WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
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◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 12: A Debt of Gratitude
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A cargo cart lay half shattered at the roadside.
Four corpses were sprawled across the dirt around it.
An old driver with an arrow in his neck, two sturdy men cleaved by axes, and a man dressed as a silk merchant.
Salt sacks had burst from the broken cart, leaving the road white as though it had been dusted with snow.
They had said the mountain roads to the northwest were troubled. The rumors had been true.
Still, there was no way to confirm whether these men were behind the disappearance rumors from the marketplace.
Those rumors had originated near Black Fang Mountain, another two hundred li farther in.
There appeared to be six or seven bandits.
Yet the ones bleeding and dying were the bandits themselves.
“Who the hell are you? Where did this bastard crawl out from?”
“He's just some Orthodox Faction brat! Swarm him and tear him apart!”
A man in white martial robes stood alone amid the group, wielding his sword as though it were dancing.
His immaculate white clothes bore not a speck of dust. A jade token hung at his waist, and he held a finely forged renowned sword in his hand.
Anyone could see he was the disciple of a prestigious orthodox sect.
The power of his sword exceeded even the rumors.
It was on an entirely different level from the desperate blade work of the wanderers who had driven me into a corner a few nights ago.
His footwork left only afterimages as he slipped into the bandits' encirclement.
Whenever his wrist flexed and snapped out, another bandit sprayed blood and collapsed.
This was not a sword that cut flesh and bone through brute strength.
It severed only vital points and the paths of movement.
The arteries in the neck, the tendons in the wrists, the backs of the knees.
A bandit who seemed to be their leader charged forward with a roar, holding a double-bladed axe.
Before the axe could fall from above his head, the white-clad man's sword slid past the back of his knee like a snake.
With his tendon severed, the leader's knee buckled and he lost his balance.
The sword that had circled back sliced through his nape.
Two clean moves, without excess or hesitation.
The instant those two forms flowed together, another name was carved into my mind.
[Bamboo Leaf Sword]
One more word followed, revealing the sword's origin.
[Qingcheng]
It was Mount Qingcheng Sect, one of the Nine Sects that commanded the martial world.
It differed from the Azure Cloud Sword Sect I had seen at the marketplace two days ago as heaven differed from earth.
The Bamboo Leaf Sword truly lived up to its reputation for slicing as thinly and sharply as a bamboo leaf.
It was a sword art that would earn praise as first-rate in the martial world.
I watched the slaughter from behind a rock, holding my breath.
My eyes moved busily of their own accord, apart from any fear I felt.
I could see the half-beat delay in his off-rhythm footwork as he slipped into blind spots, and the angle at which his wrist bent.
I could even see how he measured the distance to retreat to safety the instant after cutting someone's throat.
Knowing the martial art's name changed what I could see.
Once I understood that it was a sword style meant to slash thinly and withdraw, I could grasp why he chose that place at that precise moment.
Then I noticed one of the man's habits.
At the end of every form, the tip of his sword tilted half an inch to the left.
The artifact in my chest was recording even those habits and weak points, regardless of my will, and engraving them into my body.
The last surviving bandit threw down his weapon, turned his back, and fled in terror.
The sword pierced his back.
He collapsed onto the dirt.
The fight was over.
The white-clad martial artist coolly flicked the blood from his blade into the air.
Then a woman crawled out from behind the overturned salt cart.
It seemed the bandits had been in the middle of dragging her from the cart.
The lapel of her skirt had been torn, and her hair hung loose and disheveled.
The woman fell to her knees before the man in white and pressed her forehead to the dirt.
“Thank you for saving me... Hic. Benefactor. How could I ever repay such a great debt, the debt of my life...?”
Her sobs sounded half swallowed by fear and relief.
The man in white looked down at the prostrate woman with emotionless eyes.
Up to this point, it was a familiar scene.
An orthodox hero slew bandits and saved a pitiful commoner.
I thought there was nothing more to see and tried to turn away.
I had taken in all the movements I could, and I had far to go.
Yet my feet would not move, as if they had stuck to the rock.
There was something strangely ominous about the man's steps as he approached the woman.
They were not the leisurely steps of a benefactor who had saved a life.
They were the steps of a predator choosing prey trapped in a jar.
Then it happened.
The man roughly grabbed the prostrate woman's arm and pulled her to her feet.
His hand did not stop at pulling her arm.
The woman's body went rigid with cold terror.
“B-Benefactor. What are you doing...?”
There were a hundred and fifty paces between us.
It was too far for me to hear a quiet voice.
Yet I heard it clearly.
His voice lodged in my eardrums as though he were whispering directly into my ear.
It seemed the artifact in my chest was now sharpening my hearing as well.
“No one has seen what happened to a bitch like you in these deep, secluded mountains, have they?”
“Wh-What do you mean by that...?”
“Those mountain bandits brutally killed you. I happened to pass by, arrived a step too late, and punished every one of those bandits in my fury. That is what the whole world will be told.”
“W-What a horrible thing to say...”
“Your whole party has been killed by those beasts anyway, hasn't it? The dead cannot speak, and didn't you, the only survivor, just call me your benefactor with that mouth of yours?”
With his free hand, the man drove his bloodstained renowned sword into the ground.
“There is a principle that says a debt of gratitude may be repaid by joining one's body with another's. Rather than being treated like a beast by several filthy, stinking bandits and dying, wouldn't it be far more honorable for you to obediently embrace a master from a prestigious orthodox sect like me?”
The woman staggered backward, her face white.
Then her back struck the overturned salt cart, and she crumpled to the ground.
White martial robes.
They were clothes I had put on my character hundreds of times while playing the Orthodox Faction route.
But no branch of Records of the Martial God had ever shown a scene like this.
The game had cut away the sides of humanity too ugly to put on screen and shown only a prettily packaged world.
This was the real world, one that the paltry game had not filtered for me.
I was already standing behind the rock.
I did not know when I had risen.
There was nothing to deliberate.
That man would not let the woman live after satisfying his lust.
He had just said with his own mouth that he would make it appear the bandits had killed her.
I should have recognized long ago what such cold and precise swordsmanship meant.
Those hands moved just as mercilessly whether toward good or evil.
If I hid here and merely watched, I would become an accomplice with a hand in that murder.
I had sworn I would not risk my life in someone else's fight.
But what was happening below was different from a fight between martial artists.
It was a nauseating act of crushing the weak.
It was not that I did not know what disaster might follow from challenging a master of the Nine Sects.
I knew my head could be cut off, and I ran anyway.
I raced down the slope.
A hundred and fifty paces.
For a master who had learned lightness arts, it was a distance that could be crossed in the blink of an eye.
For a Demonic Cult foot soldier without even a scrap of internal energy, it was a distant land of death.
My foot slipped on the descent, sending loose stones tumbling.
Branches cut my cheek and forearm, drawing blood.
Hold on. Please, don't die. Just a little longer.
Repeating only those words in my mind, I charged toward the hypocrite wearing the disguise of a prestigious orthodox sect.
* * *
But the woman's decision was faster than my two legs.
When I had descended about halfway down the slope, I saw the woman collapse before the cart.
She did not rise again.
When I reached the dirt, panting for breath, dark red blood was flowing from the corner of her mouth.
It seemed she had bitten off her own tongue in despair.
Both hands still clutched the torn lapel of her clothing to the end.
Yet the man in white did not stop even before the woman's suicide.
He knelt beside the dying woman.
“If you were going to die anyway, you should have repaid your debt in full with your body first. What a needlessly impatient bitch.”
His voice, grumbling before a corpse, was horrifyingly calm.
That was no longer a person.
It was a monster draped in noble martial robes.
He seemed so absorbed in his deed that he had not even noticed my presence.
Not even when I came within ten paces of him.
There was no reason to watch any longer.
I silently cut the rope binding my pack and drew my crude sword.
I did not speak to him.
There was only one thought in my mind: cut off that neck in a single stroke.
Do not raise the shoulder.
Keep the elbow against the side.
Push with the waist.
It was the exact same swing I had seen at the marketplace two days ago and engraved into my body.
My blade slid toward his nape.
It did not even make the sound of wind.
Yet he dodged.
Had the hairs on his nape risen after sensing killing intent?
Without even turning around, he threw himself forward and rolled across the ground.
The tip of my sword cut through the air an inch behind his nape.
It was a terrifying instinct.
Using the momentum of his roll, he sprang to his feet like a coiled spring.
“You worthless little rat.”
Perhaps from shock and humiliation, his handsome face had turned scarlet.
“You dare ambush me from behind?”
He pulled the renowned sword he had planted in the ground free.
The instant he gripped its hilt, the air around us turned cold.
“Are you some hidden remnant of that bandit gang? Or one of that dead bitch's companions?”
I did not answer.
Instead, I lowered the point of my sword with a small motion, holding it toward the ground.
If I spoke, my voice would remain in his head.
Only one cooling corpse needed to remain here.
“If you're going to play mute, then fine. Once you die, everyone becomes a mute who keeps their mouth shut anyway.”
If we fought head-on, nine times out of ten, I would be hacked to death.
Still, there was nowhere to retreat.
Nor did I intend to retreat.
I would kill this bastard with my own hands today.
He struck first.
It was that footwork, gliding over the ground and closing in while leaving afterimages.
The very same off-rhythm movement I had studied from atop the rock.
I could see it.
I could see the instant his footwork kicked off the ground and drove in.
I could even see the angle of his wrist as it bent while he thrust his sword.
What the artifact had recorded from a hundred and fifty paces away was unfolding exactly before my eyes.
The thin, cold blade rushed for my throat.
Then, at the final moment, it habitually tilted half an inch to the left.
When the tip tilted, his right side opened.
I slipped into that opening and thrust my sword straight ahead.
I drove it forward roughly and directly, using only the turn of my waist.
His eyes widened as though they would split apart.
My sword tore into a blind spot his own sword could not guard.
“Gah!”
He withdrew his attack and desperately bent his upper body backward.
His lower body lost its balance from the forced motion and slid forward.
Directly into the straight path of my sword.
Shhk.
A piece of flesh was cut away as easily as slicing a radish.
Only then did his scream tear through the silence of the mountain road.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
He dropped his renowned sword, clutched his crotch, writhed, and collapsed.
Dark red blood poured through his fingers.
What had been cut off was what he had exposed with his own hands by undoing his belt.
I had not aimed for it.
As he twisted away, his weakness had met the tip of my sword.
He had brought it upon himself.
Frowning, I drove in my next strike without hesitation.
The throat of a man whose sword stance had collapsed was an empty target.
Shhk.
His scream abruptly stopped.
The bloodied hand that had covered his crotch hurried to his nape.
His eyes looked up at me, as though he could not believe that a master of a prestigious orthodox sect had been defeated by some nameless country bumpkin.
He collapsed sideways with those eyes still open.
After a faint convulsion, he stopped moving forever.
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