Riding atop the donkey, Li Diudiu felt for the first time that a person ought to have their own means of transportation in this world. He thought that even urging a donkey forward carried a certain flair of its own — what would it be like if he were mounted on a real warhorse instead?
The thought grew stronger and stronger, until three hours later when Li Diudiu realized his inner thighs had been rubbed raw, and the notion gradually cooled.
It truly hurt.
A thousand ambitions in his chest, yet his groin suffered beneath.
Since he wasn’t hungry, he had planned to keep going for a good while longer — he ate a lot and could last — thinking that since it would take a full day to reach Gucheng County, he might as well not stop. But after three hours he simply couldn’t hold out any longer.
Sliding off the donkey, Li Diudiu walked forward leading it by the reins, moving as though there were still a donkey beneath him, both legs bent almost into a pair of circles.
Fortunately, he entered a large market town. On both sides of the street were quite a few small food stalls; places like this rarely had large restaurants, but the small food stalls were packed one right next to the other.
Li Diudiu tied the donkey to a wooden stake…
Since there was no wooden stake, he had spotted a stick by the roadside roughly as thick as an arm, picked it up, tied the reins to it, then with both hands drove the stick into the earth.
This alone left the proprietor of the food stall staring dumbly. Li Diudiu had grown quite tall — he looked about fourteen or fifteen years old — but he was still just a youth. Seeing such extraordinary strength, the proprietor’s manner of speaking became somewhat more respectful.
“Young master, would you like something to eat?”
“What do you have?”
“Only steamed buns and pickled vegetables, I’m afraid. Times are hard, business is difficult.”
“Then steamed buns and pickled vegetables it is — heat six buns, and bring some chili peppers if you have them.”
“Of course, of course.”
The proprietor heated six steamed buns and brought them out. The pickled vegetable strips, dressed with sesame oil, salt, vinegar, and a little sugar, carried a faint fragrance that drifted to the nose. Li Diudiu hadn’t eaten in more than three hours and was genuinely hungry. He stuffed pickled vegetables into the bun, took a bite, then bit into a bright green chili pepper — crunch, crunch — the sound was satisfying.
The donkey tied up nearby glanced at him, then stretched its neck and began to bray.
A donkey’s bray has its own charm… hungry, hungry, so hungry…
So Li Diudiu asked the proprietor to bring the donkey some hay, then stood and walked over, extending a chili pepper toward the donkey’s mouth. The donkey curled its tongue around it, and its eyes immediately grew somewhat wider.
Li Diudiu burst out laughing. Serves you right for rubbing my groin raw, he thought — I’ll burn your tongue.
Just then, from the direction he had come, a column of riders came thundering down the road, dust flying in clouds. The proprietor, seeing that display, retreated backward; anyone brazen enough to gallop like that on a public road was not someone their kind of small-business owners should tangle with.
The column was about to charge past when one rider glanced to the side, caught a glimpse through a window of Li Diudiu sitting inside eating, and hauled furiously on his reins. As he pulled to a stop he shouted: “Here! He’s here!”
At that shout, the several dozen riders immediately halted.
From their saddles, this band of fierce riders all turned to stare at Li Diudiu. Hearing that shout, Li Diudiu knew trouble had arrived. He placed his hand on the bundle at his side and slowly untied it.
“Seize him and bring him back!”
The lead man — a one-eyed brute — bellowed the order, and immediately four or five men leaped from their horses, charging straight at Li Diudiu with fierce momentum.
Li Diudiu had already opened the bundle. He reached in and drew out the repeating crossbow, and those few men instantly froze in their tracks, all of them somewhat stunned.
Li Diudiu held the repeating crossbow in his right hand and picked up the last steamed bun with his left, continuing to eat as though nothing were happening.
“Go! Get him!” the one-eyed man barked furiously. “What are you afraid of? He’s just a child!”
The four or five men hesitated, exchanging glances. They seemed genuinely terrified of the one-eyed man. After a brief pause, they gritted their teeth and charged forward. Li Diudiu had spent the previous night familiarizing himself with all the weapons, and especially this repeating crossbow — a lethal implement for close and medium range.
As he kept squeezing the trigger mechanism, crossbow bolts roughly a foot long shot out one after another. He had no intention of taking lives, so he aimed at their legs. In an instant, all ten bolts of the Dachu military-issue repeating crossbow were spent, and every one of those four or five men had arrows in their legs, collapsed on the ground crying out in pain.
Li Diudiu set the crossbow on the table and looked toward the proprietor. “Is there any tea?”
No one responded.
Li Diudiu glanced to the side — the proprietor was already at least several dozen paces away, running with the speed of a thunderbolt.
Li Diudiu wasn’t certain who these people served, but had a rough guess: those who would specifically come after him were either associates of Sun Rugong’s group, or they were after him on account of the Wang Heita affair.
The former he need not worry about. The latter…
Li Diudiu told himself inwardly: Diudiu, you may be about to face your first great killing.
He reached out, grabbed the black mask, and put it on. From this moment forward, he was no longer the academy student Li Diudiu, but the killer — Li Chi.
Li Diudiu took a longsword and a shortsword, stood up, and faced the group. As he rose he glanced left and right. The position was not bad — the front entrance of this little food stall was quite narrow; even two people walking in side by side would be cramped.
However, the stall was shoddily built: though the door was narrow, there were windows on both sides — the door was small but the windows were not, and with so many people rushing in at once, Li Diudiu could hold the door but not the windows.
“What are you waiting for!” The one-eyed man leaped from his horse and lifted a heavy blade well over four feet long from its mount, striding toward the stall and shouting orders. “A bunch of men frightened by one child — have you no shame!”
He came in great strides, and the others dared not lag behind. With a roar, they charged toward the stall.
Li Diudiu drew a deep breath, imitating his master’s manner of murmuring during a ritual.
“From the void of absolute nothingness, extending beyond all limits and horizons…”
In these quiet, soft words, two men died at the door.
Li Diudiu did not retreat — instead he advanced one step, already standing in the doorway.
“Auspicious clouds open the gate of life; blessed smoke seals the gate of death…”
Ten more syllables, two more men slain.
At the entrance of this tiny food stall, four corpses now lay sprawled on the ground. Those behind dared not approach easily, all of them frozen in place. They had seen the youth holding a shortsword in the left hand and a longsword in the right, but none of them could make out how the twin blades had done the killing.
The bladework was too swift. And every cut was a killing blow.
The youth in the black mask, at this moment, was a genuine death-claiming demon.
“Floating, floating beyond mortal ties; vast and boundless, naturally pure…”
Li Diudiu actually stepped out through the stall’s entrance. The longsword pierced through one man’s heart; the shortsword sliced open another’s throat. Then he retreated one step back to the doorway.
“Come in through the windows!”
The one-eyed man roared and charged at Li Diudiu with the heavy blade gripped in both hands. He came in huge strides; those in the front quickly scrambled aside.
A heavy blade over four feet long and razor-sharp — when it came down, it could split not just a man but a horse clean in two.
Li Diudiu knew his own strength, but still wasn’t confident he could take that blow head-on. Yet he could see that the bladework carried a cutting force unlike anything from the martial world — this was the killing technique of the battlefield.
Li Diudiu stepped back and retreated into the stall. The heavy blade came down with a bang, severing the door frame clean through. The one-eyed man stepped inside in a single stride.
“Little thief — kneel!”
He gripped the blade with both hands and hacked violently downward.
But Li Diudiu had no desire to exchange blows with him. He hooked out a stool with his left foot, swept it forward, and flung it spinning at the one-eyed man. The longsword came down, and the stool was split apart.
Li Diudiu had already moved to the window on the side. His left-hand shortsword thrust outward — thud — skewering the throat of a man who had just been climbing in. Without a moment’s hesitation, he moved to the other window, and the longsword swept horizontally. The man climbing through had both hands braced on the windowsill — one stroke, and both forearms were severed.
“Receiving the great force of the Dao, to expel and vanquish all wicked spirits…”
Li Diudiu kicked over a table to force the one-eyed man back, then launched himself off the ground with both feet, flying out through the window. Once outside, his twin blades swept back and forth, and the nearby attackers took four cuts before tumbling backward.
Li Diudiu was shorter than those stocky men, but far more nimble. After killing one, he twisted his body behind another, and the shortsword drove into that man’s lower back. A shriek of agony erupted; Li Diudiu yanked the shortsword free and shoved the man forward.
The one-eyed man had just flown out through the window, and ran face-first into one of his own men. Rage nearly split him apart — he didn’t care who stood before him, and with one swing of his blade he swept the man’s head off. In a spray of bloodmist, the one-eyed man continued his pursuit.
But Li Diudiu had already leaped back through a window, and along the way he flung out a stool leg — crack — striking the one-eyed man squarely on the back of the head. A remarkably loud sound at that.
Li Diudiu returned to the stall. None of those inside were any match for him. Though they all looked tall, broad, and formidable, once Li Diudiu turned fierce he was no longer Li Diudiu, but Li Ruthless.
“I am not a wandering lost soul — I am the one who escorts them onward.”
Li Diudiu slew two more, then charged back out through the front entrance. At that same moment, the one-eyed man had just climbed back in through the window, while Li Diudiu was already cutting through those outside the door.
That day, that youth, with twin long and short blades, broke his abstinence from killing. Bodies fell both inside and outside the food stall, dozens of them.
Li Diudiu went in and out, then out and in again — two full circuits — and the twenty-odd followers of the one-eyed man had been slain to the last.
Inside the stall, Li Diudiu looked at the one-eyed man and asked quietly: “You just told me to kneel?”
Without waiting for a reply, Li Diudiu murmured to himself: “I truly didn’t want to break my abstinence from killing. Once I have, it will be hard to stop.”
The one-eyed man’s face had turned ghastly to the extreme. In his prior rage he hadn’t thought clearly, but now he saw that not a single one of his men remained by his side. When the youth had no mask on, he looked refined, handsome, and harmless — but with the mask on, he was like a killing demon from hell.
“Die!”
The one-eyed man shrieked at Li Diudiu and hacked the heavy blade savagely downward.
Li Diudiu did not dodge. Instead, he charged straight toward the one-eyed man’s heavy blade.
“Crush the enemy in the heat of battle, slay the wicked with the force of righteousness and vigor!”
Three breaths later, Li Diudiu wrapped both long and short blades in cloth, without another glance at the bodies on the ground. He picked up the other weapons one by one, loaded the large bundle onto the donkey, and rode off toward the distance.
In his hand he held a rope, and on the rope were tethered dozens of warhorses. Behind that small figure, a herd of warhorses that had once sailed on campaign ships all lowered their heads and followed along.
“Little Donkey.”
Li Diudiu patted his mount and asked, almost as if talking to himself: “Were you scared?”
Little Donkey lifted its head… hungry, hungry, oh so hungry…
Li Diudiu patted it again, and looking ahead said: “In a moment I’ll find a place to sell the horses. With the money I’ll buy you a donkey-meat flatbread.”
Little Donkey…
Li Diudiu let out a long breath, and in a voice low as though sharing a secret, said: “Don’t tell anyone… the truth is, just now, I was a little scared.”
“But… now I’m not anymore.”
—