Lanke Chess Edge -
Chapter 48: Ethereal Pursuit
[T/n: note on chapter title]1
Content warning: semi-graphic depictions of violence (bone breaking)
Whoooo…
A gust of wind came. Just as Wei Wuwei thought his eyes were about to be destroyed, a figure wearing thick gray clothes suddenly appeared in front of him, attacking the man in stealth garb in front of him with his hands and feet.
“Pah pah pah!!! Clang clang clang!!!”
After witnessing the fight just now, Ji Yuan no longer dared to underestimate the people in the martial arts world. As the saying went, it really was a dangerous world, and the nine young heroes he had met before were truly young!
He didn’t intend to use any sword techniques in the first place, and he didn’t have a knife on-hand, so he had to use the fist and claw techniques from the Iron Punishment Battle Guide.
Straight punches, hooks, leg sweeps, knee strikes, arm swings, kicks… Every move was like a hurricane!
No one could see where the grey-clothed man with his hair tied back had come from. The man in black had previously used only finger techniques with one hand to deal with Wei Wuwei, but now he was hard-pressed to even parry with both hands up.
In just a few breaths, the man in black’s arms were already numb. Under the fabric, his fingers, palms, and arms were already red and swollen in several places, and he was only supporting himself with his vital qi.‘What kind of monster is this!’
The man in black only had the power to parry but not to counterattack, and every collision felt like hitting an iron pillar. It brought him a huge shock, not to mention pain. In just a few breaths, the strong energy protecting his body had nearly been shaken away.
‘His pace has been disrupted! Alright, his physical skills are not as good as mine!’
Ji Yuan’s heart moved, his spiritual energy circulated, and his body that had just finished throwing a punch swayed like a snake, disappearing in front of the man in black’s eyes, appearing right beside him as the opponent’s heart beat wildly.
The man in black reacted very quickly. He swung the knife in his left hand, trying to force Ji Yuan back, but in an instant he felt his arm being grabbed.
Ji Yuan brought his five fingers together and stabbed his left armpit.
“Aaargh!” The man in black tensed his left shoulder in pain.
At the same time, Ji Yuan’s hand formed an eagle claw, sliding from the opponent’s shoulder to his wrist, clasping his hand and twisting it.
“Crack, crack, crack…”
Three crisp sounds of snapping bones were heard, and he nearly lost all feeling in his left arm from the severe pain. Out of the corner of the eye, he caught a glimpse of the gray shadow under his feet.
“Bang! Crraaack…”
The muscles and bones of the left leg were dislocated. Before he could react, Ji Yuan appeared on the right side as if by teleportation.
“Crack… Crack!”
The right arm was dislocated from the wrist to the shoulder…
At this moment, Ji Yuan felt that he had finally subdued the man in black.2 Feeling both excited and nervous, he grabbed the black-clothed man’s hair and lifted him up to face him. The other master who hadn’t had time to come over and give support could not intervene, and neither could the remaining bandits.
“Ho… uuuhhh, hooo…”
The black-clothed master being held up by Ji Yuan was in great pain. He gasped for air carefully, in cold sweat. Every inhale and exhale brought severe pain to his body, as if he were being punished each time.
For a moment, the scene fell into an eerie silence, as everyone stared at the mysterious master who suddenly appeared.
He was dressed in a coarse gray cloth. His hair was tied up simply, and his face was dark, as if there were a dark birthmark covering half of his visage. He seemed expressionless, but it gave people a sense of solemnity.
Their impression of this person could be summed up in two3 words – very dangerous!
After a long time, the other black-clothed master let out a fearful voice.
“Iron! Punishment! Achieved!4 What an incredible and fierce attack, what a powerful blow! Who might your Excellency be?”5
In fact, there was no one present, including Wei Wuwei, who was not afraid upon seeing what this man had done. Just now, this person’s attack was so fierce as to cripple an originally unfathomable master.
With this move, Wei Wuwei didn’t even dare to breathe while he was unsure of the opponent’s purpose.
“Haah…”
Ji Yuan quietly exhaled a long breath. Only now was the excitement of fighting against someone for the first time slowing down, which also confirmed his own thoughts: although he had only practiced martial arts for a few months, the spiritual energy the training time of martial arts is only a few months, his body had been tempered with spiritual energy, but it did not replace the circulation of true Qi. In addition to his good comprehension and good Qi cultivation, his martial arts talents were not bad!
‘Or rather, I am very strong!’
This idea did not come out of thin air, but from his experience of the previous fight, from the fearful words of the other people, and from the nervous breathing and rapid heartbeats of everyone around him now.
The attack just now may have been a bit harsh, but the black-clothed man was not a pure and kind person.
With his display of martial arts prowess just now, it was natural for them to regard him as a master of the imperial court. It could even be said that Ji Yuan deliberately led them to think so.
When the man in black had mentioned the three words, “Sword Intent Inscription,” Ji Yuan’s heart had jumped, and he had suddenly realized that it was most likely referring to the copybook in his home.
Originally, Lu Shan Jun was a tiger spirit, and he never left Niu Kui Mountain. Where could he have gone to get this kind of calligraphy that contained martial arts and swordsmanship? He had obviously only acquired it recently.
Now, this group of people had found the blue jade of the Wei family, and the man in black who had appeared later seemed to belong to the same camp as the so-called Thirteen Thieves of Yan Di. The two black-clothed obviously had a higher status than the Thirteen Thieves. When the two appeared, although the Thirteen Thieves did not make a sound, there was a kind of surprise in the fluctuations of their aura, indicating that the Thirteen Thieves did not know that the men in black had been following them, meaning that there was an unequal distribution of information.
This allowed Ji Yuan, an outsider, to instinctively develop a conspiracy theory about their organizational structure.
Although Ji Yuan had been told in film, television, and literary works of his previous life that it would be very annoying to get involved in this kind of thing, it was a different story of the targets of this group were things like the Sword Intent Inscription or the blue jade.
Ji Yuan lowered his voice, and then channeled his spiritual energy to use the small voice-changing technique in the Iron Punishment Battle Guide. It caused a slight turbulence in his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse, but full of energy.
“Patriarch Wei, do these people have any grudges against your Wei family?”
Wei Wuwei suddenly reacted as he was being asked. He could only assume that this person who had come for him was a friend rather than an enemy, but after he thought about it, he knew that the Iron Punishment Battle Guide technique could not be faked. Any expert from a public sect6 who could practice this kind of martial arts to such a level would be an existence like Tie Zhan, who couldn’t tolerate Xiaoxiao’s violations of the rules.7
“Thank you, sir, for saving me. I, Wei, have no grievances or enmity with these people. My Wei family has always maintained good relationships. If there are any unresolves enmities, it would be impossible for me, as the head of the family, not to have known about them!”
At this point, Wei Wuwei was worried. Either way, the matter of the blue jade had already become known to someone who was interested in it, so he told Ji Yuan his suspicions.
“Besides, very few people know about the ancestral blue jade of our Wei family. These people have definitely come prepared to ask for blue jade. The previous incident with the Fan family’s Sword Intent Inscription in Dingyuan Precfecture was also done by the Thirteen Thieves. I suspect that they must have other plans!”
“Well, let’s stop them first!”
The moment Ji Yuan’s words sounded, the other black-clothed man and the rest of the thieves felt the warning signs.
The next moment, the mysterious public sect master burst from stillness into movement. In an instant, he flashed in front of the man in black, and struck out with his fists and claws.
Seeing Ji Yuan take action, Wei Wuwei was not idle, and attacked the remining Yan bandits together with the two guards.
It wasn’t until the moment he faced Ji Yuan that he realized just how much pressure he was under, and after just a few breaths of fighting, he already felt like he couldn’t hold on anymore.
While he tried his best to resist the attack, he kept retreating in escape, and there was so much pain in his arms that it was difficult to parry.
“Your Excellency, do you really want to kill them all? Don’t you want climb higher in life, and be rich and powerful…”
Seeing how Ji Yuan ignored him, the man in black shouted sharply in desperation.
“Don’t you want to walk arrogantly in this world, don’t you want to become an immortal?”
This time, not only did Ji Yuan not slow down his offensive, but he changed his movements in a strange manner, using his right arm to perform the sword skills from the Iron Punishment Battle Guide. The man in black only felt that the distance he had escaped to had suddenly shortened, and he was struck in the chest before he could even react.
“Bang!”
The body of the man in black was directly knocked back, and his feet were caught flying through the air by Ji Yuan.
“Ha!”
As if he were swinging a big stick, the man in black was smashed into the ground with a bang, leaving him with only enough strength to twitch.
On the other side, Wei Wuwei and the two guards had just resolved the battle, and the remaining thieves were all apprehended.
“Becoming an immortal? Are you trying to deceive me with this kind of nonsense?”
Ji Yuan sneered and looked at the man in black on the ground.
“Haaah…haaah…the traces of immortals are elusive…but, but they are not untraceable… Legend has it that Mad Disciple Zuo broke through martial arts and entered onto the path of Taoism. You, you can ask Wei Wuwei… the blue jade of the Wei family… haaah… its origin is extraordinary…”
The man in black endured the pain in his body, and finished his intermittent words. He had been searching for his dream for many years, and it was finally in front of him… He was unwilling to let it vanish!
T/n:
JY: *demolishes several masters without breaking a sweat* – “am I strong now? … Naaaah.”
- T/n: the chapter title reminds me of the D&D spell “Misty Step,” which, like the techniques used by the fighters here, is a footwork/movement technique that allows you to teleport up to 30 feet. I highly doubt it’s actually a D&D reference, but the parallel brought a smile to my face 😀 ↩︎
- T/n: Ji Yuan, buddy, I think you need to look up the definition of “overkill.” You have literally snapped every bone in each of his four limbs. ↩︎
- The original was “three” words, because there are 3 characters ↩︎
- 功 (gōng): meritorious deed or service / achievement. I don’t know why this was added as an exclamation ↩︎
- Alternate translation: “Who might your distinguished self be?” This is quite the amusing translation, because there are literally 5+ extra characters in this sentence that are only denoting how extremely respectful this guy is being. It’s like he’s stopping every other word just to add an honorific. He is scared out of his pants ↩︎
- Presumably meaning that the sect is known, open to new initiates, i.e. not a cult ↩︎
- From the Chinese wuxia story Juedai Shuangjiao, Tie Zhan is a battle-hungry character who conflicts with Xiao Mimi in the story, a woman notorious for seducing martial artists with no regard to the conflicts that might cause (note: might also refer to the character Xiaoyu’er, who charms all the women he meets, but based on Chinese diminutives tending to repeat the character for female names rather than male names I’m assuming its Xiao Mimi). Also note that this novel was first published in 1966 but is being referenced by a guy in fantasy Ancient China, so RIP continuity I guess ↩︎
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