At the Door of Justice Page 10

The clash of the Masters

  We stayed on the hillside that night as it made no sense to travel back and fore from the city. There was very little moon that night, it was pitch dark after night fall. We decided to start a small bonfire for warmth and light, as we sat down to discuss the day’s work, a light wind started blowing. After a while the wind picked up strength and before long it was like a storm.

  The Grand Master said, “He is here.”

  I asked, “Who? You mean Black Bear?”

  Grand Master replied, “Not him, he sent his slaved spirit, Green Snake. Do not worry, I am here. ”

  By now the bonfire had been scattered by the strong wind, I could hardly see beyond five feet in the darkness. I could feel the intensity of the storm blowing around us, but beyond the rushing wind, I felt a presence, the presence of acute hatred and extreme anger.

  The intensity of these emotions had overtaken all my other sensations, my anger and hatred was exploding, it was directed at the Miao people. I did not know why suddenly I was filled with hatred for the Miao people. At that moment, I did not need an explanation; I wanted to kill the two Miao person on the hill top, Xiao Miao and the Grand Master.

  I was reaching for my saber when the Grand Master calmly gripped me by the wrist and splashed some water on my face. Suddenly all the anger was gone, my legs gave way and I sat down on the ground. I realized that my emotion was briefly taken over by the dark side; I had been turned into their instrument to kill. If not for the timely intervention of the Grand Master, Black Bear would have succeeded in eliminating the one person who could counter him.

  This was the first time I had experienced the power of the Evil Gu, I realized that I was powerless against it. I could understand now why it had been so feared by the people who had seen it in action. I understand now why the Han Imperial authorities had decided to ban this art altogether; right from the beginning. Even after the Grand Master had taken me out its evil grip I could still feel the lingering sensation of emptiness. It took much conscious effort for me to hold on to my earthly existence, my entire awareness was swinging from acute emotion to total blackness.

  My head was spinning, I sat down on the ground, Xiao Miao was told by the Grand Master to watch me closely. Being a Xiao person, Xiao Miao was less affected by the Gu, and he was more exposed this dark science. It was quite clear that I was the target of this attack; everybody else was not so affected by the dark energy. Black Bear had seen me as the leader and organizer of this resistance group, and I was the priority on his list.

  Soon the spinning environment twisted into a vortex and the space around us became deadly calm but a few feet beyond us the air was still spinning!! I realized that the Grand Master had created a protective cocoon for our group. The Grand Master was dancing around beating his wooden drum and chanting in the Miao language. His dancing and drum beat were executed at a furious pace, he seems to be fighting a battle, except that this battle was not fought with solid weapons, this battle was fought with unseen forces. Forces stronger than any knives or spears I had ever seen.

  The fringe of our protective domain was pulsating like a living membrane; it was the push of the darkness against the shield the Grand Master had created for us. This canopy of darkness was trying to engulf us, our weapons and fighting skills were useless against this evil force; the Grand Master was the only one with the knowledge and skill to fight this battle.

  By now I was back on my feet, I suggested to Xiao Miao that perhaps we could stab the darkness with our sabers and spears. He told me solemnly that such action would only enhance the dark energy, because our weapons were meant for killing, they were full of negative energy. The dark forces feed on such negativity.

  Soon an equilibrant was reached between the dark forces and the Grand Master’s protective aura, darkness outside began to lighten. We began to be able to see the trees and hills beyond the darkness.

  With us safely inside the cocoon, the Grand Master lowered his drum and changed a slow calming rhythm; the storm outside our cocoon began to die down a little. Next the Grand Master started chanting a soothing melody; Xiao Miao who was standing next to me explained that the Grand Master was appealing to the spirit of the forest to help us neutralize the darkness of Green Snake’s presence. At the same time, he was persuading Green Snake to reject the evilness and come over to our side.

  The Grand Master was betting that Green Snake’s spirit being an unwilling accomplice of Black Bear could be persuaded to change sides. Even though his spirit was captured and enslave by Black Bear; now being a vast distance away Green Snake might be able to break free if he had the resolve. In addition, the dark energy that Black Bear had forced onto Green Snake was slowly being neutralized by the goodness, and positive energy that Grand Master had collected today.

  Initially the collected energy was intended for fighting Black Bear, but now that Black Bear had sent his slave spirit to attack us, Grand Master had decided to use this force to neutralize this immediate threat. If he was able to neutralize Green Snake, it would be a big step forward in breaking down Black Bear’s defenses.

  The Grand Master intensified the rhythm of drum beats and stepped forward to the edge of our protective cocoon. Soon we saw the entire spinning vortex shrunk into a single entity, slowly the single entity stopped spinning all together. In the darkness I saw a wift of vapour suspended in the air, this vapour had no form or shape and the night breeze did not scatter it, it just hang there.

  The Grand Master said in the Miao Language and Xiao Miao beside me translated the conversation, “My old friend Green Snake, please come to my side, I will protect you from the darkness.”

  After a long while, a soft voice replied, “My old friend, I had taken the evil path, I am paying for my mistakes, I am tormented every moment of my existence. I am suffering unimaginable pain and anguish. I could not control my action, I am sorry.”

  Grand Master said, “It’s not too late to turn back, you must accept your fate as a Dark Gu Master, your spirit would have to spend the next hundred years in meditation to resolve your sins, you should start doing that now. If you continue serving the darkness, your sins will never be resolved. Come to me, I will help you settle in a comfortable place for you to meditate. Your evilness was forced onto you by your evil student Black Bear, you must use you own goodness to overcome them; I will help you by injecting bright energy into your environment. Come into this urn, it would protect you from Black Bear’s power.”

  He placed an urn on the ground and stepped back, the cloud of vapour hovered above the urn for a long time. I believe it was a tough decision for Green Snake, the Grand Master explained the consequences to me after the whole event.

  As Green Snake was practicing the Dark Gu before he was murdered by his student, his spirit was not accepted in the afterlife. To rid himself of the dark energy surrounding his spirit, the spirit had to meditate and suffer physical pain for a long time. Alternatively, he could continue being the slave-spirit of the evil Black Bear.

  Being a slave spirit was not a straight forward affair; the Dark Gu Masters controlling the spirit often introduce more and more dark energy onto the slave to make it more powerful. Such inputs were in the form of hatred, anger, violence and destruction. When such emotions were forced onto a spirit, the sensation was worse than physical pain. That was the price one had to pay for practicing this evil art.

  Slowly the vapour cloud drifted to the top of the urn, even without shape and form, the cloud was conveying a feeling of hesitation. A hundred years of seclusion and meditation or continue walking on the dark side? It was not an easy choice.

  Suddenly with a burst of determination, the vapour slipped into the urn, and the night turned deadly still and silent, even the crickets knew they were witnessing a spectacular event. After a breath-taking pause, the cheery night sound came back, even the little night creatures were cheering the triumph of goodness over evil.

  The Grand Master went forward and sealed the urn with a pi
ece of yellow talisman, finally the night breathed a collective sigh of relief. I asked him, “What will happen to Green Snake’s spirit now?”

  He said, “I will protect him until I destroy Black Bear, because even now, Black Bear still have some control over him. After that, I will find a suitable place to plant his spirit in, a place where he can meditate and resolve his sins. To resolve one’s sins, it would be up to the person, no one else could help. If he is strong and determine, I believe he will be freed in a few decades.”

  He continued, “Young man, this world has a cosmic record keeper, all your sins and good deeds will be recorded, in your final days the gods will give you a fair treatment, nobody can cheat that. Not even the Emperor.”

  I asked him, “Now what do we do next?”

  The Grand master said, “Now that we have captured Green snake’s spirit, we have weakened Black Bear considerably, soon we would be able to block his bad energy from reaching the General. That will render him powerless. Then we move in to destroy him, we cannot allow such an evil person to remain in this world. I do not like to kill, but this time I had no other options. If I allow him to get more powerful, the entire humanity might suffer.

  He continued, “I believe Black Bear is no longer himself; he had been taken over by extreme evilness. Sometimes in the course of training a Gu master could push his own boundaries beyond his own capability, he might have push his progress too fast.

  Such mistakes could lead to the Gu master losing control of his own being; he became taken over by darkness, this process is irreversible. His body had became a magnet for evil bad energy, which is the first stage; later the body will start generating more and more bad energy on its own. By the time he reaches that stage, even I would not be able to defeat him; I would take the collective effort from the entire humanity and it would lead to much suffering.”

  In the course of history, there were personalities that personified extreme evilness; they deviated from the normal spectrum of human behaviors. Such persons’ actions defied normal explanations, and they even possessed the ability to influence the people around them to evilness.

  Very often such characters caused upheavals in the society, sometime even the entire humanity became embroiled in such misery. It could only be reversed by the intervention of the entire humanity, wars would be fought, and many people would be killed before normality could be established.

  Eventually goodness will always triumph over evil, but the price would be huge. This is the balance of our cosmic world; goodness always overwhelmed evilness, but occasionally evilness could distort the balance for a while. This philosophy could fit into our daily life, we had always fought evil, but an individual’s capability was limited. The world of Wulin had always played the role of uniting humanity against such evilness; no matter how greedy or self-centered a Wuxia was, when confronted with such evilness he would always fight it.

  The General recovers

  After clipping the wings of Black bear by capturing his slave spirit Green Snake, the General began to show signs of recovery. He woke up from his long sleep and was able to take in some mild nourishment; with Liu Ching Feng’s help (the old doctor) he was making speedy recovery. Now we had to focus on defending him against further attacks and continue to neutralize the dark energy of Black Bear, soon we would be ready to pay Black Bear a visit.

  The Grand master and the citizens of Huang Long city continued their effort at creating positive energy; more and more trees were planted in the hill sides. The barren hills of the surrounding countryside were slowly being transformed. The livelihoods of the volunteers were compensated by the rich merchant’s families of the city, they knew the entire region’s survival was at stake, and there was a sense of goodness all around.

  Even the normally detached minority tribes began to join in the effort; they were informed of this imminent disaster by Xiao Miao and his tribesmen. They knew that an invasion by the Kingdom of Xi Xia would be equally disastrous for them, and they had no wish to live under the rules of a person like Black Bear.

  Soon the Grand Master informed me that we were ready to confront Black Bear, and we had to do it before Black Bear get too powerful. The Grand Master through his meditation and his communication with the spirit of Green Snake had been able to detect the general location of Black Bear’s hideout. And through his paranormal communication with the spirit of Green Snake he found out that Black Bear’s location was guarded by soldiers from Xi Xia.

  This discovery had presented us with a problem, ever since the Gu attack on the General, the entire army had became very fearful of Black Bear’s power. The soldiers were unwilling to come with us to attack Black Bear, the soldiers were not cowards, they were willing to fight any invading army, but comes to black Gu they were scared stiff.

  We knew we had to get rid of Black Bear before the army could function properly, we managed to gather an assault force of around twenty volunteers consisting of me and my friends, a few Miao tribesmen, and a small team from the Ding family led by Tu Gao.

  We would have to make do with this small number; we simply could not find anyone else willing to face the big bad Black Bear.

  Without us knowing, we were given some extra help, from an unlikely source…

  We went to the Bear’s den

  We set off immediately for the mountains, along the way the Grand Master would stop and meditate to feel for Black Bear’s evil presence. By this ‘feel’ he was able to guide our party to the evil hideout. Our small party was led by the Grand Master, but unfortunately he was not skilled in martial art, therefore it was up to us to protect him. But as the story unfolded, his skills were worth more than the ten of us combined.

  Soon we reached the mountain where Black Bear was located; the Grand Master could detect the strong presence of evil, he told the group to stay hidden in a cave while he created a protective cocoon for us. We could rest there without worrying about Black Bear attacking us. After that he left on his mission to find the exactly location of Black Bear, I decided to go along to protect him.

  We quietly walked through dense vegetation listening for the sound of human, the forest was strangely quiet; it was as though even the little insects and animals were afraid of Black Bear. I could feel the sense of evilness hanging in the air, we came across many trees that were poisoned and rotting; this could only be the work of Black Bear.

  These rotting trees had an iron stake driven into the trunk, with a black cloth tied to it. The Grand Master told me that this was the way Dark Gu Masters’ stakeout their victims and enslave the tree, by doing that, they would harvest every single ounce of the dark energy emitted by the dying tree.

  As we went along, we tried to remove as many of the stakes as possible. But we both knew that it was a futile attempt to save the trees as they were already poisoned and there was little we could do about that. Furthermore, we were jeopardizing our mission by doing that because by removing the stakes, we might be exposing our presence to the evil Black Bear. The powerful Black Bear might be able to sense the change in the flow of dark energy going to him. But both the Old Master and I could not bear to see the suffering of these grand old trees.

  Nature had provided us with these wonderful plants to help us survive better in the world; all this living trees had devoted their existence to the service of humanity. They were created out of the best and purest of intention, but one evil man had turned this goodness into darkest of evil. It was saddening to see destruction and misery in such wicked form.

  Unfortunately, as we went deeper into the forest we saw something even more gruesome. We came across cages upon cages of animals trapped in very small enclosures; they were deliberately physically wounded to create the intended suffering. Some limbs were cut off; some were just stabbed or slashed leaving behind opened infested wounds. They were starved and purposely placed in uncomfortable positions, but ….they was not killed.

  The Grand Master explained to me that this method was intended to create th
e maximum suffering so that the dark energy emitted by this caged animals would be at the maximum efficiency. These caged animals had suffered so much that all of them had gone out of their mind; they had banged repeatedly at the enclosure so that every bit of their body were bleeding.

  Such treatment had turned normally docile animals like deer into a demented wild beast. All this anguish, suffering and hatred were what Black Bear was harvesting to enhance his power. I went around the cages and put my knife to the poor animals, they were beyond help; I could see the look of gratitude when I put them out of misery.

  Soon we reached a clearing closed to the top of the hill; from there we could see the altar Black Bear had erected for his rituals. The area was heavily guarded by soldiers; there was a garrison of about a hundred. From our vantage point, we could also see a huge army deployment about five miles away; I believe it was the Xi Xia invasion forces!!

  By evening the Grand Master and I returned from our survey of the area, he briefed us on his intended course of action. He emphasized that we had no time to lose, Black Bear had harnessed too much dark energy; was very powerful. Soon he would be beyond destruction. In addition, the huge Xi Xia army hidden in the mountains were preparing for the invasion of the Song Empire.

  The Kingdom of Xi Xia was located in the Northwest of Song dynasty China (present day Gansu region); they had been eyeing the northwestern part of the empire for a long time. With the Kingdom of Liao threatening the Song Empire’s northeast, it was a good opportunity for Xi Xia to invade.

  They had made used of the distracted Imperial Court and Black Bear’s evil magic to weaken the defenses along the northwestern borders. If the General (The sleeping General) were to be incapacitated for a longer duration, their invasion plans might have been successful.

  The Grand Master began to outline his plan to us, he said, “Black Bear had built an altar on the mountain top to summon the evil energy of the surrounding hills, he was protected by about a hundred soldiers from the Kingdom of Xi Xia. We would have to breach the defenses to get to him; it would not be easy as we have so few fighters with us. We will have to create a diversion.”

  Night Owl volunteered, “I can set fire to the camp while the rest of you move in and capture Black bear.”

  Night Owl was an expert burglar; he could move about freely in the night, if he could set fire and create chaos in the deployment, we might stand a chance.

  We waited for night fall.

  The Attack on Black Bear Hideout

  We hid at the fringe of the encampment as we waited for Night Owl to create his diversion; there was a light night breeze that would help him to fan the fire. We could see that Black Bear’s altar was guarded by Xi Xia’s soldiers, there were too many of them for us to take on, we hope that the fire would divert at least half the soldiers away from the area.

  The soldiers’ tent where located a distance from the altar, it was down a gentle slope closer to the valley below. Night Owl’s plan was to start the fire there so that the soldiers would have to go down the hill to fight the fire. Even though it sounded like a good plan, but still the risk involved were huge as the numbers were not in our favour.

  We had an only a short span of time to accomplish our task, as soon as the soldiers realize our attack, they will rush back to reinforce their comrades. The fire might even attract the attention of the huge army stationed a few miles away, this army consisted of tens of thousands of battle harden fighter, if they come to the aid of Black Bear we would be in serious trouble.

  From where we were hiding in the shadows, we could see Night Owl darting around in the darkness. Soon we saw a small fire started in the far end of the camp, but very quickly there were several fires being started simultaneously all over the camp, we were puzzled as to how did Night Owl manage to start so many fires at the same time. But at that moment; it was not important, we did not think too much about it.

  Soon the whole encampment was on fire, the night breeze was fanning the flame. The soldiers guarding Black Bear’s altar was rushing down to fight the fire, only a hand full was remaining behind to guard the place. By now Night Owl had rushed back to join our assault, he said to me breathlessly, “I do not understand, I did not start most of the fire, how could I have started such a big fire so quickly? Someone else was doing it.”

  I replied, “No time to ask questions. Let’s go.”

  I led the team into the altar area; the few soldiers guarding the place were surprised by our sudden appearance, we overpowered them easily. As we approach the big platform housing the altar, we saw Black Bear standing on the edge looking at us. He was watching our approach calmly as if he had expected us. Slowly he raised his hands to the heavens and started to chant, immediately an intense storm began to form around us, our surrounding space began to turn into an empty dark void, darker than darkness itself. Flashes of lightning were rolling out from nowhere striking randomly onto us, our advance was held back.

  The Grand Master stepped forward, he took out an earthen urn that he had collected the positive energy for the past few days; he tossed it to the ground smashing the urn. A stream of green vapour came from the shattered urn and began to mingle with the darkness surrounding us. The darkness slowly turned lighter, the green vapour penetrated the dark void and started to flow towards Black Bear.

  As the pureness of the green vapour began to filter into the environment, we could hear the forest coming back to life, the sounds of little insects were cheering the triumph of goodness over evil.

  But it was not over; Black Bear was not defeated, he turned and ran towards the altar, he took a jar from the altar a smashed it to the ground in front of us. From the broken urn out came many huge centipedes, these were not normal centipedes, they were almost one foot in length and they were orange in colour. This army of centipedes crawled towards us as if they knew we were the enemy, they were no doubt controlled by Black Bear.

  Dark Gu masters uses many method to attack their victims, one way was the use of poisonous insects and reptiles. Centipedes, scorpions and poisonous snakes were kept in earthen urns; they were fed with other poisonous insects along with special potions to increase their deadliness. An occasional diet of human flesh would be introduced to let them acquire the taste of it. This rare diet and exceptional care would make these assailants grow to extraordinary size; they would also be exceptionally aggressive in nature. And they had a taste for human flesh.

  These insects could be controlled by the Gu Master with his drum beats; the direction of the vibration of the drum would dictate the direction of the insect’s movement. The insects were taught to move away from the drum beat; therefore the Gu Master could herd the centipedes in the desired direction.

  Black Bear held his long wooden drum close to his torso, the lower end of the drum was firmly held to the ground to ensure the vibration of the drum would be channeled to the ground. His was directing the sound wave of the drum to guide the centipedes towards us, there were hundreds of the creature jumping over each other to get to us. We were beaten back for the moment; one bite from these creatures could be fatal. These centipedes were fast and dangerous, and they had acquired t
he ability to leap a distance of several foot.

  Black Bear was performing a dance while he beat the drum, he was moving to the rhythm of the drum beat, and he was laughing the laugh of a victor. He knew that as long as he could delay us long enough for the soldiers to come back and reinforce him, our attack was doomed.

  In addition to that, the huge army that was deployed further away would have gotten the signal of an attack; they too would be sending reinforcement to the area. Our attack looked like doomed to failure.

  I was contemplating a retreat, when suddenly a white shadowy figure dashed forward from the darkness, at lightning speed. The white figure glided like a ghost over the army of centipedes to land a few yards in front of Black Bear.

  The shocked Black Bear’s starred at the old man with his mouth hanging open, before he could make a move the white figure shot a pebble from where he stood. The powerful flick of the finger delivered the pebble like an arrow straight into Black Bear’s opened mouth; the shot was so powerful that the pebble after smashing his jaw bone went straight through the head and came out the other side. It was Ouyang Hao, the old man from Sunrise Inn…he killed his first man.

  Black Bear was dead before he hit the ground, our old savior Ouyang Hao walked off without acknowledging us as though we were not there. He walked off with his hands behind his back looking up in the air as if taking a casual stroll. Before we could call out to him, he had disappeared into the darkness of the night. All of a sudden with the arrival of Ouyang Hao the situation had turned in our favour, at least for the moment.

  Meanwhile the Grand Master was dealing with the centipedes with his talisman fire that he had carried in a jar. Talisman fire was created from alcohol spitted out from his mouth; this stream of alcohol was shot through a small flame he held in front of him, the alcohol would be ignited. The projectile of flaming alcohol would then set fire to the advancing army of centipedes. It was an effective way to destroy the poisonous centipedes.

  After clearing the centipedes the Grand Master told us that we must destroy the altar to thoroughly destroy the power of Black Bear, and we must hold off the reinforcement and give him some time to capture Black Bear’s spirit. If the spirit was left wondering two things could happen, the extreme evilness of Black Bear might give him the ability to ‘infect’ other Gu masters or his wondering spirit might be captured by another Gu master who could then possess this terrible power.

  While the Grand Master set off on his task of capturing the spirit, I sent two of the Miao men to set fire to the altar. The rest of us watch over the path leading to the lower encampment; we knew the reinforcement could be coming any time. It would be disastrous if we were caught by the hundred Xi Xia soldiers, we would have a hard time fighting against that number. By now Ouyang Hao was nowhere to be seen, I knew we could not depend on this eccentric old man to protect us; he was unpredictable.

  Soon we saw the Xi Xia soldiers approaching the slope leading to our position; they were about a hundred of them, I turned to look at the Grand Master who was still conducting his ‘spirit capturing’ ritual.

  It seems like we would not be able to escape in time, we knew from the moment we had volunteered for this mission that it was dangerous. We had done our duty to the people of the Empire, now that the General is awakened and Black Bear was destroyed, the Xi Xia invasion could be stopped.

  We were prepared to make our last stand against the enemy; we had to give the Grand Master time to thoroughly destroy Black Bear. If we accomplish that, all our sacrifices would have been worth it…even our lives. This was the ultimate duty of a Wuxia. My only wish was that the Grand Master could destroy Black Bear’s evil spirit before the Xi Xia soldiers could capture us, if not all our effort would have gone to waste.

  I organized the few fighters we had, we fanned out to block the path leading to the altar. As the contingent of soldiers led by their commander charged up the slope we braced ourselves for the onslaught, none of us ran, we all knew the importance of our mission.

  As they crashed onto our thin line of defense, we managed to take out the first few soldiers, but it was not easy as all of them were wearing light armour. We had a clear disadvantage as we were unprotected; when we strike them we had to hit their faces, lower arm and legs, those were the only parts of their body unprotected. This situation emboldened the soldiers, they knew we could not injure them easily; our sharp blades were useless on their armour.

  The experienced fighters among us were able to hold our ground; we focused on striking the soldiers at their unprotected areas. But the rest of the Miao tribesmen were in deep trouble, they were being pushed back. We would be overrun soon; we desperately tried to hold the line to buy more time for the Grand Master to finish his task.

  Soon two of my Miao tribesmen were injured and fell to the ground; two Xi Xia soldiers went forward for the final kill. I was unable to help them as I was tied down by three enemy soldiers. As the enemy soldiers was about to plunge their sabers into the fallen Miao tribesmen, a projectile was shot from the darkness. The projectile looks like a copper coin, it smashed into the unprotected kneecaps of the Xi Xia soldiers crippling them. The soldiers fell to the ground holding their legs in pain; they would not be walking for a long time. Shooting copper coins were the trademark of the innkeeper at Sunrise Inn, I realised our help had arrived.

  Soon we saw more and more Xi Xia soldiers falling to the ground in pain. Meanwhile shadowy figures were dashing among the contingent of soldiers creating chaos, they were moving around the soldiers at incredible speed. Every soldier was given a small cut on the face or a stab on the buttock as a warning. These injuries would not kill them, but it certainly showed them what they were up against.

  I counted five to six dark figures attacking the Xi Xia soldiers, they were moving extremely fast and they were using ordinary kitchen tools as weapons. I could see one of them using a butcher’s knife, spatulas and other kitchen tools. The speed that they were moving around made them seemed more like ghost than human.

  The Xi Xia’s assault had been stopped, the remaining soldiers starred warily into the darkness. They had no idea what had hit them. By now the dark figures that had attacked them had disappeared into the dark forest, I could hear familiar laughers coming from beyond the tree line. The same laughter I heard on the day the young man (The challenger) was being made a fool of in Sunrise Inn. I was quite sure it was the innkeeper and his service crew who had saved our lives.

  This group of recluse martial art experts had saved our lives, they did not show themselves, but I knew it was them. Even though they had decided to detach themselves from Wulin, they had not forgotten their duty to the people of the land. The old man Ouyang Hao and the entire crew of Sunrise Inn had come to the rescue of the Empire, but I believe their action was in no way for the love of the Emperor or the Empire, they did it for the people. And they had their fun…

  The Xi Xia soldiers were totally spooked by the shadowy figures, they could not see their attackers; they only hear laughter in the darkness. After being around Black Bear for the last few days, they were convinced that they were witnessing some other form of evil spirit.

  As the Xi Xia soldiers started to retreat down the slope, the bunch of old Wuxias and their laughter melted into the night. By now the Grand Master had completed his ritual to capture Black Bear’s spirit; he sealed the spirit in an earthen urn. He told us that this evil spirit was beyond redemption, it had to be destroyed; he would have to conduct a more elaborate ceremony to ensure its total destruction.

  Now we had to direct our attention to the ten-thousand-strong Xi Xia army deployed in the mountains. Even though we had spoiled part of their plan by destroying Black Bear; that did not mean that they would not invade us. The enemy’s number was still way superior to the small defense force put up by the Ding family. We had still got to find a way to fight these invaders, the Imperial Capital was too far away; they would not be able to reach us in time.

  We decide to leave t
he mountains and head back to Huang Long city to help the Ding family in the defense of the city. We could not afford to wait as the General had to be informed of the secret army hidden in the mountains.

  And we had no intention to stay around for the Xi Xia soldiers to regain their confidence and regroup, one more determine attack would surely break our defense. And we had no idea if the innkeeper and his crew would be around to help us again. We retreated…