THE SMILING PROUD WANDERER by Jin Yong

Imprisonment Part 4

When he first entered the tunnel, he had no intention to watch out for the four Manor Masters, but at the moment he simply couldn't help feeling his vigilance growing considerably. "They couldn't defeat me in sword tests. Could it be possible that they have lured me down here so they could imprison me here? There are gates after gates inside the tunnel, no one would be able to escape even if he was furnished with wings." That thought almost made him shudder. But with Mr. Huang-Zhong in front of him, Mr. Black-White, Mr. Bald-Brush, and Mr. Paint behind, and not a single weapon in his hands, he found himself quite helpless.

The third gateway actually consisted of four separate doors. Behind the iron door was a wooden door covered with cotton wadding nailed onto the door plank. Behind the wooden door stood another iron door, behind which was another wooden door covered with cotton waddling.

"Why have they placed two wooden doors covered with cotton wadding in between the two iron doors?" Linghu Chong wondered. "I got it. I suppose the prisoner has very formidable inner strength. The cotton wadding was used to absorb the fierce power from her palm and prevent her from breaking down the iron doors."

For the next one hundred feet or so, there were no more gates along the way. The oil lamps hung from the tunnel wall stood further and further from each other. In some sections of the tunnel, the oil lamps had long extinguished, leaving only complete darkness, and the pack had to feel their way forward for dozens of feet before seeing the next light.

The further they went, the harder it was to breathe, Linghu Chong found. Moreover, the tunnel wall and the tunnel floor had turned awfully damp. Suddenly, a thought came to his attention, "The Plum Manor sits on the bank of the West Lake. After walking for so long, we are probably deep underneath the West Lake by now. This person is locked up underneath the West Lake, not only is it impossible for her to escape by herself, it is also impossible for others to rescue her, because as soon as they dig open the tunnel wall, water from the lake would have poured in from above."

After another thirty or forty feet forward, the tunnel suddenly turned very narrow, and they had to bend their backs to proceed forward. The further they went, the lower they had to bend their backs. Another twenty feet later, Mr. Huang-Zhong finally held his steps and took out his flint to light up the oil lamp on the tunnel wall. Before long another iron-door came into view under the dim light, an iron-door with a square-shaped opening one-foot wide.

"Mr. Ren, Huang-Zhong and his brothers have come to visit you!" Mr. Huang-Zhong spoke toward the square-shaped opening, loud and clear.

"What? How could it be Mr. Ren? Shouldn't the person locked inside a female?" Linghu Chong was taken aback.

But no response came from the inside.

"Mr. Ren, we are very regretful for not having sent our respects to you often. We have come today to inform you of an important matter," Mr. Huang-Zhong spoke again.

Suddenly a hoarse voice bellowed from inside the cell, "Important matter my ass! If you've got horseshit, unload it now! If not, get the hell out of here!"

Linghu Chong was dumbfounded. Instantly, all his previous fancy disappeared like mist and smoke. Not only did the voice belong to an old man, the words this man used were also so crude that they had to come from the mouth of a street vulgar.

"Before, we had always thought that when talking about exceptional sword masters of our time, Mr. Ren would undoubtedly be ranked as the number one on the chart. But how wrong we were! Today we had a visitor to the Plum Manor. The four brothers of us certainly were no match for him; even Mr. Ren's sword art would pale into insignificance by comparison," Mr. Huang-Zhong said.