Chapter 117
“Oh, heavens! What’s happening?!”
At the sight of the arrow, the middle-aged man collapsed to the ground in terror, shouting to his servant, “Help! Help! They’re going to kill us!”
The servant hastily drew the long saber at his waist and stood trembling in front of him. “M-Master, where did that arrow come from?! Have bandits set their sights on us?”
“What? Bandits? There are bandits here?” The middle-aged man hid behind his servant, looking frantically from side to side. Several masked men dressed in animal skins suddenly slid down the surrounding slopes and approached them, laughing.
“Look at these two cowards!” A particularly burly bandit deliberately swung his saber at the middle-aged man to frighten him. The man instantly dropped to his knees, bowing over and over with his hands clasped. “Merciful bandit sir, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! Take anything you want, just spare my miserable life!”
“Heh, this one knows what’s good for him!” The bandit leader pinned him to the ground and searched him, pulling out five gold discs. “Well, well, a fat purse! You, what’s your name? Did you just say you used to be a craftsman?”
“Y-Yes, sir. My name is Hu Lai. I did used to work as a craftsman…”
“Excellent. That makes you valuable.” The bandit leader’s eyes gleamed. He waved a hand. “Men, tie him up and take him back to the mountain!”
Then he turned to the servant. “This one, just kill him and toss him by the road!”
“Spare me!” The servant hastily shook his head, frantic. “Please don’t kill me, sir! I’ll go up the mountain and become a bandit with you! Just don’t kill me, or my master and mistress!”
“Second Chief, why don’t we spare this one?” Another bandit sidled over and spoke quietly to the leader. “That fellow Xie took out so many of our brothers, we’re short on men. And the Chief thinks highly of him. If we want to kill that Xie, we’ll need men of our own!”
Hu Lai and Wuji exchanged a discreet glance. Xie?
The Second Chief rubbed his chin. “You have a point.”
The servant seemed loyal enough, and he was tall. Carrying a saber, he probably knew some martial arts too. He was a bit of a coward, but the Second Chief was in no mood to be picky. He waved a hand. “Tie up both men. You, go see what the wife in that carriage looks like. If she’s decent-looking, bring her back too, to warm our brothers’ beds!”
“Yes, sir!” The bandit he had singled out hurriedly climbed onto the carriage and lifted the curtain. The next instant, he froze.
Inside sat a young woman in a white dress, wrapped in red fur. Even through her veil, he could glimpse the peerless beauty beneath. A touch of vermilion at the outer corners of her phoenix eyes lent them boundless allure. When she glanced toward the sound, it was as though her gaze could steal a man’s soul.
Yet that exquisite face was rather pale, with a touch of Daiyu’s weary disdain for the world. She was probably in poor health. Her gentle coughs were as soft and delicate as a kitten’s sneeze, enough to send a tickle through a man’s very heart and lungs.
The bandit stared for quite a while before stammering to the Second Chief, “S-Second Chief! A f-fairy’s come down to earth!”
“What’s that about chow down? She’s a feast for the eyes?” The Second Chief hadn’t caught his words. He came over with his saber, kicked the bandit out of his way, and peered past the curtain. He, too, froze.
S-So beautiful!
It really was a fairy come down to earth!
“This is your wife?” Rubbing his eyes hard, the Second Chief turned to look at Hu Lai’s age and appearance, then at those of the woman in the carriage. He simply couldn’t believe it.
It would have made more sense if she were the servant’s wife!
Seeming to catch his meaning, Hu Lai indignantly puffed out his chest and declared, “Second Chief! Don’t let her beauty fool you. She’s a sickly bottomless pit for money! If I hadn’t married into her family to bring her good fortune and drive away her illness, expanded my father-in-law’s business, and fed her ginseng every day, she might not have lived this long!”
“And she’s impossible to please! Whatever you do, don’t take her up the mountain!” Hu Lai offered the kindly warning. “She has to have the finest of everything, from food to clothes. If anything displeases her, she threatens to kill herself. If I weren’t so kindhearted, she’d probably have starved to death in the street long ago!”
“Hey! You married into her family and took over their fortune, and now you want to leave her to starve in the street!” one bandit protested on her behalf. “What kind of man are you?!”
“What do you know?!” Hu Lai spat. “Take her up the mountain and you’ll find out! Just don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
The bandits looked at one another, then doubled over laughing.
“Listen, brother, you’re just saying that because you’re afraid we’ll steal your wife and make her the lady of the stronghold, aren’t you?”
“What trouble can one woman possibly cause? We’re bandits!”
“Bring her back! Bring her back! I’d like to see what she can do to me in bed, heh heh!”
The Second Chief took out a piece of cloth and approached the “woman” in the carriage. “Madam, I’ll take good care of you from now on. Be good and let me gag you first.”
“No. It’s filthy.”
The beautiful woman frowned slightly. Even her frown was exquisite enough to make a man want to cradle her in his hands and lavish her with affection.
“She” parted her scarlet lips, tantalizing beneath the thin veil. Her words, however, were cold and scornful, like a flexible sword that seemed soft and yielding but was razor-sharp. “What sort of shabby rag is that? You think it’s worthy of entering my mouth?”
The Second Chief blinked. “Huh?”
The beautiful woman raised her head proudly. After a few coughs, she ordered imperiously, “My husband knows where the best cloth is among our goods. Tell him to find it. Only the softest, most expensive strip of cloth in the world is worthy of entering my mouth and gagging me.”
The Second Chief: …
He abruptly burst out laughing. “Listen, little lady, have you still not figured out your situation? We’re bandits! Bandits who kill without blinking!”
Apparently disdainful of his coarseness, the beautiful woman raised a slender, fair hand to brush aside a stray lock by her ear. “So what if you’re bandits? Even if the Lord of Heaven himself came here, he’d have to do whatever I told him!”
Hu Lai squirmed and hopped over like a maggot standing upright. “Second Chief, she’s right. You’d better do as she says, or she’ll smash her head against the carriage and kill herself! There were several times before when I almost failed to stop her!”
“Seriously?” The Second Chief was deeply skeptical.
“Hmph! In life, a woman of unyielding virtue; in death, a hero among ghosts. Still I think of Peng E, who became an immortal in a mountain cave!” With that, the beautiful woman rose, looking ready to meet death for a noble cause, and hurled herself at the carriage wall!
The Second Chief was so startled that he hastily reached out to stop her, saving the carriage from being splattered with her blood. Bewildered, he turned to Hu Lai. “What’s this Peng E? Who’s Peng E?”
Hu Lai didn’t know either. He made something up. “She was a chaste, resolute woman from Jiangzhou. Bandits attacked her home and killed both her parents, so she took a knife and went to kill them. But how could a frail woman defeat mighty bandits like yourselves? In the end, they chased her into the mountains. To preserve her honor, she decided to dash her head against a mountainside. Who would have thought the mountain would suddenly split in two?!”
The more Hu Lai invented, the more freely the words flowed. He continued excitedly, “So Peng E slipped into the opening of the mountain cave, and the bandits followed her in. But then the crack suddenly closed, crushing every last bandit into a bloody pulp! Later, someone went into the mountain and saw Peng E. They said she’d become a mountain immortal, protecting the women on that mountain!”
“Exactly!” The beautiful woman coughed a few more times. Despite her pale, sickly face, she declared proudly, “We should all be like Lady Peng E! Fear neither mountain bandits nor death!”
The Second Chief: …
The bandits: …