Chapter 248: He Profits, I Profit

The talisman array let these jianghu folk and pirates learn exactly what an ambush by Daoist Priests looked like.

Namely, relying on their grasp of the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams to skulk in the shadows and stab a cold blade from behind.

Forget Zhang Ning, Hu Jing, and Su Ying—the three jianghu folk—even Ah Xin, a purebred pirate, couldn't help but say, "Sneak attacks from behind—that's not what a gentleman does, is it?"

Pan Yun: "You're a pirate who robs households for a living, and you're holding yourself to a gentleman's standards?"

Ah Xin choked, and said quietly, "Well, I've never stabbed anyone in the back either."

Pan Yun wasn't about to indulge him, and said bluntly, "Hypocrite. Before you rob a place, do you send word to the household first, clearly stating the date and time you'll come to rob them? When you're at sea, have you never ambushed a fleet? Instead of going at it openly, with torches lit and weapons in hand, charging straight in?"

Ah Xin immediately dared not speak, his face both anxious and ashamed.

Pan Yun hmmphed, "This is the art of war—deception is never excessive. When it comes to keeping faith, I'm far better than you lot. Take Song Bei—I could let him go just as I said I would."

Pan Yun shoved his blade back into his hands, pointed at three trees off to the side, and said, "Hide over there. Whenever any Japanese pirates come up, you lot go kill them. I've already picked out a good ambush spot for you. If you still can't win and die here, that's just your fate."

The few of them hid behind those three trees, and sure enough, in no time at all six Japanese suddenly appeared before them.

Truly all at once.

The cold wind whistled. Before them there had been only swaying tree shadows, with occasional bursts of thunder, but in the blink of an eye, six Japanese pirates suddenly appeared right in front of them.

Then, in the span of two or three breaths, they were upon them.

Ah Xin and the Green-Clad Guards exchanged a glance, and quietly shifted to spread out.

Daoist Priest Sanzhu had said that as long as they moved within this range, they wouldn't suddenly end up somewhere else.

None of the six Japanese pirates noticed them. Ah Xin and the others quietly raised their blades…

The moment the enemy drew close, Ah Xin and the four Green-Clad Guards raised their blades and hacked down at the same instant.

Having been led by Pan Yun, Ah Xin had learned by now: hack at the head and neck, stab at the heart and belly—always a clean hit.

The other Green-Clad Guards were a touch slower, but they could still wound their targets. Only one of them had picked a Japanese pirate who was perhaps too strong; he got tangled up at once, was forced into panicked footwork, dodging every which way, and in an instant had drifted a bit away from the three trees.

Ah Xin was about to go rescue him when Pan Yun, who had already finished off her targets on the other side and turned back, saw what was happening. She took a single stride forward, her figure flashed—swift as lightning she swept past the Japanese pirate, her sword already slashing open his throat.

He stiffened, clutching his throat and staring at Pan Yun in disbelief, unable to form a complete sentence, only mumbling, "Ninja…"

Pan Yun ignored him, kicked a Green-Clad Guard in the rear and sent him tumbling behind the three trees. "Keep waiting. Next time you can't win, fall back. They can't see you."

Su Ying, hearing this, grew very curious, so he ran over and stood from the Japanese pirates' angle, looking toward where Ah Xin and the others were—and couldn't see them.

He saw only seven or eight large trees pressed close together, vines tangled thick between them, looking like an impenetrable wall of vines.

If it were him, he'd suspect someone was hiding behind it, but he'd never think they could get past the vines to attack him. So he'd pretend he hadn't noticed, then step forward bit by bit, and suddenly spin around to peer behind the trees and vines to search…

Ah Xin knew why Su Ying was so astonished, and silently stepped out from behind one of the trees…

In Su Ying's eyes, it was as if Ah Xin had appeared out of thin air before the vine wall.

His breathing quickened. "This talisman array…"

Pan Yun turned to look at him. Su Ying's tongue curled, and at last he said, "How ingenious."

Pan Yun said, "You lot just hide here. The formation will make them lose their bearings—at least a quarter of the Japanese pirates will pass through here. This single point is the one we have to hold. Hero Su and I will go clear out the other scattered Japanese pirates. We won't go too far from here. If anything happens, call out loudly—I can hear you."

Ah Xin and the Green-Clad Guards agreed, looked at the vine wall before them, and steeled themselves to step forward and crash into it. The other Green-Clad Guards all got through smoothly, but Ah Xin went bang and cracked his head. He looked up—the vine wall had vanished, and he was pressed up against a single tree.

The Green-Clad Guards looked on with rueful sympathy. "So the vine wall is fake, and half the trees are fake too, but these three are real. If you're not careful, you'll still bump into them."

One Green-Clad Guard felt the tree and asked, "Brother Ah Xin, how do you reckon she did it? To our eyes, this clearly looks like a vine wall."

Ah Xin: "If I knew that, I'd have become a Daoist Priest long ago—would I still be a pirate?"

Pan Yun took Su Ying with her and wove through the formation. Time and again, the moment they turned around, they'd appear behind a Japanese pirate, then raise their sword and strike.

A few more steps, and they'd spot a new Japanese pirate.

It made sense—this talisman array only looked vast; you couldn't see from here to there, but in truth the area covered by the array was just one road flanked by a stretch of woods and some graves.

No matter how big, how big could it really get?

With so many Japanese pirates, even though they were scattered the moment they entered the array, there were so many of them that a few steps was enough to bump into another.

Soon, the Japanese pirates caught on. Because their companions kept vanishing and dying, they grew increasingly irritable, and couldn't help but slash wildly with their blades. As they hacked away, their footwork broke down, and they crashed hard into a few other Japanese pirates.

They discovered the secret of this place, and shouted at the top of their lungs, "It's a maze, it's a maze! The eyes are lying, but the ears won't—Lord Songpu, Lord Songpu, where are you?"

Pan Yun's steps faltered, and she asked Su Ying, "What is he saying?"

Su Ying: "Can't understand."

Pan Yun looked at him with a "what good are you" gaze, glanced at the few men shouting and screaming, and very decisively killed off all the others, sparing just one.

The very one who had first noticed something was wrong and started shouting—Pan Yun pressed down on Su Ying's shoulder and dodged with him, not killing him. Su Ying stuck close to her side as they left, and asked in a low voice, "Why didn't you kill him?"

"I want to know what he was shouting. I thought I just heard a person's name, which means there might be an important figure among these Japanese pirates."

Pan Yun led Su Ying back behind the three trees, found Ah Xin, and asked, "Can you understand Japanese?"

Ah Xin paused, then nodded. "I can understand a few varieties."

That's right—Japanese also came in several varieties. Different regions didn't just have different accents; the languages themselves were different.

In any case, anything that came out of Japan, they lumped together and called Japanese.

Pan Yun repeated the words that man had just shouted, and asked, "What did he say?"

Su Ying stared at her in shock—she'd remembered it after hearing it just once?

Ah Xin said, "He said this is a maze, the eyes can lie but the ears won't. He was calling for Lord Songpu."

Pan Yun asked him, "Who is Lord Songpu?"

Ah Xin shook his head. "I don't know."

He paused, then explained, "I've been a pirate for seven years. In that time I've seen plenty of Japanese. They rarely mention a person's surname—they act wild and unruly, with no rules or restraint, and you can never reason with them. But the ones who do have a surname, even if you can't necessarily see eye to eye, you can at least communicate."

! 。Read

"Every Japanese on the islands with a name and a surname, I know them all. There is absolutely no one surnamed Songpu."

Pan Yun tilted her chin up and said, "Wouldn't we just find out by asking?"

Ah Xin turned his head following hers, and saw six more Japanese pirates coming down the road.

Pan Yun couldn't be bothered to wait for them to strike first, so she killed three on the spot, left three alive, and kicked them all in front of A Xin.

One of them did a carp-kick trying to leap up and resist, but Pan Yun slapped him down with a sword, then drove the blade straight through his shoulder blade and pinned him to the ground, asking: "Can you speak Han?"

The man glared at Pan Yun with hatred, opened his mouth, and began hurling filthy abuse at her.

Pan Yun couldn't understand the words, but she could read his meaning — without A Xin translating, she knew he was cursing her. So she repeated his words back to him with a blank face, not only returning his curses verbatim but also snatching A Xin's scabbard and beating him with it, banging away until his face was bruised and swollen before she stopped.

She tossed the scabbard back to A Xin, planted one hand on her hip, and said: "You turtle-egg lookin' thing and you dare curse me? Can you even beat me? You, you, you — you three, keep your eyes on them. From now on, if any one of these three Japanese pirates lets another filthy word out of his mouth, give him a slap."

The three Green-Clad Guards acknowledged the order, fixing the three Japanese pirates with bright, watchful stares.

Seeing all three had quieted down, Pan Yun tilted her chin up and said: "Go ahead and ask."

Only then did A Xin question the three men in Japanese: "Where is Lord Songpu?"

All three men's faces changed in shock; they refused to speak.

Pan Yun's ears and eyes stirred slightly, and she told them: "You keep questioning them first. I'm going to go take care of a few people."

As she spoke, she reached out and pulled her sword free. The pinned-down Japanese pirate screamed, and the moment Pan Yun's sword tip moved, he shrieked: "I'll talk, I'll talk—"

Pan Yun's steps paused slightly, and she looked up at A Xin.

A Xin: "…He says he's willing to surrender information."

Pan Yun felt that, having left the first array and entered the second, the Japanese pirates here weren't quite as critical. So she stopped her steps, planted her sword into the ground, and said: "Speak."

The pirate, his body and spirit badly wounded, hurriedly babbled out a stream of words. The two men beside him, trembling with fear, were terrified that all the merit would be snatched away and that their own fates would end badly, so they hurriedly scrambled to speak up as well.

Once they started talking, the more they said the more it piled up. A Xin translated a sentence now and then, his face growing uglier and uglier.

"…They don't know where Lord Songpu is, but they're certain he came. It was he who forced them into this little path to look for people."

"The one wearing a brown round-collared warrior's robe — that's him. He's the Third Young Master of the Songpu family. This shipment contains fire-arms and gunpowder, both very important goods. They need to transport all of it back to Hirado; it has a great use, so they value it highly. That's why the Third Young Master of the Songpu family came in person."

Pan Yun asked, "Who's guarding the beach? How many people are there in total?"

Without hesitation, the three sold out the men on the beach: "They're retainers of the Songpu clan — there are still several hundred of them in all."

Pan Yun heard this, gave a cold laugh, and said: "Several hundred — how many exactly?"

One said there were still a little over two hundred, another said over five hundred, and the third said there was still a thousand.

Pan Yun heard this and told A Xin: "Looks like none of them are being honest. Kill them all."

A Xin figured it was because she'd gotten the information she wanted and didn't want to keep these burdens around, but he still obediently killed all three.

Pan Yun told them to keep guarding those three trees, while she and Su Ying returned to the second array.

The Japanese pirate who had been shouting earlier had actually made it through the first array, and by shouting had remotely made contact with Songpu.

The Japanese pirate shouted up at the sky: "Lord Songpu, say one more word — I feel like I'm close to you, I'm about to find you!"

A voice came from somewhere unseen: "I'm here, I'm here—"

Pan Yun was delighted, and told Su Ying: "See? I told you he was useful, didn't I? I deliberately took a look at his physiognomy back then, felt he was auspicious for me, so I specially spared his little life."

(End of chapter)