Chapter 45
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 44
Chapter Title: Wildfire - 1
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"I'll tell you who gets to take my head."
Peng Soyoung leveled her sword. Little Divine Dragon unfurled his jade-green fan. Yang Chosul prepared the thrust of her Peerless Under Heaven spear technique, and behind them even the Iron Blood Fist King quietly raised his fist.
But Zhang Ping didn't rush. He spoke calmly, step by step.
"Aren't you curious how the White-Clothed Hero met his end?"
Click. As he reached out his hand, the person beside him handed over the unmistakable Black Thunder Sword. A black scabbard. Blue silk tassel. Even the blood of someone caked on its battered blade.
It was unmistakably the White-Clothed Hero's sword.
The secret tied to Nangong Dan's death—that single phrase weighed more than ten thousand catties.
To the Iron Blood Fist King, who had suspected Nangong Dan was a dark sword.
To Peng Soyoung and Yang Chosul, wondering if their old friend might have left something crucial behind.
To Little Divine Dragon, striving to unravel the strangely unfolding situation.
"Puahaha!"
Zhang Ping threw the Black Thunder Sword aside with exaggerated flair, cackling and clapping his hands. Peng Soyoung hurriedly stepped forward to catch the blade.
"You're all the same, always have been. Thinking only of yourselves."
"Even if thousands starve, my warehouses must be full. Even if innocents die, my reputation as a hero must shine. Even with villains who disrupt the world right in front of you!"
Zhang Ping's eyes flashed.
"See? The moment I mention 'your friend' or 'someone you know,' you hesitate to strike."
"Wag that tongue one more time, and I'll sever your head."
"Why not now?"
Whoosh. Peng Soyoung moved without a word, swinging her sword at once. But the Iron Blood Fist King blocked her path.
"Uncle Huangfu?"
"Stand down. I'll handle this myself."
It was because if the enemy had caught on to the existence of dark swords, things could escalate.
Depending on how much the opponent knew.
That would determine their target. It might start as a show of force to crush the cult, but if needed, they could declare everyone involved as enemies of the martial world and silence them all.
His fist clenched tight. The Iron Blood Fist King was among the pinnacle masters. His realm was the Transcendent Realm.
A man who had harmonized the three flowers to gather his inner energy's essence and achieved the five energies converging to origins, drawing his entire body's power into a space as small as a fingernail. Truly a world of immortals who could twist reality itself.
The fist of Huangfu Hu, infused with intent, began to emit a yellow-earth glow.
"Choose your words carefully. How many lives I take today depends on that flimsy mouth of yours."
"Oh, is that so?"
Zhang Ping's eyes narrowed at the response. He gazed into the distance, not even focusing on the Iron Blood Fist King.
At last, his mouth opened.
"Nangong Dan died attempting an assassination. He scaled the walls at night and stabbed the Divine Maiden in the shoulder. And still he fell in defeat—truly a blessing to the martial world! Ha ha ha!"
"What?"
"But you all think he fought a life-or-death duel. That's what we spread around."
The Huangfu Clan wasn't the goal. The cult—and the Divine Maiden—weren't fated to end in mere Guangdong. Zealous faith bordering on madness gave Zhang Ping a broader vision instead.
What must be done to set Anhui ablaze, and beyond that, the entire martial world?
First, two things.
Gather the outcasts of the world in one place and unite their strength.
And conversely, strike and shatter the Martial Alliance before it could fully unleash its potential.
The world is vast. The martial world too—from the Kunlun at the edge of the divine continent to Shaolin in Henan, their reach extended to every corner.
Gathering such widespread forces completely took time.
The more time given, the more sects would await in Anhui. The only way to raise their odds was time—nothing but time.
An assassination and a duel carried different weights of justification.
The third son of the righteous Nangong Clan was dead—who would hesitate to seek vengeance? Indeed, the scheme had worked. Now was the time for the second.
"You so-called heroes!"
Zhang Ping climbed atop the walls, his gaze fixed beyond Mount Huo. Ignoring even the Iron Blood Fist King before him—what was he staring at so desperately? All eyes turned there, as if drawn by fate.
Beyond Mount Huo. An endless forest of pavilions, and far in the distance, Huangzheng Pavilion.
"No way—"
And in that instant,
flames erupted.
The blaze engulfing Huangzheng Pavilion, its scarlet tongues licking the air—it was unmistakably fire. Desperate gazes locked onto it.
It can't be, someone thought. Neither Little Divine Dragon nor the Iron Blood Fist King were fools. Guest elders guarded the main house, and both Three Blades One Flash and Gale Sword remained. Not to mention the Elder Council intact.
The Huangfu Clan's elders were all once stars who had shaken the jianghu.
The Elder Council head was even a pinnacle master. To them, Huangzheng Pavilion was more precious than life itself. And now it burned in broad daylight?
All denied the unbelievable reality they refused to accept.
"It can't be..."
But what of the acrid smoke carried on the wind? Why the faint warmth caught by a martial artist's sharp senses?
"Prove your heroism! Show with actions what your so-called righteousness demands! Is it the peace of the world, or merely your own safety?!"
"Ahahaha! Here, I'll give you a choice! I'm right here!"
Zhang Ping pointed at himself, his lips curling into a grin. The cultists around him sealed their lips, steeling their resolve.
"Will you stand guard over whatever remains in your lavish home? Or cut down this demon who disrupts the world and leisurely sift through the ashes?"
Gazes in the hall poured toward the Iron Blood Fist King in an instant. But in that moment, he had only one conclusion he could reach.
Wealth accumulated over generations. Precious medicines gathered dreaming of the Huangfu Clan's revival. And
above all, to a martial clan, the ancestral martial arts manuals irreplaceable by any mere cult they could wipe out anytime.
Those priceless treasures were burning fiercely.
"Ignore his nonsense! Doesn't this mean the Divine Maiden came alone, separated from those scum? It's an opportunity!"
Even as he boldly turned and employed lightness skill, his heart burned.
The streets of Mount Huo. No passersby recognized them. In Guangdong's premier city, sword-wielding men and women in mourning garb were beyond counting.
They stood boldly before the Huangfu Clan's main gate.
Bai Hui fiddled with the gourd flask in his bosom—the one Zhang Ping had earnestly warned mustn't fail. Liquid sloshed inside.
Oil he couldn't have obtained without Mount Huo, from distant Western Regions, they said.
Unquenchable fire—what sounded like a folktale.
Come to think of it, the girl before him was much the same.
"Ready?"
The girl looked up at the Huangfu Clan. It was too vast to call a house.
The gate alone seemed three times her height. Behind it stretched clusters of tiled halls, each hung with gold-lacquered plaques. And that wasn't all—servants bustled about, while retainers draped in luxurious silk inspected every corner.
The flow of qi visible to the eye formed a fortress in itself. Utterly different from afar. Yellow true energies gathered and intertwined, breathing like a living beast.
"..."
The massive simply imposed by existing. A thousand-zhang cliff, an endless sea, and the Five Great Clans.
The five largest houses under heaven wielded their majesty amply.
"Yeah."
But was it larger than her hatred?
Stronger than the pain searing her heart?
Was the fire raging inside her too weak to burn down a single house?
"Let's begin."
The light in the girl's eyes died. The black-eyed girl walked straight ahead. The Huangfu gate guards spotted her.
A clan gate guard was never trivial. The gate sentries were the house's face, and the Huangfu chief sentry was an honorable post for first-rate masters only, requiring at least a decade of effort to attain.
How absurd it must have seemed to them—a raggedly dressed girl approaching without warning.
She looked neither noble nor wealthy. This gate barred even Guangdong's rich without permission; it wasn't for beggars' pleas.
"Halt!"
"To enter the Great Huangfu Clan, your name must be on the roster! Who are you?!"
A resonant shout. But the girl didn't stop.
The guards drew swords without hesitation, cries of alarm rose from the crowd,
and the girl, now before them, suddenly thrust out her hand. The hand even pinnacle master Yong Heisha couldn't evade. Effortlessly, she seized the sentry's collar.
"I am..."
Thrust.
As if playing.
Her hand, extended lightly without a trace of inner energy, pierced the Huangfu sentry's chest. The warrior couldn't comprehend his death even then. So with dazed eyes, he merely stared at the girl's face.
The dying warrior's limp gaze saw, behind the girl, an autumn field unfurling like an illusion. Golden rice fields on the verge of harvest consumed in house-sized flames.
At last, the girl answered.
"A wildfire."