Chaotic Times and Disasters: I Hunt Down Martial Arts Masters and Become a God

"Old Zhao?" Fu Qing's heart sank.

Old Zhao was someone who had always fought alongside Fu Qing.

During the battle of transporting grain through Black Wind Gorge, Old Zhao cheered him on from the back of the grain cart while brandishing his knife. Afterwards, he even said he would treat him to drinks for a month.

Before the mission at Langya Village, Lao Zhao was smoking and chatting with him on the training ground, saying that he would treat him to braised beef at the market after the mission was over.

Fu Qing immediately volunteered to lead the team to find Lao Zhao.

Zhou Tie hesitated for a long time. The area around Langya Village was now teeming with Di cavalry, and sending scouts to search for them was a high-risk operation in itself.

But he approved it in the end.

...

Fu Qing selected Xiao Lu and three veterans from the hundred-man team. The five of them traveled light, without horses, and walked the entire way.

We searched for two whole days in the direction of the last message Lao Zhao sent back.

In two days, the five men slept for less than four hours, eating dry rations with snow water, and stopping to carefully search every place they passed that could be used for hiding.

Xiao Lu was so tired that his lips turned white, but he followed Fu Qing without saying a word.

On the third day at noon, Fu Qing found Lao Zhao in a depression about thirty miles northwest of Langya Village.

To be precise, they found Old Zhao's body.

A half-withered, crooked tree stood alone in the center of the depression, with a person hanging from its branches, their neck tilted to one side.

There were more than a dozen knife wounds on the body, on the chest, abdomen, thigh, and arms. None of the wounds were deep and were not fatal.

He was tortured first, then hanged.

The body had been hanging in the wind for several days.

Fu Qing watched silently for a while, then reached out and untied Old Zhao.

Xiao Lu knelt beside Lao Zhao's body, his lips trembling and tears streaming down his face. He wiped the tears with his sleeve again and again, but they wouldn't come off, so he gave up.

Three veterans stood to the side, none of them saying a word.

One of them squatted down and straightened Lao Zhao's clothes, covering the knife wound on his chest.

Another person took out half a flask of wine from his pocket and poured it on the ground next to Old Zhao.

Fu Qing led three veterans to find some dry firewood and piled it under Old Zhao. Then, he bent down and picked up the pipe stem that Old Zhao had left behind, chipping off half of the pipe bowl.

That was knocked off when Old Zhao was excitedly tapping his pipe after the Battle of Black Stone Ridge.

When Fu Qing killed Guo Lie and two of his deputies by himself, Han Yue said he wanted to claim credit. Old Zhao was so excited that he banged his pipe on a rock several times, shouting, "I knew this kid was a ruthless man."

Fu Qing dug a hole in the ground next to him and temporarily buried the tobacco pipe in it, planning to come back and take him home after the war was over.

Then he stood up and lit the dry firewood.

"Walk."

Xiao Lu stood up, wiped away his tears, and kicked the crooked tree hard.

...

When Zhou Tie returned to the military camp at noon the next day, he was drinking tea in his tent.

Fu Qing walked in and placed Old Zhao's pipe handle on the table. Zhou Tie's hand, which was holding a teacup, froze in mid-air as he stared blankly at the copper pipe on the table.

Zhou Tie put down his teacup, picked up his pipe and stared at it for a long time. There were only two people in the tent, and no one spoke.

...

That afternoon, Zhou Tie convened a meeting of all officers of the scout battalion, from centurion rank and above.

The military tent was crowded with more than a dozen people. The centurions surrounded the sand table, and Fu Qing was one of them. The deputies stood in the back row.

Zhou Tie stood in front of the sand table, holding neither bamboo slips nor command tokens, and remained silent for a long while before speaking.

"Old Zhao has been with me for fifteen years, ever since I was a squad leader."

He placed Old Zhao's tobacco pouch next to the sand table.

"He went to Blackstone Ridge, he went to Blackwind Gorge, he went to many battles, both those you know and those you don't..."

"He fought the Di barbarians face-to-face on the grasslands, and he has no fewer than ten scars of varying sizes on his body. I remember which battle each scar was from..."

"Fifteen years have passed. He didn't die on the battlefield; he was hacked to pieces on the grasslands and then hung from a crooked tree, hehe..."

The military tent was deathly silent.

Han Yue stood in the first row with his arms crossed, while Lao Qian leaned against the wall with his head down, repeatedly rubbing the handle of his pipe with both hands—that pipe and Lao Zhao's were made by the same blacksmith and were the same style.

Zhou Tie turned around, picked up the map of Wolf Fang Stronghold from the corner of the table, walked to the center of the tent, and pinned the map to the tent wall with a slap.

"Go back and get ready, I'm going to wipe out that bastard's stronghold!"

...

In early March, the border troops decided to take down Langya Village.

Zhou Tie slammed the command arrow on the table in the military tent, and the five hundred border troops were divided into five hundred-man squads, with Fu Qing's hundred-man squad being assigned to the vanguard.

On the eve of his departure, Fu Qing put on the soft armor that Han Tie had given him at home. Song Yawei, with her already showing belly, helped him fasten the belt on the side. It took her two tries to fasten it. She couldn't bend over, so she could only reach it by turning to the side.

"I'm gone."

Fu Qing pressed a finger to each of their foreheads, then turned and pushed open the courtyard gate.

Five hundred border troops had already lined up outside the north gate.

Five hundred men set off under cover of night. Fu Qing led his hundred-man squad at the front, with fifty-odd veterans sandwiching forty-odd new recruits in the middle.

Xiao Lu followed beside Fu Qing, glancing back at the new recruits from time to time. The recruits were tense, and one of the shorter recruits kept squeezing and releasing the hilt of his knife.

Fu Qing didn't even turn his head. "Stop pinching. When we get there, you'll have your chance to draw your sword."

The short recruit's hand trembled, and he dared not grab it anymore.

At daybreak, the team arrived at a point five li outside Wolf Fang Village. Han Yue, with his scouts, had already ascertained the locations of the outposts and their changing times.

Wolf Fang Village was built against the mountain. The village walls were made of rough logs and earth and stone, and were more than two zhang high. A moat one zhang wide was dug outside the village gate, and the bottom of the moat was filled with sharpened wooden stakes.

Han Yue squatted down next to Fu Qing and drew a simple diagram on the ground with his dagger.

"There are about six hundred cavalrymen in the stronghold, one centurion at the Meridian Opening Realm, one deputy at the Meridian Opening Realm, four centurions at the ninth level of Body Tempering, and several personal guards at the seventh or eighth level of Body Tempering."

"This lineup is pretty impressive." Fu Qing stared at the simple diagram on the ground, his mind filled with thoughts of how many points these items were worth.

Han Yue sheathed the dagger in his boot, scoffed, "Scared?"

"I'm not afraid..."

Fu Qing shook his head. "I just think it's quite valuable."

...

At the coldest time of the early morning, five hundred border troops launched a simultaneous attack from three directions.

Han Yue, with his scouts, used ropes and hooks to scale the stockade wall. He silently slit the throats of two sentries with his dagger, and the stockade gate was opened from the inside, allowing the border troops to swarm in.

The shouts of battle erupted the moment the gates of the stockade opened.

Fu Qing scaled the stockade wall and led his men straight to the centurion's tent. His hundred-man squad pushed forward in a three-by-three assault formation behind him, scattering the Di soldiers in their path.

When they were thirty paces away from the tent, the eight guards outside the tent simultaneously drew their swords; two were at the eighth level of Body Tempering, and six were at the seventh level of Body Tempering.

The eight guards spread out in a fan shape, their swords flashing in unison.

Xiao Lu followed two squad leaders who flanked from the side, each keeping an eye on a seventh-level guard.

The remaining veterans formed small groups of ten, each entangling a seventh-level enemy.

Two more eighth-level cultivators stood in front of Fu Qing, blocking the tent entrance side by side, clearly not allowing him to pass.