Chapter 8: The Dark Jail Part 1

"Lo and behold, she had neighbours in this godforsaken place!"

This was the first time that Zhou Fei had used the real Snow-breaking Sabre. She was a little stunned by its infinite, chilling viciousness, and stood there in a daze.

You mean he 's dead…just like that? She thought in disbelief.

In the 48 Zhai, Zhou Fei had basically done nothing everyday apart from practicing her skills. But she had never slaughtered even a chicken, let alone a man. She suddenly realised that there was something on her face, and reached up to wipe it off. It was blood on her hand. Zhou Fei didn't quite feel afraid, nor any sort of guilt – she just had the sudden urge to wash her face right now.

Old Madam Wang said: "Sheng, roll up the trousers of these men, and examine their legs."

Li Sheng felt like two thorns were bitterly piercing his side: the first, because he had nearly allowed a masked man to escape, due to his cowardice; the second, from witnessing Zhou Fei's dazzling display – the Snow-breaking Sabre that Zhou Fei wielded today, and on the Flower Picking Dais, were as different as night and day. It was obvious that Mistress Li had imparted the technique to her.

The Snow-breaking Sabre was the crowning glory of the Li Clan, passed down from generation to generation, and his aunt had imparted it to Zhou Fei, without a single word to him.

These two thorns were lodged uncomfortably in his throat, and he could barely mumble out a distracted 'yes'. He used his dagger to roll up one of the men's pant legs, but nothing about his leg seemed out of the ordinary. He said calmly: "What's wrong with their legs, Madam?"

Old Madam Wang pointed at the other corpse: "Look at that one."

Li Sheng lowered his head and walked towards the corpse in front of Zhou Fei, deliberately not looking at her. Fixing his gaze on that maimed corpse, he thought to himself: I'm not going back. If I don't accomplish anything that would make Aunt proud, I'm not going back.

Distracted with soothing his wounded pride, he half-heartedly rolled up the pant legs of the second corpse.

Zhou Fei said abruptly: "This person's legs are very thick."

Finally focusing on the task at hand, Li Sheng examined the man's legs closely. They were very unusual, with the calves more than twice as thick as an ordinary person's, and gleamed with a stone-like lustre. It was evident that this person's legs were extraordinarily hard. It was fortunate that Zhou Fei's blade had moved quickly, giving him no opportunity to flex his legs. Otherwise given the 'little finger's worth' of internal strength that she possessed, a flying kick from him would surely have meant game over for her.

Deng Zhen and the other disciples finally reached their courtyard.

Old Madam Wang was stroking her cane, her eyes half-closed. She asked them: "Did any escape?"

Deng Zhen had spent many years in the martial arts world, and this wasn't his first rodeo. He replied: "No. There were some who tried to escape, but we managed to seize every single one of them, both man and horse. We've counted all of them, don't worry."

"Good. Clean things up." Old Madam Wang said. "Fei, bring me my hairpin. Let's leave tonight."

Old Madam Wang had been the acting leader of the Xiaoxiang Sect for some time, and the disciples were all used to obeying her commands. They immediately dispersed, and not long after, finished cleaning up the scene. The corpses, bloodstains, abandoned weapons…even all traces of their own party, had been completely eliminated. As long as the villagers kept their mouths shut, even if someone came to investigate, they would not be able to find anything amiss.

Zhou Fei gazed wide-eyed as the disciples went about their business. She had only known that the Xiaoxiang Sect's swordsmanship was vicious and that they were adept at using hidden weapons like the 'Xiaoxiang Dart', but was unaware that they possessed these 'special skills'. A clean-up job like this was tedious and meticulous. Observing quietly in a corner, she tried to learn as much as possible from them. Only when she saw that they were more or less done, did she run to the river to wash her face. Seeing that the robes which the village chief's wife had given her were also splattered with blood, she removed them and started scrubbing them in the river.

Just then, the village chief's wife came over, and quickly snatched the tattered robes from Zhou Fei's hands, saying: "Give them to me, you are not meant to do work like this."

Zhou Fei didn't object, and stepped aside. That large brown dog which had narrowly escaped death crept quietly over, stopping nearly a metre away from her. It looked as if it wanted to get closer to her, yet was also a little afraid of her. Zhou Fei stretched out her hand for the dog to sniff. It cautiously rubbed its nose against her hand, then lumbered over to her side, looking up at her with large, wet eyes. It didn't look fierce at all, and in fact quite meek.

Seeing this, the village chief's wife said: "This is a good dog, perceptive and well-behaved. If you like it, feel free to take it with you."

Zhou Fei said in surprise: "Ah?"

The village chief's wife rolled up her sleeves, and swept aside the loose hairs framing her face with the back of her hand. "It wouldn't have a good life with us. This past year, it has had to eat like a rabbit – at this rate I think its ears are going to start growing longer."

The brown dog seemed to understand that its mistress was about to give it away, and immediately bounded over to her side, rubbing its head against her knee while barking pitifully. The village chief's wife looked down at it in surprise for a second, then smiled ruefully: "Silly beast, I'm letting you live a better life elsewhere, yet you don't want to."

Zhou Fei was silent for a while, then asked: "Does nobody care about these things?"

"By right, the local government officials should do something about it," the village chief's wife said evenly, "But for quite some time now, they have been busy fighting – I'm not sure who's fighting who – and countless people have been killed. They don't even have time to dispose of all the corpses, where would they even find the time to look into these trivial things? And now, with the local government having more or less disintegrated – we can even appoint our own selves officials if we so wish – it's even less likely that anyone would do anything about this."

Zhou Fei furrowed her brow: "Since things are so unsafe here, why don't you move to another place?"

"Move?" The village chief's wife glanced at her, thinking that this ruthless young maiden's eyes were clear and bright, even naïve, and sighed: "Where would we go? At least here we have a few rooms and a few acres of land. If we go to a foreign place with unfamiliar faces, we would have to beg and borrow to get by. We are not people of great abilities and means. Unless we are at the very end of our rope, we don't dare leave. And anyway…aren't things just as bad everywhere else?"

Zhou Fei did not know how to respond

"Shimei," Just then, Deng Zhen walked over, horse in tow, and nodded at Zhou Fei. "We should get going."

The little party left the village under cover of darkness.

Only after leaving the 48 Zhai did the two youths realise that a good night's sleep was a luxury.

The masked man whose skull had been pierced by Zhou Fei had a leg that, if chopped off and smoked, would look exactly like a large leg of ham. It was obvious that he was from the Huo Clan. Old Madam Wang dared not trust the Huo Clan now. But she was still most concerned about finding her son, and was not in the frame of mind to look into this. So the party circled around Yueyang City, and headed straight for the Dongting Region instead.

The missing disciples, together with General Wu's family members, would certainly have attracted some attention regardless of how low-profile they had attempted to be. Old Madam Wang's party might therefore have a chance to trace their whereabouts by asking about them at the roadside inns in the Dongting Region. This last-minute detour meant that they had to spend two nights in the wild. But this was not a problem for the disciples, who were used to roughing it out, and they took turns standing guard at night.

On their second night in the wild, it was Li Sheng's turn to stand guard.

Since witnessing Zhou Fei's Snow-Breaking Sabre that night, Li Sheng had been like one possessed – he had become fixated on the idea of running away. His determination only grew once Old Madam Wang made the decision to circle round Huo Jia Bao, as Li Sheng knew that the main reason for his participation in this mission was to make it easier for them to ask the Huo Clan for assistance. But now that they were no longer going there, there was even less of a need for him to stay.

Thoughts of leaving had filled his mind for the past two days. And now, the time was right.

Li Sheng left a note, placing it in a book that everyone often saw him carry around. He decided to make his move just before dawn, when both humans and horses were at their drowsiest. Taking a deep breath, he turned his head towards the direction of the carriage, thinking: Zhou Fei, we'll see who comes out tops in the end.

Then he turned around and ran off into the distance, without looking back.

Zhou Fei had been assigned to stand guard in the first half of the night. While several of her seniors had volunteered to take her place, she felt embarrassed to be given this concession when she spent the entire day sitting comfortably in Old Madam Wang's carriage, and had rejected all of their kind offers. But they had kept coming to her to chat, keeping her wide awake. Even after she passed her duties on to Li Sheng in the second half of the night, and returned to the carriage, she was unable to fall asleep.

While Li Sheng was thinking of nothing else but running off to the ends of the earth, Zhou Fei suddenly longed to go back home. Perhaps absence truly made the heart grow fonder – when she was at home, she would get irritated by just a few words from her mother, and was not close to her at all. Ever since Zhou Yitang left, she had constantly thought about leaving the mountain and going to Jinling to find her father.

But when she finally left the mountain, only a few days had gone by before Zhou Fei suddenly started missing her mother a little. She kept thinking about the prosperous villages at the foot of the 48 Zhai, as well as what the village chief's wife had told her, and concluded: If such attacks had happened in the 48 Zhai, someone would definitely look into it.

Mistress Li was frequently irritating, unreasonable, and often too quick to whip her. But on this wide earth, the lands that stretched out all around them seemed cold and desolate; only in the region of the Shu Mountains, where the Li Clan planted its flag, were there people bustling on crowded streets, prosperous and happy.

Zhou Fei tossed and turned for a good long while, until she felt that she must have disturbed Old Madam Wang. She quietly exited the carriage, deciding to go for a walk nearby. After making a round of their camping grounds, she spied a person riding off on a horse, a travel sack on his back. Shocked, Zhou Fei immediately set off in hot pursuit.