novel Martial Wild West - Chapter 05

Chapter 05

A campfire built from scraped-together dead branches let out a small, wavering light.

Qian snapped a long, dead branch in half and threw it in the fire. With not a lot to burn, the fire was small, shaky, and not very bright. To have a fire that could burn all night, it was clear that Qian had to go find more wood elsewhere.

But Qian didn’t really care. The light was faint, but for someone who had mastered ki sense like him, it was enough light to see as if it were broad daylight. He’d made the fire so his horse, Cao Cao, wouldn’t get anxious and so he could boil tea.

He sipped the slightly bitter tea from a tiny, metal cup. It wasn’t very tasty, making him smack his lips.

“This tastes like shit.”

Cao cao was laying on the floor, chewing on something. Hearing Qian’s outburst, he looked over at Qian. Sensing Cao Cao’s gaze, Qian looked back at his horse.

“What? Do you want it as well?”

Cao cao looked at Qian like he was pathetic; he then neighed before laying fully down on the floor.

Qian smacked his lips again as he said, “I bet there’s not a horse in the world that loves laying down more than you.”

Cao cao neighed and scratched the ground with his nose like he understood Qian’s jab. This kicked up some dust towards Qian’s direction.

“Shit.”

Qian waved away the dust. He sometimes thought that Cao Cao might be someone that had reincarnated like him because he was far too smart for an animal, but being reminded of his personal secret calmed Qian down.

Reincarnation… Buuhism describes it as the act of a dead being changing forms and being reborn.

It was the hardest phenomenon to believe in that world of martial realms and a thousand-year empire, but it was also something he had to believe. The young man that had lived in an age where planes flew at the speed of sound and people voyaged to the moon had died in an accident and reincarnated into that land. Though, to be exact, he wasn’t reborn on the new continent but in the central plains as the son of a wealthy family.

“Fucking hell.”

Qian suppressed his emotions and sipped on his tea. He then frowned and spat out his tea, glaring at Cao Cao while dumping out his dust-mixed tea.

Thinking it was funny, Cao Cao let out a happy neigh as if he really was a person.

While laying down, Qian swore to himself that he’d sell Cao Cao off one day and get himself a new horse. His eyes drifted away from the fire to somewhere far away.

It was a night without any moon, so everything in the landscape looked like one large, dark lump. Contrasting that, the sparkling stars of the milky way filled the night sky with lights as if trying to claim that they were alive. The light was like treasure shining deep under water, making Qian want to jump into that sea of stars.

But the distance between Qian and the stars was so far that his mind could understand it numerically, but his heart didn’t feel like it was real—even though he knew that even if he spent all of his remaining life flying in a single direction towards the sky, he wouldn’t even get close to one of those lights.

Others might’ve been saddened by that fact, but Qian at least didn’t let himself get hung up on something he couldn’t do anything about. Instead, he let out a deep breath and pulled his thin blanket up to his neck.

It was time to sleep.

* * *

Qian woke up in the morning and stretched his body by swinging his sword around lightly. He then cleaned up the fire, put away his bedding, pulled up the still laying down Cao Cao, and fastened the saddle on him. Cao Cao neighed in complaint, not wanting to be saddled, but he couldn’t stop Qian.

With things more or less ready, Qian took out a small, dry bread from his bag and started nibbling on it while getting on Cao Cao. He was a bit worried if he could get to a village by day’s end. No matter how beautiful the night sky was, it didn’t beat the comfy bed and warm meal of an inn.

He hoped that he’d find a big village if possible. He had to sell off the jade ring he’d gotten from Gweng and find a job for money.

“I swear I’m dead to myself if I play another game of dominoes,” Qian mumbled to himself while slowly riding Cao Cao. Having mastered a fair amount of martial arts, he was confident in his dexterity and eye sight, but for some reason, dominoes always got to him.

You can’t take all your opponent’s money with just good eyes and sneaky hands. What’s important is whether or not everyone except the sucker is in on it—that was the lesson he’d learned after blowing all of his money.

While pondering miscellaneous thoughts, Qian suddenly pulled on the reins. The sudden yank made Cao Cao shake his head in anger.

“Calm down, you rascal.”

With his hearing that’d become sensitive from ki and training, he had heard a faint scream—it came from beyond the hill to the right.

Qian quickly pulled Cao Cao’s reins towards that direction. Cao Cao understood his owner’s intent and started dashing furiously towards the hill, leaving behind a thick dust cloud.

At the top of the hill, Qian and Cao Cao could see a stopped wagon, people on the ground, and bandits breaking and robbing the wagon in the distance.

There was only one person that looked unharmed despite not looking like a bandit, but he was on his knees, begging to someone. The bandit towering above the man was standing proud and smiling wide with a sword in his hand.

The man on his knees looked to desperately want to live because he went all the way down on the sandy ground to beg. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, as the bandit’s sword quickly swept through the man’s neck.

The bandit must have liked painting his sword with blood, as he still had a wide smile.

With the final person murdered, the other bandits all raised their weapons high and chanted in joy.

Watching them from atop the hill, Qian had a frown on his face.

* * *

There were very few regions in the new continent that were under the complete influence of the Empire—it was no more than three or four cities at best. As for the rest of land, public safety was taken care of by a sect in that region or warriors were dispatched through branches of the Martial Alliance.

Naturally, there were plenty of bandits and villains that had no disregard for laws. The smart ones exploited peasants amidst normal people while the less than intelligent ones claimed their share in the plains and deserts.

But because they were still people that were raised into the ethics of the thousand-year Empire, most of them hesitated to murder. And with the Martial Alliance prioritzing bounties on murderers, only very few mindlessly slaughtered people.

Even with all that, there were always one or two guys with screws loose no matter where you went, there were murderers everywhere that didn’t care about bounties or ethics—either they were crazy madmen that got off on murder, or they were a demon cultist that learned a demonic martial art. Oftentimes, the two went hand in hand.

The bandit that was smiling suddenly turned his head towards Qian. The bandit’s face was covered in grime, and his two eyes shone like glass beads while staring at Qian.

The guy pointed at Qian with his sword and shouted something, and then the bandits that were rummaging through the corpses quickly got on each of their horses and started charging at Qian together while letting out a bizarre scream.

A chilling smile appeared on Qian’s face. “So they wanna go.”

Qian drew the sword on his waist, and the long blade shone brightly. He then lightly kicked Cao Cao, and his horse purred loudly before rushing down the hill.

Fifteen bandits and Qian charged towards each other.

Like typical bandits, they must not have trained in making formations because they ran at him together in a horizontal line. Thanks to that, Qian only had two directly in front of him.

When Qian and the two bandits crossed each other, two heads flew into the air.

Qian immediately grabbed the reins and turned Cao Cao around. Despite normally acting like a mule, the horse circled around smoothly like a premium car.

“What the fuck? That motherfucker killed SangYeon and Gumoon!”

“Fuck! Kill him! Chop his head off!”

The bandits that rumbled past Qian turned their horses around while shouting in anger. Because each of them had different turning speeds, they ended up coincidentally charging at Qian one at a time.

And one by one, their heads went flying from Qian’s sword.

After the fifth guy’s head was cut off, one guy held his sword with his mouth and jumped off his saddle at Qian, but Qian just grabbed him with his left hand and threw him aside and cut him. Slashed from the chest to his thigh, the guy rolled to the ground while spurting blood.

Seeing their comrades killed so easily, the rest of the bandits stopped their horses in shock.

“We fucked up! He’s a martial expert!”

“Shit! Why is someone like that here?!”

One guy turned his head and shouted at the bandit standing alone near the wagon, “Boss! Help us, boss!”

But if that guy really wanted to live, he shouldn’t have turned his eyes away from Qian because Qian closed the distance in an instant and cut him diagonally.

“Fuck! Run!”

The bandits all ran in fear in the direction of their boss. They must have had some confidence in their boss’s skills, seeing how they didn’t try and flee just anywhere they could.

Qian didn’t bother chasing them, stopping Cao Cao for a moment to watch the bandits run towards their boss.

The boss of the bandits glared at Qian with killing intent, and he noticed that Qian didn’t have a single drop of blood on him—other than the blood dripping down the side of his blade.

The boss looked away from the sword and locked eyes with Qian. Unlike his nonchalant face, Qian’s eyes were cold and harsh like steel.

The boss smiled, “Are you with the Martial Alliance?”

“Nope,” Qian answered, stopping Cao Cao.

The boss put on a thicker smile at Qian’s reply, “I see. Then you must be a warrior of justice in passing. Well, why don’t you continue passing, then?”

Qian put on a bitter smile at the man’s mocking tone, “Are you nuts? You want me to just go when you swung your swords at me first?”

“That was unavoidable. As you can see, that’s our job.”

“Killing people and picking up money is your job. I didn’t know you were such a grand son of a bitch.”

The boss retorted with open arms, “What about it? It’s been a hundred years already since the new continent was pioneered, and who ended up taking control during that time? It’s the people with power. The Martial Alliance backed by the Empire, ancient noble clans of old kings, scheming merchant unions, etc etc etc. And in the last hundred years, they’ve done nothing but profit by taking advantage of people setting roots on the new continent.”

The boss licked his teeth while smiling. His rotten, yellow teeth were atrocious to look at, “I’m only contributing to that. I can call it a job because that’s what they’d call their actions as well.”

Qian frowned from listening to the bullshit and looked over at the fallen bodies. One of them was a dead young woman leaned against the wagon. She must have been a warrior, as she was holding a sword. Her bosoms were exposed, but it wasn’t clear if it was because they’d rummaged through her clothes or because they’d wanted to play with her.

For some reason, Qian thought that the hazy, dried-out eyes of the body were staring directly at him.

Qian jumped off his horse and walked until he was about six meters away from the boss.

“You asked me if I was with the Martial Alliance,” Qian said while giving his sword a shake and slowly putting it back in its scabbard.

Seeing Qian’s actions made the boss smile ear to ear in excitement.

“That must mean you have a bounty,” Qian said.

“Yeah! That’s right! I do have a bounty on my head! And I bet it’d jump higher once my recent actions are revealed!”

The excited boss started breathing loudly. He grabbed his sword with both hands, bringing the sword to his waist and flattening the blade horizontally; he then widened his legs and crouched his body—it was like he was gathering power for an explosion.

Qian loosened his grip on his sword, thinking about how funny the situation was.

As the Han Empire’s Imperial Forces became the strongest martial organization under the heavens, martial arts had developed towards killing your opponent as fast as possible. Because of that, the martial arts of reality were much different than the martial arts he knew—albeit what he knew was from novels he’d read.

Stuff like movement techniques, thousand-mile hearing technique, sound telepathy, and kinesis—martial arts that could be used in daily life—either had only the most basic principles or didn’t exist at all. Martial arts was entirely focused on killing your opponent as fast and easy as possible.

As a result, this is what it looked like when two martial arts experts beyond a certain level encountered each other.

The boss’s eyes started changing into a dark red color, his spread-out legs started ballooning like they were going to burst, his crouched body twitched with power that seemed like it was ready to explode at any moment, and in his ki-imbued sword hand, a dark red light shone.

In contrast, Qian looked calm—he just had his right foot a step forward and his left foot perpendicular to his right foot. Qian’s left hand held his scabbard while his right hand lightly held the handle of the sword. Because his rice hat was slightly tilted down, the bandits could only see his scruffy, bearded chin.

Despite there being over a dozen men and horses present, it was quiet. There wasn’t any wind, wild animals, or insects. Even the fauna was remaining silent.

One of the bandits that had been nervously watching the two sniffled loudly.

And at that precise moment, two flashes of light passed each other.

“…You’re fast,” The boss quietly mumbled.

The boss and Qian were then standing with their backs facing each other.

Despite having heard the boss’s mumbling, Qian didn’t reply, and except for the slight cut on his hat, he was unscathed.

Meanwhile, the boss of the bandits fell, his body coming apart in two at the waist.

Qian watched the bandits panic through the slit that’d opened up on his hat.

The bandits tried to turn their horses and escape, but Qian was faster than them, cutting them open and spilling their guts.

Having taken care of all the bandits, Qian shook his sword and looked at the field of corpses he had cultivated. He then whistled, and Cao Cao clopped over. It was a harsh contract to the warhorse-like performance he’d exhibited just moments ago.

Seeing Cao Cao’s muted face made Qian smirk. But right as he was about to get up on the saddle, he heard a dying voice from the wagon.

____