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Chapter 203: Bloody Battle
After entering the jungle, Great Swordmaster Galinan quickly discovered the footprints
The left side of his face throbbed with violent pain once more, and the wounds on his left shoulder and right leg stung with a searing heat. Great Swordmaster Galinan knew that the recent burst of rapid movement had disturbed the
He let out a few more venomous curses before rummaging through his belt and producing a small, round silver box. Fortunately, the healing salve was still inside. He hadn't expected to be wounded when he set out, but he'd packed this box of healing salve just in case. Now it was finally proving its worth.
He popped open the round silver lid to reveal a green, translucent, jelly-like salve within. Great Swordmaster Galinan smeared the salve over his wounds, then tore a few strips from his inner shirt and haphazardly bandaged them. Only when a cool, soothing sensation spread across the injuries did he finally let out a breath of relief. Good. Just you wait, Norton brat — when I catch you, I'll make you beg for death with tears streaming down your face...
He followed the footprints on the ground for another hundred meters or so before the sound of a babbling stream reached his ears. Not good. A sense of unease settled over Great Swordmaster Galinan. He surged forward with long strides. Sure enough, after pushing through a thick cluster of bushes, another wide stream bank appeared before him — and the footprints on the ground vanished at its edge.
The jungle here bordered the Lancang River and was where the streams from nearby hills flowed into it, so the abundance of such stream banks was hardly surprising. But for Great Swordmaster Galinan, losing track of Lorist was the most vexing problem of all. He had no way of knowing whether Lorist had followed the stream bank upstream or downstream to conceal his trail, but one thing was certain — that Norton brat couldn't be far away. He might well be hiding behind one of the large boulders flanking the stream bank.
"Don't let me catch you, or I'll skin you alive, you little brat!" Great Swordmaster Galinan roared in fury. The moment he finished his tirade, he pricked up his ears and listened intently, hoping that Lorist — whom he had been pressing relentlessly — would be spooked by his furious bellowing and cursing into breaking cover and fleeing into the open, thereby revealing his trail.
Unfortunately, Great Swordmaster Galinan's roar echoed through the jungle, startling a few nearby birds into flight, but nothing else stirred.
"I refuse to believe it. He's only a few minutes ahead of me — where could that brat possibly have hidden..." Great Swordmaster Galinan muttered to himself. At this point, his only option was to rely on a Great Swordmaster's perceptive senses to search the stream bank and track down that hiding Norton boy.
For Great Swordmaster Galinan, assassination attempts were nothing unusual. During the Krisen Empire's civil war, the most frequent plots to dispatch assassins against rival leaders took place between the First Prince and the
Those years were truly eventful. The First Prince and the Second Prince endured who knew how many assassination attempts. From what Great Swordmaster Galinan knew, the Second Prince had on several occasions promised the mercenary assassins sent to kill the First Prince that if they succeeded, these lowborn sellswords would be elevated to genuine territorial nobles. Unfortunately, every single one of those who departed never returned — because the Second Prince had both Galinan and Ruinsi, two Great Swordmasters, at his side at all times, and the Great Swordmaster guarding the First Prince was no slouch either.
Bribing servants and attendants, poisoning, and long-range ambushes were the most common and unremarkable forms of assassination. What left the deepest impression on Great Swordmaster Galinan was when the First Prince somehow procured an extraordinarily beautiful dancing girl and delivered her to the Second Prince's presence through a down-on-his-luck noble. The dancer's limber, boneless body and exquisite performance thrilled the Second Prince to no end, and before the banquet had even concluded, he carried her straight to his bedchamber.
This dancing girl never could have imagined that even while the Second Prince lay with her, Great Swordmaster Galinan remained hidden within the bedchamber — meaning the two of them were essentially putting on a live performance before the Great Swordmaster's eyes. After the Second Prince had exhausted himself twice and collapsed upon the dancer, she finally judged the moment had come. From within her hair she drew a small hairpin carved from an animal fang — but the bluish, glinting pin on its head betrayed the fact that it had been coated in deadly poison...
Just as that bluish, gleaming needle was about to pierce the Second Prince's neck, Great Swordmaster Galinan struck, restraining the dancing girl. Dragged off the bed, the Second Prince was devoid of his earlier tenderness. The dancer's fate was truly wretched: she was tormented by hundreds of wolfish guards for three days and three nights. Despite being force-fed healing potions nonstop, she still perished. Upon receiving the news, the Second Prince coldly ordered that her body be minced into paste and fed to wild dogs.
The pit had been filled — nobody wanted to leap in and die, and the shortage of manpower eventually forced the attempts to cease.
However, the greatest casualty in the assassination war between the First Prince and the Second Prince was the innocent Third Prince. The First and Second Princes each only faced assassins from the other, but the Third Prince was targeted by assassins dispatched by both. The main reason was that neither the First nor the Second Prince was willing to let the Third Prince reap any benefit unscathed. And so the poor Third Prince, minding his own business, was struck by a poisoned arrow amid the wave of successive assassination attempts. Though medical treatment came in time to save his life, he was nonetheless confined to his sickbed for a long period.
This time, the Second Prince took up his old trade once more. He even dispatched the sole Great Swordmaster remaining at his side to assassinate Lorist — a testament to how deeply he hated Lorist to the bone. Given the Second Prince's nature, he considered Lorist to be the root cause of his army's total annihilation, his expulsion from the Northland, and the humiliation that had reduced him to his current wretched state. Until Lorist was dead, the Second Prince would never rest easy.
In the Second Prince's mind, there was no way Galinan the Great Swordmaster could fail. The only Sword Saint in the former Krisen Empire had perished over thirty years ago in the Empire's last campaign against the Forde Commercial Alliance. Now, whether in kingdoms or duchies, Great Swordmasters held the highest military positions. And among all Great Swordmasters, Galinan was the closest to the realm of Sword Saint — a half-step from the pinnacle. If he could comprehend that final critical insight and break through his current bottleneck, ascending to Sword Saint within another decade or so was not at all impossible.
The Norton Family had no Great Swordmasters, only a few Gold Knights to their name. So Galinan's taking Lorist's head was practically a foregone conclusion. The Second Prince, though mad, still had his own calculations. Taking Lorist's head served two purposes: first, to vent his fury; second, to send a warning to the other lords. Even without his army, he still had a Great Swordmaster at his side. Those rebellious bastard lords would have to think long and hard about whether defying His Majesty the King's orders might cost them their own heads.
As for the Norton Family's retaliation — that was a joke. If they marched an army, the Second Prince only needed to hold the royal capital of Windbury City and wait for his father-in-law Grand Duke Fisaburun's reinforcements. If they sent assassins instead, that was suicide. With Galinan the Great Swordmaster at his side, who could lay a finger on him?
Even if the Norton Family's military strength proved too great for the Second Prince to hold the capital, Galinan could protect him and escape to Grand Duke Fisaburun's territory. And if the Norton Family forces gave chase, that would be even better — the Second Prince could sit back and watch that old bastard of a father-in-law fight the Norton Family to the death. A mutual catastrophe would be ideal; once both sides were spent, he could sweep in and clean up the mess.
It wasn't only the Second Prince who thought this way — Galinan the Great Swordmaster held the same view. It was just a trip to Northland. Taking that Norton boy's head would be child's play. The round trip would take barely a month. He might as well treat it as an outing to clear his mind.
Though the Second Prince was merely his sword technique apprentice, Galinan had long since regarded him as his own son. Obsessed with the way of the sword, he had no home and no family. Besides Ruyinsi, the junior disciple left by their master, the Second Prince — who had begun studying the blade under Galinan at the age of eight — was the closest person to him. The Second Prince had all manner of flaws and bad habits, yet he was deeply filial toward Galinan. After over forty years together, their bond was that of father and son.
But what Galinan had not anticipated was that the Norton boy would prove so troublesome. Not only had he failed to complete the job, but that boy's strange power had left him with three wounds. Though the boy had not gotten away unscathed either, fleeing into the jungle with injuries of his own. Still, if Galinan could not find him and bring back his head, this incident would become an indelible lifelong humiliation — an object of ridicule.
From the far edge of the jungle came the sounds of men shouting and horses neighing — the Norton Family's reinforcements had arrived, and they were about to enter the jungle to search as well. Galinan was unconcerned. On open ground, he might have needed to avoid a few thousand soldiers, but in a jungle, the Norton Family forces posed no threat whatsoever. He would simply kill however many showed up.
But where exactly had that Norton boy hidden? Perhaps he was searching in the wrong direction. Should he try looking further upstream?
In truth, Lorist was only twenty or thirty meters away from Galinan in a straight line. He had not hidden behind the boulders beside the stream bank or at the jungle's edge. Once he reached the stream bank, he had spotted a hanging vine and scrambled up it in just a few movements, then made his way along the tree branches above, putting as much distance between himself and the stream as possible. When he finally collapsed onto a branch, utterly spent, he at last felt a sliver of safety.
Sure enough, the old Great Swordmaster called Galinan began searching the boulders flanking the stream bank and the surrounding jungle, keeping his attention fixed on the ground, hoping to find footprints or other traces left behind. He never once thought to look up.
Lorist let out a quiet breath of relief. Once he had recovered a bit more strength, he began tending to his wounds. During his flight, he had pressed a few acupoints to temporarily stanch the bleeding, but climbing the tree had caused the wounds to seep again. In the jungle, bleeding was a grave taboo — those magical beasts with their keen sense of smell could easily track a scent of blood. That was far harder to evade than slipping past the old Great Swordmaster's eyes.
Compared to Great Swordmaster Galinan, Lorist carried far more healing supplies on him. There was a hidden pocket inside his outer robe, containing three or four different kinds of medicinal powders, ointments, and elixirs. But the most troublesome part was removing the chainmail shirt he wore beneath. In that last close-quarters exchange with the old Great Swordmaster, Lorist had taken over a dozen sword strikes during the old man's counterattack. The steel-wire chainmail over his chest had been shredded by sword qi, and in several places the wires had been driven into his flesh.
Blood stained everything crimson. Since his clothes were already soaked through, Lorist simply stripped naked, pressed a few more acupoints to stop the bleeding, applied medicinal powder first, then found a curved needle. He threaded it with the long strand of catgut from a small silver case, gently severed a thin twig, clamped it between his teeth, and trembling, fighting through the searing pain, used the curved needle to stitch up the long, gashed wounds on his body…
After cleaning the wounds, applying medicine, cutting open an undershirt to bandage everything, Lorist was drenched in a cold sweat and his head began to spin. He fished out a flat little silver flask from inside his outer robe — it contained a second-tier healing elixir — and dripped two drops into his mouth. He closed his eyes and rested for a long while before his senses returned to him. He could feel some strength flowing back into his body.
Lorist pulled his outer robe straight back on and used a strip torn from an undershirt to tie it firmly around his body. Only then did he hear the sounds of combat coming from the stream bank. When he stood on the branch and looked toward the bank, his jaw dropped in shock — it had become a bloody battlefield. Hundreds of corpses from the Norton Family's soldiers and warhorses lay strewn across the stream bank, while the enemy numbered only one: that ghostlike, elusive old Great Swordmaster…
But Great Swordmaster Galinan was in a wretched state himself by now — hair wild and disheveled, several new wounds across his body, and a feathered arrow jutting from his back. No matter how many he cut down, facing the Norton Family soldiers who surged forward in wave after wave, utterly unafraid of death, even Galinan had to summon his full concentration just to keep fighting.
At first, Galinan had been dealing with a group of longbow cavalry. Dozens, even nearly a hundred, incoming arrows posed no real threat to him, and he had charged straight into their midst, slaughtering freely. But the killing only seemed to bring more, and one green-shafted arrow in particular cost him dearly. He had assumed it was like all the rest and deflected it casually — only for the Combat Force hidden within that green arrow to detonate unexpectedly, blasting his long sword aside. Dozens of arrows streaked toward him in a deadly volley, forcing him to dodge, and he took an arrow to the back.
Furious at being ambushed, Galinan burned with rage, dead set on finding the scheming wretch who had shot him. Only then did he discover that the one who had fired the green arrow was a Golden-tier archer. Every draw of that archer's bow forced Galinan to treat the threat with the utmost seriousness. He barely managed to find an opening and grievously wounded the Golden archer, and was about to finish him off when a Golden-tier knight charged in from the side, intercepting his killing blow and allowing others to carry the archer away to safety.
Now Galinan finally understood why the Second Prince's army of a hundred thousand had been swept away entirely by the Norton Family's armed forces. These elite, battle-hardened soldiers before him were the most formidable he had ever encountered. Even facing a Great Swordmaster, they charged forward without a moment's hesitation, fighting to the bitter end. Take this Golden-tier knight for example — his swordsmanship was built on an incredibly solid foundation, and he had managed to hold his ground against Galinan for nearly a hundred exchanges before finally being cut down by a single stroke.
The dire injuries sustained by the two Golden Knights did nothing to frighten the Norton Family soldiers. They threw themselves at Galinan the Great Swordmaster with suicidal abandon, each one willing to trade his own life if it meant leaving so much as a scratch on the Great Swordmaster's body. Some even hurled their weapons aside and lunged in bare-handed, anything to pin the enemy down long enough for a comrade to exact revenge.
Galinan could no longer recall whether he had killed two hundred or three hundred men. His Combat Force was nearing exhaustion. Even as a Tier Three Great Swordmaster, his Combat Force was not inexhaustible — it simply lasted longer than a Golden Knight's. Against the Norton Family soldiers, Galinan found his Combat Force draining at an alarming rate. The standard-issue equipment those soldiers wore demanded far more Combat Force to cleave through than ordinary iron armor.
When dozens of steel crossbows entered the fray, Galinan suffered yet another bitter lesson. He had not expected the crossbow bolts to pack even greater force than the arrows loosed by that Golden-tier archer. His carelessness cost him two more wounds — one iron bolt grazed his left ribs, carving a long gash, while another punched through his right calf, leaving a bloody hole...
Badly wounded, Galinan had long since lost the will to keep fighting. If he did not flee now, these Norton Family soldiers might actually pin him down here for good. Seizing what little Combat Force he had left, he burst into the undergrowth at full speed, racing toward where Lorence was hidden.
Once he had healed his wounds and restored his Combat Force, he would come back and settle the score with those Norton Family bastards! Galinan swore inwardly as he fled. Seeing a thicket blocking his path, he vaulted over it and, burning his last reserves of Combat Force, leapt up into a large tree ahead, sprawling himself across a thick branch.
Galinan was quite satisfied — the branch was perfect. The trunk was sturdy and the foliage was dense; no one below would ever spot him. He raised his head to survey the surroundings, only to find a pair of eyes blazing with fury and a sword blade glinting cold in the light staring right back at him: "Bastard — hand over your life!"
…
ps. Hey, everyone following along — do you still have free recommendation tickets and Qidian coins to spare? The 515 Red Envelope ranking countdown is on! I'm making a last push for bonus rewards and recommendation tickets — let's give it everything we've got! (To be continued.)