The Mercenary Brothers

The sun was slowly rising when Tang He woke up from his light sleep. It took him awhile to remember what had happened yesterday and to understand his situation again.

He had been taken and now he didn't have any control over his own life anymore. A yawn escaped his mouth…

"uuuuuaaaaaa"

Albeit the facts where very depressing the new day was actually able to wash them away a bit and bring with it some kind of hope and determination.

He is going to live! He is going to be happy!

Trying to blink the grogginess out of his eyes he looked around him and still found himself in the same waggon he slept in. Even though Su Liling was not awake yet all four soldiers were.

< Hey, maybe we can talk to them. They must be so bored… >

'Okay, let's try! We need to find out more about everything anyway.'

With that he finally turned around and stood up.

This action caught the attention of all the soldiers. Some of them were just curious what that young boy would try and others were instead happy in what would happen next as their boredom would probably stop. One of them even had a dangerous glint in his eyes.

Noticing all the different reactions Tang He came closer to them and sat down not too far from one of the most amiable looking guys.

"Hello, my name is Tang He. Sorry, that I didn't talk last night, I was feeling kind of under the weather…"

Immediately one of the more neutral looking ones scoffed back at him:

"We don't care what you say your name is. We were commanded to keep you here inside this carriage and that's all we are going to do. Don't even try and get some kind of good connections with us."

Another one added:

"We will not let you escape…"

Hearing all that Tang He didn't get demotivated and instead continued:

"Oh, I know I am staying here. That is exactly the reason, why I want to get to know you all. Aren't we going to travel for a rather long time together?"

The most pleasant looking one seemed rather convinced and replied:

"Hmmm, true… We are going to travel for a couple of weeks together until the young lord gets accepted into the immortal sect. Yeah alright, my name is…."

"Don't tell him! Don't you see he is fishing for information? He's a clever one" the dangerous looking one retorted.

"But what can he do, even if he knows?" countered the first soldier.

"Ah, stop it both of you!" a third one chimed in, "It is way too boring right now and aren't we doing our job if talking can prevent him from leaving?" he turned to the boy and said:

"Alright boy, those two are brother Hu and Fu and don't mind brother Hu too much," he turned to the guy with the dangerous look in his eyes "he is always someone very careful when it comes to completing missions."

The two in question nodded to Tang He.

"Next the quiet one there is brother Lei…"

"Yo boy!" The forth guy who still hadn't said anything greeted him.

"And lastly I am brother Huan…"

Tang He was noticing that they weren't telling him their family names and wondered whether it would impolite to ask about them but before he could by probably seeing the plight he was in Huan answered that question for him:

"We became sworn brothers when we became soldiers so we left any family names behind we had before. Now we are just brothers."

And just like that started a merrier round of conversation.

"Have you fought any big battles before?"

This was a pretty important topic in Frank's opinion. This era could be either full of peace or full of war everywhere. It was pretty clear that it wasn't extremely peaceful as there seemed to be trained knights and soldiers but still the question remained whether fighting was something that often happened.

Lei, the one with the battle scar on his face answered:

"Big wars are luckily very rare in the kingdom. Rebellious groups are normally annihilated before they can do any real damage and if there is any bigger trouble some of the sects around can help out as well."

Huan added: "We became mercenaries exactly because there was nothing going on recently and so we decided to travel the world. And just like that the Yang clan gave us a task to escort their young lord to the Everriver sect."

"Yup, that's more or less how we came to be in the young lord's service…"

Frank was intrigued: < So, there is a king and there are some kind of sects? If those have power how does the king keep his? >

"Is the king an immortal?"

That was the question it all boiled down to. What were immortals?

"Your village was really quite secluded, wasn't it? Have you never met with a cultivator before?"

Now Tang He was a bit confused. Why cultivators? What did they have to do with immortals?

"Haha, your face is priceless… 'immortals' is the name we mortals give to cultivators as they normally live longer and are way stronger than us." The one called Hu continued:

"You see cultivation is a very time-consuming thing… If one were to take the word literal we soldiers would be cultivators too just very low ones. Our trainer taught us how to strengthen the body and he was definitely strong, do you remember, brother Huan, how that guy was able to punch a whole tree into smithereens? Didn't you piss your pants at that time? Haha"

A small chuckle could be heard followed by a punch into an unexpecting face.

"Arrrgg, don't hit me brother Huan… How can you do that to your family?"

"Family? You have the guts to mention family after you say that? Pffhh"

All four of them started laughing happily. They were quite close from what Tang He could see.

"Anyway, the king is no active cultivator but I guess he is an immortal if you so want…"

Trying to understand Tang He asked again:

"So what is a cultivator then? Someone who trains his body?"

"I guess you could say that. We actually don't know exactly but we have heard that you not only need to train your body but your mind and spirit as well. Somehow you can use those to absorb energy from your surroundings…"

Lei too got excited: "Yeah I once saw a guy walk through the air as if he were on land…"

"Brother Lei, weren't you drunk that night? Any child would know that flying is impossible, right boy?"

Huan was looking at Tang He who nodded slightly and made a small "mhh" sound.

While that was happening, he was conversing with Frank about planes and other flying vehicles.

'If they knew, what was possible…'

< Well it isn't easy to build one even if you know a lot about planes. You need the right materials, fuel and flying it is a different story what-so-all. >

'What about a single flying human?'

< In general humans are not really strong enough to do any flying. But with the right constructs even that is possible in the short-term. But obviously not walking through air…>

Lei tried to defend himself:

"Hey, even though I was drunk I remember what I saw If you don't believe me then it's your problem…"

Another roaring laughter sounded out and this time it was actually loud enough to wake Su Liling.

Opening her eyes, she too started to realize what situation she was in. Again, tearing up she started crying out:

"Father…"

Listening to the crying girl made all the men stop laughing and Tang He tried to calm her down:

"Ling'er, everything will be fine… Surely your father is alright and you will meet him again…"

"Wuuuaa." Suddenly she stopped crying and looked at Tang He.

"It's your fault…" she first said it quietly almost nobody was able to hear it but very soon she repeated it, this time with fury in her eyes:

"Tang He, it's your fault that we are here!"

"Last time father ignored me for weeks because of you and now you made me lose him forever!"

"Do you hate me that much?"

"Why did you do that? Why?"

With the last sentences she started crying again as she knocked on Tang He's chest and shoulders. Silently he took her struggling form into his arms and embraced her.

"Everything will be alright…"

"No," *wuhuu* "it won't!" *wuhuuuu* "I'll never see father again…He told me so himself…" *waaaaa*

It appeared as if Su Xuefeng knew exactly what would happen next and tried to prepare his daughter for it, but how can you prepare a girl of ten for a life without her only parent?

Now she would depend on another man, a man who probably wouldn't even care too much after he had enough of her…

"Everything will be alright…"

Tang He tried to calm her down again and through all that talking she actually started to relax a bit. Then she too saw the soldiers next to them and after a moment of realization she started to blush and pushed Tang He away.

With a slightly red face she sat down again next to Tang He and the mercenaries and very soon all of them started talking rather happily.

She explained her life in the village, how her mother died when she gave birth to her and how her father was the best person in the whole village…

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A couple of days went by, just like that. Sometimes they would do a small stop to feed the horses. Frank had been very surprised when he heard how this breed of horses were able to walk for days without real rest as they would often sleep while walking. He had heard of birds sleeping in flight but walking is a different story as you normally can't just walk in one direction without turning and you would need some kind of muscle-tension to keep on walking.

They would talk about their lives, how training in the military was or how amazing their drill-inspector was. When the children had some questions about the world around them the brothers tried to answer them to the best of their knowledge…

There were many cultivator sects and schools in the kingdom, some were stronger than others and they appeared to have a lot of influence in the kingdom even though they didn't seem to want to rule it.

It was rather difficult to get into one as one needed to pass through some kind of test of talent normally or one needed to have the connections to get in. The brothers knew about those things because some of their comrades were actually able to get accepted to one of the sects after they finished training.

Often a sect would rule and control a certain area so for example the Everriver Sect had control over the near city of Everriver and its region.

In here the Yang clan seemed to be a very influential merchant family which was recently able to amass enough wealth to step into the cultivation world. Hence the head of the family sent his son to become one of those cultivators.

And so, they travelled and the children came to know about more and more things and most interestingly young master Yang Jie never came down to bother them – that was until a week had passed…