The Ferryman
Kaifeng was a peaceful place. A safe place.
It was home to the Murim Alliance. A city where righteous and orthodox people from all over the Central Plains passed through day after day, their traffic so constant it never seemed to end.
And that meant there was nothing for me to do in Kaifeng.
There weren’t any bandits in the vicinity. No villains with bounties on their heads, either.
Wild beasts attacking travelers?
None. The martial artists passing through had already beaten them down and driven them to extinction.
So the conclusion was obvious: I had to leave Kaifeng.
I needed to go somewhere with a little less order.
Or maybe somewhere with at least a few of those shady black-path sect types causing trouble.
Where would those kinds of people be most likely to gather?
I dug through the memories I had of wuxia novels.
In places crowded with righteous sects, like Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hubei, and Sichuan, there usually wasn’t room for a major black-path sect to establish itself.
They tended to gather in the Jiangnan region instead. In other words, somewhere near the Yangtze River?
Places with heavy trade routes and enough mountains to hide in. Those were the kinds of places where public order was lousy and food was plentiful.
So black-path sects usually congregated in the south, around Jiangnan.
Dongting Lake, Hangzhou, Suzhou—places like that.
And where there were places like that, there were probably forest bandits and river pirates as well.
But I wasn’t about to make it that far yet.
It wasn’t just the distance. The most important thing was that my skills were still pitiful.
Which meant there was a very high chance I’d run into trouble.
And if I got into trouble looking like this, it wouldn’t end with me simply losing my life.
I’d probably suffer something much worse. Something so awful that just thinking about it made me feel like I’d take internal injury.
So no. I couldn’t take that kind of risk.
It was no different from a woman traveling alone to India.
It was the same in the game, too.
If you started on the righteous side, you were supposed to follow a route from the north down to the south.
If you started on the black-path side, you did the opposite and headed north from the south.
So I might as well do the same.
First, head south.
Somewhere beyond the territory controlled by the Shaolin in Songshan and the Wudang Sect in Wudang Mountain. Hubei.
I’d head there. I had no idea how long it would take.
So I left Kaifeng and set off blindly to the south.
It was only possible because I still had plenty of silver.
Which meant I had to do something before my next bit of income came in. If I just sat around, the silver I had would slowly leak away, and my options would keep shrinking.
So I walked for three days.
When evening came as I was walking, I’d stop at inns along the route used by peddlers, escort bureaus, and merchants, and rest there.
Without my bamboo hat and veil, I drew plenty of attention, but I ignored it and kept going anyway.
I did briefly wonder if I should just put the hat and veil back on, but in the end I left them off.
A little risk was unavoidable. Besides, that way the North Sea Ice Palace would be able to find me.
Right now, I needed to make my existence known as quickly as possible. Even if it was dangerous, that had to come first.
The only problem was that every time I stopped to rest, I felt horribly uneasy.
I couldn’t relax at all. There could be perverts in a place like this, too.
So whenever possible, I deliberately took rooms on upper floors, and when I slept, I didn’t lie in the bed—I leaned against the door and dozed off there instead.
I even bought little bells and tied them to the window so I’d know if someone tried to open it.
A martial artist could easily climb through a second- or third-story window like it was nothing.
It was a lot of trouble, and it made me nervous, but there was nothing else for it.
If I wanted to live in an age of violence and savagery, this kind of caution was the bare minimum.
What was the point of getting careless, getting hurt, and then regretting it afterward?
By then, who knew what kind of state I’d be in?
The one saving grace was that nobody had actually picked a fight with me so far.
I got a lot of attention, but no one had deliberately come after me.
Or at least, that had been true for three days.
It was a fairly wide river, one that you had to cross by ferry.
There weren’t many people at the ferry landing. Four, including me.
The other three didn’t seem to know any martial arts at all.
They all looked like merchants, judging by the heavy bundles slung over their backs.
Still, if they managed to haul those loads all the way across and sell their goods, how much profit would they make?
The old ferryman at the landing looked like a fossil.
Skinny body. Hair tied back in a rough, haphazard mess.
The hand that collected the ferry fare looked like a dry tree branch.
How long had he been steering a boat from this landing? He looked almost like a master craftsman.
Once we boarded, the old man slipped a long pole into the water and, practically hanging off it, shoved the boat forward with a powerful thrust.
The boat drifted steadily away from the riverbank.
He didn’t seem to be putting in much effort, but the boat still slid along smoothly.
The old ferryman narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze once over our side of the boat and then the far bank.
Was he looking to see whether another passenger was coming? But there didn’t seem to be anyone.
Maybe escort bureaus and merchant companies with wagons just didn’t use this route.
They probably took a different road, or made a detour.
The old ferryman finished scanning the river, then turned his gaze to me.
And in that instant, I saw the corner of his mouth curl upward.
The long pole he’d been pressing into the river bottom shot out like lightning and thud—it slammed straight into the chest of the merchant sitting at the edge of the boat.
It happened in an instant.
The merchant’s chest was pierced clean through. He didn’t even have time to cry out before his mouth flew open and he toppled straight into the water with a splash.
The other two merchants, who hadn’t properly seen what happened, only looked up in confusion—then finally noticed that the man who’d been sitting beside them a moment ago was gone. Their faces twisted in bewilderment.
It felt like every hair on my body stood on end.
Someone had suddenly died right beside me. And it shocked me badly.
I’d thrown a few punches myself since coming here, but I’d never killed anyone.
But that old man had killed someone so easily, as if he were crushing a bug.
So effortlessly it was absurd.
“Heh-heh. Surprised, are you, little girl? Don’t worry. You’ll be the last one. Heh-heh-heh.”
Then the old man hefted the pole again and thrust it toward another merchant with terrifying speed.
I struck the pole away with a sharp clang, my hand knocking it aside.
When the two surviving merchants saw that, they screamed and flailed around on the narrow boat, trying to dodge.
“Oh? You blocked that? Heh-heh. This is going to be fun today. Tasting the flesh of a defiant little bitch ought to be fun, too. Heh-heh-heh.”
Revulsion crawled over my whole body. Malice pricked at my skin.
The old man looked calm enough still, which made it impossible for me to gauge his true skill.
But I didn’t think he was that remarkable.
If he were, he’d be strutting around in some black-path sect somewhere instead.
He wouldn’t be serving as a ferryman like this.
“Then I suppose I should get rid of the trash first, shouldn’t I?”
Once again, the old man’s pole shot like an arrow toward the merchants.
It was incredibly fast. But it was a long pole, and not as fast as I’d feared.
I knocked it away again with a loud boom, and the pole sliced through empty air without even snapping.
After being interrupted twice, the old man’s eyes narrowed.
“Tch.”
He clicked his tongue, hooked the pole over the side of the boat, and strode toward me.
Even on the rocking boat, his steps were natural and steady.
He was the complete opposite of me, who was standing there awkwardly and off-balance.
Even if I were more skilled than he was, this was still a bad position for me.
The old man was probably underestimating me because of my feeble internal energy.
Which meant I only had one chance.
The first strike. The very first one that would keep him from realizing the power of Iron Body Weight-Adding Force.
But even that wouldn’t be enough. I had to use everything I could.
It was too late to draw my sword. So the moment the old man came close and reached out his arm, I thrust out my palm.
It wasn’t a particularly fast attack. The old man’s expression was almost mocking.
But a definite chill had gathered in my palm, and when he saw that, his eyes widened for a split second.
Ice Soul Divine Palm. The only martial art I could really use barehanded right now.
The old man hurriedly blocked my palm with his arm, but with a bang he toppled over and rolled several times across the boat.
“Ooooooh!”
The merchants behind him gasped and cheered in admiration.
But honestly, that last strike was hard to call the Ice Soul Divine Palm.
To be blunt, it was no different from a brute-force swing powered by Iron Body Weight-Adding Force.
The cold was just there to help.
“You little bitch! Don’t think you’ll be ravished so easily!”
Staggered by the sudden blow, the old man roared and scrambled back to his feet.
But underestimating me had come at a cost.
His right arm hung limp. His face had twisted ugly and uneven.
Then, like a demon, he charged again.
Honestly, I was relieved.
If the old man had jumped off the boat and tried to run, there would have been no way to catch him.
So it was better that he came at me like this. His right arm was ruined, so this was still workable.
With a face tight from pain, he closed the distance in an instant and hooked his fingers like claws, aiming for me.
But because it was his left hand, not his right, it didn’t seem all that impressive. I could still handle it.
So I slapped his hand aside with my right.
My knuckles throbbed, but thanks to Golden Dragon Body and Ice Soul Divine Art, I didn’t even get a scratch.
That was when panic finally flashed across the old man’s face. And my left palm was already driving toward his empty midsection.
“Aaaagh!”
The old man twisted desperately and dodged the palm strike.
But that wasn’t what I was aiming for. I wasn’t trying to land a palm technique—I was trying to seize him.
I grabbed his limp right arm, and in the same motion, I moved my foot and kicked his leg out from under him.
“Guh—!?”
His body spun half a turn and crashed to the deck with a thunderous thud.
With his right arm locked in my grip, he couldn’t even roll with the fall properly, toppling over in a humiliating mess.
Then, with another crack, the force of my kick shattered one of his legs and the upper deck beneath him.
“Kraaagh!”
With his right arm and left leg completely broken, there was no way he’d be able to jump into the water and escape now.
But you never let your guard down around a martial artist with internal energy.
Part of me wanted to smash his dantian, but I still didn’t know how to do that, so instead I broke what was left of his left arm and right leg, too.
“Haaah.”
It might have been a little cruel, but compared to what would have happened if I’d stood there and taken it, it wasn’t too much at all.
Besides, the two merchants who’d barely escaped with their lives seemed to agree.
The moment I let out a breath, they rushed over and hurriedly said, “Young lady! I’ll bind this bastard!”
“I’ll take the pole and try to get us to the other side!”
With that, one of them tied the old man up while the other grabbed the pole and, grunting with effort, tried to push the boat forward.
Thanks to them, after a long while, we finally made it to a point far from the ferry landing on the opposite bank.
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