Of Mountains and Rivers 31
Chapter 31 – Chu Huan Raised An Eyebrow. “Young Man, I Didn’t Rely On Sucking Blood and Taking Drugs To Survive Until Now.”
Chu Huan looked up at the expansive sky again and saw a giant raptor circling with its wings spread, appearing as small and insignificant as a sparrow. He looked around. Once again, the only things he could see were countless rising mountain ranges and steep cliffs.
Under the cliff was a stream as fine as a cotton thread. Within this short amount of time, the leafless forest within the Liyi Clan’s settlement had regained its lush and flourishing appearance, the gracefully slim branches supporting a canopy. Whenever the whistling wind blew, it’d become a large wave of vigorous green.
He seemed to be overlooking from a dark monster. His eyes couldn’t reach the ground and, when he looked up, all he could see was a sweeping sea of clouds around the ash-grey mountain, unable to make out its peak.
His vision was unable to make the most out of his surroundings and the openness suddenly birthed a peculiar sense of dread.
Between this place where the top couldn’t be touched and the bottom couldn’t be seen, the Mountain Keepers’ small buildings and open fields seemed to become a drop of water in the vast sea – an insignificant tiny world.
Back then, when Chu Huan saw Nanshan casually make a toast to everyone, there was a moment he optimistically thought Brother Wooden Club’s so-called ‘battle’ was just two groups engaging in a gang fight, and when the Mountain Door reversed to this side he’d arrive at another Shangri-la… Where there’d only be a few occasional evil dogs in the wilderness.
Until he saw it for his own eyes.
Just one look at this place birthed a different kind of feeling towards Nanshan’s slight smile when he said ‘we’ll return next year’.
Did these Mountain Keepers have to jump into cruel battle mode each time they left their Shangri-la to this place?
How long did they have to stay here? Could it be that each time they opened their eyes and woke up, they’d discover a big, fierce monster blocking their doorway?
He didn’t know how that young man could smile and gulp down that bowl of liquor – didn’t he feel it hard to swallow, like there was a fishbone stuck in his throat?
The ‘mad dogs’ Mutayi appeared larger than before. Chu Huan took a closer look. There, on the ‘mad dogs’’ necks, rode one-metre high… En, little creatures.
Their backs were bent like circles drawn by a compass. No wonder the Gatekeepers used circles to represent them – they were also very ‘flat’ like they’d been rolled by rolling pins. Spreading a pair of legs around the ‘mad dogs’’ necks, these little creatures were at risk of fluttering away with the wind, hence, the legs overlapped around the ‘mad dogs’’ necks like buckles to prevent them from falling.
Looking even closer, the ‘mad dogs’ Mutayi appeared as if they had indecent shawls wrapped around their necks.
He didn’t know how others felt – either way, with Chu Huan’s limited common knowledge, he could hardly imagine those noodle legs supporting their owners when they walked upright.
It was as if the flat people knew when the Mountain Keepers would arrive. From the cluster of mad dogs came penetrating yet coarse whistles, ringing in beats like war drums. The valley maintained the whistles, the echoes like gradually strengthening tides. All the ‘mad dogs’ Mutayi raised their heads to the sky and howled madly, causing the hills and earth to ceaselessly tremble.
Chu Huan knew this wasn’t the time for his mind to wander, but other than pinching himself, he truly didn’t know how else to react to this.
Under the current circumstances, a feeling of ‘I must be fucking dreaming’ sprung up from the bottom of his heart.
A hand suddenly grabbed his arm and Nanshan curtly said, “Come over here. Don’t leave my side.”
His pull was exceptionally strong – Chu Huan almost stumbled.
At this moment, Xiao Fang turned his head and shouted loudly at Nanshan, “Patriarch! How could they have surrounded us? Where are the Gatekeeper brothers at the mountain’s foot?”
Nanshan cast him a deep look and meaningfully said, “Have the Elder prepare well.”
Prepare what well? Chu Huan couldn’t understand, but Xiao Fang did.
Xiao Fang was a boorish and outspoken person who typically didn’t know how to make discerning judgements. He’s usually very 2501, but this time, he understood Nanshan’s meaning with just a look and vague sentence. Those pair of large, cow-like eyes suddenly reddened. He widened his eyes as if wanting to draw back his tears, giving him a malevolent expression with a splitting stare.
After Nanshan finished speaking, he raised the Patriarch’s truncheon. At some point, the small venomous snake had climbed to the top of the truncheon. Its triangular head swayed perpendicular to the truncheon’s tip – then, it opened its mouth and swallowed the flame in one mouthful.
Other than bird eggs, its diet consisted of flames – it turned out to be an omnivorous snake.
The cold-coloured flame vanished, exposing the truncheon’s thick and charred wood inner core.
Nanshan: “Fire the arrows.”
Xiao Fang let out a low, beast-like roar. He loudly bellowed, “WHAT ARE ALL OF YOU DOING?! FIRE THE ARROWS, FIRE!”
While he spoke, vary-sized arrows flew like pouring rain down the cliff. Most of them were densely-cluttered small arrows, with an occasional mix of large, javelin-like arrows. They weaved in the air, causing a dark cloud that hid the sky and covered the earth.
When they were halfway down, the arrows suddenly contradicted the laws of physics and paused. Then, as if they’d consumed fuel, their speed abruptly accelerated.
The cutting metals split the air, rushing to their enemy with crushing force.
It was as if… There was an invisible accelerator in the air!
The accelerator was highly effective. Countless ‘mad dogs’ and the flat people around their necks were either mercilessly penetrated or sent flying by the rain of arrows. Even a few almost-untouchable ‘mad dogs’ that rushed over were speared into Tanghulu2, clearly demonstrating the arrows’ strength.
Even the thinnest arrows – which could be broken with only two fingers – were able to penetrate the mountain wall rocks. They were unstoppable as they attacked the enemy with shocking ease, leaving only their quivering fletchings exposed to an outsider’s eyes.
Chu Huan turned his head abruptly. He could clearly feel the tremble in Nanshan’s hand. Beads of sweat dripped from his temples and his soaked, long hair stuck onto his chiselled jaw.
He asked in alarm, “Is this… The blood-changing’s power?”
Hearing this, the corner of Nanshan’s lips curled up. He wanted to ask ‘do you regret this?’, but Nanshan was currently shouldering the weight of a thousand arrows alone and couldn’t be distracted. Thus, he could only silently ask this question in his heart.
Chu Huan didn’t wait for his answer either. He just dazedly pondered for a moment before sighing in admiration, “How miraculous – your mother was truly powerful to have such a special ability. She could instantly kill someone when necessary! A true man.”
Nanshan: “…”
He glanced at Chu Huan helplessly, feeling his vocabulary was still too small. He truly couldn’t evaluate those words.
Nanshan raised his truncheon once again, evoking another overwhelming wave of arrows. Following the snapping cracks of bowstrings, they eroded the mountain slope like a roaring tsunami. The enemy’s corpses were left on the slope, creating a large film of congealed ripples.
Although this was Chu Huan’s first battle experience with cold weapons, with a detached point of view, he could still understand the well-fortification of the Liyi Clan’s settlement – it was both on high ground and backed against a mountain ridge. The only problem was that the ‘mad dogs’ Mutayi were truly too hard to defeat. Even if they were to become hedgehogs from the number of arrows penetrating through their bodies, as long as they weren’t dead, they’d get up with firm spirits and charge forward brandishing their claws.
Chu Huan didn’t participate in the battle. He stood obediently beside Nanshan, wondering when the dark ‘mad dogs’ would use their ultimate ‘spitting wind arrow’ attack whilst also observing their strange enemies.
Right now, the Mountain Keepers’ arrows were pushing down regardless of the results; the enemy, too, was using the corpses around them as shields to come up. Hence, Chu Huan concluded that the ‘mad dogs’’ wind arrows had a limited firing range.
Nanshan must’ve also known this, which was why he had the clansmen shoot as many arrows as possible during this short period of time to weaken the enemy’s fighting capacity.
Once the opponents come close enough, the Mountain Keepers’ arrows would become useless; when that time comes, they’d definitely have to combat hand-to-hand.
The ‘mad dogs’ alone had limited killing powers. How did these flat, shawl-like people gather them together?
Chu Huan touched the dagger Nanshan gave him tied around his waist and sighed regretfully – if only he had a gun.
The rifles left behind by the seniors would’ve been fine too. Although there were some minor problems with it caused by the long passing of time, it wouldn’t have been a problem for Chu Huan – the biggest problem was the Liyi Clan folks had played broken with the bullets.
They were in the South and near water, so the climate was already humid; in addition, some children secretly took out the bullets while the adults weren’t looking and played games with them, forcing them to travel through water and soil. After decades, the gunpowder must’ve already turned into cumin powder.
At this range, even if Chu Huan was given a local civilian rifle, he’d shamelessly boast he could crush those wind arrows or whatever water arrows.
There was a saying: No sand dunes or sledgehammers can kill an ant; not even blades falling from the sky can stop a suicide squad.
Although the Mountain Keepers fired fiercely and there was an unidentifiable cyclone supporting them, they still couldn’t keep off the countless ‘mad dogs’ that feared no death. Many fell in pieces before crawling back up with a howl. Gradually, the number of ‘mad dogs’ that could crawl back up massively reduced and, soon after, only thirty-fourty percent of their original numbers were left.
Just as Chu Huan expected, it was also at this time the ‘mad dogs’ had come close enough for the Mountain Keepers to enter their wind arrows’ range.
He saw a flat person suddenly take out a strange horn and blow out a ‘wu wu’. The sound reverberated throughout the valley. Together with the following echo, it created a spine-chilling cadence.
Nanshan must’ve expected this and was well-prepared. He held onto Chu Huan and dodged behind a mountain rock. “Everyone on high grounds, come down!”
The clans-people skillfully searched for covers to hide behind. Then, the surrounding air seemed to distort and the light clouds above the mountain slopes were churned into a colossal spiral. Large boulders loosened and grains of sand went flying; the crossbows erected on the rooftops were completely destroyed in what almost seemed to be an instant.
The so-called ‘wind arrows’ collided with stones, armour, and cold weapons. Suddenly, a disorderly series of ‘ping pang’ sounded. Perhaps some of the slower clans-people were scratched. For them, a bloody cut would instantly materialise and an ominous black would drip as blood.
‘The wind carries poison’ – Chu Huan truly couldn’t understand how the poison worked. Wouldn’t it cause respiratory tract infections? But when the wind blew past him occasionally, he could feel the overwhelming killing power in its current.
At this point, the once-advantageous long-range attacks had become useless. Only an idiot would try to use their crossbows again.
Nanshan firmly shouted, “Continue killing! First, kill…”
It was the first time Chu Huan heard the last word, but it didn’t stop him from understanding that Nanshan meant the flat people riding on the mad dogs’ necks.
The ‘mad dogs’ moved extremely fast. With no arrows repressing them, they climbed up in an instant.
Dashan, that hot-headed youth, unexpectedly rushed up to a rooftop regardless of consequences and quickly raised an iron crossbow. He shouted, “KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM ALL! I’LL TAKE REVENGE! REVENGE!”
This habitually silent fellow was naturally gifted with astonishing strength. He alone could lift up a giant crossbow weighing up to a hundred catties3. Thick, javelin-like arrows swept out, directly penetrating the front-most flat person preparing to blow the horn a second time and sending him flying. He also successively hit three or four ‘mad dogs’.
At the same time, another flat person had come close and picked up the horn. Without pause, it continued the previous staccato. Once again, the Mutayi sent out the toxic hurricane and Dashan pretty much became a live target.
The rooftop below the fellow’s feet toppled down. He stumbled and crashed down; immediately, numerous bloody cavities appeared on his body.
Wooden Club and Two Kicks simultaneously threw themselves onto him. Risking their lives against a fatal, invisible weapon, they dragged him behind a large, white boulder.
Chu Huan half-turned his body and leaned against his boulder’s surface. He stopped moving. His fingers slowly but steadily stroked the icy hilt of his dagger, as if he wasn’t in the middle of a bloody siege, but idly sitting around in a typical afternoon.
Chu Huan noticed that every flat person had a horn around their waist. They didn’t need to communicate; instead, they seemed to abide by a particularly established sequence. When one died, the next would instantly follow up.
Since they were unidentifiable creatures, he couldn’t rule out the possibility the flat people communicated through infrasound or ultrasound undetectable with human hearing. However, immediate communication wouldn’t be this fast and efficient, so Chu Huan speculated these flat people definitely had an order to their arrangement.
Spring suddenly appeared and killed the second hornblower with a flying dagger before disappearing again in a flash. She was a good assassin, but though she killed fast, the enemy replaced their fallen comrade faster.
The third horn stretched continuously, almost without pause.
The closer they were, the more lethal the cluster’s wind arrows. Nanshan suddenly moved Chu Huan to the side – where he just stood was a watermelon-sized hole caused by a wind arrow.
Chu Huan slightly raised his eyebrows, feeling a long-unfelt rush of adrenaline.
Typically, the more urgent a situation, the more aloof his expression would become, but Nanshan didn’t know about this perverted habit of his.
Nanshan saw him raise his hand and take off his glasses before calmly folding the temples and putting them in his pocket. He didn’t know what to say.
He admits that sometimes Chu Huan behaved like a ‘fierce mammoth’, but he didn’t expect his reaction time to actually be as slow as a mammoth.
Nanshan had a special background. Although his bloodline provided him with incomparable power, it also gave him inherent burdens. Even though it was the Elder who, against the masses’ opinion, had him inherit the Patriarch’s truncheon, he was subject to much scepticism during his childhood when he had no father nor other forms of support. Nanshan never mentioned these things to others before, and nobody else knew how the clans-people accepted him nor how stabilised his position within the clan from the day he took over the Patriarch’s truncheon at fourteen until now.
As the Patriarch, he had to be impartial and altruistic. He’d long developed the habit to consider mere worldly possessions as dirt, so he never had any concepts of ‘treasure’.
Hence, at this moment, he couldn’t understand his current anxious state of mind.
Nanshan was accustomed to dealing with these neighbours. Just by listening to the wind, he could determine where the wind arrow would hit. He could easily avoid these shots, but seeing Chu Huan senselessly stand there as if his feet were rooted underground; sensing the wind arrows’ approach, their killing intent almost brushing his hair…
Nanshan’s mind blanked. He pounced over and embraced Chu Huan.
He stretched out his arms to protect Chu Huan the best he could and use his back to bear the wind blades sweeping over. The tips of the wind arrows were already touching him. Nanshan clenched his hands into fists, knowing in his heart that these arrows might pierce his armour – he’d already prepared on using his flesh to protect this person.
But just at this moment, Chu Huan suddenly slipped the dagger out of his hand. The hilt briefly hit one side of the boulder and rebounded, allowing the blade to collide with the invisible wind arrow and force it out of the way. Nanshan felt the armour located behind his heart sweep aside, causing a long but soft chafing noise. Without hesitation, he turned around and grabbed the dagger’s hilt before dragging Chu Huan and ducking behind a small building.
He met Chu Huan’s eyes.
There seemed to be a slightly strange and complicated look in Chu Huan’s eyes. Then, they flashed past, leaving only tenderness. He asked, “What are you doing?”
For some reason, Nanshan felt a little embarrassed. Finding an excuse, he handed back the dagger and stiffly changed the topic, “Your knife was thrown quite accurately, no worse than Sister Spring.”
Chu Huan raised an eyebrow. “Young man, I didn’t rely on sucking blood and taking drugs to survive until now.”
