Chapter 43: Betrayal, Part II

“Do you really think you can run from me?!”

Wu Jian felt iron fill his mouth as he gnashed his teeth together. His breathing had grown heavy as he raced through the trees, leaping over roots, ducking under branches. His hanfu kept getting snagged while he ran, so he had long since ditched it and was now wearing nothing more than his undergarments.

He barely felt the cold night air.

The blood pumping through his vains was like fire.

His chest and legs burned as he ran.

“Come back here! I won’t let you escape, Wu Jian! I’m going to kill you! Do you hear me?!”

Wu Fei’s shouts echoed to him as he ran, the older boy hot on his heels. Wu Jian had managed to keep ahead purely by stint of knowing this forest better than his foe. He and Wu Meiying had used this area as a training ground for the past several years.

One of their training methods was playing a game of combat hide and seek. The goal was for one person to hide and the other to seek. Once the seeker found the person hiding, the hider had to run and use any means at their disposal to throw the seeker off their tracks. Wu Meiying said this kind of training would help them fight in uneven terrain.

It looked like their training really was coming in handy.

But he knew that running away like this wouldn’t grant him victory.

He couldn’t keep this up forever.

The Wu Clan compound was much bigger than most people might have expected. There were hundreds of buildings built upon the several dozen square lí of land, and of course, there was a section dedicated entirely to forest. It was not something the Wu Clan had planned. They had simply expanded their compound so much that it touched borders with the forest.

The forested area had trees so thick you couldn’t see more than a bù in any direction. Many roots stuck out of the ground, hidden underneath bushes and shrubs. A person would trip if they weren’t careful.

Wu Jian had attempted to lose his pursuers in this forest, but that had turned for naught. The shadow called Wu Lan was simply too good at corralling him back into the forest. Whenever he came close to an exit, those knives of hers would peirce the area before him, forcing him to dodge.

She knows she can’t hit me, so she’s at least keeping me from leaving.

Wu Jian had proven apt at dodging her attacks. The woman could not contain her killing intent, so he could always sense her attacks seconds before she launched them. He dodged around trees, allowing her poisoned knives to hit the thick trunks instead of him.

He also had Wu Ming to worry about.

“RRRAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!”

Feeling adrenaline pump through his vains, Wu Jian leapt backward and maneuvered into a series of back handsprings as Wu Ming swung his jian downward. The attack slammed into the ground and rent a gash on the earth. Had Wu Jian been even a second late, that could have been him.

Wu Ming looked like an enraged monster. His face had burn scars covering it, blistering red still, and his eyes were those of a beast, consumed by madness. He made Wu Jian shiver with fear.

I can’t keep this up…

Wu Jian understood what they were doing. He was keeping them at bay by using the terrain to his advantage, but they were preventing him from leaving this small forested area. The guards that normally patrolled the forest also weren’t coming. He could only assume they had been bought off. If this situation kept going on like this, he would eventually run out of energy.

I need to take them out one at a time.

Wu Jian had never killed anyone before, nor had he wished death upon another, so he didn’t understand how someone could have such an intense hatred for him, but he realized that he couldn’t allow sentiment or familial feelings to cloud his judgement here. He needed to strike hard and be merciless if he wanted to survive.

Wu Ming is the weakest link. I’ll take him out first.

Once again racing toward the edge of the trees, Wu Jian acted like he was trying to leave. Wu Lan threw her knives just like he expected. He dodged left, allowing them to strike the tree he had been running toward, swung around the back of the tree, and grabbed the knife as he came out from the other side.

Wu Ming was there just as he expected. They must have been coordinating with each other to keep him from leaving. The older and bigger boy swung the jian in his hand. It was another downward slash. Wu Jian stepped to the side, waited until the sword sank into the soft loam of earth, and thrust the dagger in his hand forward.

“AAAAAHHHH!!!!”

An agonized scream tore from Wu Ming’s throat as the dagger penetrated the soft flesh of his arm. Blood spurted from the wound as he dropped the jian, but Wu Jian didn’t have time to pay attention to that. He leapt forward and delivered a punishing palm thrust to the man’s sternum. A loud “oomph!” as the air was expelled from Wu Ming’s lungs preceded the man striking the ground with a harsh thud.

“Damn it! What are you doing, Wu Ming! Get up!!” Wu Fei screamed.

Thus far, Wu Jian had managed to avoid confronting Wu Fei through his wit and superior evasion tactics. He was the most dangerous of Wu Jian’s opponents by far. There was simply no way he could defeat a man who had reached the Hunger Realm on his own, not without the element of surprise or an insane amount of luck. It took everything he had just to keep his enemy from closing the distance.

“Damn it! Wu Lan! Corner that brat! We’ll take him down together!”

Wu Lan did not say anything, but she suddenly dropped from a tree, landed on the ground silent as a shadow, and leapt at Wu Jian. He barely had time to dodge as she swung her left hand. He felt the wind brush his bare skin. Fortunately, her attack missed. Wu Jian realized only after she attacked that she was carrying a dagger in each hand.

Before he had time to look at her weapons, he sensed movement behind him. Ducking low, Wu Jian was able to avoid the chi-infused fist that would have plowed into the back of his head. He scrambled away from Wu Fei to avoid letting him get anymore attacks in, but that just meant he ended up running into Wu Lan.

The woman known as Wu Lan was not someone he recognized. This did not surprise him since the Wu Clan was quite large. He didn’t know the name of every clan member, which meant it was perfectly possible for this woman to be someone he had never met before. That said, the skill she possessed with throwing weapons and daggers was abnormal. He felt like he should have heard of her if she was this talented.

She must have been the former head elder’s secret weapon…

Wu Jian ducked under one dagger, only to yelp in shock as another one emerged from within the woman’s cloak. He fell back, turned his fall into a roll, and landed on his feet. This didn’t help him. The woman stuck close, swinging her weapons with calculated recklessness.

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He sensed movement behind him.

His body moved before his mind could keep up. He leapt to the side to avoid the strike to his back, but he wasn’t fast enough. Pain lanced at his torso as the remnant energy wafting from Wu Fei’s fist struck him hard. It felt like his insides were burning. He screamed and stumbled away, rolling across the ground.

“Damn it! What the fuck were you thinking, bitch?! Why didn’t you move out of the way!”

The angry scream caused Wu Jian to raise his head. Everything was blurry, but he could just make out the sight of Wu Fei standing over Wu Lan. The woman was lying on her back and twitching. He couldn’t tell what happened. Maybe she hadn’t been able to move out of the way when he dodged and got struck by Wu Fei’s attack. That would explain the yelling.

“Well, no matter. You’ve already outlived your usefulness anyway.” Turning to him, Wu Fei wore a deranged grin as he began his march toward Wu Jian. “You have given me so much trouble, but it’s all over now. I, your father, am going to show you the true meaning of pain. You should have known that trying to go against me was the same as courting death.”

It was a stupid thought, but it ocurred to him that the insult “I, your father” was rather dumb. It was built upon the concept of seniority. A person’s father was considered the central authority figure in a child’s life, so when someone called themselves “your father,” they were basically saying they were better than you. However, that insult only really applied to commoners. In the world of cultivation, strength meant more than seniority.

Ugh… that blow really threw me for a loop. I can hardly think straight.

Wu Jian struggled to stand up, but his body felt sluggish and heavy. He realized this was probably a result of Wu Fei’s chi messing with his insides. As someone who did not have the ability to use chi, he had no defense against something like that.

Every step Wu Fei made felt like the ringing of a bell tolling his death. Wu Jian felt his heart thudding against his ribcage. He was scared. He was absolutely terrified. The blood in his body had grown cold with fear. His body was shaking he was so frightened, but he didn’t want to die a coward. That was why he looked in Wu Fei in the face as the young man stopped in front of him.

“Any last words?” Wu Fei asked.

“I have one,” a voice said from behind him. “Die.”

Wu Fei only had enough time to widen his eyes before a hand clamped over his mouth and another holding a knife slid across his throat. Hot blood gushed from the wound. A muffled scream escaped Wu Fei, but it sounded more like a gurgle. Wu Jian could only stare in horrified fascination as the boy’s eyes dimmed.

Seconds later, the corpse of Wu Fei was pushed to the side, hitting the ground with a dull thud, and Wu Taohua appeared before Wu Jian.

“Are you okay, young master?” she asked, extending a hand.

Wu Jian bit his lip and sucked his tears inside of himself as he reached out and placed his hand in hers.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Wu Jian said as Wu Taohua pulled him up.

“It’s a good thing Wu Meiying came to us when she did,” Wu Taohua said. “I might not have made it in time.”

“Mei did?” Wu Jian asked.

Wu Taohua nodded. “She came in screaming about how Wu Fei was after your life and said we needed to save you. I wouldn’t have believed her if she’d been anyone else, but… well, you know about her mysterious powers better than anyone.”

Wu Jian nodded absently as he looked around the clearing. He first laid eyes on Wu Fei, but he quickly looked away because all that blood made him queasy. After that, he looked at Wu Lan. She was still lying some distance away, not moving. Wu Taohua saw where he was looking and shook her head.

“Poor girl. She was a servant of former elder Wu Wei. According to him, she had been someone he took pity on and adopted, but it’s clear that he had her tongue cut out and trained her to be an assassin from a young age.”

Wu Jian nodded without really listening. As he tried to keep his mind off the two dead bodies, he looked around and noticed something was missing.

“Where is Wu Ming? He was also here.”

“Hmmm. He wasn’t here when I arrived. Guess that means he fled. We’ll send out a search party to locate him, but my priority right now is getting you to the hospital. It looks like you got injured, so we need to make sure you are okay.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Wu Jian didn’t put up a fuss as Wu Taohua dragged him out of the forest. He wanted to put what happened this night far behind him.

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I hope you found this chapter exciting. I wanted to make it clear that while Wu Jian is strong, he is not top dog...yet.

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