Faraway Wanderers Novel (English Translation)

War

Chapter 74.

Wen Kexing watched him silently, gaze like an awl, as if he was about to pierce into his core. Lao Meng suddenly felt a little panicked, automatically going over all his own mental calculations from start to finish.

Rebellion. He hadn’t started planning for that only just recently, but for a long time beforehand. Back when Sun Ding and Xue Fang began to overtly and covertly fight, he had already started to scheme and prep. The Hanged Ghost pilfering the key, betraying the Valley, and leaving had practically been an opportunity given to him by the Heavens.

He still remembered how the man before him had gotten the position of Valley Master eight years back. He had merely been a young, unknown man that Lao Meng had never taken notice of, only thinking that the delicate-featured fellow being able to bring his little girl to live in a place like this was something rather amazing.

The former Valley Master of the time was dissimilar to the present one, and had honed in on flashiness. Yama Hall hadn’t even been as desolate as it now was, frequently full of song and dance.

The old Master seemed to have appreciated him. In what way had he appreciated him, though? Lao Meng wasn’t certain, as back in those years, no one had dared to say anything. Regardless, he had been transferred over to be a close attendant of Yama Hall, occasionally giving him pointers in martial arts when in a good mood. Wen Kexing would show up behind the Master from time to time, standing in a set spot, never speaking too much, and always following the rules, like a wooden man that didn’t talk or move.

Yet, it was this wooden man that had, one night, set the insides of Yama Hall into a sky-soaring blaze, those organ-tearing, miserable screeches seeming to linger around its roofbeams for three days afterwards.

Silently bearing with it for three years, one half of the former Master’s attendants went with him. Anybody that opposed would get rended apart, thrown into a fire, and roasted well the day of. Like so, killing a few would make the rest have no rebuke, no matter how stupid they were.

Xue Fang ate a maiden’s heart every month, and Sun Ding liked to drink wine paired with human blood, but even they both thought that that night had been a nightmare. The blood within the Hall had looked to be smeared all over. The former Valley Master had howled for over two shichens. Some said that Wen Kexing had sliced him into pieces, staunching the bleeding all while he cut, then forced him to eat those pieces. Others said that he had skinned him, peeling him whole while he still lived.

When this man came out from inside, he had been wearing a bright red robe. At that moment, no one could tell whether it had been red to begin with, or had been dyed with fresh blood. His face, forever wooden and placid, had shown a smile for the first time before all.

“He’s dead. I got rid of him,” they had heard him say. “Anyone unconvinced can come fight me, but otherwise, be good and obey from here on out.”

After that came a war, a royale, a massacre… and then the dust finally settled.

There was no sort of conspiracy. This was exactly how to survive in the Valley — the strong were respected, and that was it. Wen Kexing trusted no one, except for the girl he had raised, so on his second day of being the Valley Master, he had immediately ordered for the extra people of Yama Hall to be cleared away. In the Valley, no living thing apart from Gu Xiang was allowed to come within three chi of him without permission.

He was temperamental, unreadable, and of ever-mysterious whereabouts.

Over those eight years, secrets got all the deeper. At times, Lao Meng would even get the illusion that the man, from the strands of his hair down to his fingernails, did not have a single area about him that wasn’t permeated with the horrific stench of blood; he was a through and through madman, born to slaughter. For that reason, Xue Fang and the rest preferred to fight amongst themselves before anything else, refusing to enrage the lunatic when their wings were not yet developed, and they still could not kill him in one blow.