is Yi Ding Si supposed to devote the rest of his life to me as well?! Of course not! And I'm not the only one who saved you. Are you going to ask Tong Xue to command you as well?"
"Tong Xue already has Lian Rou."
"And I already have Tang Qi Hong."
"…" Song Ting Yu frowned briefly, but quickly bit her lip before she could say something she could regret. After all, Tang Qi Hong was…dead. Instead, she shook her head and stared at me. "I'll wait however long you need to move on."
"What if I don't intend to move on?" I yanked my hand out of her grasp. "And stop with the bullshit romance thing. Don't go chasing after a guy just because he saved you once. That's the most contrived plot device to run a cliché story, like ever. So are you going to commit the rest of your life to the next person who saved you too?"
"…probably not." Song Ting Yu sighed and rose daintily to her feet. "But I know what you did. you risked your life and put everything on the line to fight the Dark Sage, even though you were completely outmatched and had almost zero chance of winning. You had no obligation to save me, yet you did so at great personal expense. There is no way I can repay you for this."
"You don't have to. You think I helped you because I wanted you to be in my debt?" I snorted. "And besides, I was also saving my friend, Yi Ding Si. What kind of martial artist would I be if I left my comrade to die?"
"I'm not your comrade…and you still saved me anyway."
I shrugged. "Let's just say it was along the way…you were an extra. Since I was helping Yi Ding Si, I might as well help you as well."
"So I was just an extra, huh?" Song Ting Yu giggled. But she leaned closer and stared into my eyes. Despite my lenses shielding my eyes, I could still feel the intensity of her honey-laced pink gaze boring into me. "But why do I get the feeling that, even if if was just me and Yi Ding Si wasn't around, you still would have gone and saved me anyway."
I didn't say anything.
"Isn't that right, Fei Wu?"
Stepping back uneasily, I merely shrugged in reply, refusing to answer. There was no deceiving this girl. Even if I told her, "no", she would just call me out and laugh at my pathetic attempts to lie. Song Ting Yu was a master at deception and persuation, and had a lot of experience communicating with people. She was an excellent judge of character.
Honestly, she was right. Even if Yi Ding Si wasn't poisoned, I still would have gone to help Song Ting Yu. It was partially my responsibility that she and her bodyguards ended up in the predicament that they did. After all, it was my plan to send them to fight the Black Venom Cult. They trusted and listened to my plan, and now…
"I'm sorry about your bodyguards. If I hadn't been too reckless…if I hadn't stupidly sent them to fight the Black Venom Cult, they might still be alive."
"They knew the risks when they took the job. And it isn't your fault." Song Ting Yu shook her head. "No one could have anticipated that the Dark Sage was the real leader of the Black Venom Cult. He had disappeared for so long…everyone thought he was dead. If he hadn't been there, your plan would have worked."
"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy," I quoted Helmuth van Moltke. "I should have prepared for any unforeseen circumstances, such as the arrival of an extremely formidable enemy. I should have contingents in place…"
"That may be true, but you left us to our own initiative." Song Ting Yu sulked slightly. "As much as I hate to admit it, we should have retreated. We should have realized something was amiss. But we got too complacent…and this was the result."
"…"
I didn't say anything, and lowered my head. There was nothing I could say. It wouldn't bring her bodyguards back to life.
"And…I think my guards are more grateful to you than resentful. You avenged their deaths. You killed the warrior who massacred them. They're probably saluting you from the underworld." Song Ting Yu offered me a gentle smile. "They've served me for a long while, so I know them very well. I can guarantee that's what they'll be doing."
"Their families…" I began, but Song Ting Yu shushed me with a finger.
"…will receive compensation. As I said, they knew the risks when they took the job. And the Martial Arts Alliance is generous if not anything. I know…" she glanced at me applogetically. "You haven't seen the best of the Alliance…and there are….dissident elements who attacked your Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. But as with all large organizations, the Alliance is split into factions. You probably know about the three great families."
"What, they're all locked in a power struggle?"
"You really are smart, aren't you?" Song Ting Yu looked impressed, and then she nodded. Turning away, she locked her fingers and stretched. "That is correct. The Song family, the Xie family and the Nie family. The Alliance Chief will be chosen from only one of these families, so there's a lot of politicking, backstabbing, betrayals and dealing under the table. Obviously to gain support from the major sects, they would make promises and backdoor deals, offering them a huge portion of Nine-Tailed Fox Sect's resources and territory if they support them in return. That sort of thing."
"So do you know who was behind the attacks on Nine-Tailed Fox Sect? Who ordered it?" pushing up my glasses, I stared at her with my mouth pressed into a thin line. "Your father, Alliance Chief Song Yu? Xie Jing Lian's father, Xie Yao Yang, perhaps?"
"…I don't know yet, but I can guarantee that my father did not send out such an order. I've investigated him myself after I returned from overseas." Song Ting Yu's shoulders deflated. "I understand that you won't be able to believe me, but that's the best I can offer right now." She then shrugged. "But obviously, since my father is already the Alliance Chief, he has no need to make promises and garner support from the major sects."
"Nonetheless, he approved of the invasion and even provided support for the invading sects." I remembered Song Si Yuan, Xie Zhi Zhang and the Alliance members who attacked. They seemed like pretty swell guys, and admittedly they didn't really do much when compared to the ten invading sects (or thirteen later), but it was an irrefutable fact that they participated in the invasion and played a major role. "That won't absolve him of anything."
"…no." Song Ting Yu sighed. "But I can only ask you to suppress your anger for now and allow me to find the real mastermind. My father was probably manipulated…after all, he can't allow the Alliance to present a divisive front. There would be many who wants to take advantage of that."
I wanted to sneer at that. How naïve. No matter how persuasive or charming Song Ting Yu was, she couldn't convince me to forgive the Alliance. On the other hand, what was I supposed to do about this? Form a coalition of demonic sects and destroy the Martial Arts Alliace or something? That was impractical to the extreme.
I was just one guy. I couldn't possibly go and destroy an entire Alliance by myself. Even Nine-Tailed Fox Sect was aware that they couldn't retaliate against a gigantic organization. We broke off all ties and were wary of them, rejecting deals with them in the future and all that, but we didn't have the power to attack them and destroy them.
"Don't worry. I'm not reckless enough to go attack the Martial Arts Alliance, if that's what you're worried about."
Song Ting Yu seemed to slump down in relief when she heard that. I raised an eyebrow when I saw her expression.
"What? You seem to have some kind of weird perception of me. You think I'm some sort of genocidal martial artist who goes around massacring entire sects or organizations, or even whole kingdoms? I'm not the protagonist of some xianxia story, I don't have that big a plot armor or Deus ex Machina to help me out. If I try to do something as stupid as that, I would die."
"That's understandable. But…" Song Ting Yu lowered her voice. "What if I tell you there's only one mastermind, or at least a small circle of masterminds that you can eliminate without the Alliance retaliating?"
That caught my interest and I nodded, waiting for her to continue. Song Ting Yu smiled, her pink lips curling up seductively.
"I'll help you with that. I'll also protect you from any repercussions. After all…" she was grinning now. "It will benefit my Martial Arts Alliance more to eliminate these bad eggs…as well as future threats and rivals to the Song family's leadership."
Then she paused and held my hand again.
"But I promise you this. The Song family will never raise a hand against you, your family or the Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. We'll always be your allies." She bowed her head. "Father will probably understand. He knows the risks you took to save my life."
"Uh…stop exaggerating. I was helping Yi Ding Si too…and Tong Xue also contributed quite a lot to the rescue effort."
I frowned, not very pleased with this, but Song Ting Yu giggled mischievously.
"Maybe, but a little embellishment is necessary to persuade my father to accept you."
She almost added something else, but stopped herself before she could utter those words. My scowl deepened, and I wondered if I was imagining things. It was almost as if she wanted to say "as my fiancé" at the end.
"For now, just trust me, and we'll both benefit mutually." Song Ting Yu tightened her grasp. "Oh, and one more thing. Do you mind waiting a bit before the whole revenge plan?"
"…why?" I asked carefully.
"…because right now, the Alliance is facing some sort of crisis." Song Ting Yu's expression had turned grave. "The demonic sects are moving in force. Until they have been dealt with, I wish to request that you postpone your vendetta and any plans of revenge against the mastermind hiding inside the Alliance. Right now, we need a united front, or the Great Zhou Empire will be in huge peril."
"ugh"Opening my eyes, I found myself staring at a white ceiling. Wincing, I tried to sit up, but red-hot agony flared up inside the upper part of my body, almost causing me to topple back down. Drawing deep breaths and forcing myself to withstand the pain, I straightened my back, took my glasses from the side table and put them on, and glanced around.I was in a hospital, evidently."Hey, Fei Wu! Are you all right?"A familiar voice called out to me. Blinking in surprise, I turned and caught sight of Tong Xue waving at me. He was accompanied by a concerned-looking Lian Rou."Thank goodness, you've finally woken up," she said."Oh, hey." I stared at them, still trying orientate myself. "What's up? How long have I been out for?""A couple of days." Tong Xue rolled his eyes. "I told Lian Rou this is normal. Actually, I expected you to be out for another two or three days before you finally wake up. The healing experts are pretty good, but your injuries aren't light.""On the bright side, your wounds should fully heal in two or three days," Lian Rou assured me with a smile. "So you can go right back to beating people up.""Beating people up?" I repeated incredulously. "Who do you think I am?"Tong Xue and Lian Rou exchanged a glance. For some reason, I felt annoyed when I saw the flicker of amusement."Hey, what's that supposed to mean?""Nothing." Lian Rou shook her head and shrugged."Well, you were the one who defeated the Heavenly Venom King." Tong Xue was ogling me. "You kind of caused a huge furor in Duchun Townno, the entire empire probably knows about this by now. A young martial artist still yet to graduate, actually defeated the most powerful martial artist from the old Martial Arts Alliance. That was insane!"At first I didn't reply. It took a few minutes for Tong Xue's words to sink in, and I sat there, digesting the implications. Sha Chen was dead. I defeated him. And I managed to survive, and was rescued.I won. Against the most formidable opponent I had ever fought. I actually survived and won against such a terrifying enemy.This didn't feel real. I couldn't believe it."I actually did it?"Then I remembered seeing Sha Chen's corpse. I had obliterated a large chunk of his torso, destroying his heart and the majority of his lungs. As powerful as he was, there was no way he could survive such a grievous wound."Did you find his body?" I asked."Not us, but the Imperial Guard did," Tong Xue replied. "They were wondering what sort of technique you used to kill him. Several of them were wondering if you are some kind of monster in disguise.""Nope. I'm just a regular human.""Somehow that doesn't sound convincing when you say it," Lian Rou muttered with a shake of her head. Glancing at her, I suddenly recalled something important."How's Yi Ding Si and Song Ting Yu? Are they alive? Did you manage to get the sample and concoct an antidote?""Yeah, thanks to you two, we synthesized a serum that neutralized the Black Venom Toxin. The both of them recovered days ago." Lian Rou smiled, and then narrowed her eyes at me disapprovingly. "You're the one we were more worried about, given how your injuries were so much worse than anything poison could have caused."Not to mention I was immune to poison, so I didn't have to worry about that. But I didn't tell her that, of course.Instead, I breathed a sigh of relief. Especially with regards to Yi Ding Si. With a name like that, I thought he was dead for sure, but it seemed that he had defied fate and survived. Hah! Tong Xue and I had defied the heavens! We had denied them their claim on a life of one of our schoolmates! We prevailed against those cruel, sadistic gods and saved someone they had marked as cannon fodder, or a character destined to die!It felt good."That's great." I was smiling genuinely. "I'm glad they are safe.""Yeah. You're the only one who had us all worried, but it's good to see you up and awake now." Tong Xue sighed in relief, and then clapped a hand on my shoulder. I winced, still feeling pretty sore, and he withdrew his hand apologetically. "Rest well and recover, Mr. Great Hero. We'll need you in the coming days.""Huh? Coming days? What are you talking about?" I gaped at him.Tong Xue grimaced and traded an uneasy look with Lian Rou. He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper."It's just a rumor for now, butthe demonic sects are on the move. And it seems that their target is Wu Ling City."*Well, that news definitely put a dampener on my spirits, you can be sure of that. I wasn't fond of lying in bed the whole day despite my body throbbing all over like a million Orks screaming WAAAGH! Into my ears and bashing me with their choppas, so like the valiant guardsman I was, I picked up my lasgun and crawled out of bed.Okay, my lasgun was actually a hi-tech shield. Speaking of which, it was still pretty damaged from the fight against the Black Venom Cult. The mobile turrets served me well during the fight against Sha Chen, but ultimately didn't do enough damage to incapacitate him. I probably should recaliberate the output of qi and everything.They did hurt him, though, so there was that. They provided an annoying distraction that allowed me to avoid some of his lethal strikes and get some cheap shots in. I still hadn't perfected my control over them in the end, I just forgot about them because I was spending too much qi on Heaven and Earth Strike and Heaven and Earth Reversal, and my mobile turrets were either blown away or I didn't have enough qi to have them hover around, but they made quite a difference at the beginning of the battle, and that was good enough for me.Unfortunately, thanks to me spending a couple of days without my medicine, the excessive yang qi flared up inside my body again, causing me red-hot agony."Ugh"Fortunately, I had the Nine Yin Pills at hand, and retrieving one capsule from the storage device of Snow Aegis, I downed it. After resting for a bit, I felt the fiery yang qi calm down, counteracted by the frosty yin qi in the pills and the pain abated."Phew!"That felt much better. After the fiery pain was gone, I stood up and looked around."hmm"I glanced around, surprised that there wasn't any hooded guy with a scarred face and a bunch of mercenaries working under him. You know, an old guy who took over Nan San Village or something, and was acting like a benevolent Buddhist priest despite being one of the former Four Heavenly Kings who betrayed my masterokay, that was a lie. This wasn't Gosu. My master wasn't betrayed by any Four Heavenly Kings. I wasn't on a mission to avenge my master's death by killing all four former Heavenly Kings. I got rescued by the Imperial Guard, not a former Heavenly King who I should really be addressing as my senior. Besides, every member of the Heaven and Earth Sect had been killed when the Martial Arts Alliance attacked. Other than me and Tian Yu Di an ancient guy who came from a distant past centuries ago Heaven and Earth Sect had been utterly annihilated.And again, I didn't want to get into trouble for ripping off Gosu. Not that I didn't already rip it off, but I didn't want to cross the line, if you know what I mean."There you are."I turned at the familiar voice and spotted Song Ting Yu approaching me. She was dressed in her usual pink dress, as opposed to the patient gown that I wore. I waved at her and halted briefly to allow her to catch up."Good to see that you're alive.""It's all thanks to you." Song Ting Yu bowed her head. "You saved my life. I owe you everything.""Nah, I was helping Yi Ding Si as well, so I might as well help you out too. Besides, it wasn't just me. Tong Xue helped tremendously too.""Yes," Song Ting Yu acknowledged. "I've already thanked your friend. But Tong Xue is right. He said that he owes you his life too. If you hadn't risked your life to stop the Heavenly Venom King and buy him time to escape, he would have been a corpse in the Toxic Marshes.""That doesn't sound like something Tong Xue would say," I muttered. My friend was smart, but he wasn't poetic."I might be dramatizing it a bit, but believe me, your friend insists that you saved his life as much as ours."Song Ting Yu smiled, and then she suddenly knelt down in front of me. Find authorized novels in Webnovelfaster updates, better experiencePlease click www.webnovel.com for visiting. "Whoa!" I threw up my hands and gestured for her to rise. This felt so awkward. "Don't do that! Please get up!""No." Song Ting Yu took my hand and held it firmly. "From today onward, I will be yours. My life is yours to command.""HELL NO!" I shouted. "What the fuck are you playing at?! Then is Yi Ding Si supposed to devote the rest of his life to me as well?! Of course not! And I'm not the only one who saved you. Are you going to ask Tong Xue to command you as well?""Tong Xue already has Lian Rou.""And I already have Tang Qi Hong.""" Song Ting Yu frowned briefly, but quickly bit her lip before she could say something she could regret. After all, Tang Qi Hong wasdead. Instead, she shook her head and stared at me. "I'll wait however long you need to move on.""What if I don't intend to move on?" I yanked my hand out of her grasp. "And stop with the bullshit romance thing. Don't go chasing after a guy just because he saved you once. That's the most contrived plot device to run a clich story, like ever. So are you going to commit the rest of your life to the next person who saved you too?""probably not." Song Ting Yu sighed and rose daintily to her feet. "But I know what you did. you risked your life and put everything on the line to fight the Dark Sage, even though you were completely outmatched and had almost zero chance of winning. You had no obligation to save me, yet you did so at great personal expense. There is no way I can repay you for this.""You don't have to. You think I helped you because I wanted you to be in my debt?" I snorted. "And besides, I was also saving my friend, Yi Ding Si. What kind of martial artist would I be if I left my comrade to die?""I'm not your comradeand you still saved me anyway."I shrugged. "Let's just say it was along the wayyou were an extra. Since I was helping Yi Ding Si, I might as well help you as well.""So I was just an extra, huh?" Song Ting Yu giggled. But she leaned closer and stared into my eyes. Despite my lenses shielding my eyes, I could still feel the intensity of her honey-laced pink gaze boring into me. "But why do I get the feeling that, even if if was just me and Yi Ding Si wasn't around, you still would have gone and saved me anyway."I didn't say anything."Isn't that right, Fei Wu?"Stepping back uneasily, I merely shrugged in reply, refusing to answer. There was no deceiving this girl. Even if I told her, "no", she would just call me out and laugh at my pathetic attempts to lie. Song Ting Yu was a master at deception and persuation, and had a lot of experience communicating with people. She was an excellent judge of character.Honestly, she was right. Even if Yi Ding Si wasn't poisoned, I still would have gone to help Song Ting Yu. It was partially my responsibility that she and her bodyguards ended up in the predicament that they did. After all, it was my plan to send them to fight the Black Venom Cult. They trusted and listened to my plan, and now"I'm sorry about your bodyguards. If I hadn't been too recklessif I hadn't stupidly sent them to fight the Black Venom Cult, they might still be alive.""They knew the risks when they took the job. And it isn't your fault." Song Ting Yu shook her head. "No one could have anticipated that the Dark Sage was the real leader of the Black Venom Cult. He had disappeared for so longeveryone thought he was dead. If he hadn't been there, your plan would have worked.""No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy," I quoted Helmuth van Moltke. "I should have prepared for any unforeseen circumstances, such as the arrival of an extremely formidable enemy. I should have contingents in place""That may be true, but you left us to our own initiative." Song Ting Yu sulked slightly. "As much as I hate to admit it, we should have retreated. We should have realized something was amiss. But we got too complacentand this was the result."""I didn't say anything, and lowered my head. There was nothing I could say. It wouldn't bring her bodyguards back to life."AndI think my guards are more grateful to you than resentful. You avenged their deaths. You killed the warrior who massacred them. They're probably saluting you from the underworld." Song Ting Yu offered me a gentle smile. "They've served me for a long while, so I know them very well. I can guarantee that's what they'll be doing.""Their families" I began, but Song Ting Yu shushed me with a finger."will receive compensation. As I said, they knew the risks when they took the job. And the Martial Arts Alliance is generous if not anything. I know" she glanced at me applogetically. "You haven't seen the best of the Allianceand there are.dissident elements who attacked your Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. But as with all large organizations, the Alliance is split into factions. You probably know about the three great families.""What, they're all locked in a power struggle?""You really are smart, aren't you?" Song Ting Yu looked impressed, and then she nodded. Turning away, she locked her fingers and stretched. "That is correct. The Song family, the Xie family and the Nie family. The Alliance Chief will be chosen from only one of these families, so there's a lot of politicking, backstabbing, betrayals and dealing under the table. Obviously to gain support from the major sects, they would make promises and backdoor deals, offering them a huge portion of Nine-Tailed Fox Sect's resources and territory if they support them in return. That sort of thing.""So do you know who was behind the attacks on Nine-Tailed Fox Sect? Who ordered it?" pushing up my glasses, I stared at her with my mouth pressed into a thin line. "Your father, Alliance Chief Song Yu? Xie Jing Lian's father, Xie Yao Yang, perhaps?""I don't know yet, but I can guarantee that my father did not send out such an order. I've investigated him myself after I returned from overseas." Song Ting Yu's shoulders deflated. "I understand that you won't be able to believe me, but that's the best I can offer right now." She then shrugged. "But obviously, since my father is already the Alliance Chief, he has no need to make promises and garner support from the major sects.""Nonetheless, he approved of the invasion and even provided support for the invading sects." I remembered Song Si Yuan, Xie Zhi Zhang and the Alliance members who attacked. They seemed like pretty swell guys, and admittedly they didn't really do much when compared to the ten invading sects or thirteen later, but it was an irrefutable fact that they participated in the invasion and played a major role. "That won't absolve him of anything.""no." Song Ting Yu sighed. "But I can only ask you to suppress your anger for now and allow me to find the real mastermind. My father was probably manipulatedafter all, he can't allow the Alliance to present a divisive front. There would be many who wants to take advantage of that."I wanted to sneer at that. How nave. No matter how persuasive or charming Song Ting Yu was, she couldn't convince me to forgive the Alliance. On the other hand, what was I supposed to do about this? Form a coalition of demonic sects and destroy the Martial Arts Alliace or something? That was impractical to the extreme.I was just one guy. I couldn't possibly go and destroy an entire Alliance by myself. Even Nine-Tailed Fox Sect was aware that they couldn't retaliate against a gigantic organization. We broke off all ties and were wary of them, rejecting deals with them in the future and all that, but we didn't have the power to attack them and destroy them."Don't worry. I'm not reckless enough to go attack the Martial Arts Alliance, if that's what you're worried about."Song Ting Yu seemed to slump down in relief when she heard that. I raised an eyebrow when I saw her expression."What? You seem to have some kind of weird perception of me. You think I'm some sort of genocidal martial artist who goes around massacring entire sects or organizations, or even whole kingdoms? I'm not the protagonist of some xianxia story, I don't have that big a plot armor or Deus ex Machina to help me out. If I try to do something as stupid as that, I would die.""That's understandable. But" Song Ting Yu lowered her voice. "What if I tell you there's only one mastermind, or at least a small circle of masterminds that you can eliminate without the Alliance retaliating?"That caught my interest and I nodded, waiting for her to continue. Song Ting Yu smiled, her pink lips curling up seductively."I'll help you with that. I'll also protect you from any repercussions. After all" she was grinning now. "It will benefit my Martial Arts Alliance more to eliminate these bad eggsas well as future threats and rivals to the Song family's leadership."Then she paused and held my hand again."But I promise you this. The Song family will never raise a hand against you, your family or the Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. We'll always be your allies." She bowed her head. "Father will probably understand. He knows the risks you took to save my life.""Uhstop exaggerating. I was helping Yi Ding Si tooand Tong Xue also contributed quite a lot to the rescue effort."I frowned, not very pleased with this, but Song Ting Yu giggled mischievously."Maybe, but a little embellishment is necessary to persuade my father to accept you."She almost added something else, but stopped herself before she could utter those words. My scowl deepened, and I wondered if I was imagining things. It was almost as if she wanted to say "as my fianc" at the end."For now, just trust me, and we'll both benefit mutually." Song Ting Yu tightened her grasp. "Oh, and one more thing. Do you mind waiting a bit before the whole revenge plan?""why?" I asked carefully."because right now, the Alliance is facing some sort of crisis." Song Ting Yu's expression had turned grave. "The demonic sects are moving in force. Until they have been dealt with, I wish to request that you postpone your vendetta and any plans of revenge against the mastermind hiding inside the Alliance. Right now, we need a united front, or the Great Zhou Empire will be in huge peril."
