This man killed so silently that even a feather falling onto gravel would have made more noise.

The straw mat at the entrance of the guest shelter in the forest had fallen down. Two men’s corpses lay sprawled there. One was in beast form, while the other had not had time to transform. It seemed he had been killed from behind while fleeing. Part of his body was missing. Judging by the traces, a passing wild beast had probably carried it off.

Hua Yi studied the corpse for a moment. When he turned around, he saw several pairs of gleaming green eyes in the forest, not too far away but not close either. They were watching the place hungrily. Without hesitation, he transformed into his giant beast form, turned around, and let out a low growl at the wolves.

Chang An then saw the beasts, which had been eyeing the dead flesh and lingering around nearby, all flinched at once before slowly retreating. He could not help looking up at the enormous creature with envy. This trick really was quite effective.

Chang An then bent down. He did not mind the filth and used his hands to turn over the corpse. After carefully examining the wounds on the dead man’s body, he concluded, “There were arrows, two longswords, and a curved sabre. In the end, he was killed by the curved sabre.”

Longswords and curved blades were, in fact, the preferred weapons of most beastman hunters.

Curved blades were common in tribal warfare. They could be used on horseback and had a very wide range of attack.

Longswords were usually three to five chi long and about as wide as two adult male hands placed together. Even the lightest longswords made for half-grown children weighed around thirty jin (NT: about 15 kgs). There were even tales of swords weighing a hundred jin. Beastmen were naturally strong and tall, so weapons that were too short were generally awkward for them to use. The short knives they carried were usually tools, not weapons for fighting or hunting. Of course, there were exceptions. Hua Yi’s nine-cun-long short knife (NT: about 30 cms) was not meant for cutting up roasted meat. He generally used it for assassination.

It was also quite rare for someone like Chang An to carry a sabre on his shoulder every day as he travelled. In actual combat, a double-edged sword was always easier to handle than a single-edged sabre.

Chang An then reached inside the dead man’s clothes and felt around. He found a small black iron token in the man’s chest. He lifted the little token, still stained with blood, and turned it over several times. Unable to figure out what it was for, he asked Hua Yi, “Do you recognise this?”

“It’s a distress token.” Hua Yi returned to human form and identified it after a single glance. “He was a messenger, sent to ask the nearby tribes for help. It may have been a tribal war.”

Chang An looked at him and knew that Hua Yi was not telling the whole truth. His instincts told him that Hua Yi must know something he did not. However, Chang An said nothing. Whether or not it was a tribal war, it had nothing to do with them.

It was the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Both cultivated and wild sprouted wheat were about to yield their harvests. Many fruits and vegetables were also ready to be picked. The weather was neither cold nor hot, and the animals in the forest had not all wandered far away. Hunting was easy enough. It was the best season of the year, when no one should have been driven to the point of starvation. At such a time, most people would be preparing food for the winter in their own tribes. Who would travel thousands of li to wage war on another tribe?

Unless they had encountered one of the legendary Ghost Tribes.

Ghost Tribes did exist. There were almost no sub-beasts among them, and most of their women had been abducted by force. They did not produce anything themselves and had no fixed home. They wandered everywhere, avoiding powerful tribes and targeting only small, vulnerable ones. They made their living by raiding and plundering all year round.

Hua Yi considered the matter thoughtfully. This place was not far from his employer’s tribe. Judging by the direction in which the messenger had fled, these small tribes might even happen to be under his employer’s protection.

Hua Yi gave Chang An’s shoulder a light push, stood up, and said, “This has nothing to do with us. Let’s go.”

Chang An glanced at the completely empty guest shelter and asked, “Aren’t we going to rest?”

“Rest, my ass! With all that fighting going on outside, do you think you could sleep? What if someone’s head came flying through the window and hit you awake?”

Chang An replied, “Oh,” apparently unmoved. Hua Yi immediately remembered his extraordinary ability to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, and felt a twinge of irritation. All right, he had nearly forgotten. This fellow could sleep under any circumstances.

Both of them walked quickly, almost as though they were travelling through the night. Deep in an unfamiliar forest, even an experienced hunter could only determine the general direction. Unless one lived in the area, it was impossible to find one’s way with complete accuracy. So although Hua Yi had intended to avoid the others, he still accidentally passed close to the battlefield.

Calling it a battlefield was not quite accurate. The fighting seemed to have ended.

Hua Yi’s ears twitched. The wind carried the shrill sounds of people crying and shouting. He could even hear children’s delicate voices, their throats hoarse from crying.

Yet apart from the fact that this was the wrong season for it, wars like this were nothing unusual in the north.

Every tribe occupied a certain territory and enjoyed the birds, beasts, plants, and food found in the surrounding area. Those who lived in barren places suffered from hunger and cold, while those in fertile lands ate their fill and lived comfortably. There was no reason for a weak tribe to occupy a good piece of land.

They had two choices: wash their necks and wait for someone to slit their throats, or show some sense and get out while they still could.

As for the fate of the defeated, that depended on the victors’ mood. If they were merciful, they would allow the original inhabitants to remain and incorporate them into their own tribe. Even if they were not merciful and chose to kill all the prisoners of war, that was not considered wrong either. However, whether or not they showed mercy, the defeated tribe’s chief and elders could not be allowed to live. They had to eradicate the roots to prevent future trouble. Their young sons would be placed over a fire and roasted into dried corpses, and the rendered body fat would be kept to honour the souls of the warriors who had died in battle.

Besides, this was clearly a surprise attack by a Ghost Tribe, which had come specifically to plunder and cause harm. Expecting such people to show mercy was no better than hoping for the protection of the gods, who had long since fallen into ruin and drowned in some river pit.

Hua Yi listened to the child’s sharp, hysterical screams. He knew that this was the sound of a child being roasted alive until nothing remained but a dried corpse. Yet his footsteps did not slow at all, and his expression remained calm, almost cruel. He did not know when he had become this kind of person.

Chang An, who had been following quietly behind him, had never encountered a scene like this before. Several times, he stopped walking. But when he saw how Hua Yi seemed not to hear anything, he had no choice but to catch up again.

Just then, the young man suddenly asked, “Zhe Yan said you were still very young back then, travelling alone. Why did you use your own food to save him and even hunt a deer for him?”

At first, Hua Yi thought Chang An was hinting at something or accusing him of something. But when he saw the young man’s expression, he realised that perhaps he really was asking out of simple curiosity. Hua Yi pushed aside the prickly bushes in front of him and remained silent for a while. Then he shook his head and let out an exaggerated sigh, though he kept his voice very low.

With a deeply troubled expression, Hua Yi said to Chang An, “Look at me. I’m no good at either literature or martial arts, I can’t speak well, and I’m not very clever. Hunting a deer is about the only thing I can do. Helping him back then was just a small favour.”

“...Oh.” Hua Yi had casually made up an answer, and Chang An did not press him. He merely nodded and gave a brief reply, making it impossible to tell what was going on in the young man’s mind.

Yet Chang An’s “Oh” felt like a small prick to Hua Yi. He fell silent and concentrated on walking, but he could not help asking himself: if he had been fourteen or fifteen again, and had come across a dirty-faced child, would he really have rushed forward in a moment of reckless impulse and rescued the child being roasted over the fire, just as he had once picked up a dirty little boy and carried him to the river to wash his face?

But he could no longer remember... After so many years, he could no longer remember what kind of person he had been back then.

Just then, a woman suddenly dashed out in front of them. Perhaps she was so young that she could only be called a girl. Her clothes barely covered her body, and her exposed skin was covered in all kinds of injuries. Her black braid had come undone, and its ends were stained with so much blood that the hair had stuck together in a tangled mass. Her foot caught on something, and she fell straight at Hua Yi’s feet.

Hua Yi instinctively took a step back. Immediately afterwards, a giant beast that had transformed from a beastman burst out of the forest behind her. It had been about to pounce on the woman, but when it saw Hua Yi, it hesitated. It could not tell whether this man who had suddenly appeared was friend or foe.

Hua Yi stood still without revealing anything, facing the giant beast.

The woman at his feet stretched out a bloodstained hand and clutched the hem of his clothes as if begging him for help.

Her hand was very beautiful, with soft, delicate skin. Apart from her fresh wounds, there was not a trace of an old callus. She was clearly someone who did not usually do any manual labour. She was also quite pretty, even beautiful. The torn skirt she wore had intricate, delicate lace along its edges. Only the most skilful women, working for months, could weave lace so fine and elaborate. Judging by her appearance, she was either the daughter of a tribe’s chief or the daughter of one of its elders.

Hua Yi looked at her with pity. These tribal nobles enjoyed the finest things and the admiration of others in their daily lives. When a disaster came, however, they had to bear the consequences on behalf of their entire tribe. Yet, in truth, it was only fair.

The giant beast bared its ugly, bloodstained teeth. Its face twisted into a fierce expression as it glared at Hua Yi, clearly trying to intimidate him.

After a moment, Hua Yi lowered his head slightly to avoid the beastman’s gaze and show submission. He smiled cautiously, almost ingratiatingly, then bowed a little and said in a meek voice, “My brother and I are just passing through. We don’t want any trouble.”

As if to show his sincerity, he bent down after speaking and gently pulled his clothes from the girl’s grasp. Facing her increasingly desperate gaze, he sighed and gave her a complicated look before saying softly, “Woman, this is your fate. You cannot blame anyone else.”

The girl let out a short, desperate cry.

Chang An’s brows suddenly knitted together, and he placed his hand on the hilt of the sabre hidden in his bundle.

But before he could do anything, Hua Yi had already lowered his head and walked past the giant beast. As he went, he continued speaking. “We’re outsiders and don’t know this place well. We wandered in by mistake. We really didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

The giant beast looked at him with contempt and turned slightly aside in an arrogant gesture, allowing this seemingly spineless man to pass. But when they were shoulder to shoulder, the beastman heard the tall, soft-hearted man continue muttering, “Fighting every day, sigh... You northerners really are...”

The instant Hua Yi uttered the words “really are”, he turned his body sideways, as though he were nervously trying to avoid bumping into the other man. At that moment, the hand he had kept at his side suddenly shot out without the slightest warning. Even Chang An failed to see his shoulder move. With astonishing precision, Hua Yi drove his nine-cun knife into the giant beast’s throat.

“...barbaric.” Holding the knife’s hilt, Hua Yi felt the hot blood spurting from the beastman’s neck. Without changing his expression, he finished his sentence.

His little knife was so dark that it was almost invisible in the night. It slid into flesh and bone as smoothly as a knife cutting through a melon. Hua Yi moved his hand gently downward, cutting through the giant beast’s throat and major blood vessels at the same time. The beast did not even manage to make a sound before it crashed to the ground.

Hua Yi calmly reached out and caught the enormous body. Even though the beast was almost as tall as he was when standing on all fours, Hua Yi caught it with his human hands without seeming to exert any effort. Then he bent down, wiped the blood from his hand and knife on the beast’s fur, and carefully lowered the corpse to the ground.

All these movements took no more than the time it took to blink twice. Hua Yi killed so silently that even a feather falling onto gravel would have made more noise.

Then Hua Yi grabbed the girl and pulled her up from the ground. A bead of blood ran from the centre of his forehead down the straight bridge of his nose. He casually wiped it away, took a handful of dried meat from the food he carried, and gave it to her. “Run.”

The girl gave him one long look, clutched the dried meat, and plunged into the dense forest.

 

Translator : DarNan