Chapter 400
Blood and Soul
Chapter 400 Blood and Soul
"Jiang Jue and Jiang Chi passed by one after the other. This kid let Jiang Jue pass and then attacked Jiang Chi from behind."
"Jiang Jue and the other two didn't notice him?"
"That's why I said he was a hunter."
The leader of the hunting squad examined all the traces on the battlefield, following in the footsteps of his dead comrades, retracing the path they had taken.
He first glanced at the tree where Chen Ji was hiding, and the three arrow holes in the tree: "Jiang Jue shot three arrows in a row and he dodged them all. His skills are no worse than ours."
The squad leader followed Jiang Jue's footprints, mimicking Jiang Jue's actions as he retreated step by step to the open space: "The fact that they are locked in a stalemate here means that Jiang Jue cannot sense his position. In the end, Jiang Jue lost in a test of patience."
Someone whispered, "Why does it look like the Fengzi Battalion?"
A man sneered from behind a skeleton mask: "What a load of bull! Those treacherous people in the Fengzi Camp are all long dead."
Amid the noise, the squad leader raised his right fist, and the commotion abruptly ceased.
Beneath his skeletal mask, wildfire flickered in his eyes as he grappled with a frantic thought: "He took twelve arrows with him when he left, but we only have eight men left. Be careful, we might not be able to take him down."
The Five Witches' army has always been invincible in one-on-one battles, so the fact that they now have to use their own lives to count the number of arrows in the enemy's hands is a sign of weakness.
But on the battlefield, only victory matters, not face.
Someone asked in a low voice, "We're not going to let this kid get away, are we?"
The eight hunters, who were hunting in the mountains, all looked into the distance. Dusk was falling, and the sun had already set halfway into the distant mountains. The setting sun dyed the white bone masks on their faces orange, and then darkened.
The sun has set.
The centurion's order was to retrieve Chen Ji's head before sunset, and the hunters never doubted this, even planning in advance where to go for a drink until they left the world at dawn.
Now, the matter of drinking has been put to the back of his mind.
The sergeant calmly said, "He can't escape. While he was playing games with us, the centurion had already led his men to seal off the mountain. Trying to escape? That's wishful thinking."
He continued, “Our advantage is that we are tireless and need no rest. This kid has realized he can’t shake us off and wants to finish off all his hunting and trapping before leaving. Send one of you to report this to the centurion and have him lead the army to surround and annihilate us.”
After he finished giving his instructions, a hunter immediately slung the bone bow over his shoulder, turned around, and flew away without hesitation.
A hunter, observing the footprints on the ground, asked, "There are two tracks on the ground indicating we've left. Which way should we go?"
After a brief moment of thought, the sergeant said, "South Third, East Fourth, split up and pursue him. Fire whistling arrows the moment you spot him, and let's go."
Having said that, the leader of the hunters made a strange hand gesture, his palm like a knife, slicing straight down from the throat to the abdomen. The others exchanged glances and nodded slightly.
The next moment, the seven hunters split into two groups, one heading south and the other east.
……
……
It's getting dark.
The squad leader led the three men forward in a diamond formation, each five steps apart.
The squad leader suddenly crouched down and carefully examined the bush in front of him. The bush branches were broken, and the cuts were clear and moist.
He gently rubbed the broken end of the branch with the pad of his thumb to assess the degree of moisture loss, then said with certainty, "It just broke off half an incense stick ago, and he's nearby. No, he wouldn't be that careless; this is a trace he left on purpose!"
The four of them stopped in place, nocked the bone arrows on their bowstrings, and slowly pulled them back, carefully scanning their surroundings, not missing a single sound.
In the quiet, a noise suddenly came from the woods.
A hunter, out hunting in the mountains, raised his bow and shot. Without even seeing the target, the bone arrow followed the sound. In an instant, the bone arrow pierced a spotted dove and fell to the ground, startling a flock of birds that flapped their wings and took to the air.
The squad leader coldly surveyed his surroundings; nothing had happened.
He originally thought Chen Ji would take advantage of this opportunity to attack, but Chen Ji did not appear.
"Not good," the squad leader suddenly said, "He noticed that we outnumbered him and deliberately broke tree branches to lure us away from here, so he can ambush us to the south. Let's go."
In the dim forest, the four of them set off at the same time, quickly heading south.
However, as they were moving quickly, the hunter at the back of the group passed a large tree and suddenly saw a hand "grow" out of the tree, holding a feathered arrow and stabbing it at the fire in his eye.
The arrow came flying straight at me; there was no way to dodge it.
While hunting in the mountains, one can only watch helplessly as arrows pierce the eye sockets and turn into white ash.
The sergeant suddenly turned around. None of the three of them had noticed the person hiding next to the tree when they passed by. It turned out that Jiang Jue and Jiang Chi had fallen into an ambush.
The question posed by someone earlier flashed through his mind: Fengzi Camp?
The squad leader reacted quickly, raising his hand to fire a whistling arrow, while the other two fired a barrage of bone arrows at Chen Ji. One after another, the bone arrows fell into the dark forest, chasing after Chen Ji's figure.
There are many techniques for rapid archery. Some people like to carry a quiver on their back with the arrows held upright behind their ears. When shooting, the archer raises their elbow high, and each time they release the bowstring, they can easily draw the next arrow from the quiver.
Some people like to hold a bow in one hand and three to five arrows in the other, nocking the next arrow immediately after each draw.
The Five Witches are different; they hold nine arrows in the hand that holds the bow, with their thumb and forefinger forming a tiger's mouth to grip the bow, and their middle, ring, and little fingers holding a bundle of arrows on the bow, with the arrow tails pointing down and the arrowheads pointing up.
After each draw, a slight tremor of the bow hand is all it takes for the next arrow to be precisely nocked on the rebounding bowstring, without the slightest error. This rapid-fire technique is called Nine Breaths Eighteen Arrows, a feat that even the most skilled archers in the three great imperial camps of the Ning Dynasty might not be able to achieve.
Even at such speed, they still missed their targets one after another, forcing Chen Ji to hide behind a large tree.
The three hunters exchanged glances and slowly moved to flank Chen Ji from both sides of the large tree. Their feet sank to the ground with barely a sound. They slowly drew back their bows, ready to release them as soon as they saw Chen Ji.
The next moment, the three of them went around the big tree, only to find that the traces behind the tree had disappeared.
The squad leader suddenly raised his bow and aimed at the treetop, but the treetop was empty.
The three were startled and simultaneously turned to search for any trace of Chen. They retreated step by step, moving closer to each other, but still found no trace of Chen.
"Where did you go?"
"They escaped using a blind spot?"
"Don't let your guard down, he's very patient."
The three held their breath, the bowstrings taut and motionless. But they waited for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, and still no trace of Chen appeared.
A hunter wandering the mountains whispered, "Are they really gone?"
Before he could finish speaking, a whistling arrow rang out from the east, and the squad leader's eyes lit up: "Oh no, he went to the east."
The squad leader realized that Chen Ji had come to ambush them only to make them fire whistling arrows to lure others over.
Upon hearing of the whistling arrow, the colleagues in the east would rush to the spot where it was fired, and would not pay attention to anyone lying in ambush on the road.
The sergeant sprinted towards the sound of the whistling arrow: "Be careful, this man is an expert in the art of battlefield maneuvering..."
His colleague's earlier words flashed through his mind: "Fengzi Battalion?"
In just these few encounters, the techniques of concealment and breath-holding, and the tactics of maneuvering on the battlefield, made him feel as if he had truly encountered the Fengzi Battalion.
When the squad leader led his men to the place where the whistling arrow had sounded, there was already a handful of white ash on the ground. The other two left a mark on the tree and chased after the traces of the past.
The squad leader set off in pursuit, while two hunters on the trail warned him from behind, "Be careful, you might get ambushed again."
But the squad leader ignored it all, seemingly already consumed by rage.
Moon on the branches.
As the branches swayed, the dappled moonlight on the ground resembled ocean waves.
The squad leader chased after them and saw a patch of white ash halfway there, indicating that another colleague had died at Chen Ji's hands.
As he chased after it, he suddenly saw a handful of white ash about ten feet ahead.
The sergeant's eyes blazed with wildfire: there were only three colleagues left to the east, and now all three had died in battle. Where were they now?
Before I could think any further, I could already hear the wind rushing overhead.
The squad leader saw a dark figure crouching on a tree branch in the moonlight on the ground, almost overlapping with his own shadow.
"Go find the centurion!"
With a roar, the squad leader pushed off with both legs and flew backward. Three feathered arrows fell from the sky, chasing his figure and nailing him in the path of his backward flight.
If he had been even half a breath slower, the arrow would have pierced his skull.
As his body flew backward in mid-air, the squad leader looked up and saw that Chen Ji was covered with dense branches, and his face was smeared with mud and stuck with tree bark.
The opponent held a bow in one hand, and a bundle of arrows in the other. With each shot, a flick of the wrist would nock a new arrow onto the bowstring.
The movements of those nine breaths and eighteen arrows were so familiar, even more skillful than those of the Five Witches' soldiers.
"you……"
In that instant, the world seemed to slow down.
Or perhaps the speed at which Chen Ji drew his bow was so fast that it made the world seem to slow down.
With a flick of his wrist, Chen Ji nocked the bow and shot the arrow with unparalleled fluidity.
With a soft thud, the fourth arrow pierced the squad leader's chest.
Chen Ji flicked his wrist again, nocked the bow, and shot the fifth arrow.
The sergeant held the bone bow in mid-air in front of the bone mask. With a clang, he felt a tremendous tremor in his hand as he blocked the arrow that was aimed at his eye socket.
Five arrows were fired in total, all within two breaths, and the squad leader had just landed on his back.
He moved the bone bow away from his eyes, only to find that Chen Ji had pounced on him the moment his eyes were covered by the bone bow.
Just for this one moment.
The two wildfires beneath the sergeant's bone mask suddenly calmed down, as if they had been prepared for something. He discarded the bone bow in his hand, keeping only a bone arrow in his right hand.
Just as Chen Ji descended from the sky and pierced his eye socket with a feathered arrow, the squad leader swung his right hand with all his might, gripping the bone arrow and thrusting it towards Chen Ji's left rib.
The moment the arrow pierced his eye socket, it reached Chen Ji's left rib. Chen Ji used his left hand to block the arrow, but the squad leader used his last bit of strength to spin the arrow, slicing Chen Ji's wrist.
The world is quiet.
The squad leader and the bone arrow turned into white ash and scattered, leaving only the wound on Chen Ji's wrist from which blood flowed, dripping onto the decaying leaves.
Chen Ji got up and slowly regulated his breathing.
He glanced down at the injury on his wrist, retreated step by step into the moonlight, and then turned and ran wildly towards Incense Burner Peak.
Half an hour later.
Dozens of Wuchang soldiers blocked the area, and a centurion carrying a long sword strode over.
By the moonlight, he surveyed the battlefield: "Tell me, what happened?"
Three hunters, having received orders, carefully examined the battlefield: bent and broken grass stems, the locations of white ash, and fragments of tree branches and bark—leaving nothing out.
One of them pointed to the route the squad leader had taken: "This man lured us into firing whistling arrows while he ambushed reinforcements ahead... He hid in a tree and fired five arrows in quick succession; judging by the distance, he must have finished within two breaths..."
After the story of the hunting expedition was finished, the centurion's eyes suddenly lit up with a wildfire, and he whispered, "Fengzi Battalion."
Immediately afterwards, the centurion denied it: "No, the Fengzi Battalion doesn't have such archery skills either."
He looked at the feathered arrows on the ground, then at the white ash and blood.
Beside the centurion stood two soldiers, the Five Witches of Soul Reaping and Forbidden Army, one holding a head in one hand and raising a white bone banner in the other.
One of the Soul Collectors grabbed the head by the hair, raising it towards the direction Chen Ji had left. The head greedily murmured, "The taste of blood and living souls."
The centurion looked up in the direction Chen Ji had left: "The prey is troublesome enough. Judge Jiang gave his life to bring us the taste of blood and life. He can't escape now."
(End of this chapter)