90 Hard to Tell Friend from Foe

Sangkun and Jamuqa had staked everything on this one stroke and had brought nearly all their main forces out of the camp to assemble beyond its gates. Aside from the sentries patrolling the outer perimeter, only a few stragglers, women, and children remained behind to watch over the livestock and jewels. Cheng Lingsu and the others happened to be in a secluded corner of the camp, so no one paid them much attention.

Before the words had even faded, and before Cheng Lingsu could refuse him outright, Ouyang Ke suddenly blurred into motion and sprang close to her in a flash. Cheng Lingsu retreated two steps at once and flicked her wrist; silver needles shot from between her fingers.

With an exclamation, Ouyang Ke neither dodged nor blocked. He merely turned the folding fan lightly in his hand, and the silver needles struck the dark fan surface with a sharp ping before being deflected and sent flying away. Having knocked the needles aside, the fan did not pause in the slightest; instead, it spun on toward Cheng Lingsu’s head.

She twisted away, but the fierce wind raised by the fan’s ribs swept across her face, so powerful that it nearly stole her breath. In haste, she bent her slender waist and threw herself sharply backward. The loose strands at her temples flew up, and the fierce gust along the fan’s edge severed several black hairs, which fell rustling down.

Yet Ouyang Ke’s arm seemed to have suddenly gone boneless. The instant before it had clearly been before her, but in the next moment it curved through the air in an impossible arc and came around behind her. It slipped exactly beneath her bent waist, supported her at the small of her back, and with a smooth pull drew her toward him. Cheng Lingsu only felt her waist tighten before she was already locked in his embrace and, against her will, knocked straight into his chest.

The move was so swift it seemed like lightning and stone. Only then did the silver needle, knocked aside by the fan, finally strike the ground with a faint and nearly inaudible sound.

“Let go of me...” Cheng Lingsu struggled hard.

Her clothing had been dusted with Red Scorpion Powder for protection. Even if Ouyang Ke could force the poison from his body later, he could not escape the agony of touching it, pain like fire on contact. But when she had come, she had feared running into Tolui and accidentally harming him by brushing against her clothes, so she had worn a fox-fur short coat over everything to keep the poison contained. She had never expected to run into Ouyang Ke instead...

Ouyang Ke only felt that the slender waist beneath his hand, though wrapped in thick fox fur, was still something he could encircle with one palm, supple and warm, as though that softness could be felt straight through the pelt. Then he caught the faint, elusive fragrance on her body, and a pleased, roving delight rose in him. He tightened both arms to restrain her struggles and smiled in a frivolous way. “Relax. Even if you are not the least bit merciful when you strike, I could never bear to hurt you.”

In truth, although Cheng Lingsu’s martial arts were far inferior to Ouyang Ke’s, she should not have been defeated in a single move. The trouble was that Ouyang Ke had suddenly launched his arm from an utterly impossible angle, catching her completely off guard.

That strike was none other than the "Spirit Snake Fist" devised by the Western Venom, Ouyang Feng, after long contemplation and bitter training, taking inspiration from the twisting movements of snakes. When he throws a punch, the arm’s angle is as supple and elusive as a serpent’s. It seems to have bones and yet not to have bones, so uncanny and unpredictable that it is impossible to guard against. Ouyang Feng could never have imagined that this secret technique, intended to seize victory from a master in combat and not yet revealed to the jianghu, would first be used by Ouyang Ke upon a young woman today—and with such success as well, yielding soft fragrance and warm jade at once, and producing an immediate and splendid triumph.

Suddenly, from the distant main camp came the sound of uproar, along with shouts and cries. The clash of metal against metal and the ringing of armor could also be heard, faint but distinct, drifting over together.

Those voices were speaking Mongolian, which Ouyang Ke did not understand, but Cheng Lingsu did. It turned out that the sentries on patrol had discovered the men Tolui had cut down when he rushed out of the camp a moment earlier. The sentries were warning one another and preparing to search the camp.

Hearing that the search was moving in their direction, Cheng Lingsu’s mind turned. Just as she was about to cry out and try to draw them over, hoping to take advantage of the confusion and slip away amid the crowd, Ouyang Ke saw through her intention. He tightened his arm, and with a faint smile parting his thin lips, the corner of his mouth almost brushing her cheek, he said, “A few men like that can’t stop me.”

Before the words were even finished, he had already surged forward. By then the warning horn in the camp had just begun to sound. The soldiers who had managed to gather into a rough formation saw the two of them coming so swiftly and were about to shout them down. But Ouyang Ke’s movement was far too fast. Before the intercepting men could even raise their blades, a white blur had already swept past their sides.

In that instant as he passed them, Ouyang Ke freed one hand and, like a flash of lightning, brushed across their wrists and the sides of their necks, pressing and striking at several points. Just as he reached the camp gate, a chorus of anguished cries erupted behind him.

Once outside the camp, no one dared pursue them. Seeing that Cheng Lingsu kept staring at his hand, Ouyang Ke could not help asking, “What is it?”

Cheng Lingsu shifted her gaze from those jade-carved, elongated fingers to his face. “Wanyan Honglie and Wang Khan are, after all, supposed to be allies. Those were soldiers under Wang Khan. Why did you have to kill so many of them?”

Ouyang Ke had not expected that to be her question, and he laughed lightly. “I am the young master of White Camel Mountain. If I leave without teaching them a proper lesson, would I not be thought to have fled with my tail between my legs?”

Cheng Lingsu saw him lift his chin slightly, his expression haughty, and gave a cold sniff before saying no more.

Her master, the Poison-Handed Medicine King, considered the use of incurable poisons a grave taboo. Though known by the name Poison-Handed and famed for his poison craft, he was in truth a man of compassion. Especially after taking monastic vows in his later years, he had repeatedly instructed his disciples: poisoning a man is unlike blades or fists. It does not kill at once. If the other party can repent and beg for mercy, swear to reform, or if by mistake the wrong person has been harmed, there is still room to save them. For that reason, Cheng Lingsu’s poison work depended above all on ingenuity. Even when facing the fellow disciples who had betrayed their master, she always left a thread of mercy in her hand. In the end, even the candle containing Seven-Heart Begonia was lit only because their greed would not relent.

By contrast, the Western Venom, Ouyang Feng, was also an expert in poisons, but both his aims and methods were entirely different. He pursued only the refinement of all manner of violent and lethal toxins, seeking nothing but the swift death of his enemies. He would leave no margin for retreat, not even a breath of life for an opponent. Raised under such teaching, Ouyang Ke naturally could not understand Cheng Lingsu’s thoughts, much less imagine that there could exist in this world a poison user whose heart was so merciful.

But now that soft fragrance and warm jade were in his arms, he had no inclination to probe further. The girl in his embrace had a waist both supple and resilient, unlike those fragile maidens who were all softness and weakness. On her body lingered a heady fragrance that was intoxicating, as if he had been suddenly immersed in a garden of lush blossoms; and within that floral scent there seemed to be a faint trace of wine. Coupled with the coy reproach hidden in her eyes and brows, it truly was the sort of thing that could make one drunk without a sip.

He was just about to tease her a few more times when he suddenly noticed that the clear face before him seemed to sway ever so slightly.

“Mm?” Ouyang Ke narrowed his eyes and tilted half his face aside, his brows drawing together faintly of their own accord as he sensed that something was not quite right with him.

Cheng Lingsu’s eyes lit at once. She twisted forcefully at her waist, raised one hand to block between them, and with the other struck toward the pulse point of the hand that was locking her in place.

Ouyang Ke’s mind had grown hazy, as though drunk. He understood perfectly well how to break her move, how to counter with a follow-up, and how to turn the tables afterward. Yet when it came time to send force through his hand, for reasons he could not understand his movements were a beat slow. Worse still, the instant he moved, he actually staggered as well, allowing Cheng Lingsu to break free in one stroke. She even turned her hand and struck back at his chest.

“What is this?” Ouyang Ke was already unsteady. After taking her palm to the chest, and though Cheng Lingsu had not used much strength, he still toppled at once. Even the folding fan in his hand clattered to the ground with a slap. A dizzying whirl seized him, and the world before his eyes began to blur little by little.

Having escaped him, Cheng Lingsu reached into her bosom and took out the two blue blossoms she had hidden there beforehand. She held them up and shook them in front of his eyes.

“Impossible!” The deep blue flower buds trembled softly in the wind, looking frail and helpless. Ouyang Ke, whose eyes were already almost unable to focus, recognized them at once as the strange little flowers he had seen Cheng Lingsu holding beneath the cliff and later planted beside her bedchamber. “I examined those flowers beforehand. They were clearly not poisonous...”

Cheng Lingsu smiled faintly. “Very well, I’ll teach you something useful. Though my tent may not be exactly a place of constant traffic, people do come and go from time to time. Since these flowers were placed in my tent, it would hardly do for them to harm someone at random. So long as no one touches them, they are naturally harmless. Unless...”

Ouyang Ke suddenly understood. “The wine...”

“Not too stupid after all.” Cheng Lingsu gave a soft laugh. While the struggle just now had loosened her hair, she tucked the scattered strands behind her ear, then pressed the back of her hand against the forehead already slightly reddened by the sun. “These blossoms have a rich fragrance and are harmless in themselves. Only after wine is added do they become truly intoxicating.”

Ouyang Ke had grown up rolling through poison all his life and should have been highly wary of strange flowers and uncommon herbs. Yet when he saw Cheng Lingsu take this flower out beneath the cliff, he had been alert for only a moment. Later, finding that the fragrance contained no anomaly, and then personally sneaking into Cheng Lingsu’s tent to inspect it, where he confirmed that although the flowers were fragrant they were indeed not poisonous, he had formed a fixed assumption in his mind and thus let down his guard.

These flowers had been cultivated by Cheng Lingsu according to the method she had once used in a former life to grow "Nectar Fragrance." Their scent was like strong liquor, intoxicating a person without a trace. Ouyang Ke had already inhaled a little of that fragrance in Cheng Lingsu’s tent, but relying on his deep internal strength, such a measure of wine was not enough to make him drunk in the short term. If he had not just now been thinking impure thoughts and kept holding Cheng Lingsu tightly, treating the flower fragrance she had deliberately drawn from her handkerchief as the scent of a maiden and breathing it in again and again without the slightest caution, then this so-called Nectar Fragrance, cultivated in the desert, would never have been able to do more than a fraction of what it had in her former life—and it would truly have been unable to do anything to the young master of White Camel Mountain.

Having fallen into the same trap before this young woman more than once, Ouyang Ke’s heart, however unwilling, could no longer withstand the thick wine haze surging up in his head. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier; the consciousness he had forced to stay together began to scatter little by little; the alarm in his heart only sharpened, yet his awareness drifted farther and farther out of his control...

Just as he was burning with anxiety, he felt someone lightly touch him in his arms. Then, by his ear, came a faint whisper: “This Nectar Fragrance is like drinking strong liquor, but it harms no life. You only need to be drunk for a while...”

At once there came a sharp whistle, and the beat of hooves drew near from far away. After a brief pause, they gradually faded into the distance...

One man can devise one uncanny move after another with the Spirit Snake Fist; another can cast forth a poisonous fragrance that spreads in all directions. So tell me—when Ke Ke faces Ling Su, who is the one who wins? Wahaha.