Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan Volume 8 Chapter 7 part2

Kou Zhong was greatly delighted, "That will do,” he said, "Outside the gates, the piers are full of ships and boats in all kinds of shapes and sizes, one must be the enemy's hideouts. At that time they must be watching us in secret, to determine whether they should trail us and make their move; that's why it induced a reaction from you, just like the other day when Yang Xuyan was trying to assassinate Xiang kid. Ha! This time we hit the jackpot!”

Xu Ziling rose up suddenly. His tiger-eyes flashed with sharp glints, he spoke in heavy voice, "There is no time to lose, we'll go now to give the enemies an unexpected shock they won't forget for the rest of their lives.”

The one-li-or-so long pier outside the city of Baling was full with docking ships and boats, big and small; at least there were two or three hundreds of them. On the vast shoreline stood about a dozen or so canopied structures, where goods and cargo, which did not make it into the city that day, were piled like small hills.

Xu Ziling and Kou Zhong followed the water line, and crouched behind a pile of goods, looking at the hundreds of flickering lights coming from the ships. They had no idea where to start looking for the enemy.

"Do you feel anything stronger anywhere?” Kou Zhong whispered.

Xu Ziling smiled wryly and said, "I don't feel anything at all. Ay! Shall we go back to sleep?”

Kou Zhong shook his head to indicate he had different ideas. He said thoughtfully, "Supposing we stick our ears to the bottom of the boats and apply our inner strength to eavesdrop, do you think we will be able to listen to the conversation inside the boat?”

"So what if we could?” Xu Ziling was displeased, "Supposing the people in the boat are sleeping or not talking, do you still want to continue taking turn in eavesdropping? Don't forget that there are hundreds of boats here. Even if we only listen for a moment each, we won't even cover one tenth by daybreak.”

Finally Kou Zhong relented. "We'll come back tomorrow then,” he said disappointedly, "I hope your feeling will be a bit stronger by then. Huh?!”

Following Kou Zhong's gaze, Xu Ziling saw a skiff, without any light on it, was weaving through the rows after rows of ships, coming toward the shore. By looking at the speed of the boat, they knew that the one steering it was a very capable sailor.

Applying their inner power, the two boys focused their attention to the boat; they did not wish to miss any movement or sound.

On the boat stood two people: one man and one woman. The youthful looking woman was standing on the bow. Just by looking at her clothes, they knew that she was a maid. She had a graceful and good-looking countenance, but there was a little bit of licentious feeling on her. The man looked thick and solid, but his face looked uncouth. Apparently this man had the same capacity as the woman; they were both maid and servant.

The skiff was fast approaching. Before it even reached the shore, the maid soared into the air. With several ups and downs she reached the dark shore, while under the skillful hand of the servant the skiff stopped ashore to wait.

The two boys were overjoyed at this turn of events. Although they could not ascertain if these two were Evil Monk, Amorous Nun's people, this matter was definitely incomparable to their previous situation where they had no clue of what to do.

After exchanging eye signals, the two boys stealthily circled around and went down into the water outside the male servant's range of vision. A moment later they reached the bottom of the boat and applied their strength to attach themselves to the boat. They used this opportunity to cultivate their strength to deal with the hard fighting that might come soon.

Less than half a sichen later, the maid returned. The servant asked, "Did you get it?”

"Uh huh,” the maid replied, indicating that she did indeed get what they were looking for.

The skiff set off, the servant and the maid on the skiff no longer speak.

Quite half a day later, the skiff reached a huge sea-going ship, and stopped by its side.

The two boys left the skiff and dove under the giant ship. Sticking their ears to the hull, they seemed to hear voices, too bad the sound of the waves lapping against the hull distorted it, so that they could not hear it clearly.

Kou Zhong pulled Xu Ziling away; as the two of them emerged from the water at the aft, he said, "How do you catch the tiger cub without entering the tiger's lair? Well?”

Xu Ziling laughed and said, "No need to talk too much, go!”

The two boys looked at each other's eyes and laughed. They climbed up, stopped at the edge of the deck, and craned their necks to take a peek.

Even at its bottom, this ship already felt huge. Now that they looked from this angle, it felt even grander; the hull extended to more than two hundred chi. Three floors of cabin towered above the main deck, with more than thirty cabin windows, but only four of those windows were lighted, and they heard voices coming out of these windows.

But the deck was quiet, no one was in sight.

Putting his mouth close to Kou Zhong's ear, Xu Ziling whispered, "I found two guards on sentry duty, both are on the third floor. Clearly their job is mainly to monitor any movement of other boats on the surface of the river, not to watch for any activity on the deck.”

Kou Zhong nonchalantly said, "We'll just have to gamble his mother's a bit; if things go awry, we'll escape via the water. Let's go!”

The two boys somersaulted over the railings. Crouching low on the deck, they crept toward the aft and hid in the shadow. Not only their movement was as fast as a ghost, they were in sync with each other, as if they had already practiced this mission a hundred or a thousand times before.

They did not dare to rashly break into the cabin. Focusing their power in their ears, they listened carefully and quietly. A man's voice was heard inside. The man said, "When the two boys fight together, they become especially formidable that even Ren Shaoming ended up in injustice death. Therefore, when we fight, we must pick just one and go all out to kill him, and then we can capture the other one and torture him to extort his confession. I don't believe he won't spill the ‘Duke Yang Treasure's' secret.”

Listening to this, the two boys looked at each other in shock; wasn't it the voice of Dajiang Hui's Second Chief ‘Tiger Lord' Pei Yan, who pursued and attacked them at the mouth of the river when they had just left Changshu? At that time there was also Wang Kuijie, whose martial art was extremely strong.

This time they were looking for Evil Monk and Amorous Nun, but unexpectedly found a ‘second carriage'.

Another unfamiliar voice said, "We will wait for eight days until after they cross the River to the north before using the force of a ten-thousand-jun thunderbolt to either capture or kill them in one fell swoop. With our strength, dealing with them ought to be as easy as pinching a few ants.”

This person was speaking in a variable voice; sometimes it was low and muffled, sometimes it turned shrill and sharp, somewhat disjointed, so that it was quite uncomfortable to listen to.

If his voice became like that due to the martial art he trained, then it must be an eccentric, strange, heretical and unusual martial art that was hard to estimate.

Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling's countenance changed. Not because of the strange voice, but because the opposite side had such an accurate information of their whereabouts. Needless to say, someone must have tipped them off; no wonder they did not have to send anybody to watch the two boys' movement.

A muffled female voice filled with hatred said, "We'll kill that Xu Ziling, and captured Kou Zhong, who attacked us the other day. I want him to suffer all kinds of torture before we kill him.”

Just by listening to the fiery animosity in her voice, one would immediately know that she hated Kou Zhong to her heart and to her lungs.

The two boys felt that the voice sounded familiar, but momentarily they could not figure out whose voice was it.

Another charming and sweet female voice, as soft as the clouds in the sky, spoke indifferently, "You Xiangu's [female immortal/goddess/fairy] desire is definitely attainable. Those two boys must be proud for being able to facilitate the joining hands of Die and Shen Dangjia [Chief]. When we declare our kingship in the future, we can have them to thank!”

Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling immediately remembered that the woman who hated them to her guts must be Haisha Bang's pretty nun, You Qiuyan, the other ‘Amorous Nun'.

Shen Dangjia must be Shen Faxing, to whom Haisha Bang recently pledged their allegiance to be his hunting dogs. The allied force has suffered devastating setback in the two boys' hands; no wonder they were this thirsty of revenge.

But who was the girl's dad? It sounded as if Dajiang Hui was also taking orders from him.

Shen Faxing's voice was heard, "This time Princess Mei presides over this mission, I am sure the two boys will fall into our hands. After we obtain the ‘Duke Yang Treasure', plus the alliance of our Jiangnan and Garuda [Jialouluo], two armies, won't we have the world [tianxia - China] in our bag?”

Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling's heart shivered in fear. They finally realized who this Princess Mei's dad was.

Among the warlords vying for supremacy over the world [China], in terms of brutality, nothing could surpass Zhu Can, who called himself Garuda King, whose fame and power was, currently, growing day by day.

It was said that when Garuda Army lacked provision, they even cooked human beings for food. This matter might be grossly exaggerated, yet it showed how bad their reputation was.

Kou Zhong whispered in Xu Ziling's ear, "What do we do? Perhaps we could carve ‘Xu Ziling and Kou Zhong were here' with a knife, so that they would jump in fear.”

"No!” Xu Ziling shook his head, "That way we will never become real martial art masters. We might as well go his mother's all out, so that in the future they will not be in our way.”

Kou Zhong grabbed Xu Ziling's shoulder forcefully, his tiger-eyes were gleaming. "All right!” he said, "We will change according to the situation. We'll see whose fist is a bit harder. Hee!”

Chapter end