Chapter 72 – The Cloth-clad Patriarch’s Patriarchal Battle

Five Bamboos slightly lowered his head, letting the cold night wind blow the black cloth over his eyes, that stable and terrifying right hand, slowly gripped the brazier handle on the side of his waist, and step by step, step by step, stepped over towards that side of the noodle store.

The clothing material on the man in the noodle store was made of coarse cloth, earthy yellow color, half sleeves, not thick, exactly the dress of the drudges on the river dock south of Kyoto, not a hint of surprise. He blinked, the indifference in his eyes didn’t change half a bit, and the expression on his face didn’t have a hint of movement, he just slowly stood up from the bench along with the sound of the five bamboo’s stepping.

The cloth-clothed man’s hand held a knife, a straight blade, and with a wave of his hand, the blade whistled and slashed out horizontally – the straight blade landed on the neck of that dying, rickety shopkeeper who was picking noodles, and the noodle shopkeeper’s neck snorted, and with a splash of blood at his neck, he poured as much as he could into the pot of boiled noodles without any discrepancy!

Immediately after that, the noodle shop owner’s head clicked, like a heavy fruit at the head of a tree on an autumn day, detaching itself from the branch and falling into the noodle soup, snapping and swirling up a few piping hot and bloody streams of soup.

Without warning, without reason, an unusually cold-blooded and steady strike, the noodle store owner’s body and head were separated, the pale head in the soup floated up and down, and the noodle soup had been dyed a dim red color. Under the light of the oil lamp that could go out at any time in the winter night, this scene looked indescribably scary and weird.

Five Bamboo was standing at a distance of three feet in front of this cloth-clothed man, the half of his face exposed outside the black cloth did not move at all, seemingly not caring that the other party had just killed an innocent noodle boss in front of him.

“You come from the south.” The blind man’s voice was always so monotonous and lacking in rhythm.

The cloth-clothed man slowly retracted his straight sword, and those cold eyes gazed at Five Bamboo. Although his eyes and expression did not show any emotions, somehow, it always made people feel that he had entered an extremely wary mood.

“Routine inspection.” Buyei said in a very thin tone, “Looking for you to return.”

Five Bamboo said, “You came to kill Fan Xian.”

The cloth-clothed man said, “You deliberately put out the news.”

“Because I didn’t find you in the south, I had to use this method to force you to show yourself.” Five Bamboos looked at him indifferently, as if looking at a dead man, “You knew that Fan Xian was her descendant, so of course you would rush to Kyoto to kill him.”

The cloth-clothed man’s eyebrows moved a little strangely, as if he was trying to express a kind of surprise and incomprehension, but it was obvious that his expression was a little raw, so it looked a little comical, those two smudges of eyebrows wriggling around like two little bugs.

“You know why, so you let me come.”

Why was it that after this cloth-clothed man knew that Fan Xian was Ye Qingmei’s son, he would definitely come into the capital to kill him? From the conversation between Five Bamboo and this cloth-clad man, it was obvious that the two knew each other.

Moreover, Five Bamboo knew that once the other party knew of Fan Xian’s life, he would stop at nothing to enter the capital to kill him, so he specifically waited outside the Fan Mansion. In that case, it seemed that this recent storm in the capital might just be Five Bamboo’s way of secretly waking up Bitter Lotus through a false omission in order to reveal Fan Xian’s origins from the distant North Qi, and still be able to do so without leaving half a trace.

If Uncle Blindie had the ability to weave such a perfect plan – then his sole purpose in doing all of this was simply to attract this man in cloth to Kyoto.

What exactly was the man in cloth?

A few months ago on the southern coastline of Qing, there appeared an unnamed man who looked around for a blind man, and when his questions were not answered, he would simply kill anyone who ever saw him, without reason, without asking why.

He was, none other than the Southern Border Serial Killer that Fan Xian and Yan Bingyun had always remembered.

When the Ministry of Justice was at a loss, the Supervisory Court finally began to investigate these odd and bizarre murders, but whenever the Supervisory Court’s experts tracked down this nameless man, they would be turned back on each other and killed cleanly as many as they could without mercy. So until now, no one knew what this nameless person looked like. Yan Bingyun had once thought of borrowing troops from Fan Xian and borrowing the Tiger Guard to go south for this very person.

When he first appeared in this world, it seemed that he wasn’t quite used to the ways and norms of behavior in this world, which was why he killed too many people quite unnecessarily, until later on, he gradually understood more and more, so he knotted his loose hair into the most unusual bun, slipped his bare feet into the straw shoes that were necessary for the home, and chose a straight sword that was often worn by martial artists in the state of Qing, and, at the same time, changed into the coarse quality of the most unnoticeable Cloth clothes.

Five Bamboo took a step forward, one point closer to the noodle stand, and said with a slightly lowered head, “I went to the south to look for you, and didn’t find you.”

The cloth-clothed man said something very puzzling, “I looked for you in the south and didn’t find it either.”

Five Bamboo’s feet were bare; the cloth-clothed man wore straw shoes on his feet. Five Bamboo’s hair was tied tightly behind his head, motionless, and the cloth-clothed man’s hair was tied into a bun, slightly higher.

The smell and flavor of the two people’s breath was extremely similar, and although their clothes and appearance were different, the only thing that could differentiate between the two seemed to be these two characteristics. The aura that permeated their bodies let one know that these two people were both ruthless killing machines, yet they were like two hunters lurking in the darkness of the night, clearly searching for each other, but caring about who found whom first.

They demanded that they could only find each other first themselves, and not allow themselves to be found by the other, and while it didn’t seem to make much of a difference, it was like a fight to the death between a hunter and a wounded tiger, with whoever had the upper hand remaining in the world.

“You were told I was in the south.” Five Bamboo said.

The man in cloth didn’t answer his speech and said directly, “No traces can be left behind.”

Five Bamboo said, “She has already left too many traces. I won’t kill you if you go back to the temple.”

The cloth-clothed man seemed to find Five Bamboo’s words rather perplexing and in great conflict with the reasoning he had always believed in, and a strange look flashed through those cold and ice-like translucent eyes, a look rarely seen in the eyes of the world.

“You return with me.” Buyei’s tone remained as undulating as ever.

Five Bamboo’s voice, however, was a bit more animated than the other, “I forgot something, wait for me to remember.”

This two people’s conversation, has been in a very strange rhythm, and if more attention, will find that this conversation, the two people actually is a question sentence is not used, but only with a very sure tone in the statement of what, perhaps they are very confident in their own logical judgment ability of the people, probably only these two strange people can be so jumping thinking, in the ordinary people seem to be unusually difficult to understand the Conversation.

The two people’s lips suddenly moved without making any sound, seemingly conducting a final silent negotiation.

The negotiation broke down, and Gojira took another step in the direction of the noodle stand. The distance between the two had gone from three feet to two feet.

Buyei’s face was expressionless, not taking a step back, just staring at Five Bamboo’s hand that was gripping the brazier, as if waiting for that pale hand to blossom.

A lowered-pitched puffing sound emanated from the stove that held the noodle pot. The noodle soup with human heads boiling in it roiled over the top of the pot with a blood-red, fishy froth, and flowed along the rim of the pot into the stove, where it touched the red-hot coals with a plopping sound and a pungent, smoky odor rose up.

Five Bamboo moved up, the black cloth on the eyes instantly turned into a black silk, the brazier in his hand did not produce a flower, but like a sharp bamboo tip of the winter, stabbing the cloth-clothed man’s chest!

Strangely enough, Five Bamboo did not choose to drop the brazier at his throat today.

Almost at the same time he moved, the cloth-clothed man with the straight sword also moved, both of them rushed with exactly the same reflexes and speed, and no one could detect a single difference.

The distance of two zhang disappeared in the blink of an eye, as Five Bamboo and the cloth-clothed man violently collided together.

The speed of the two was so fast that it even exceeded the limit of what people’s eyes could observe, it seemed that one moment, the two were standing two zhang apart, and the next moment, the two were already standing opposite each other!

It was like two streams of light, suddenly meeting each other, so fast, no matter if it was Fan Xian before he was injured, or that shadow assassin from the Sixth Office, or even Haitang was here, surely they would not be able to react, and only have their hands waiting to be killed–such a realm, on earth, except for those four great masters, no one has ever touched it again.

However, the stream of light collided, and did not bloom into dazzling fireworks, but in an instant turned into a dead silence.

The tip of a knife emerged from Five Bamboo’s right rib cage, a horrifying horror, and the knife was dripping something onto the ground.

A shovel, with unparalleled accuracy, went through the cloth-clothed man’s midsection without a single deviation.

Five Bamboos moved first, and his speed seemed to be that much faster than the enemy, so when the two men were rushing against each other, his left leg and knee crouched a little bit when he still had time, then it was just that much faster, but it was the most fatal one.

At this time he maintained such a half crouching posture, while the brazier in his hand slightly lifted up, as if lifting the fire to burn the sky in general, stabbing the other party’s abdomen.

In the garden at the back of the alley, human voices were faintly heard, the sound was extremely soft, but it fell on the ears of Five Bamboo and that cloth-clothed man.

Like a saw cutting wood, the two people separated in silence, the weapons in their hands slowly pulled out from each other’s bodies, and it was at this time that the cloth-clothed man’s abdomen let out a cackle, as if something had broken!

By such a serious injury, the cloth-clothed man’s face still did not have a trace of expression, as if the pain is not even half, just like a baby like watching his abdomen that wound, seems to be thinking why he will be slower than the five bamboo so a little bit.

Five Bamboo a move to defeat the enemy, but also seriously injured, but still and the other side of the same expressionless, only exposed in the black cloth outside the corners of the lips, more a trace of more earthly atmosphere of detachment.

He knew the other could no longer exist in this world. And the reason why he was able to be a little faster than the other party was because he was the one who had lured the other party here today with Fan Xian’s life, so he had made more preparations, not wearing shoes or tying his hair in a bun.

Mo dyed the red dust intention, the temple this really has a few points of truth.

Night snow again, a few silhouettes swiftly over the garden wall, silently landed in the alley. As soon as they landed, several people drew out the long knives they carried behind their backs and formed a sniping formation, looking around vigilantly.

The visitors were none other than the Tiger Guards who were responsible for protecting Fan Xian’s safety.

After confirming his safety, Gao Da sheathed his sword and walked over to that noodle stall amidst the sparse snowflakes, looking at the pot of noodle soup on top of the remnant stove, and at the eerie human head in the noodle soup, he frowned.

Immediately afterward, his eyes fell on the parting of the human head from the corpse, and after just a glance at the wound, a hint of coldness and fear could not help but penetrate his eyes – what a fast knife!

Gouda suddenly felt a coldness at his neck, as if a snowflake had burrowed into his clothes. He knew that the fight that took place in this room earlier, absolutely not the kind of people like himself can not interfere, although he did not see it with his own eyes, but he could also guess that the two people who fought each other, have what kind of subtle realm.

The snow gradually big, gradually ice-cold still have the temperature of the noodle soup blood, but also ice-cold in the alley in the hearts and minds of the people. Noodle store miserably stayed at the entrance of the alley, the boss has died, the furnace has been cold, blood has dried up, no one in the world has seen this snowy night in the alley, there have been two unknown, do not list the ranks of the masters, but there are masters of the real top masters, once in here to kill.

The officials of the Supervisory Yuan who were on the night shift were dozing off. Wind and snow in the night of that building, seem more cold and solemn, suddenly a gust of wind swept through, woke him up, still have the residual shock to pat his cheeks, ordering himself to wake up.

In the courtyard there are usually many officials on duty at night, not to mention that in these recent days, because of the matter of Fan Tisi, Dean Chen has not been back to the Chen Garden, but directly sat in the courtyard to suppress everything, if letting the Dean Lord know that he had fallen asleep earlier, he would not have any good fruits to eat.

Chen Pingping at this time is half leaning on the wheelchair dozing, the old man these years has not been very good health, although the stove in the house is extremely prosperous, but he is still subconsciously in his sleep with the pair of withered hands, pulling the woolen blankets on the lap, covered in his chest and abdomen.

The door opened and was closed again.

Chen Pingping woke up, slowly blinked his somewhat cloudy and feeble eyes, looked at the black cloth in front of him, and said softly, “Why are you here?”

Then he noticed the horrific wound on the left chest of Five Bamboo, his eyebrows, which were interspersed with snow-white hairs, suddenly rose, and although he was not angry, he asked with a great sense of caution, “What happened?”

Being able to injure the Five Bamboo? Then it could only be one of those several Great Masters who had struck. No matter how arrogant Chen Pingping was, in this troublesome situation in Kyoto nowadays, it was no longer difficult to withstand the news that the enemy had suddenly gotten the help of one more Grand Master.

Five Bamboos did not answer his question, but only said three words very directly.

“Get Shadow back.”

“The person who injured me knows that I’m in the south.”

“Fan Xian dies, and the Kingdom of Qing dies.”

Knowing that the old cripple in front of him was wise enough to hear these three sentences, and that the terrible injuries he had suffered today had already prevented him from supporting himself for much longer, Five Bamboo left the Supervisory Courtyard very swiftly and quietly after he had finished speaking.

Chen Pingping sat in his wheelchair and fell into a long silence, and in the fireplace not far beside him, the reddish firelight jumped like an elf, reflecting red on his face that should have been pale and haggard.

The three sentences of the Five Bamboos were simple, but they revealed a very important message.

The first sentence was to have Shadow come back, indicating that the injuries he had sustained had been so severe that there was no way for him to stay by Fan Xian’s side to protect him, allowing Chen Pingping to fulfill her promise in advance by summoning Shadow back to protect Fan Xian’s safety.

However, the person who had the ability to injure Five Bamboos should have died as well, otherwise with Five Bamboos’ character, for the sake of Fan Xian’s life and death, he wouldn’t have left Kyoto even if he was seriously injured.

What kind of person would be able to injure Five Bamboo? It definitely wasn’t those Grand Masters, otherwise Five Bamboos wouldn’t have deliberately concealed the identity of the other party. Chen Pingping’s heart trembled slightly, vaguely guessing a little something, this guess had been there since many years ago, only it had never been confirmed.

On the night that Five Bamboos left Kyoto carrying Fan Xian, the two of them had considered how they could make Fan Xian escape from that unknown danger. Just …… why would the temple know that Five Bamboo was in the south? Chen Pingping furrowed her brows and began to sort through it all.

During the two years that Fan Xian had been in the capital, Chen Pingping had inquired about the whereabouts of the Five Bamboos more than once, and Fan Xian had always been very careful to lie and say that the Five Bamboos were in the south looking for Ye Liuyun to play with. And the only person who knew about this false news, besides Chen Pingping, was the emperor, whom Chen Pingping had once told. (See Volume 2, Chapter 62.)

The second sentence of Five Bamboos is a nod to Chen Pingping on this point. In that case, the threat of the third sentence was something quite natural.

“Your Majesty.” The wrinkles at the corners of Chen Pingping’s eyes twitched slightly as he sighed softly, “You really do always surprise me, admire admire admire.”

In just a matter of moments, he had already surmised the emperor’s true thoughts. Although it was unclear how the emperor was able to connect with that ethereal temple, he was quite certain of one fact, that His Majesty, the great emperor, really wanted the Five Bamboos to disappear.

For a generation of emperors, it might be really hard for them to tolerate having a Grandmaster level figure by the side of their illegitimate son.

A Grandmaster, if he were to go mad. It would possess enough power to shake the rule of the imperial court, which was something that anyone could think of. Even if it was impossible to single-handedly kill his way into the imperial palace and slaughter the entire royal family, he could completely single-handedly travel to the ends of the earth and kill the state guardian officials in the various county roads, and still not have to worry about being besieged by the army.

Can also sneak in the Kyoto ten years do not come out, once out of the sword, scared the emperor never dare to go out of the palace, the decree can not go out of the city. In such a situation, no one dares to be an official, the emperor does not dare to show his face, the court in addition to falling apart, what else can be done?

So back then, Bitter Lotus could single-handedly deter all the princes and noble officials in the north who wanted to rebel.

That’s why the Four Gu Swords can protect Dongyi City for so many years with a single sword, and can let their sword power spread out and straighten the backs of those small vassal states caught between two great powers.

So seemingly loose, but actually have great wisdom Ye Liuyun, as long as continue to the end of the world to continue that do not know the end of the trip, Qing will be treated Ye family, even if a generation of emperor wants to remove the Kyoto defense, but also be forced to use their own fire this shameful trick. Of course, Ye Liuyun himself was well aware of the imperial land’s taboo, so he hadn’t returned to Kyoto after so many years.

If the world’s conquest started, His Majesty could use the Ye family to threaten Ye Liuyun, he could use the lives of the ten thousand people of Beiqi to persuade Bitter Lotus, he could use the survival of Dongyi City to remind the Four Gu Swords, and the two sides could come to some kind of balanced agreement.

And Wuzhu was different from all three of these great masters, he didn’t have a huge family as a burden, there was no country’s people that he needed to guard, what he did was only for Fan Xian alone, so he possessed a much greater degree of freedom, and it was even less likely that he would be coerced by the emperor or take advantage of each other, and there wasn’t even any room for both sides to even haggle over what to do.

If Fan Xian had a short or long life, when Five Bamboos went crazy, the world would go crazy with him.

So, as long as the five bamboo in a day, the emperor must love and cherish Fan Xian, as in the past years, play the last resort and guilty father, chest ambitious but seems to be full of sadness emperor.

The emperor might have appreciated Fan Xian as his son from the bottom of his heart, but he was an emperor in the end, and he couldn’t allow Fan Xian to have such a loyal Grand Master as a servant by his side; even if he didn’t take advantage of the temple visitors this time, one day, the emperor would find a way to remove the Five Bamboos.

Of course, Chen Pingping knew clearly that this was only one aspect of the reason, as for the other, it probably lay in the faint fear in the emperor’s heart.

The temple had always stayed out of the world’s affairs, no one had really seen the people in the temple, and the people in the temple didn’t see the world once in a few hundred years, so if they could let the Five Bamboos and the people in the temple die together, and could hide Fan Xian’s relationship with the Ye family forever, and bury all that year’s events in a pile of old paper, for the emperor, this was probably the most wonderful ending.

It was just that the emperor did not expect that Fan Xian’s life as a descendant of the Ye family would be stabbed out so quickly, and that his own son had become the temple’s prime target. He wanted to use the temple as a sword to kill Five Bamboos, but instead, Five Bamboos utilized Fan Xian’s stature and successfully booby-trapped that temple visitor to save Fan Xian’s life.

Chen Pingping didn’t know what Five Bamboo had moved in it, but he just thought with a slight hint of sadness that His Majesty knew that someone from the Temple of God had come to the world, and never reminded himself or Fan Xian after Fan Xian’s birth was revealed, could it be that His Majesty would only give only faint sadness and sympathy to anyone other than himself?

The old man laughed coldly, pushing his wheelchair to the fireplace, somewhat greedily stretching his hand closer, yawning as he warmed himself, and cooing in slurred speech, ”You’re just good at enjoying yourself, and you’ve actually created a fireplace. You everything is excellent, just this thing to do a little confused, the girl’s family ……”

At dawn, the remote and quiet place called “Outer Three Miles” in Kyoto was dark, and the shadow of a round building could be seen vaguely, all of which was made of black wood and was a temple. Snowflakes fall one after another, so that the temple colored a layer of transcendence of the world’s meaning of dust.

This was the Temple of Qing, rumored to be the only place in the Kingdom of Qing where one could communicate with the imaginary temple of the gods, the royal temple of heavenly worship.

The temple door was pushed open with a creak, and the Great Priest of the Qing Temple, who hadn’t appeared in Kyoto for a long time, stepped out, and the shocked look on the face of this ascetic monk, who was silent compared to the Bitter Lotus of the Qi Temple, disappeared, and silently and sadly lifted up the corpse from the snow and stumbled into the temple, which was wearing a common piece of cloth clothing on earth.