The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre Chapter 14

Meeting the Zhongshan wolf while blocking the way.

The two people (Yang Buhui and Zhang Wuji) walked for half a day, only then did they finally leave the Butterfly Valley. Yang Buhui’s feet were small and her legs were short and as a result couldn’t walk any further. After resting for a while, they needed to hurry on the road again, repeatedly stopping and starting, so that on the first night they couldn’t find a place to stay. They traveled until the sky was dark, but were still randomly travelling on the mountainside. The sounds of owls and wolves nearby made Yang Buhui start crying.

Zhang Wuji was also scared, so when he saw a cave next to the road, he pulled Yang Buhui inside the cave, hugging her and covering up her ears so that she couldn’t hear the sounds of the animals. The two children, hungry and scared, suffered for an entire night. In the morning they were able to pick some wild fruit to eat and continued intermittently walking and resting.

Around noon, Yang Buhui suddenly cried out loud, pointing to a tree by the side of the road. When Zhang Wuji took a look, he saw two corpses hanging from a tree. Zhang Wuji and Yang Buhui were so scared that they turned around and starting running. They weren’t able to run more than ten paces when they tripped over a rock, falling down. Zhang Wuji bravely looked back, and this time was even more startled, blurting out “Mr. Hu!” The corpse hanging from the tree was actually Hu Qingniu. The other corpse had long hair and was apparently a woman; from the appearance of her clothes, it seemed to be Hu Qingniu’s wife Wang Nangu. The image of her long hair and corpse blowing in the wind created a dark, chilling air.

Zhang Wuji tried to stay calm and in good spirits, telling himself, “Don’t be afraid, Don’t be afraid!” He slowly started crawling toward the corpses, verifying that the corpses were Hu Qingniu and Wang Nangu. On each of their faces was something glittering – it turned out that each of them had a golden flower on their face. Zhang Wuji was disappointed, thinking, “so they weren’t able to run away from Jing Hua Popo’s poisonous hand after all” He saw that in the mountain gorge was a broken carriage and a mule that had drowned in the river. Zhang Wuji really started crying and decided to loosen the ropes, taking down the Hu couple’s bodies from the tree.

All of a sudden, there was a “Clap!” sound; a book fell from Wang Nangu’s body. Picking it up, he saw it was a handwritten book, titled “Wang Nangu’s poison manual.” When he flipped it open, he saw that the pages were filled with small print, detailing the toxicity of poisons and how to use them. Not only did it detail how to use poisonous medicine, but also poisonous weeds, snakes, centipedes, scorpions, spiders as well as other strange fish, insects, birds, flowers, fish and trees, leaving out nothing. He decided to keep it without much thought and put the Hu couple side by side, burying them with stones and dirt. He bowed down to the couple before grasping Yang Buhui’s hand and continuing with their journey.

Shortly after they reached a large road, which then led them to a small town. Zhang Wuji wanted to buy some food to eat, but as he walked from house to house, they were all empty, without even a single person. They had no choice but to continue their journey.

On the way, they noticed that the cornfields and rice fields were all dried up and desolate. Zhang Wuji was confused and worried, but he saw that Yang Buhui was able to not cry and keep walking which was already rather well-behaved, so what could he do? After a while, they saw next to the road were several corpses, with empty stomachs and sunken in cheeks – it was obvious at first glance that they had starved to death.

The more they walked the more they saw others like this. Zhang Wuji was scared out of his wits, thinking, “Is there really nothing to eat? Are we also going to starve here like this?”

In the evening, they reached a small forest and saw some white smoke emerging into the sky. Zhang Wuji was very happy – they had not seen anyone or any smoke since they had left the Butterfly Valley, so he quickly ran towards the white smoke.

After going near the smoke, they saw two men wearing ragged clothes circling a pot of boiling water, adding firewood under the pot. When the two men heard footsteps, they turned around. When they saw Zhang Wuji and Yang Buhui, they burst out with big smiles and jumped up. One of them waved a hand, “Small kids, good, come over here, come over here quickly. Where are the adults that came with you? Where did they go?”

Zhang Wuji said: “There’s only the two of us, no adults came with us.” The two adults broke out into big smiles, while saying, “What luck, what luck!” Zhang Wuji was so hungry, so he took a look into the big pot to see what it was, only to see grass in boiling water.

One of the men grabbed Yang Buhui in one hand, exclaiming, “This small lamb is so fat and tender! Tonight we can eat until we’re full, how nice.” The other man said, “Very good, we can eat the little boy tomorrow.” Zhang Wuji was very surprised, exclaiming, “What are you doing? Let go of my sister!”

The man ignored him and proceeded to laugh and start to tear off Yang Buhui’s clothes, reaching into his boots to take out a knife, saying “It’s been a long time since I ate such a fat and tender lamb.” He grabbed Yang Buhui to the side, apparently to slaughter her. The other man took a bowl and followed him, saying, “Wasting lamb blood is a pity, we can cook a bowl of lamb blood soup, the flavor’s not bad.”

Zhang Wuji was scared out of his wits, but he looked at them and it seemed that they really weren’t joking. It really looked like they were about to slaughter Yang Buhui, so he yelled loudly, “You want to eat people? You aren’t scared of harming heaven?”

The man holding the turkey bowl laughed and said, “Old man hasn’t eaten a grain of rice for three months, if I don’t eat a person, can I really eat a cow or lamb?”

For fear that Zhang Wuji would run away, he came over to grab Zhang Wuji’s neck. Zhang Wuji dodged the man. With his left hand he pulled the man and with his right hand he hit the man’s back.

He had learned martial arts from the Blond haired Lion King Xie Xun as well as his Wudang Palms from his parents. So even though these few years he had only learned medicine and had not practiced martial arts, he had good martial arts habits and was able to exert good martial arts. He put forth this palm with great effort, and even someone studying martial arts for many years would’ve been unable to bear this palm, much less this ordinary village person. That man let out a “Hng!” before fainting and falling to the ground, unable to move.

Zhang Wuji immediately jumped up next to Yang Buhui. The other man exclaimed, “I’ll kill you first”, raising his knife and striking towards Zhang Wuji’s chest.

Zhang Wuji used a move from Wudang Palms called “Wild Goose Wings”; his right foot flew, hitting the man in the wrist. The knife flew out of the man’s hand. Zhang Wuji exerted another move called “Yuanyang lianhuan kick”, following with another kick to the man’s jaw. The man was in the process of opening his mouth to yell at him, but his jaws were forced shut by the kick, resulting in his biting his own tongue in half. Blood spurted out of his mouth and he fainted.

Chapter end