Chapter Ninety-One: Yang Shengtian’s Duel Challenge

Exactly!

Huang Xianlin cupped his fists toward the visitor and asked, “May I ask who you are, and what business brings you here?”

“I am Yang Shengtian, regional king of the Kingdom of Benevolence. Wang Chuying is my subordinate. Go back and tell your king that, one month from today, our armies will fight to the death with yours at Twin Peaks Mountain!” the visitor declared. As soon as he finished speaking, the beast he rode lifted its head and let out a long howl at the sky, as if showing off its power before Huang Xianlin.

By then, all of Huang Xianlin’s soldiers had already passed through the stone gate, and only three generals remained beside him.

Seeing the mount howl skyward, the three generals thought the beast was about to charge them. They immediately stepped in front of Huang Xianlin, each gripping the hilt of his sword, ready to draw.

Then Yang Shengtian placed his right hand on the beast’s head and said, “Little Black, calm down. No fooling around!”

With that, he sprang onto the beast’s back, seized the reins that bound its head, and said to Huang Xianlin, “General Huang, I thank you on behalf of the more than one thousand of our soldiers who survived your mercy in sparing their lives. But one month from today, when we meet on the battlefield, I will show you no mercy!”

Then Yang Shengtian called out, “Little Black, home!”

The beast let out another long cry, spread its wings, each as wide as two or three zhang, flapped them a few times, and flew off toward the sky above Twin Peaks Mountain.

Huang Xianlin watched Yang Shengtian and his mount disappear into the distance, standing motionless and dazed.

“So alike, so alike,” Huang Xianlin murmured, still gazing toward Yang Shengtian’s retreating figure.

“General, what are you saying? He’s already gone far away!” said the general named Zhu Hongxiu.

Only then did Huang Xianlin recover from his daze. He turned to his three generals and said, “Did none of you notice? This Yang Shengtian is very much like our General Wei Xiaoping.”

Only after hearing this did the three generals seem to wake from a dream. They all exclaimed that no wonder he had looked so familiar. Indeed, he was very much like General Wei Xiaoping.

“When we return to camp, none of you are to mention that this Yang Shengtian resembles General Wei. Anyone who lets even the slightest word slip will be dealt with under military law!” Huang Xianlin warned them.

He forbade his three generals from telling anyone outside that Yang Shengtian looked like Wei Xiaoping, but in his own heart he was already thinking about how to tell Wei Xiaoping about it.

Seeing Yang Shengtian’s resemblance to Wei Xiaoping that day reminded him of the disappearance of Wei Xiaoping’s younger brother, Wei Xiaofan, ten years earlier.

Wei Xiaoping had a twin brother named Wei Xiaofan. When they were about five years old, the Daoist master Xuanzhe took him in as a disciple.

Around the time the brothers were fifteen, one day they went out to gather medicinal herbs. As they passed through an ancient forest, Wei Xiaofan suddenly felt stomach pain and needed to relieve himself, so he stepped into the woods by the roadside.

No one expected that after entering the forest, Wei Xiaofan would never be seen coming out again.

According to Wei Xiaoping’s recollection, Wei Xiaofan had gone in only about ten paces from the edge of the forest to relieve himself.

Because the brothers were twins, and had been born from the same womb, they possessed a certain natural psychic bond.

This bond meant that if one of them was suddenly stabbed by something, or if one of them suddenly felt miserable and deeply upset, then provided they were not too far apart, the other would sense it too.

At the time, about five or six minutes after Wei Xiaofan entered the woods, Wei Xiaoping felt as though something had stabbed his heart; a sudden, wrenching pain seized him. The pain lasted only for the space of a blink or two before vanishing.

Back then, Wei Xiaoping did not think much of it and kept waiting by the roadside for Wei Xiaofan.

After a while, however, he suddenly remembered the special psychic connection between himself and Wei Xiaofan, and thought: Could this be some ominous sign?

Seeing that Wei Xiaofan had been gone for quite some time, he called out to ask whether his brother had finished relieving himself. Unexpectedly, after calling several times, he still received no reply. He immediately ran to the place where his brother had gone to relieve himself.

But when he reached the spot, there was no sign of his brother at all. Panicked, he searched all around the area, but still found nothing. In the end, he sat down where he was and sent out a psychic search to locate his brother.

The twins’ psychic bond had a maximum range of about ten li. Beyond that distance, its strength would weaken immediately, or even disappear entirely.

Where could his brother have gone? How could he have vanished so suddenly? Even within ten li, there was nothing to sense?

Wei Xiaoping realized how serious the situation was and immediately fired a distress signal into the sky, notifying the senior brothers in the monastery to come help search for his brother.

Unexpectedly, when the senior brothers arrived and used either light-footed skill or magical arts, they could not find him anywhere, whether in the forests or on the mountains, within a radius of hundreds of li.

For the next half year, Wei Xiaoping continued searching for any trace of Wei Xiaofan.

He scoured nearly every corner of half the Savage Continent, yet still found not a single reliable clue.

From then on, Wei Xiaoping temporarily set aside the search for Wei Xiaofan and instead threw himself into daily cultivation, training in martial arts, spells, and the Dao.

Even while training, he kept wondering whether Wei Xiaofan had disappeared of his own accord or been taken by someone else.

If his brother had run away on his own, then although both he and his brother had studied martial arts and magic under their master for ten years, the spells and light-footed techniques they had learned at the time were still nowhere near enough to carry them ten li away in just a few minutes. Moreover, the speed of the psychic search they could send out far exceeded the speed of their light-footed skill and spells. And later, when the senior brothers came to help search, they used magic to sweep through places within dozens of li very quickly, yet still found nothing. If his brother had been taken by someone, then based on the spells and martial arts he and his brother had learned at the time, though they had not yet reached even half of their master’s level, there were very few people in the surrounding area who could have abducted his brother so easily. Could it be that whoever took him far surpassed both him and his brother in magic and martial skill, or perhaps even surpassed their master?

Wei Xiaoping could never figure it out: how had his brother disappeared? He never gave up the thought of finding Wei Xiaofan.

Huang Xianlin knew of this because his own master, Daoist Master Xuanwu, was a fellow disciple of Wei Xiaoping’s master, Daoist Master Xuanzhe. In the past, Huang Xianlin’s master often took him to visit his martial uncle, Daoist Master Xuanzhe, so Huang Xianlin knew the Wei brothers as well. Not only did he know them, he had also become close friends with them.

Now that he had seen that Yang Shengtian, the regional king of the Kingdom of Benevolence, looked so much like Wei Xiaoping and was so similar in age, Huang Xianlin naturally thought of Wei Xiaoping’s lost brother, Wei Xiaofan.

So, after returning to camp, Huang Xianlin did not even have time to remove his armor before hurrying to Wei Xiaoping’s residence to tell him about the encounter with Yang Shengtian.

After hearing the news, Wei Xiaoping immediately disguised himself as an ordinary commoner the next day and went to the region governed by Yang Shengtian. He quietly investigated the local people, and once he reached the place where Yang Shengtian lived, he secretly activated his psychic sense to see whether he could catch any trace of his brother Wei Xiaofan.

Before long, the psychic resonance emitted by Wei Xiaoping’s mind encountered, sure enough, the same kind of resonance emanating from one person’s body, identical to his own. Only, that person had not sensed him in return.

Moreover, Wei Xiaoping also caught, through that psychic resonance, the other man’s thoughts as he searched for ways to deal with the Kingdom of Green Peaks.

In order to confirm whether this man really did look exactly like him, Wei Xiaoping lay in ambush nearby, waiting for Yang Shengtian to come out, wanting to see whether Yang Shengtian was indeed as Huang Xianlin had said, very much like him.

After a day or two, Wei Xiaoping finally saw Yang Shengtian come out. And sure enough, Yang Shengtian truly looked exactly like him.

Only, for some reason, Yang Shengtian could not sense him. More than that, Wei Xiaoping also detected that within Yang Shengtian’s mind and heart, there was often an ancient voice directing him to do things Yang Shengtian himself did not want to do.

After learning all this about Yang Shengtian, Wei Xiaoping returned to the Kingdom of Green Peaks, thinking all the while about why his younger brother Wei Xiaofan, now Yang Shengtian, had become like this, while also making arrangements for the duel with Yang Shengtian the following month.

Then, on a day one month later, the duel atop the mountain described at the beginning of the story took place.