TDSDE 14

14. Kidnapping Deal

Bai Yuanxiu simply sat up. After all, he was someone who practiced martial arts—who cared if it was the righteous path or the demonic one? Staying alert was just common sense.

He sat up too quickly, and when he saw the face in front of him, for a moment he thought he was hallucinating.

The man wore a white robe embroidered with golden threads, his bearing impeccable, completely looking like a refined young master from an aristocratic family.

Bai Yuanxiu exclaimed, “You?!”

It was the same young man he had once met in that ruined temple. At the time, he’d been too concerned about Xiao Qing’s condition to pay much attention to the stranger.

The youth curved his eyes in a genuine smile. “We meet again, Hero Bai.”

Half an hour later, Bai Yuanxiu felt he must’ve drunk too much—his mind couldn’t keep up.

This young man, named Guan Yi, wasn’t just the leader of that new force emerging in the martial world. He was also a member of the Guan family.

Bai Yuanxiu cautiously asked, “Uh… Brother Guan… you haven’t, by any chance, been back home lately, right?”

Guan Yi folded the fan in his hand and smiled brightly. “Bad luck for you—I just came from home two days ago.”

Bai Yuanxiu groaned, feeling like it was a mix of weird constitution and downright bad luck! How did stuff like this always happen to him?

In truth, no one in the Demonic Sect knew this, but Bai Yuanxiu was not some wandering martial artist since childhood as he claimed. He was born into the Bai family, a famous scholarly household in the Dajing Empire.

The Guan family, to which Guan Yi belonged, was an old family friend of the Bai family. The kind of friendship that, if they ended up working as officials together, they’d be bound together in life and death by default.

Guan Yi was born to the old master of the Guan family late in life. He was the younger brother of the current Guan family head. In theory, Bai Yuanxiu should call him “uncle.”

Back when they were kids, Guan Yi used to tease Bai Yuanxiu with that fact constantly. It wasn’t until they got a little older that they started calling each other brothers in private.

But to Bai Yuanxiu, that was nearly ten years ago!

How to describe it… it was like a stray cat tearing it up out in the wild, only to get spotted at the door by a bunch of old alley cats from back home, yelling, “Sang Biao, why are they calling you Mimi?”

Utterly awkward!

Guan Yi took a slow sip of tea and said lazily, “Relax. I didn’t tell them anything about you.”

Bai Yuanxiu immediately let out a breath of relief—but just as he was relaxing, Guan Yi added, “But they want you home for Mid-Autumn Festival this year.”

Last Mid-Autumn Festival, Bai Yuanxiu had been in the middle of a huge fight with his family. In a fit of rebellion, he dragged Xiao Qing around from place to place, refusing to go home.

It seemed like his family had softened a little this year, but Bai Yuanxiu knew his father too well. That conflict couldn’t be solved so easily. Just thinking about it gave him a headache. “We’ll see.”

He then asked Guan Yi directly whether he had any news about the Vermilion Bird Hall Master or the Left Protector of the Demonic Sect. As he’d suspected, their disappearance had indeed happened through Guan Yi.

“But you came too late,” Guan Yi sighed. “The deal was done eight days ago. Someone already took them away.”

“Someone?” Bai Yuanxiu pressed. “Just one person? Was it a man?”

Guan Yi nodded. “Yes. But we’re just middlemen—we don’t know how that guy managed to overpower two top experts of the Demonic Sect.”

According to Guan Yi, they normally didn’t deal in anything illegal. They were just intermediaries helping with certain requests. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have accepted a kidnapping job.

But that man swore on his martial path, and even offered to sign and stamp a written guarantee that no harm would come to them. Guan Yi had been moved by his sincerity—he’d even knelt so hard his forehead was bleeding. That’s what made him agree.

Guan Yi said, “Actually, the Vermilion Bird Hall Master was just a lead. From the start, what that man really wanted was the Left Protector.”

Bai Yuanxiu’s heart tightened, and then he heard Guan Yi continue, “According to him, the Left Protector might be connected to what happened sixteen years ago.”

Sixteen years ago, there was a horrifying massacre in the martial world. In Nanyang, an entire wealthy merchant household—servants included, forty-three people in total—was slaughtered in a single night. No survivors.

That merchant family had been wealthy, and when they were found, everything valuable in the house was gone. People guessed it was revenge from business rivals, or maybe greedy thieves committing a murder-robbery.

Because the death toll was so high, the case even reached the capital. The next year, a gang of bandits were caught and executed by beheading, which seemed to satisfy public outrage.

But now, it appeared those bandits were just scapegoats.

Seeing Guan Yi hesitate, Bai Yuanxiu asked, “What is it?”

Guan Yi was silent for a long while before lowering his voice. “This isn’t something I should say… but the one who came to us asking for help looked like a teenager. Maybe fifteen or sixteen years old.”

A sixteen-year-old boy. A massacre sixteen years ago.

Bai Yuanxiu knew he shouldn’t think this way, but a memory suddenly jumped into his mind—something from when he had just joined the Demonic Sect.

Back then, he was still a reckless kid who knew a bit of swordplay. He had barely seen blood before, let alone taken a life.

But the martial world always demanded victory, demanded life or death.

Bai Yuanxiu had killed a man. The man had deserved it, but Bai Yuanxiu still couldn’t sleep at night. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that blood-covered face wailing beneath his sword.

When he was about to lose his mind, the old man who had taught him swordsmanship in the Demonic Sect asked, “Do you know how young the youngest person was when they killed for the first time in the Demonic Sect?”

Bai Yuanxiu had been sixteen. He remembered a child rumored to have been brought in personally by the cult leader. Based on that, he guessed, “Fourteen?”

The old man had laughed—and then fixed his hawk-like eyes on Bai Yuanxiu. “Six.”

He puffed on his pipe, tapped it against the stone steps, and said, “If a six-year-old can do it and you can’t, then just go home. The martial world’s not as easy as you think.”

At the time, Bai Yuanxiu had simply held his breath in frustration, thinking—if a kid two years younger than him could do it back then, why couldn’t he?

No one is born knowing how to kill, or willing to kill. Most do it because they have no choice. Bai Yuanxiu had felt that helplessness before, and that’s why all he wanted was to grow stronger—strong enough to choose whether or not to draw his sword.

Now, Bai Yuanxiu looked down at his own hand. It had been a long time since he’d felt this familiar chill in his limbs.

Xiao Qing had killed someone when he was six. And that massacre of the wealthy merchant family? It had happened when Xiao Qing was exactly six.

Thinking back on it now—where had Xiao Qing’s strange martial techniques come from? Who taught them to him?

The Sect Leader had always been lazy, hated trouble—so why had he, of all people, left the Demonic Sect just to bring back a child and raise him?

Bai Yuanxiu suddenly realized he didn’t know Xiao Qing at all. Not the Xiao Qing who pretended to be someone else, nor the one who served as the Demonic Sect’s Left Protector. He had never truly understood either of them.

His fingers curled inward until they formed a tight fist, the veins bulging across the back of his hand. It took him a long time before he could relax it again.

He turned to Guan Yi. “Brother Guan, tell me more about this deal.”

Guan Yi looked at Bai Yuanxiu for a few moments, then opened his folding fan and began explaining everything, one detail at a time.

The setting sun was as red as blood, casting fiery golden light over the loose snow scattered on the ground.

This was Anyang Mountain, more than a hundred and ninety li from Yunhua, located in the northeast of the Dajing Empire. Surrounded by mountain ranges, the temperatures here were far colder than in most places.

A young man was leading a horse through the empty terrain, moving slowly through thick snow that nearly buried the reddish-brown horse’s legs.

Bai Yuanxiu glanced back at the horse, which was panting hard, and coaxed it gently, “Just a little more. Once we reach flat ground, I’ll let you rest.”

Then he suddenly laughed, muttering to himself, “Ah Qing’s rubbed off on me. Since when do I talk to horses?”

He felt a bit foolish for doing it—but the horse seemed to understand, bumping his arm as if to urge him onward.

This was now the fourth day since Bai Yuanxiu had left Jinyan City. He had barely slept, rushing day and night, and finally entered Anyang Mountain early that morning.

According to the Demonic Sect’s Vermilion Bird Hall, the boy had bought a carriage just before leaving Jinyan City, heading straight north the moment the gates opened.

The boy clearly knew the northern routes well—he had managed to evade all the scouts’ eyes more than once. If not for a few items he bought in a small village at the foot of Anyang Mountain, the Hall might still have no idea where he’d gone.

This snowy, icy land was bitterly cold. Even Bai Yuanxiu—who usually went sleeveless in winter—was starting to feel the chill, let alone someone who had always hated the cold.

He frowned. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the worry gnawing at him.

According to Guan Yi, the boy had mentioned wanting to take the Demonic Sect’s Left Protector back to his old home.

But the massacre had taken place in Nanyang—traveling from there to here meant crossing the entire empire from south to north. Logically, the boy shouldn’t be anywhere near this place.

Unless… he picked the coldest location on purpose for revenge?

But if that was the case, it was even stranger—Bai Yuanxiu was certain that not many people in the Demonic Sect knew Xiao Qing feared the cold. So if the boy did know, where had he learned it?

Bai Yuanxiu felt like he couldn’t afford to dig too deep into these thoughts—if he kept going, everyone would start looking like traitors.

He had never been the type to torture himself. If something didn’t make sense, he didn’t dwell on it. In any case, once he caught that kid, everything would come to light.

In the snow-covered woods, only the sounds of hooves crunching snow and his own footsteps echoed in Bai Yuanxiu’s ears. The silence was suffocating. The warm breath from the reddish-brown horse puffed against his wrist—right now, it felt like the only warmth left in the world.

Suddenly, Bai Yuanxiu made a decision.

This time, he wouldn’t just question the boy—he would question Xiao Qing too. He would get answers to everything.

Just as the thought formed, something strange appeared in Bai Yuanxiu’s field of vision.

In the middle of this desolate, snowbound mountain, far in the distance—a thin trail of white smoke curled into the sky and disappeared.