Chapter Four: The Trap

The wine cup in Bu Jinxian’s hand had not yet been set down. Staring at the figure beneath the moon, turning over her words in his mind, he felt a tangle of emotions. He had long sensed Bai Xing’s intentions toward him, yet had never reached a decision. Bai Yue’s words tonight carried a veiled implication, but he believed she did not speak from the heart. Originally, he had not been concerned about Bai Yue’s designs, but now, doubt crept in. That she spoke in such riddles before departure clearly meant she hoped he would devote himself more earnestly to the task. Quickly, he suppressed these suspicions, focusing instead on the mission ahead.

At the second quarter past midnight, the deputy leader of the Evening Glow Sect delivered his night garb: a suit lined with alloy-threaded soft armor, two daggers, a sturdy bow with ten arrows, and two grappling hooks for climbing and rappelling.

"Young master, be extremely careful. Your safety comes first."

The man’s usually expressionless face, for once, betrayed a hint of concern. The deputy leader, already past fifty, had always looked upon Bu Jinxian with disfavor—partly due to his rejection of those who pursued the cultivation of soul and will, and partly because he believed Bu Jinxian to be an unreliable rogue, seeking fortune and favor from Bai Xing.

But at this moment, for the first time, the deputy’s opinion began to change.

“Thank you for your concern, deputy leader. I will do my utmost.”

Bu Jinxian climbed into the plain carriage prepared at the manor’s back gate, sitting in the compartment, still pondering his plan. His soul technique, viewed through the Divine Eye, had already revealed some of its enhancements. With each level, his core technique doubled his base stamina; by the eighth level, he possessed nine hundred stamina and one hundred inner force. The advantage lay in the soul technique’s recovery abilities, naturally restoring twice the base rate, allowing him to regain ninety-five points of stamina almost instantly.

Some abilities remained unclear. Through introspection, he noticed colored lights glowing along his meridians. During sparring with Bai Xing, he had intentionally operated a lower-level technique and found that, upon receiving blows, these colored lights would flare; at the moment of impact, his stamina would double, reaching an astonishing twenty-seven hundred. The same doubling occurred when attacking. When stamina was depleted, the colored glow continued to flicker, raising his natural recovery rate by fifty.

Bu Jinxian guessed these abilities might be inherent to the soul technique, or perhaps the unique power of the primordial soul tribe mentioned by Lady Li.

Over these days, he had come to understand most of his own combat strengths: he could withstand injury, fight for prolonged periods, and inflict significant harm on his foes. All of this was thanks to his physical constitution and the attributes of his core technique.

Yet his weaknesses were equally obvious. The martial arts he learned from North Spirit Mountain, he judged, were chiefly valuable for intelligence; he had grasped the essence but not the form. The essence gave similar purpose to the moves, but lacking the original forms, they lost much of their power—sufficient for dealing with the weak, but against a skilled opponent, it was courting disaster.

If he could not strike the enemy, the effectiveness of his moves was moot. That day in Leper Town, it was only because Ling Shaobao, incited by Bai Yue, rashly used the Brave Never Returns technique that Bu Jinxian had seized the chance to kill in one blow. Otherwise, even if he could have beaten Ling Shaobao, it would have been a hard-fought, time-consuming struggle, and had Ling fled, Bu Jinxian could only have sighed in frustration.

Bai Yue and Bai Xing had taught him all the Evening Glow Sect’s martial forms, yet he could only grasp their spirit, never the shape, because although the soul technique enabled him to cultivate all manner of inner strength, it could never mimic the circulation patterns of those forms to develop the same control. Previously, he thought his failure lay in ignorance of the martial incantations, but lately he realized the problem stemmed from the soul technique itself.

The soul technique’s inner energy surged too swiftly, and whatever force it generated was impossible to manipulate with subtlety. It was as if a man walking could stop at will, with little deviation from his intent; but astride a thousand-mile steed, stopping suddenly would never be as precise. This was the root reason he could not master the forms: by the time he thought to alter his flow, the energy had already rushed through his meridians, making it impossible to implement the nuanced changes required.

He understood now that he might never master any martial form in this life. He could only hope to learn lightness skills—lest he become a stationary target should he face a true expert. Though he was now fleet of foot, this was due entirely to the abundant energy in his meridians; his steps struck the ground with great force, but as for leaping lightly or other such feats, he possessed none.

Lady Li had said the soul technique had no forms, and so it was. With the wisdom and experience of Old North Spirit, even he had failed to master its forms—what hope had Bu Jinxian? He could only accept this fate.

Sitting in the carriage, Bu Jinxian turned over every possible tactic, but could devise no reliable plan. He could only await arrival at the destination and hope for the chance to strike with surprise, ending matters in a single blow.

The carriage rumbled along the narrow path between golden grass fields as Bu Jinxian pulled aside the curtain. Under the moonlight, the golden grass was veiled in a hazy gold—not the dazzling glare of day, but something that soothed the heart.

The carriage continued to the foot of the mountain outside Golden Light City, five miles beyond its gates, where it stopped by the official road. The Evening Glow disciple driver cautioned him to be careful, then quickly turned the carriage and departed.

According to intelligence, the new commander would pass through in two quarters of an hour. If he died within Golden Light City, the prefect would be held responsible, thus the ambush was set beyond the city bounds.

Bu Jinxian surveyed his surroundings and realized the only place to hide was amid the dense golden grass. The foot of the mountain was too far from the road; he lacked the lightness skills to leap down onto the road itself. So he climbed a tree on the hillside to watch the road beneath the moon from afar.

Evening Glow’s intelligence proved reliable—the commander’s convoy appeared at the edge of Bu Jinxian’s vision right on schedule, drawing ever closer.

There were three carriages; the central one bore the character Zhao, which, according to the reports, was the commander’s. The escorting soldiers numbered about a hundred, everything matching the intelligence gathered.

Bu Jinxian swiftly descended the hill, slipped into the grass beside the road, gripped his heavy sword, tucked a dagger into his waistband, and held his breath, mind taut, waiting for the carriages to pass. Silently, he ran through his planned attack once more.

‘Meteor Chasing the Moon: heavy sword strikes the central carriage. Battle Aura: rapidly follow up behind the sword. In the spin, hurl daggers at front and rear carriages. Seize the sword, mount a horse, fire arrows at pursuing cavalry, abandon the horse upon entering Golden Light City territory, cross the fields, climb the hills…’

The convoy advanced unhurriedly down the official road, the wheels creaking and groaning. It was said the Reformists were destitute—apparently, they could not even afford decent carriages.

At first, Bu Jinxian thought the carriages looked shabby; as they drew closer, he grew suspicious, unable to see the tracks left by the wheels or judge whether the load was unusual.

First the soldiers ahead passed by, then the lead carriage creaked past. As the second carriage’s wheels drew near, Bu Jinxian sprang from the grass like a gust of wind, his heavy sword whistling as it crashed through the carriage. He leapt forward, spinning to add force as he flung both daggers—two shooting stars piercing the wooden walls.

Grabbing the sword’s hilt where it fell, Bu Jinxian saw that the middle carriage held no less than six corpses. The front and rear carriages burst open, each releasing five unarmored martial experts, with two more inside each carriage lying in pools of blood from his daggers.

It was a trap.

The mounted squad leaders hung back to prevent him from seizing a horse. The ten martial experts who had leapt from the carriages now encircled him.

A signal flare soared into the sky and exploded in a shower of sparks.