Chapter 4
Coming down the mountain took no more than a couple of minutes, and the feeling of freedom and lightness was simply extraordinary.
Having lived in the body of a kung fu master, I could no longer imagine what it was like to exist in an ordinary one.
I was forty years old and doing things that plenty of twenty-year-olds couldn't manage. The Furious Five were supposedly stronger, faster, and more agile — incredibly talented young masters, all of them — and yet somehow that didn't seem to hold.
The damned tortoise had kept me locked in that dungeon for twenty years, where I had slowly degraded, gradually losing physical strength. But my control over Chi had only grown during that time, and with it I could replicate everything I'd done in my youth through sheer force of body — and when I had fully recovered, I would be even stronger than before.
It was infuriating beyond measure that those twenty years had been wasted. No matter. I would make up for lost time. Masters who had opened their Chi lived considerably longer than ordinary people, so I still had plenty of chances to show them what I was made of.
The path to the village ran through forest, which made sense — what sort of fool would route a caravan through the mountains? There were no roads up there and no prospect of any. Economically speaking, it was pointless.
The nature here was remarkable. In the mountains I hadn't been surprised by snow underfoot and constant blizzards, but descending a few hundred meters it was as though I'd stepped into a different season entirely. The forest was in bloom, butterflies drifted past, and I spotted a few animals along the way. The air was warmer here, smelling of pine resin and damp earth. Deer didn't notice me until I was almost on top of them, but I only watched for a moment before moving on.
I was desperately hungry, but it seemed far better to eat food prepared by someone who knew what they were doing, with proper spices, than to hack a rough piece of meat off a carcass and toast it over a fire.
I eventually found the road — more of a footpath, really — and followed it toward the village. And there, just before I reached it —
"Hey. What do you think you're doing here?" A jackal stepped out from behind a tree in front of me. He had genuine jackal features, a sword of some kind in hand, and wore a dirty, worn-out robe. His dull fur was matted with burrs.
"Walking," I replied calmly, without slowing down.
If this was the village's idea of a guard, they'd be better off without one. And if he was a bandit — what kind of idiot would try to shake down a man with a body like a god of war, wearing nothing but trousers? Even without recognizing me personally, you didn't need to be a genius to understand that a man traveling with nothing was almost certainly a martial arts master.
"Oi, freak, I said stop!" The fool planted himself in my path. Well. Now I knew what kind of idiot. "Boys, come out!"
Three more jackals emerged from the trees, dressed similarly and armed with an assortment of hardware. One had a rusted mace, one a bow, one a plain cleaver. I had already noticed all four of them well before this — not because I needed Chi for it, but because these geniuses had been audibly shouting to each other while supposedly lying in ambush.
I pressed my palm to my face.
"Oh, what, scared?" The sword-wielding jackal noticed the gesture and perked up, visibly relaxing. When I had been approaching him he'd been clearly panicking, but now that he thought I was frightened, a predatory grin had taken over. "Empty your pockets or we finish you!"
I was momentarily speechless.
What exactly had happened in these twenty years? Since when did common bandits fail to recognize an obvious master, let alone shake him down? You could assume this was a crew of exceptional idiots — and that would probably be correct — but even so. I was genuinely at a loss. Mildly speaking.
"You deaf, animal?" the jackal with the bow added, pointing it in my direction. "Pay up. This road costs money!"
"…Psh… pfhah… PFHAHAHAHAHAHA!" I finally lost my composure entirely. The laughter seemed to be the last straw for them, because an arrow came flying straight at my forehead — which I caught between two fingers and tossed into the dirt with a flick. "Oh… You've really done it for me. Fine, I'll pay you."
"Wh… what?" The sword jackal, evidently the leader, stared at me with his mouth hanging open.
"Of course. Each of you." I nodded, produced four bronze *wen* coins, and with a single motion sent the first one into the leader's forehead.
The coin left a neat hole. Blood sprayed from it.
"Kh…" said the falling corpse, releasing the sword.
"And now the rest of you." I turned to the others and repeated the exercise. The last one — standing farthest back — managed to flinch, but it didn't save him. The coin caught him in the eye and punched clean through.
What absolute idiots. Well, no matter. I was still hungry, and I had no interest in standing here looking at the bodies of the intellectually deficient.
I stepped past them and continued toward the village.
Hunger made itself known again, my stomach growling for the first time in years, as though the brief burst of violence had woken my appetite.
Did that make me bloodthirsty? The slaughter itself held no particular appeal for me — but a real fight, against a worthy opponent? Now that sounded genuinely interesting.
The path brought me out of the forest a few minutes later.
The village of Han-Ya, Cold Cliff, lived up to its name completely. It clung to a grey, sheer mountain slope like a swallow's nest. The houses were simple wooden structures with roofs of moss and slate, many of them looking distinctly the worse for wear. I noticed cracked tiles patched over with dirty straw and window frames beginning to rot. The air smelled of damp wood, sour goat dung, and smoke.
But what struck me more than the buildings was the atmosphere. The silence.
Not the peaceful silence I remembered from the Jade Palace. Something else. Something dead — like a cemetery on the day of a burial. No children's voices. No hammering from a smithy.
The streets were almost empty, though the sun hadn't set yet. The few people I saw — villagers with goat features — hurried about their business with their eyes fixed on the ground. They were all grim-faced, their expressions stripped of any curiosity or life, leaving behind nothing but exhaustion and fear.
My eye caught a woman carrying empty baskets, her shoulders hunched, her lips bitten raw. She pressed herself against the walls of buildings as she moved, as though trying to avoid being seen, frightened of everything around her. The only sounds were the creak of wooden signs swinging in the wind and a soft, nervous bleating from behind the locked gates of the animal pens.
As I came up into the village proper, I noticed a young boy — barely a teenager — trying to catch an escaped chick by the wall of a house. He had small, neat horns just beginning to grow in, and narrow yellow pupils like a true mountain goat. He wore a simple grey tunic, the quality of which was roughly on par with what the bandits in the forest had been wearing.
He saw me and went completely still. The chick darted into the bushes. The boy dropped a small bag of grain and stumbled back against the wall.
What was going on here? The people of China were generally content — with kung fu masters around, banditry was nearly nonexistent, harvests were consistently good, and the standard of living reflected that. So why was everyone here looking as though the sky had already fallen?
I raised my hands slowly, trying not to frighten the boy further.
"I won't hurt you," I said. My voice came out lower and deeper than I'd expected. "I'm just looking for somewhere to eat. I'm… very hungry."
I pointed at my stomach, which chose that moment to growl loudly and emphatically on my behalf. The boy swallowed and stared not at me but at something behind me — the forest path I'd come from.
"You… you came past… the guards?" he whispered. His voice was trembling.
"If you mean the four jackals in the forest, they won't be bothering anyone again," I replied evenly, with a nod.
His eyes went even wider — but the raw animal fear in them shifted into something else. Shock, maybe. A small spark of hope.
"Then… then you really shouldn't go into the village, Master!" He grabbed my arm. His hand was bony and shaking. "There's food — plenty of it! Over there, at the Mountain Goat tavern — the only place still open — but…" He hesitated, glancing around nervously as though afraid of being overheard. "Sabo Iron Tooth is there right now. Don't go, Master, please! He's a martial artist too! He'll kill you!"
I frowned slightly. *Sabo Iron Tooth?* The name sounded ridiculous, like a nickname for a circus dog. But the boy's fear was completely genuine.
"Who is he?"
"A bandit!" the boy hissed, pulling me into the shadow of an alley between two houses that smelled of mildew. "He and his crew… they showed up two weeks ago. Took all the stores. Said the village was theirs now. Sabo sits in the tavern, drinks our beer, and…" The boy faltered, staring at his feet. "His people guard the road below — the main one — so no one can run or send word to the Emperor. And in the forest, where you came from… so no one could sneak in unnoticed. They killed people who tried to leave…"
That explained it. The jackals in the forest hadn't been ordinary bandits. They'd been sentries. Guards.
Of course. Guards again. Was this my destiny?
I hated people who believed that having strength gave them the right to use it against the weak.
I looked at the boy. He was frightened — not for himself, but for me. This small, trembling kid was worried about a stranger. It was strange. And, if I was honest with myself, a little touching.
I placed my large, clawed hand on his head. He flinched but didn't pull away. I gave him an awkward pat between his small twisted horns. The fur was surprisingly soft.
"Don't worry, kid. I'll handle it." I tried to sound reassuring, already reaching into my pocket.
"No! Master, there are dozens of them!" he pleaded. "And Sabo is the strongest — he's huge, and… he has a metal tooth!"
"Well, I have claws of steel," I said, pressing two small silver ingots into his palm before heading toward the tavern he'd pointed out. The boy made a choked sound at the sight of the *liang* in his hand, but I was already not looking at him. "And I'm very, very hungry."
The Mountain Goat tavern was the largest building in the village. Two stories, and unlike the rest of the structures, it looked genuinely solid. From inside came rough laughter, the clinking of cups, and — a quiet female sob, quickly cut short.
I had seen almost no women on the streets.
Now I understood why.
Rage rose from somewhere deep inside me. I shoved the door open hard.
It flew off its hinges, sailed across the room, and slammed into the wall, burying two dumbfounded jackals under it. It didn't just fall — it shattered into splinters on impact with the stone.
Hm.
Dead silence fell over the tavern. The full weight of the smell hit me: spilled beer, unwashed bodies, roasting meat, and the sharp bite of fear. The floor was slick with ale and littered with gnawed bones.
Inside, no fewer than fifteen bandits. All jackals. Their clothes were a mix of filthy robes, reeking leathers, and — on a few of them — pieces of stolen armor.
Along the walls and at the tables, young women stood frozen. Goats as well, with small horns and frightened yellow eyes. They held trays in their hands, their aprons stained, their eyes red from crying. One had a torn sleeve. Another had a visible bruise on her cheek.
At several tables, the bandit jackals had been helping themselves, and the women, horror written across their faces, had been tolerating it in silence, too afraid to make a sound. Those hands were now withdrawing slowly, moving toward sheaths and blade handles.
In the center of the room, at the main table, sat Sabo himself. I knew it immediately — he was larger than the others, dressed in expensive if filthy silk robes. His greasy hair was knotted into a slovenly tail, and cheap rings glinted on his claws.
And he did, in fact, have a metal tooth. A fang of dull silver that caught the light when his mouth dropped open in surprise.
Until my arrival he had been drinking from a cup and tormenting the women unfortunate enough to be in the room. Two goat girls were seated on his knees, held in a grip they couldn't break, his face buried in one of their hair. It was obvious how much they hated it — they were shaking and weeping silently.
Sabo slowly lifted his head away from the girl.
"What the—" he began.
"I'm looking for somewhere to eat," I interrupted him, stepping into the hall and over a groaning bandit pinned under the door's remains. "And I think I've found it."