Chapter 286. With the Mindset of Jing Ke.

I wondered if I would ever take such a long journey again.

Each day was filled with unfamiliar scenery and foods I had never tasted before. There were days when we walked all day until the sun set, and on nights when the wind was cool, we walked straight through until morning.

There were days when we were drenched by rain at dawn and fled into an inn.

Now and then, when we saw a lake, we would play by throwing stones before preparing to camp, and if the moonlight was bright, we swam at night. In any case, I was planning to fight at Donghu, so I took it as a way to get used to the water in advance.

Eating at a decent restaurant was enjoyable, but I also grew used to diving into lakes to catch fish, or catching wild animals and roasting them to eat.

Our journey grew more and more special in itself, as though a portion of life had been cleanly cut out and given a sign that read “travel.”

Then was I going to kill the Number One of the Unorthodox Path?

Or was I simply enjoying the journey?

Strangely enough, I forgot about martial training and circulating qi for a while. My impatience vanished, I forgot my loneliness for a time, and merely looking at unnamed mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees allowed me to set down my hatred for a while.

Without even properly checking the road…….

We kept heading east.

It would not matter even if the sea appeared at this rate. After taking a look at the sea, we could simply head back to Donghu.

I gave my enemies and allies plenty of time.

Who, exactly, would come to kill me?

Who would come to help me?

From a certain point onward, I honestly stopped caring. This was how I thought of the meaning of this fight.

I hoped that even people who did not know me would remember the battle that took place at Donghu.

Why did the man called the Hao Sect Leader fight?

Why did the man once called the Hao Sect Leader try to kill the Number One of the Unorthodox Path?

It was important that others knew the reason. Success and failure were merely matters of luck.

I moved forward with the mindset of Jing Ke.

Thanks to the terrifying expression of the Ghost Demon and the heavy atmosphere of the Sword Demon, we could not find anyone who treated us rudely the entire way.

If only the Lust Demon and I had been traveling together, we probably would have beaten dozens of people to death by now. Even when we encountered a group from some nameless jianghu sect, the road opened wide before us without so much as the usual greeting exchanged.

Since the other side did not seem to have any desire to fight, we continued on our way without a word, and without any emotion.

Would the Four Great Villains grow?

Who could say?

Still, something that had been tightening around us until we could hardly breathe loosened somewhat. Only after it loosened did we realize we had been constricted, a narrowness of mind we never would have known had we not traveled.

When some forty days had passed as lightly as the wind.

I realized that the state of my body had become far better than before. It felt as though my body had recovered and regenerated as I ate, slept, rested, and played.

I had the pleasant feeling that my physical condition had risen by one level.

It was not intentional, but…….

Was playing and eating well truly the eternal truth after all?

I learned firsthand that training while staring at a wall was not the greatest method for becoming stronger.

Then had I finally escaped the state of a mad monkey? In truth, it no longer mattered whether I was a mad monkey or not.

* * *

Donghu was a place where bizarre cliffs, strange stones, and peculiar waterways mingled together. As soon as we arrived, it was so vast that I could not get a sense of where we had to go to meet the Number One of the Unorthodox Path. Beyond the water there were rocky islands, beyond the rocky islands there was more water, and small boats set off carrying people, while many people could not be distinguished as either members of the jianghu or boatmen.

If I turned my head, a lake like the sea stretched out.

When I looked to one side again, a bustling district that did not seem like part of Donghu had formed in a long stretch along the lakeshore.

What I felt as soon as we arrived was…….

How had someone come to be called the First Sword in a Donghu this vast? It felt as though I had arrived in an independent jianghu all its own.

The Lust Demon said,

“If he is the First Sword here, then he must be no different from a king.”

The Ghost Demon looked this way and that as he said,

“Indeed. It seems we arrived before the declaration-of-war proclamation did.”

I shook my head.

“Do you really think so? We took our sweet time.”

There were so many people that our shoulders brushed. The Ghost Demon’s frightening face and the Sword Demon’s heavy aura had little effect amid the crowd. It was also a noisy mess, loud enough that conversation with the person beside you was drowned out.

Food, clothing, street performances, touts, the locals, sightseers, and people whose purpose was impossible to guess were all mixed together in a cluttered state, turning the street into chaos. For now, we needed to adjust to this bustle.

But before we could grow accustomed to the unfamiliar scenery, a loud voice rang out from somewhere.

“Hao Sect Leader!”

I stopped and looked up at the rooftop of a building. A man I had never seen before was glaring straight at me, and the moment the loud-voiced man’s shout ended, the street that had been so bustling grew astonishingly quiet.

“…….”

It had fallen into a silence impressive enough to make one marvel. Passersby stopped and looked at us, and four or five out of every ten hurried away from the area. But while quite a few people watched us, I could also feel killing intent from the windows of buildings here and there, from alleys, and from rooftops.

The Lust Demon exclaimed in admiration.

“Wow… what the hell.”

Though none of us had said anything, we stood in a formation that guarded every direction and looked around. A voice came from somewhere.

“……Have you only just arrived? You took an unbearably long time.”

At this level, it meant they had seized this entire nameless bustling district and waited for me.

I looked around with an incredulous expression and said,

“……That bastard has this many subordinates? I am the Hao Sect Leader.”

The instant I finished speaking, weapons were drawn here and there. The sound of hundreds of swords being drawn at the same time was something I had never heard before, and it sent a chill down my spine.

“Wow, you crazy bastards.”

Could there be people so brave and yet so reckless? As great as the gap between my intentions and the mindset held by the Number One of the Unorthodox Path, countless enemies were glaring at us.

I said to the enemies,

“This is absurd.”

It was so quiet that my words spread clearly.

“I said I would settle things in a one-on-one duel with the Number One of the Unorthodox Path, so guide me to him. Do you all plan to die here?”

Laughter spread from every direction, and all of us except the Sword Demon joined in that laughter as well.

“Hahahahaha…….”

Suddenly, I spotted a man raising his hand by the window of a three-story building. As the man’s hand fell, an order was issued.

“Kill them.”

Without a single person charging in, hidden weapons poured in from every direction.

How are we supposed to block this?

I unleashed a palm strike infused with the Fading Moon Ice Art to the front. The moment I confirmed that the Ghost Demon, the Lust Demon, and the Sword Demon were each responding with palm strikes of their own, I shot up into the air and charged toward the building where the man who had given the order stood. As soon as I drew my wooden sword in midair, I tore through the window diagonally, entered the spacious room in an instant, and scattered sword qi infused with the Wood Realm toward the front.

As soon as I identified the one drawing his sword to respond, I charged in, struck his lower body with the force of my left palm, then thrust my wooden sword and pierced the man’s throat.

I couldn’t help being somewhat surprised to realize the commander wasn’t much of an expert.

I returned to the shattered window and looked out over the pandemonium. The silence had vanished, replaced by overlapping screams. The Ghost Demon was charging as he swung his sword, and the Lust Demon was rampaging with both hands dyed white.

Even in the midst of it all, the Sword Demon was smiling.

As if he were pleased that his tedious daily life had finally disappeared.

With a smile on my face, I watched the men dying in the chaos.

“Stupid bastards, every last one of them……”

As soon as I saw hidden weapons flying toward me again, I sprang back up into the air from the broken window. After cutting off the head of the man looking down at me from the rooftop, I landed there, and the state of the battlefield came into view at a glance.

“……”

Only then did the men who had been lying in ambush on every rooftop rise here and there, display their lightness skills, and leap across the roofs. It was a bizarre sight, like a swarm of multicolored locusts surging in from the rooftops.

Through his locust-like subordinates, I confirmed that the Number One of the Evil Path was no ordinary man.

Also, seeing that some of them were uniformly dressed in black, I realized an assassin organization or an entire sect had been hired wholesale. I’d thought he would only know how to employ river bandits and underlings who traveled by boat, but my guess had been wrong.

The ones coming to die were so steeped in killing intent that there was no talking to them.

For an opening skirmish, it was bloody.

They probably hadn’t thought they could kill us with just this. It felt more like an attack meant to seize the initiative. Between the buildings, I split the upper bodies of the men suspended in the air with sword qi. Even as the corpses, cleaved in two, fell to the ground, a great number of hidden weapons poured in from behind, so I had no choice but to keep leaping about.

At that moment, a fellow hopping toward me nearby hurled a sack into the air, and yellow powder spread out overhead.

‘What a fucking mess.’

To think they’d scatter poison so openly……

Enemies from other groups inhaled the yellow powder and collapsed while charging at me. Holding my breath, I ran across the buildings, cutting down the arms and torsos of anyone who got in my way as I moved.

Suddenly, the Lust Demon’s laughter rang out from below.

It seemed he had gone completely mad and was running wild.

Since they didn’t seem afraid of us, I deliberately killed them in brutal fashion. I grabbed heads and threw them down from the buildings, split men in half where they stood, and at those swarming over the rooftops like ants, I unleashed the Flame Realm Great Hand Seal and blew them apart in a single strike.

I had no way back either.

Whether my internal energy hit bottom or not, I caught and killed them all. Only after I had brutally killed more than twenty did the mood on the rooftops shift, and men slowly began to flee. I deliberately chased only the fleeing ones and cut off their arms. When I cut off only their arms without killing them, the screams that began erupting one after another shook the courage of those who had been prepared to die.

I completely forgot about the situation below.

Because most of the hidden weapons were pouring down from the rooftops.

I left the floor of the pandemonium to the three of them and continued clearing the front line on the rooftops. Occasionally, there were men with enough internal energy to deflect my sword, but even they couldn’t block my attacks more than three or four times.

Those who resisted fiercely from time to time, I crushed down with internal energy and killed quickly.

At some point, I heard a wet splashing sound beneath my feet. Moving from rooftop to rooftop, I found myself stepping through puddles where blood had gathered. My pants and shoes were the first to be soaked in blood.

After slaughtering every last person on the rooftops, I set my bloodstained shoes on the railing and watched the situation below.

The corpses lay there grotesquely, like fish.

Some buildings had collapsed, and some corpses stood frozen in place. From one building, a man flew horizontally, crashed into the wall on the opposite side, and his head burst open.

Thud!

From that place, the Lust Demon walked out, drenched head to toe in blood.

The Ghost Demon was looking down at his own torn clothing, while the Sword Demon, spotless and without a wound or bloodstain, was surveying the surroundings.

Just how many had died?

I looked down at the three of them from the roof and said,

“It’s bullshit right from the start.”

When the Lust Demon grinned broadly with his bloodstained face, his white teeth showed.

“Did these bastards think this much would make us cower?”

The Ghost Demon said calmly,

“There were certainly a lot of them.”

The Sword Demon looked up at me and said,

“Come down. Let’s eat.”

“Let’s do that.”

It seemed we would have to wait for the next opponent together with these corpses. I jumped down onto a place where bodies lay piled atop one another.

There was a thud, and blood spurted up slightly from where I landed. It didn’t mean much, but I shook the blood from my wooden sword and put it away.

When I suddenly took a deep breath, the smell of blood and fish mingled together and stabbed at my nose.

It was a tremendous stench.

If the Four Great Villains and the Number One of the Evil Path had begun to fight, then a stench like this was only natural.

The Ghost Demon said,

“There weren’t any particularly remarkable experts. They were hired men. Wanderers and assassins were mixed together.”

The Lust Demon kicked aside a corpse sprawled at the entrance of the inn to clear the way, then said to the Sword Demon,

“Master, this way. Wet your throat first.”

I looked at the table the Lust Demon was about to sit at and said,

“Shitbag.”

“What?”

“Don’t touch it.”

There were snacks and liquor on the table, but for some reason they were in a clean state, untouched. Though the area was full of inns and restaurants, I somehow had the feeling it would be packed only with things that would kill us if we ate them.

The Lust Demon frowned and said,

“Is there poison?”

“We can’t drink anything here.”

I was thirsty too, but all we could obtain here was the smell of blood, corpses, the smell of fish, stench, and dung flies. Smell and blood were etched into our bodies, branding us as unwelcome intruders from outside.

Looking every bit like uninvited guests, we continued along the road we had been taking. As we walked together again, the Ghost Demon looked at me.

“Do we keep advancing?”

“If we keep going, someone who gives us water will show up. Surely they can’t all be enemies. Let’s go.”

Suddenly, the Sword Demon, who had been taking deep breaths, looked ahead and said,

“Now I can finally breathe a little. It’s as if……”

I picked up where the Sword Demon trailed off and answered,

“It feels like arriving home.”

A welcome that seemed to make every fine hair on my body stand on end wrapped around me.