WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle

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◈ Raised by a Ruthless Swordsman ◈

Chapter 29: The Calm Before the Storm

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“We can't go by land.”

Du Gi spoke with his eye pressed to a gap in the straw mat.

“They'll keep a sharp watch on the pier all night.”

Then he nodded toward the water-facing side of the other boat.

“But their eyes will be on land first. In this bitter winter, the watch on the water will be the weakest.”

I thought the same. We could never get through head-on, so if we were going to find a way, we had to choose the weakest point.

But approaching from the water. Du Gi's miserable state that night, thrashing both arms in the river and gulping down water again and again, flashed through my mind.

That meant the water route was entirely my responsibility. Even taking my family into account, plunging into a winter river was not a price I could gladly pay.

“Did you learn to swim in the meantime?”

“Heh heh. Isn't that why I'm asking you?”

Du Gi answered shamelessly.

I studied his face for a moment. His expression did not change in the slightest. It was as if he had not even thought to bring an apology with him.

A sigh escaped me.

“...How long did you say it would take to reach Hangzhou?”

“If nothing happens, another full day of travel, then we'll arrive around midday the day after tomorrow.”

“Do you think they'll be going as far as Hangzhou too?”

“Most likely. To haul the cargo to Yeongpa, they'll have to change routes at Hangzhou. At the very least, we'll be on the same waters until then.”

Then we would have two chances, tonight and tomorrow night.

I considered it for a moment. My dantian was only a little over twenty percent full. If I entered the winter river bare-bodied, I would freeze stiff before I could even do anything.

“Let's leave it for today. We'll watch how they spend the night, then act tomorrow night.”

“Let's do that.”

Du Gi agreed without complaint.

“But keep your eyes moving, Brother Du. How many are on night watch, when they change shifts, who sleeps where. There is much to learn if we're going to be thorough.”

“That's my line of work. Leave it to me.”

Considering how flawlessly he had slipped into the protection convoy, I trusted he would handle that side himself. I began listing the preparations I needed to make.

The clothes I would wear in the water were the first problem. The outer garment I wore was fairly dark, but not dark enough to disappear into the night.

On the dim surface of the water, the lighter the clothes, the more they stood out. I needed a set of clothes dark enough to blend in naturally.

I also needed to cover my face. It was best to prepare for things going wrong. Even if I were discovered, hiding my face would make the consequences less severe.

Once I had finished calculating, I rose.

“I'll go into town for a moment. Brother Du, keep a good watch over there in the meantime.”

Du Gi only wiggled a hand, his eye still at the gap in the mat. Then he untied his money pouch and handed me a string of coins.

“Use this to pay for what you need.”

It was fairly heavy in my hand. It looked like I would not need to spend my own money.

Seeing how he even paid for the small expenses of work he asked others to do, the Bright Mirror Society seemed exacting about accounts where people were concerned.

Leaving Du Gi behind, I pulled my bamboo hat low and stepped down onto the planks.

The wharf street was still bright in the early evening. Sailors and travelers passed beneath the lanterns, while voices drifted out from every inn. As I walked among them, I casually checked the pier beneath the brim of my hat.

One of the two people who had disembarked earlier was just coming out of an inn. They carried an oilpaper-wrapped bundle in one hand.

I stole a quick look at their face from beneath my hat.

It was definitely familiar. I did not know their name, but they seemed to be one of the regular escort warriors who had guarded the wagon during the protection convoy.

That boat was certainly from that convoy.

The escort seemed about to head for the pier, but stopped and swiftly swept their gaze over both sides of the street.

Startled, I kept my head facing forward and quickened my steps. Only after taking several more did I glance sideways and see them moving away toward their boat.

I watched until they reached the pier, then continued on my way.

As I looked around the street, I spotted a shop with clothes hung in rows beneath its eaves. Thinking every shop that sold clothes must display them like that, I walked over.

But when I got closer, I saw that the clothes were quite different.

They were not crisp new garments, but faded, worn things mixed together. It seemed to be a place that bought used clothes, priced them, and sold them again.

That worked out well. Since I would be soaking the clothes in water anyway, there was no reason to spend money on something new.

I searched through the hanging garments and chose a dark cotton outfit, nearly black. There were patches here and there, but they would never show on dark water.

When I held it up and called for the owner, a man emerged from the back of the shop.

He wore a loose padded jacket and fingerless arm warmers. His eyes were small, and he had a bland expression. After briefly looking over my face, he shifted his gaze to the clothes in my hands.

“Fifty cash.”

Du Gi had given me coins, so I almost paid without argument. But I decided to bargain once. I had seen an example to imitate a few days ago.

Following Du Gi's method, I waved my hand and pointed out the patches with my fingertip. One spot, then another. I added that fifty cash was too much for something in this state.

The owner did not back down easily. He retorted that cotton of this quality was not common. I shot back that if it were not common, it would not be hanging here. After we went back and forth several times, the owner smacked his lips and held up three fingers.

Thirty cash. Used clothes truly had used-clothes prices. I felt the corners of my lips lift slightly, realizing this was how what I had learned could be used.

I bought black cloth to cover my face at the general store where I had bought the bamboo hat. It was only a palm-sized scrap of cotton, hardly worth haggling over.

That was enough preparation for now. Keeping my bamboo hat low, I headed back to the boat.

It had perhaps taken half a sijin. When I crawled beneath the straw mat, Du Gi was watching the other boat in exactly the same position as when I had left.

“Anything happen while I was gone?”

“One shift changed. Someone came out from inside and traded places with the person sitting beside the wagon.”

I set what I had bought by my feet and pressed my eye to the gap in the mat as well.

Three or four piers away, the boat remained where it was. The lantern on deck lit only one side of the hull, while the water-facing side, turned away from it, was submerged in darkness.

That darkness was where we would make our way in tomorrow.

I drew my eye from the gap and thought for a moment. With tomorrow in mind, I needed to fill my dantian by even one more percent.

But once I began energy circulation, I could not stop before completing a full circuit. That was why I had used only the rare times when I was completely alone, managing it so tightly. Could I trust a man I had known for only a few days?

Still, he needed to see what was inside that wagon, and for that, I needed to remain unharmed. At least until tomorrow night, he had no reason to harm me.

“Brother Du. I need to recover some Inner Energy for a while.”

Du Gi nodded readily, his eye still at the gap in the mat.

“Do so. I'll stand guard for you.”

He would watch over me. It sounded convincing enough.

I moved deeper beneath the mat and sat cross-legged. I could sense Du Gi behind my back. Deciding to entrust my back to that presence, I closed my eyes.

I steadied my breathing and sent my energy through the path I always used. From the dantian, up my spine to the crown of my head. Down across my face and chest, then back to the dantian.

At first, I could not completely let down my guard. Whenever the boat rocked or the presence behind me felt unreliable, the energy I was circulating kept trying to scatter.

But because of the rocking, I had no time to let my attention wander. Each time the boat pitched, the route tried to stray by an inch, and I had to focus all my attention on the path of the circulating energy to hold it in place.

As I repeated that, the outside gradually grew faint. The sound of water, the swaying of the boat, even the presence behind me. Only the flow of energy rising from my dantian and moving along its path became clearer. The route that had seemed ready to break opened up, and as soon as one circuit ended, the next began.

Before long, even the boundary between me circulating the energy and the energy circulating itself blurred, leaving only a single current behind.

* * *

I suddenly opened my eyes at the feeling that something had changed.

A pale light was seeping through the gap in the mat. It felt as though I had only closed and opened my eyes for a moment, but dawn was already breaking.

Had I stayed awake all night? My body felt as heavy as waterlogged cotton, yet my mind was strangely clear.

Even after circulating energy morning and evening for ten years, I had never felt this way at the end of it. I had always restored my body with sleep and only slowly drawn up energy through circulation. Last night was the first time I had completely let myself go along the route of the flowing energy.

I hurriedly checked my dantian. It was about forty percent full. It seemed to hold around five percent more than it normally would after the same amount of time.

When I looked beside me, my eyes met Du Gi's. With the day dawning, his watch on the other side had apparently ended as well. He had drawn his eye from the gap in the mat. His eyes were hollow from staying awake all night.

“I didn't expect you to go that deeply into it.”

Du Gi spoke as he pressed around his eyes. I could not tell whether he was reproaching me or not. I silently looked at his hollow eyes for a moment.

“Thank you.”

Du Gi looked at me for a moment, then waved his hand.

“Don't thank me. Just suffer through tonight.”

Then he said the night would be long and that we should get some sleep. He lay back on the floor. Before long, his breathing settled into an even rhythm. He must have been quite tired.

I considered lying down as well, but my mind still felt too clear to waste on sleep.

I got up, lifted the mat, and climbed to the side of the boat.

The dawn harbor was already awake. The boatmen were finishing binding their cargo and preparing to untie the anchor ropes. Our boat looked ready to depart soon.

A glance showed that the boat beyond the pier was bustling as well. People moved across its deck, and hands tightened the ropes binding the wagon once more. They were preparing to leave too.

After waiting about the time it took to drink tea, the boat was pushed off the embankment with a pole. The force slowly carried it out onto the water.

For a moment, I watched Lanxi recede. Its dense lanterns and crowded hulls gradually shrank into the river mist.

After watching that sight for a while, I dragged my increasingly heavy body back beneath the straw mat.

* * *

When I opened my eyes again, the light through the gap in the mat was already slanting low. It seemed that I had slept through the entire day.

Du Gi was still sleeping soundly beside me. He had stayed awake all night, so it was understandable. I did not wake him.

I rose and pressed my eye to the gap in the mat. The river had changed again. The broad banks were gone, and steep mountains pressed close on both sides of the water. The boat was silently sliding through that narrow passage.

I considered doing more energy circulation, but people came and went too often here, so I stopped myself.

Instead, I closed my eyes and considered something else.

If things went wrong and I had to cross swords, the opponents I would clash with were clear. They might not guard the wagon directly, but they would surely step forward the instant things fell apart.

The chief steward called Cold-Faced Sword and Nangong Hwi, who had burst from the carriage. Those two troubled me more than anyone else.

There was a world of difference between clashing with someone blindly and clashing after forming an image of them in my mind.

I had little to go on with Nangong Hwi's sword. All I had seen was the single strike that had sliced through the Plum Blossom Sword Chief's thigh. But I had watched the chief steward's sword closely, straining my enhanced vision.

I slowly replayed that fight.

While the Plum Blossom Sword Chief's sword spread in every direction like flower petals, the chief steward's sword remained a single blade.

The chief steward did not chase each scattered branch one by one. They chose the stream coming straight ahead and crushed it down in one heavy strike. Each time their swords collided, the fine sword strikes of the plum blossom were knocked away as though crushed beneath that weight, and the brilliant changes were abruptly cut off in whole sections.

But because that strike was heavy, it was slow.

The Plum Blossom Sword Chief did not miss that opening, splitting the sword into faster, finer movements. Whenever the chief steward crushed one stream, two more sprouted in its place. The sword that broke through with weight could not keep up with all those strikes in the end.

After reviewing it for a long time, I put myself in the Plum Blossom Sword Chief's position.

A heavy sword falls from above. I meet it at an angle with the flat of my blade, draw a circle, and let its weight slide to the side.

The redirected sword strikes empty air. But someone who wielded such weight would not try to forcefully pull back a missed sword. It would be too slow to recover. Instead, they would use that flowing force to turn the entire sword and sweep it up along my flank.

Then I would not follow it in. I would take half a step back and catch the sweeping sword in another circle, letting it slide away again. A sword that swung fruitlessly twice would settle that much more heavily.

Then I would wind my sword upward. After diverting it once, then again, and making it sink, my sword would travel up along the wrist that held the sword.

I returned the imagined exchange to the beginning. This time, I assumed the sword came from the side. If I diverted it, how would the enemy respond? With that weight, rather than knocking upward, they would turn their wrist and press down.

Then I would...

The sound of water and the rocking of the boat gradually faded away. In my mind, sword met sword through dozens of exchanges.

Whenever the enemy made a move, I connected my own sword to meet it, then followed the Sword Path to feel out how the enemy would answer in turn.

* * *

Someone shook my shoulder, and I opened my eyes.

The light through the gap in the mat had nearly faded, leaving the inside dim. Du Gi's face came into view faintly.

“We've arrived. This is Tonglu.”

I sat up and pressed my eye to the gap in the mat.

The river had emerged from the narrow gorge and widened again. A small harbor nestled beneath the foot of the mountains. It was not as crowded as Lanxi. Lanterns were sparse, and only a few boats were moored there.

“I don't see the wagon.”

“It will come in soon.”

Du Gi answered shortly and pointed upstream through the gap in the mat.

In the dusk, a single sail was slowly approaching the harbor. By now, I felt I could recognize the outline set in the middle of its deck without even looking.

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