Chapter 37
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: Stirring - 1
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Spring night.
The bitter cold that had raged through the winter finally lifted. A spring breeze settled upon the highest floor of Huangjing Pavilion, the tallest point on Fire Mountain. The two men seated there felt it too.
One was the White-Clothed Divine Hero Nangong Dan, the Anhui White Dragon among the Five Dragons and Four Phoenixes, and the Nangong Clan's Shadow Sword. A peerless swordsman versed in the Lightning Thirteen Sword Thunders passed down only to blood kin, secret assassination techniques honed in secrecy, and mastery of both blade and shadow.
The other was the Iron Blood Fist King Huangfu Hu, a leader of one of the Five Great Clans and one of the Three Great Fist Masters, a titan of the current martial world.
Few in the world could stand toe-to-toe with these two. Only those who had reached the Transformation Realm, like the One Dragon and Three Stars, perhaps.
"What are you looking at?"
"Silence."
And now, those two were gazing out from the top of Huangjing Pavilion into the darkness.
On the eastern outskirts of Fire Mountain, where the slums met the bustling districts, where the gaudy lights and raucous revelry of the Blue Flower House should have been—there had been only thick darkness for the past three months. Nothing had risen anew from the ashes of the black path's symbol. No light, no music, no laughter.
Just the occasional few souls prostrating themselves before the ruins in prayer.
Silence.
Those who had toppled the Dragon Star Clan had entrenched themselves in that silence. They flouted the martial world's courtesies and codes.
No grand opening banquet to announce their new sect. No letters sent to the factions of Guangdong bearing greetings, ambitions, or manifestos. None of the rites a fledgling faction was duty-bound to perform. They had shut themselves away, rejecting all discourse.
Even the black path had never acted this way. Was it supreme confidence, or utter madness? The movements of the Divine Maiden—who had crushed Guangdong's foremost beauty—remained a profound mystery. She simply tended to the people in the slums day after day.
Yet.
"Seven agents died in that silence."
Spies were precious assets. Only the quick-witted and nimble-footed even made the shortlist. Raising and training messenger pigeons for them cost a fortune.
How much more so their loyalty, which no amount of coin or talent could buy? They were invaluable. And seven of them had perished.
Any who drew too near the Divine Maiden were instantly exposed and torn apart. The Turtle Breath Great Law to slow one's breathing, the secret arts to mask one's internal energy—nothing worked.
The curtain of darkness was absolute. Even the Huangfu Clan, masters of Fire Mountain, could not pierce it to see what transpired in those slums.
The emperor's long illness since a decade ago had the imperial court mired in infighting. The famine dragged on, stoking peasant unrest, and to top it off, inexplicable deaths among martial artists had cropped up across the land over the past month. Even if this was some new black path star, the world was too chaotic to focus solely on a newborn faction in Guangdong's Fire Mountain.
They could not move rashly. That was all there was to it.
"The clan head is concerned."
"About what?"
Nangong Dan spoke up. He was the one who had been exchanging letters with the Sword King nonstop.
"He says the grand design is intricate— even the slightest deviation could prove fatal."
"Meaning the Nine Sects have altered their movements?"
"No."
The Sword King's missives made no mention of trivialities like the Nine Sects or the court.
They cut to the essence.
"He says the enemy's intentions are opaque."
A master who seemed to spring from the earth itself. The very notion was absurd.
No one grew strong enough to fell the Flying Heaven Golden Blade Yong Heisha overnight. Peerless spirit pills spanning ages, flawless martial arts, bone-grinding ordeals—the three had to align perfectly just to glimpse their form. And with them came trails aplenty. No technique in the world, not even Shaolin's claimed supremacy, was truly unprecedented.
Yet here was an external art that treated a pinnacle master's evasion arts like child's play, and internal energy that seemed bottomless.
No manual granting both at the Divine Maiden's age existed—not in Shaolin's Scripture Pavilion, nor the Zhuge Clan's Crouching Dragon Hall.
Then what was this force? Who orchestrated it?
The court? The Nine Sects? The black path? Or some shadowy cabal from the outer martial fringes?
"In these turbulent times, it's no surprise if the rats in hiding start scurrying about."
"Whichever it is, it will serve us well."
"External threats have always been to our advantage. If it's not some ploy by the Nine Sects or the court, it's a perfect sacrificial pawn to shove under the noses of those heaven-fated fools. The same for the Zhuge and Peng Clans, who live and die by pretext."
The Iron Blood Fist King thought of his old friend. The Sword King never played a losing hand.
A clan head had to see far ahead, and that hero was no mere performer bound to the self. Even if dealt an utterly wretched move, he would always find the countermove.
He pondered the Sword King's designs. Subjugating the Nine Sects beneath his heel. Safeguarding the martial world's autonomy. Proving the might for both. The elegant stroke solving all three at once was...
"Is Clan Head Nangong preparing to form an alliance?"
"How did you..."
"Ha, we roamed the jianghu as sworn brothers in our youth. Looks like my memories haven't rusted yet."
The fragile non-aggression with the court, upheld by the late emperor's iron fist decree—it could be solidified by displaying the martial world's united might to the throne. A mysterious faction was the perfect scapegoat.
Through strife, a common bond would bloom among the Nine Sects and clans. A masterful stroke indeed.
And atop it all would sit the Nangong Clan as martial kings.
The sacrifice of lesser lights in the fray was regrettable, to be sure...
"If a mere handful of hairs lost brings gain to the world, why hesitate? Your grandfather's words, weren't they?"
The prosperity of Fire Mountain sprawling below Huangjing Pavilion had been forged not by the corrupt, decaying court, but by the Huangfu Clan. No matter how much blood flowed, they would not yield it.
That was the heroism of a true clan head.
The Iron Blood Fist King smiled in satisfaction. Beside him, Nangong Dan silently stared into the distant dark.
Hebei, a certain garden.
A young hero sat atop a massive boulder. In his hand was a letter from his renowned comrade.
He was Peng Suying, moniker Clear Bright Blade, one of the martial world's upright Four Dragons and young lord of the Hebei Peng Clan.
「To my dear Little Tiger.
Did you weather the winter well? I'm in Fire Mountain now. Came to see Uncle Huangfu, but something huge has happened. You've heard the rumors, no doubt—countless lives lost.
The demise of the Flying Heaven Golden Blade, the Dragon Tower's ruins, and the shadowy Divine Maiden fingered behind it all... suspicious. Martial arts and origins unknown. I witnessed the strangeness firsthand, but paper's too scant to recount it all.
I'm off to unearth her secrets. Come if you have the mind.
I've sent word to the Zhuge Clan's Sleeping Dragon and Huashan's Flower Cloud Wind Sword as well. Might be a rare gathering of us all.」
Peng Suying's brows furrowed. Midway through morning training, word from a long-missed friend—and such unwelcome tidings.
"Dragon Tower ruins...?"
He'd heard of the Dragon Star Clan's fall. Tales of a ghostly female expert snapping Yong Heisha's neck. He'd dismissed it as hyped black path skirmishing, but Nangong Dan's involvement hinted at deeper intrigue.
Calling for him meant one of two: perilously dangerous, or perilously fun. Nangong Dan had always been bold.
"Summoning the Little Divine Dragon and Flower Cloud Wind Sword too... leans toward the former."
And the Zhuge prodigy's Sleeping Dragon, heir to Huashan Divine Sword besides.
When last had all Four Dragons convened? Worth the trip to Fire Mountain for that alone.
Peng Suying pocketed the letter and gripped his blade for training anew. But he had to set it down once more—a girl's youthful voice rang out in the garden.
"Ahem. I ask the world: what is justice, that it should judge life and death?"
"Well then. Training's off for today."
The Peng young lord set his blade aside with a wry smile. From behind a tree, someone scampered over and threw herself into his arms.
"Lord Peng!"
"Chuxue, when did you come down from the mountain?"
"I missed you, so I came. How was it? My poem, infused with my heart?"
"Beautiful enough to make passing geese turn back."
A firm hand stroked the twin-braided girl's hair. She was Liang Chuxue, his fiancée and secular disciple of the Point Spear School.
"News from whom?"
"The White-Clothed Divine Hero sent word after ages."
"Is he well?"
"Looks like he's stirring up trouble again."
"Heh, take me too."
Peng Suying didn't know what threats lurked in Fire Mountain. He caressed Liang Chuxue's forehead, a touch of worry in his voice.
"It'll be a gathering of all Four Dragons. Dangerous."
"That's why I'm going, my lord. Don't underestimate the Point Spear School's blade. I'll guard your side."
"Alright. Who could break that stubborn will of yours? We'll go together."
But that was precisely what Liang Chuxue had hoped to hear.
Stubborn since childhood, Liang Chuxue—Peng Suying read her eyes and relented at once.
She was the Sun Phoenix heroine in her own right; her skill wouldn't lag.
"With you added, it'll be more than half the Five Dragons and Four Phoenixes. We can handle any peril."
"Yay!"
Liang Chuxue beamed and hugged Peng Suying tight.
A crow soaring in the distant sky cawed mournfully.