Chapter 145

Chapter 145

Book 4, Chapter 32 (Part 2)

“I played by the river’s shore often when I was little,” Duan Ling turns back and says to Wu Du.

Wu Du’s eyes scan over the area. “I’ll hold the reins. You just tell me where you want to go.”

Wu Du is worried that there may be an ambush nearby, but even if the Shadow Guard is around, they probably don’t know that Wu Du and Duan Ling have come to Runan.

“When Zhao Kui told you to capture me, did he mention coming to Runan?” Duan Ling asks him in a whisper.

“No, he didn’t. He didn’t know where your mother came from. He didn’t even know the late emperor had a son. I only guessed that much by extrapolating from Lang Junxia’s whereabouts.”

“Then the Shadow Guard probably doesn’t know either,” Duan Ling says.

“Shh.” Wu Du signals Duan Ling for quiet and stops the horse by the river. There’s silence all around them save for the noise of running water.

“Did you hear that?” Wu Du asks.

“No.” Duan Ling looks completely lost. He didn’t receive the same training as an assassin, so his hearing isn’t as sensitive as Wu Du’s.

“Someone is still here,” Wu Du replies. “Or it may just be the wind.”

And now Duan Ling does hear it. The noise is coming from an alleyway at quite a distance from them, a light ka-chak at the very end of the alley. It sounds like someone is moving something.

“Or it could be a lynx or maybe a wild dog,” Duan Ling says.

Wu Du puts a finger in front of his mouth, shh. They dismount, leaving Benxiao by the roadside without hitching it to a post. Benxiao wants to follow them, but Duan Ling raises a hand to tell it to stay, so Benxiao stays and waits. The two of them move softly into the alleyway.

Out of the alley’s end comes another light sound. This time it’s a lot clearer, and Duan Ling has heard it as well.

It’s the sound of a door closing.

Wu Du puts his sword in his hand, and slots the fingers of his other hand with Duan Ling’s. Slowly, they walk to the end of the alleyway.

Ka-chak. There it is again. Duan Ling feels like his heart’s been drawn up all the way up to his throat.

“This is the Duan estate,” Duan Ling says in an exceedingly quiet voice.

Wu Du gives Duan Ling a glance, seemingly hesitating, but Duan Ling urges him to keep going. They turn into another alley and hears another ka-chak. Duan Ling can’t help but feel himself jump.

“No one’s here.” With the still-sheathed sword in his hand, Wu Du pushes his knuckles against a wooden gate that leads to a back courtyard before withdrawing his hand again. The wooden door makes a snapping sound.

It’s the sound of the wind. Every once in a while, the wooden gate would be blown open, and it would lean crookedly back into place again, making a noise.

However, Duan Ling is standing before this back courtyard with an utterly puzzled look on his face.

“What is it?” Wu Du says.

“This isn’t it. What happened here?” Duan Ling’s memories are already mixed-up.

“What do you mean this isn’t it?”

“The road outside the alley … clearly leads to the Duan estate, but this gate … when was this gate built? Even the courtyard walls aren’t the same now? I remember that there used to be a pond right here — that’s gone too? Everything’s gone? How did this place turn into a completely different house?”

Wu Du stares at him, not sure what to say.

It’s like he’s clearly taken the same path home as always, yet when he finally gets there it’s only to discover that this isn’t his home at all. Even the layout has changed.

“Maybe they’ve moved away?” Wu Du hypothesises.

“But would the courtyard walls be torn down as well? The houses next door don’t look familiar to me either.”

It’s not just the Duan estate — even the neighbouring homes to the east and west of the Duan estate have changed completely. What on earth is going on here? A chill begins to grow out of the bottom of Duan Ling’s heart.

Duan Ling checks the outside and the inside, looking at every corner, and Wu Du follows him closely the whole time.

This is no longer the Duan estate he recognises. From the inside to the outside, it feels strange all over.

“Maybe you remembered wrong?” Wu Du asks.

“I haven’t,” Duan Ling says with a frown, “there’s no way I’m mistaken.”

There may be some deviation from reality in an eight-year-old child’s memories; that’s not odd. He may have entered an alleyway that looked exactly the same, or maybe the Duans took some money and renovated the estate from top to bottom.

But all the while, Duan Ling insists that it’s impossible. Even if they renovated the house the layout wouldn’t have changed. He’s walked through this alleyway countless times. He doesn’t come out of the alley until the planet Venus rises in the east, looking rather crestfallen.

But Wu Du seems to be smiling. Duan Ling asks, “What are you smiling about?”

“I didn’t know you could be stubborn too,” Wu Du says.

Duan Ling has always been able to look on the bright side of life; now that he hears himself being called stubborn, he figures it doesn’t really matter. The only possibility is that some family bought the Duans’ house, didn’t like the design of the interior, and so they took the whole thing apart and built a house that’s both small and lousy in the same location.

Later on, the Mongols invaded, and the city of Runan emptied out overnight, leaving this lousy house here all by its lonesome, leaving not a single shred of memory behind for Duan Ling.

“I want to go see my mother’s grave,” Duan Ling says.

“Eat something first. Drink some water, and get some rest too.”

Duan Ling is getting a bit sleepy, and he’s also feeling a bit sad. There’s too much dust here, so he stands at the corner of the street rubbing at his eyes.

Wu Du pours him some water to drink. “Which way do we go?”

There’s suddenly a whipping sound of the wind, and before Duan Ling manages to react, at the very moment the sun rises over the horizon, a long sword is coming at Wu Du from behind!

Wu Du pushes Duan Ling aside right away, the sword in his hand leaving its sheath with a clang. As he turns, the ends of his robe flutters, and he blocks the sword aiming for his back!

From what Duan Ling can see, the assassin is a man in black standing nine feet tall, moving as swiftly as a gust of wind. As he crosses swords with Wu Du, they each turn sideways, and in that instant, as though out of intuition, Duan Ling is almost acting on instinct when he calls out, “Chang Liujun!”

By the time he shouts his name out loud, the tall assassin’s sword is already cutting down towards Wu Du’s shoulder. Wu Du whips a hand outward, finger-daggers glimmering as the steel between his fingers catches the Baihongjian. With a turn and a pull, a metallic hum shakes through Duan Ling’s eardrums, and it feels absolutely terrible. In that very instant, Wu Du turns his sword.

The gleaming sunrise hits the Lieguangjian, and a sudden ray of bright light shines towards the assassin’s eyes. Under the mask, two eyes narrow; the assassin senses danger and hurriedly dodges back out of the way, his mask almost picked clean off his face by Wu Du’s sword!

“Hehehe,” the assassin laughs, making Chang Liujun’s familiar voice.

Duan Ling is speechless for a beat before he says, “Hey, stop fighting already!”

Chang Liujun had only attacked Wu Du out of an itch to test Wu Du’s martial arts skills. Wu Du though, says not a word and chases after him like a shadow, his long sword cutting out at a slanting angle.

Chang Liujun bellows furiously, “Can’t I tease you a little?!”

“Enough, enough.” Duan Ling immediately tries to talk Wu Du down.

Wu Du doesn’t sheathe his sword until Duan Ling asks.

Chang Liujun replies, “I’ve been following you guys for a while, but you two just kept standing there.”

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Duan Ling feels his heart instantly icing over. “Where were you hiding?”

Chang Liujun points at an inn in the corner. It was where Duan Ling had been rubbing his eyes.

“Chang Liujun,” Wu Du says in a threateningly chilly tone, “don’t play around like that again. Otherwise, I’m going to have to start poisoning you.”

Chang Liujun doesn’t answer him. Behind his mask, he glances at Duan Ling. “Did you think I’d raise my hand against my master?”

“Who could know what terrible intentions you’re keeping in your head?” Wu Du says sarcastically.

“Apprentice, what are you doing here?” Seeing Chang Liujun is nothing less than tumultuous to Duan LIng’s mental state — did he come here on Mu Kuangda’s orders to find the Duans? He’s really hoping he’s not right about that.

Chang Liujun sheathes his sword. “Come with me.”

What should they do? To think they’d run into Chang Liujun here of all places. Duan Ling sends Wu Du a glance. Wu Du takes Benxiao’s reins in one hand, takes Duan Ling’s hand in the other, and he gives Duan Ling a little squeeze to let him know he doesn’t have to worry.

Duan Ling and Wu Du exchange a look, while Chang Liujun walks ahead of them, not saying anything. It’s a ghost town, to begin with, and the mood just grows more and more bizarre when none of them is talking.

“Master.” Chang Liujun turns back to give him a look, and talks with multiple tsks under his breath. “How come you don’t seem very happy to see me/”

Smiling doesn’t seem right, and putting on a straight face doesn’t seem right either; the corner of Duan Ling’s mouth twitches once, and he says, “Could you maybe try a different kind of greeting next time?”

“Oh, come here,” Chang Liujun reaches out to put his arm around Duan Ling. Duan Ling turns his head to give Wu Du a look, letting him know that it’s too weird if they spend the entire time not talking, and steps closer to Chang Liujun, letting him put an arm on his shoulder.

Chang Liujun stands tallest out of the four great assassins, and with his arm around Duan Ling’s shoulder, it looks like he’s grabbing a little puppy. “So how are you doing as governor?”

“I’m doing … alright. What on earth did you come here for?”

“The Lord Chancellor told me to come to track down someone. That reminds me — what are you two doing here?”

Duan Ling tells him that he’s come to the border to Liao with Wu Du to cut down trees, and when they got hungry in the middle of the night, they thought they could come to Runan to buy some food, only to find out that the place had become a ghost town. Chang Liujun looks thoughtful, then replies, “The city of Runan went through several Mongolian pillages, and they’ve moved to Anxi. If you travel along Mount Luoyang towards the northwest you’ll get to their new city.”

So that’s it … Duan Ling feels some semblance of hope rising out of his heart. That is to say, the Duans probably relocated as well. Wait a second. Chang Liujun said Mu Kuangda asked him to come and track down someone. Who’s he tracking down?

All at once, Duan Ling feels his heart dragged up to his throat, and it stays there until Chang Liujun stops outside of an abandoned tea house.

“Master Chang, guess who I ran into?” Chang Liujun calls out.

Inside the tea house, a man is lying on a worn out woven mat, and upon hearing this he gets up blearily. “Wang Shan?”

“Master Chang Pin!” Duan Ling cannot be more surprised.

Wu Du says with a frown, “Chang Pin?”

A quarter of an hour later, Chang Liujun has boiled water, and Wu Du splits some of their dry rations. They drink water out of chipped teacups, swallowing down some dry rations to make do for their breakfast.

“I was thinking about resting in Runan for a full day before heading to Ye to ask you for help.” Though Chang Pin seems to be in dire straits, when he speaks he’s still calm and composed. with his hair in complete disarray over his shoulders though, he looks quite comical.

They were just passing by, Duan Ling feels his heart resting gently back into place again, and once he relaxes his tone also lightens up quite a bit. He smiles. “What are you doing here, Master Chang Pin?”

“It’s a long story.” Chang Pin replies, sounding exasperated, “When we see Chancellor Mu again upon our return, you can get the full story out of him. He’ll tell you all the details.”

Duan Ling says helplessly, “Before three or five years are up, how am I supposed to go back?”

Chang Pin smiles. “You two have glory by military service. They may say capital officials are on the job in the country for three years, but the imperial court needs people right now. Also, the top three graduates of the civil exams don’t have to abide so strictly by the rules. Chancellor Mu said that after next year’s autumn harvest, once Hebei is stable, he’ll summon you two back. Otherwise, we really won’t have enough helping hands.”

Wu Du has one elbow resting on the tea table behind him, and with one ankle resting over his knee, he’s swaying back and forth haphazardly. “And what if we don’t want to go back?”

“Aiyoh.” Chang Pin though, doesn’t get mad at all, and jests, “Commandant General would be official of the fourth rank proper, and the rest of us are just commoners. So I suppose we’ve offended you.”

Chang Pin makes to get up to salute Wu Du, but Duan Ling knows full well that this guy has a bag full of tricks, and if they offend him there’s no way to know which one of his tricks would end up being turned on them. This is one salute they can’t possibly accept. He puts a hand on Chang Pin’s shoulder to stop him. “Master Chang Pin, let’s stop beating around the bush. We’re all one big family here, so there’s no need to speak in allegories.”

Wu Du asks Chang Liujun, “Did you two come looking for the Zhenshanhe?”

Aside from the Zhenshanhe, Wu Du really can’t think of what other mission could have steered both the martial artist Chang Liujun and the scholar Chang Pin, Mu Kuangda’s most trusted aides, away from his side.

“Zhenshanhe?” Chang Pin stares back blankly at him and replies, “Of course not. It would take too long to explain this, but since we’ve already had breakfast, please follow me.”

Where are we going now? Inside his head, Duan Ling whines. Since the middle of last night, he’s been dragged this way and that without any choice in the matter; first he’s brought here to Runan by Wu Du, then he’s taken to the tea shop by Chang Liujun, and now Chang Pin is going to take them to lord knows where. He’s downright dizzy with disorientation being dragged all over the place like this.

Even so, Chang Pin has already risen to his feet. It’s not like they can choose not to help him, so all they can do is get up and follow.

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