The fated ones

Chapter 8

Feng jiu moved towards the man standing in her doorway and took him by the arm. She helped him back to the bed and to lie down comfortably. After he was fully comfortable and didn’t look like he was on the verge of passing out, she finally started talking, “I told you to stay put then why did you have to move so much? Are you purposefully trying to ruin your health or do you not know the meaning of staying put?”

He had no clue what had just happened. The girl he thought was frail and soft had, a few moment ago, defeated an entire battalion of soldiers alone. To say it specifically, she had not just defeated, no no, she had blown them away with one slash of her sword and the generals who had stayed ended up with their heads cut off before they could even realise where she had gone. The way she had played with them had left him feeling discombobulated. She had toyed with them with the ease of a cat playing with the mouse she caught before eating it. And those generals were no toys, he knew that. Those were the best professional assassins, all over the mainland. Their rival kingdom had inculcated them in it's army as generals. They had no morale or rules and fought only to kill. These ruthless killers had been a continuous source of headache for him over the years. They kept attacking the borders again and again, resulting in a continuous war with too much deaths and endless suffering for their kingdom. He had tried countless methods to kill them but none had worked. And she had sliced their heads off with such ease. To say he had a hard time wrapping his head around this fact would be an understatement.

After a while, he finally got hold of his tongue and tried forming a coherent sentence, “how….how did you…how did you do that?”

“that?” she asked confused.

“those assassins…” he said, trying to focus his mind, “how did you kill them ?”

“was I not supposed to?"

“no…I mean, yes… I mean it is good that they are dead but what I am trying so fruitlessly to ask here is how did you kill them so easily? Those are the best assassins from all over the mainland.”

“oh”, she said. She got up moved to her work table to make his medicine while he continued chatting on.

“those blood hounds are the ones responsible for my situation right now. early morning, yesterday, I was meeting with an informant of mine when 10 of them attacked me stealthily. They caught me unarmed and empty handed. I got away just in the nick of time, before the others could gather round too.”

Well, that explained their wounds. She kept nodding her head as he kept up his tirade of how deadly those assassins were and how much problem they had caused him and their country. Feng jiu didn’t understand what the big deal about those assassins were. Even the little dough, ah li fought better than them. The students she had trained in one of the mortal worlds would have had so much fun playing with them, she thought humorously. All she could understand from his tirade was that he was a part of the nobility or some high up from the court and even that wasn’t news to her. She had guessed as much from his robes and the air he carried himself with. The way he was talking, in no way could he be dong hua, she wondered. He just had a face similar to him. Donghua would be in the sky kingdom right now, lazing around by the pundarika pond, fishing and reading a buddhist scripture at the same time. No, this man certainly can’t be donghua, she reassured herself.

When the sound of his voice stopped, she looked up to see him waiting.

“I am sorry. I missed your question. Can you please repeat it?”

“I asked who taught you sword fighting?”

“an uncle of mine”, she answered. Well, mo yuan could be considered an uncle to her, albeit one very far removed and extremely old one, she mused.

“what a brilliant uncle you have, xaio jiu. You must come from a very strong family to have such strong fighting skills. Say where do you come from?”