Sword Among Us

Panda Novel

When Happy returned to the game, he wasn’t the first to mention the matter, but Xu Lang.

Right after logging in, Happy saw the five players sitting in a circle while talking to each other. When they saw Happy, Xu Lang immediately rushed to him impatiently.

“Senior Brother Happy, did you hear about the news online?”

“What?” Happy decided to be ignorant.

“It’s about stealing the tributes. After we lose the tribute, we can chase after the thieves and snatch the tributes from other sects. We talked about it just now. After all, the journey is long, and the rewards are not great. It’d be better if we lost it and searched for a chance to snatch other players’ tribute. I heard that once the emperor’s birthday is over, the tributes will become ours! Right now, there are plenty of players who are doing this.”

Xu Lang’s eyes shone brilliantly, and there was indescribable excitement and enthusiasm in them.

“What do you think?”

Happy swept his gaze over the other members.

The four of them looked at each other before nodding. Eleventh Crane said, “I believe with the current trend, someone will set their sights on us sooner or later. It’ll be hard for us the further we progress down this quest. Instead of remaining on the passive, it’d be better if we readily lose our tribute in the next wave of attacks. Then, let’s search for a place to train, and we’ll show up when the emperor’s birthday is around the corner and search for people with tributes in their hands.”

Happy nodded in his heart.

At least Eleventh Crane did not have the intention to be blindly dragged into the mud. Just this alone made the rewards he would gain later in the quest to be greater than most of the players who entered the chaos from the start, even if he did not have any tribute!

When he thought of this, Happy nodded and immediately agreed to it.

“Eldest senior brother, you agree to it? That’s great!” The joy in Orchid Researcher’s face could not be hidden. “But won’t the next group of people who get our tribute benefit from this?”

“Yup. Regardless of whether it is players or mountain bandits from the strongholds, just hand the tribute over.”

Once he finished speaking, Ghost’s Worry cast a glance at the four guards near the carriage, and the look that flashed in his eyes showed that he did not have the heart to watch them die.

“Don’t worry. If all of us run, they’ll run as well,” Xu Lang said to comfort him.

He had already investigated this matter. All guards would act according to the players’ will. If the players fought, they would definitely fight with everything they had as well. If everyone in their party fled, they would lose their moral to continue putting up the act of protecting the tribute.

The party’s hearts were at ease after they heard it.

*****

Beyond Yangzhou City was a fortress named Fortress in Clouds.

Over there was an empty piece of ground surrounded by smoke and dustA young man with a sheathed, hiltless, black longsword strapped to his waist stood there. He was bald and dressed in a Daoist robe while his fingers were hooked around his belt in a frivolous manner.

He moved about dozens of corpses, occasionally biting down on a green foxtail in his mouth. He was looking around and using his foot to kick a corpse from time to time to check whether he had missed any spoils of war.

The elements of not being saintly, not being moral, not being normal, and not being elegant were all rolled into one in that person, but they did not make him look grotesque. Instead, there was a strange harmony, which was quite intriguing.

“How poor.”

The young man walked around the corpses once before he spat out the green foxtail in his mouth in disdain. The green foxtail was now a messy ball. He smacked his lips, which now tasted bitter, and grumbled under his breath, “No wonder you lot always went out to rob others.”

Right after he finished speaking, light and relaxed footsteps came from behind him.

The young man quirked an eyebrow before he turned around.

“So, did you get anything?”

The person was a woman with a long fiery red gown [1]. She had a pretty face, and her voice was clear. She seemed to have endless life contained in her eyes, and all those who saw her would find their spirits lifted.

But the young man seemed to ignore all that. He cast a glance at the woman in the long gown and sighed instead.

“Let’s not even talk about it. This stronghold had fallen earlier. Before I even came here, it was already ransacked by someone else. Only a few mooks are left. What about you? How many goods have you robbed?”

“None.” The girl in the long gown looked very charming when she walked forward in a catwalk. When she heard what he asked, she spread her arms. “I listened to you and delivered the goods I stole.”

“Smart girl.” When the young man heard what she said, he finally gave the woman in the long gown another glance, and he put on a faint smile. “Everyone says that my little sister is smart, but I never thought so over the years. Today, you finally did something smart people do.”

“Enough. I know you’re smart, alright? Tsk… Are you supposed to act like this as my older brother? You only know how to make things hard for your little sister.” The woman in the long gown rolled her eyes at the man in vexation before she turned to the side. Then, she said spitefully, “I got news about the Gate Realm player you asked me to check, the one named Happy.”

“Oh?”

When the young man heard this, he looked up. “Are they in Yangzhou now?”

The woman in the long gown became even angrier. She glared at her older brother with her almond-shaped eyes.

“Zhou Yu! Why does it feel like all of your opponents are more important than your own sister?! How could you be like this?! Here I am, running around as your lackey for so long to get news for you, and you can’t even spare a single sentence to comfort me and show your concern for me?”

“Comfort? Are you hurt?” The young man who named his in-game character Zhou Yu put on a very exaggerated look of bafflement. “My dear sister, you don’t need any of my concern, do you? Who in World of Martial Arts can stop you from running away and manage to hurt you? This is me showing my trust in my younger sister. But if he can stop you from running away, it’ll be good. At least you can avoid not getting married.” The final sentence was spoken under the man’s breath in a very light tone.

“What did you say?”

The woman in the long gown glared at him again. She had very sensitive hearing.

“I mean that I believe that no one in the world can stop you from running away. By the way, you said the boy has entered the territory of Yangzhou? You didn’t attack him to test his strength, right?” Zhou Yu changed the topic.

‘It’s one of your old tricks!’

The woman in the long gown snorted lightly, but she answered without a hint of inattentiveness.

“He has indeed come, but he’s not that good. There were only a few Blessed Realm players who joined that offline martial arts tournament, and they were all very weak. I don’t understand why you should be paying so much attention to a Gate Realm player.”

“Don’t try to stir me into action. If you really think he’s nothing, you would have attacked a long time ago to test him and kill him. You wouldn’t have waited until now.” Zhou Yu looked at his sister with a smile. “If you had truly attacked, I would have definitely showed my concern for you as your older brother.”

“Hmph.” The woman in the long gown snorted contemptuously. She regarded this as beneath her attention. “With his abilities?”

Zhou Yu fell silent. He no longer spoke.

When the woman in the long gown saw that her brother had stopped speaking, she instantly found the situation much more boring, and a thought rose in her mind. “They’ll come here soon. Brother, our clan quest this time is to steal the Murong Clan’s tribute. Are you going to attack later?” Once she finished speaking, she looked at Zhou Yu with a face full of hope.

Zhou Yu brought out another green foxtail as if he had just conjured it out of thin air. He placed it in his mouth and chewed on it, making the green foxtail bob up and down.

“You know the answer yourself,” he said frivolously.

“How would I know what’s in your mind?”

The woman in the long gown turned her head to the side vindictively, but her ears were open and attentive.

Zhou Yu could do nothing else but shake his head and sigh. “I’m in the middle stage of Blessed Realm, and I have a high-tier martial art in the ninth realm. My body movement skill is at Grandmaster Realm, and my body fortification skill is also at Grandmaster Realm. If I attack a Gate Realm player right now, even if I win, it won’t be honorable.”

“Then why are you here?” the woman in the long gown asked in an incredibly disappointed tone.

She had always been very vexed by the results of the offline martial arts tournament. The champion had been snatched away by a brat in Gate Realm, and she regarded this in great scorn. She initially wanted her brother to kill Happy and upload a battle replay to whittle down that brat’s prestige, but by the looks of it, her big brother clearly did not share this thought.

Zhou Yu’s act of chewing his green foxtail paused for a moment, and a profound smile appeared on his stubble-covered face.

“It’s quiet here.”