Ah-leh!"
Qing Qishu flung his shield away and jumped up, hugging his knee.
Compared to Qing Qishu, Qing Jiuye had a much thinner build, but he was clearly far calmer.
At the sudden sound of Jiang Chen's voice, his first reaction was to retreat a few steps, turn sideways, and keep his arrow trained on Jiang Chen.
"Who are you?"
Without waiting for Jiang Chen to answer, he said to Qing Qishu, "You know him? Where did you dig up this helper? This is a matter of the clan's mutual hunt—you dared to bring in an outsider?"
By the end, his voice was extremely stern.
"Hss, hss!" Qing Qishu was in terrible pain, gasping cold air through his teeth, yet he still managed a reply: "Don't know him!"
You don't know him, yet you still act like you look down on everyone? Jiang Chen silently rolled his eyes.
He could be certain that these two were not any of the cultivators taking part in the Seven Stars Tower secret realm this time.
Then, were they people who had always lived in this world shone upon by the Jade Balance star? Or descendants of cultivators lost in the Seven Stars Tower secret realm in years past?
Both of them bore the surname Qing, they spoke of the clan's mutual hunt, and even their pronunciation was strange...
In any case, the two of them had to come from the same clan, and judging by how neither had held back in their clash, this mutual hunt was clearly no simple sparring match.
Calculating rapidly in his mind, Jiang Chen kept shifting his feet by tiny degrees, working himself free of that arrow's lock.
But Qing Jiuye kept his bow firmly drawn on him: "Please leave at once!"
Jiang Chen pressed a hand on his sword and shot back, "Where do you think would be a good place for me to go?"
He just felt this man was completely unhinged. I ran all the way here through untold hardship, and with one word you want me to leave?
"Return from whence you came. Do not make me warn you a second time."
Thinking of the dead-branch snake swarm he had just escaped, Jiang Chen still felt a lingering dread: "The place I came from is very dangerous."
Qing Jiuye raised his bow slightly, his hostility now obvious: "Where did you come from?"
This time Jiang Chen did not answer right away. Instead, he feigned surprise and glanced at Qing Qishu: "Why aren't you running yet?"
Although he did not think himself inferior to Qing Jiuye, the two in front of him were clearly bitter enemies fighting a duel to the death—he had no reason not to recruit an ally. If it really came to a fight, taking on the few with the many was the true way.
But...
"You'd better answer Chive Leaf's question honestly!" Qing Qishu snarled, very serious.
That seriousness lasted only a breath before the pain had him grimacing and baring his teeth again.
Even Jiang Chen was stunned.
He shot your knee to pieces! It hurts just to look at, and you're still taking his side?
What kind of bond do you two have?
Star-crossed lovers?
He was tempted to stab this fellow called Qing Qishu, to test whether the harder he was hurt, the more obedient he became.
But Qing Jiuye's bowstring was already fully drawn; clearly, if he didn't answer soon, he would face an attack—and from the look of things, quite possibly a two-on-one beating.
As the saying goes, when you're away from home, harmony is precious... ptui!
The main reason Jiang Chen didn't want conflict with them was that these two clearly had a clan behind them, and that clan was obviously the entrenched local power of this world shone upon by the Jade Balance star.
Kill two, and you'd likely draw out a whole nest. If a dispute could be avoided, it was best avoided.
So Jiang Chen smiled politely and, very cooperatively, pointed back the way he had come: "I came from over there."
Qing Jiuye frowned. Two emerald leaves clung to his eyebrows, trembling faintly with his frown—a rather comical sight. What style of face-painting was that supposed to be?
"The Land of Hidden Serpents?"
There was a question in his voice, but the next moment realization struck and he flew into a rage: "You dare fob me off with such nonsense!"
His hand relaxed; the arrow left the string.
Whoosh!
The short bowstring quivered; a sharp whistle rose.
When those earlier arrows had been loosed, Jiang Chen's attention had all been on the man.
Only now did he actually notice the arrow.
It was a wooden arrow, a purely wooden arrow, made entirely of wood—even the head was not iron. You could say it was nothing more than a sharpened tree branch.
Yet it was keen, astonishingly fast, and steady, carrying a simple, ancient air of ferocity.
It was already in his face!
Sword light blazed up, covering the three feet of space before him.
Jiang Chen instantly turned his sword into a circle.
It wasn't that he didn't want to simply cut the arrow down with one stroke, nor that he failed to catch its trajectory.
But at the instant the sword came out, the vigilance in his heart made him choose the fully defensive sword-circle.
He would not forget that just now, Qing Qishu had blocked with that Greenwood Shield, which looked formidable at a glance. By its trajectory the arrow should have been stopped, yet in the end it curved around the shield and punched straight through Qing Qishu's knee.
Toward the archery of this strange world, he refused to be careless.
Clang~
The wooden arrow struck the sword-circle with a ring like metal on metal.
The sword light scattered; the wooden arrow fell to the ground.
Jiang Chen's prediction had been right: the arrow's final point of impact did not match its initial trajectory. Though he had no idea how it was done, an airtight, all-around defense was clearly a good answer to this kind of archery.
Shock appeared on Qing Jiuye's face; he clearly had not expected Jiang Chen to stop that arrow.
"Ah-leh!" Qing Qishu shouted instead: "So strong!"
Is this guy an idiot? Whose side is he even on?
Jiang Chen found he simply could not read this strange, brawny fellow. Sword in hand, he fixed his gaze on the slightly more normal Qing Jiuye and said, "I don't know what this 'Land of Hidden Serpents' you speak of is, but I really did come from that direction. I'm not lying to you! If you attack me again, I won't hold back!"
Qing Jiuye fell silent.
Whether or not he was lying hardly mattered anymore. What mattered was that his arrow had been blocked... His arrow had been blocked—so what if the man was lying? Qing Jiuye was no fool; he had finally won the mutual hunt. Was he supposed to go rushing off to his own death?
"Ah-leh." At this point Qing Qishu spoke again: "If he can block Chive Leaf's arrows, then crossing the Land of Hidden Serpents isn't exactly impossible. After all, this is archery that even this young master failed to guard against in a moment of carelessness."
He looked at Qing Jiuye. "Chive Leaf, he might not be lying!"
This self-righteous confidence, so proud of its own order and logic... where on earth did it come from?
Qing Jiuye was too embarrassed to say anything. How could his arrows compare with the perils of crossing the Land of Hidden Serpents?
Hoping to ease the atmosphere, Jiang Chen offered an explanation of his own accord: "If the 'Land of Hidden Serpents' you mention means a place where snakes lie hidden, then I did indeed come from there. That place is full of snakes shaped like dead branches, extremely hard to detect. It took me great effort to escape."
Qing Jiuye exchanged a glance with Qing Qishu, then said, "So they were Hidden Serpents... They are the most insidious killers here."
So the dead-branch snakes were actually called "Hidden Serpents"—a name that lived up to itself. Dead-branch snakes, once hidden, were simply impossible to spot.
"So, can you put the bow down now?" Jiang Chen sheathed his sword first, as a show of good faith: "I mean you no harm."
Qing Jiuye shook his head: "No. The mutual hunt is not over."
He did, however, stop staring at Jiang Chen. He drew out another wooden arrow, turned around, and bent his bow at Qing Qishu.
Jiang Chen went silent for a moment.
This man was unexpectedly rigid.
Also—weren't you two just teaming up against me?
This Qing-surnamed clan really was impossible to figure out...
"Ah-leh!" Qing Qishu howled: "That one doesn't count! This outsider distracted me. Otherwise, with your third-rate archery, could you have hit me? We start over—we start over once my wound heals!"
"That's your problem." Qing Jiuye nocked the arrow to the string with perfect method.
"Wait!"
Though his head was still a complete mush, Jiang Chen screwed up his courage: "I'd like to ask—this 'mutual hunt' of yours, what is it for?"
Qing Jiuye was silent a while. Probably out of regard for Jiang Chen's strength, he answered: "We duel fairly. I take his head, or he takes mine."
Clearly, this "mutual hunt" was a rule of this Qing-surnamed clan.
As they say, when in a strange land, do as the locals do...
"Can we skip the head-cutting?" a voice asked.
Qing Jiuye flew into a rage. You, an outsider—how dare you challenge the iron law my sacred clan has upheld for hundreds of years? Too arrogant! Too presumptuous!
But he quickly discovered that the one who had asked was not that sword-wielding outsider.