Righteous Assassins

"Come, let's go have a seat in the back." The skinny man walked into the back room, where he had originally come out of earlier.

Jin Shu and Su Bing followed him. The back room was a workstation for inscribing, with a small lounge area in the corner.

"What are your names?" the skinny man asked after they all took a seat.

"It is polite to first introduce yourself, is it not?" Jin Shu countered.

"You litt—hm, hm. I mean, young people should introduce themselves first to their elders." The skinny man was about to curse but caught himself.

"Fine, I'm Jin Shu, and she's Su Bing." Jin Shu conceded, not wanting to argue with the man.

"Yin'er is Yin'er!" All of a sudden, Yin'er poked her head out of Jin Shu's robes, where she had been sleeping.

The skinny man recoiled in shock. "A Silver Sabertoothed Tiger!?"

Seeing Yin'er's silver fur, he mistook her for a Mystic Beast, the Silver Sabertoothed Tiger.

"No, she isn't a Silver Sabertoothed Tiger. She's a mutated Winged Tiger." Jin Shu took Linglong's advice and didn't let the man know that Yin'er was a special species, instead calling her a mutant.

"Is that so? Well, she certainly looks like a baby Silver Sabertoothed Tiger. On account of you paying me two Qi Stones, I'll give you some advice. Don't let anyone from the Wild Beast Sect see your little pet. Also, avoid any other stores like this one, as they are owned by the Wild Beast Sect." The skinny man wasn't completely convinced, but he didn't really care either way. Although he worked for the Wild Beast Sect as a freelance Runesmith and manager of their store in this city, he wasn't interested in Demonic Beasts like the disciples of the Wild Beast Sect.

"Anyways, back to the topic at hand, my name is Shou Nanren. You may call me Sir Shou," said the skinny man in a smug tone that made one want to smack him.

Jin Shu nodded silently.

Shou Nanren waited for a response for a few seconds. When he didn't get one, he cleared his throat and continued. "Hm, hm. The Concealment Rune that you would like to know about is an exclusive rune of the Long Family. They are the strongest cultivation family on this continent, and the masters of the Righteous Assassins. The assassins use a special type of mask, like the one you all have."

Jin Shu asked for clarification. "Where can we find this Long Family? What are the Righteous Assassins? Also, why did you seem afraid when we mentioned the Concealment Rune?"

"What!? I wasn't afr—! Well... maybe a little. You wouldn't understand; you aren't from the north. In the Northern Region where the Long Family lives, they are seen as a force of righteousness, but also terror. If you cross the Long Family and they deem you 'evil,' they send the Righteous Assassins after you. And no one survives those assassins." Shou Nanren paused for a moment.

"As for what the Righteous Assassins are, that is hard to answer. Some people say that they are orphans raised by the Long Family to kill their enemies, and others say that they are a group of brave men and women who battle against the corrupt and evil Demon Worshipers in the south. The only thing that is certain about the Righteous Assassins is that they answer only to the Long Family," Shou Nanren clarified.

"Do you know if there are any Runesmiths that don't belong to the Long Family who can fix our mask?" Jin Shu asked without much hope. They would most likely have to go to the Long Family to get the mask fixed, if they would even fix it for them.

Shou Nanren shook his head in silent denial.

Jin Shu handed two Qi Stones over to Shou Nanren. "Thank you for the information. Do you mind letting me borrow your workshop for a little while?"

Shou Nanren looked at the two Qi Stones in bewilderment, then back at Jin Shu. "For a Qi Stone, you could burn the whole place down for all I care."

Shou Nanren took the Qi Stones and walked away while staring at them with stars in his eyes, as if he was staring at the love of his life.

Jin Shu looked at Su Bing and asked her, "What are your thoughts on what we just learned?"

Su Bing didn't answer; she was looking down at her feet, lost in thought.

"Su Bing, are you alright?" he asked in concern.

"Huh? What did you say?" Su Bing looked up from the ground with a confused expression.

"I was wondering what your thoughts were," Jin Shu reiterated.

"Um... honestly, I don't really know what to think. I'm glad I got to know a little more about my father, how he was an actual Righteous Assassin. I always thought that my father was lying to me when he said he was a Righteous Assassin. And due to my grandfather saying how his son was his greatest sorrow, I believed that my father may have been a bad person. However, now that I'm thinking back, my grandfather never said he hated my father; maybe he was just sad that my father lived such a dangerous life. And now we know where to go to fix my father's mask; however, I have my doubts about whether or not the Long Family will help us." Once she started talking, all of her worries seemed to flood out.

"Well, I'm sure if the Long Family really is as righteous as Shou Nanren claimed, then they probably won't turn us down," Jin Shu tried to reassure Su Bing.

"Hm." Su Bing nodded weakly.

"Alright, I'm going to inscribe some runes on my weapon. I want to test something out." Jin Shu walked over to the worktable on the other side of the room. He pulled his pistol out and started to disassemble it.

"Uh... should I leave?" Su Bing asked cautiously.

"No, I don't mind you watching. I doubt you'll try and steal my inscribing method," Jin Shu replied nonchalantly.

Jin Shu grabbed the inscribing tool on the worktable and began inscribing Qi Storage Runes on all of the various parts of his gun. There were about fifty-one different parts, so this was going to take him a while.

---

After a few hours of inscribing, Jin Shu's Qi was running out. With a wave of his hand, a Qi Stone appeared on the table next to him. He placed his left hand on the Qi Stone and began absorbing Qi from it while continuing to inscribe runes.

He finished the Qi Storage Runes and then began working on inscribing new runes on his bullets. Before he left on this journey, he had created seventy bullets, each inscribed with a Sharpness, Flame, and Wind Rune. He now only had fifty-six left. Previously, he didn't inscribe a Frost Rune on the bullets for two reasons: firstly, because he didn't think he needed it—a Frost Rune would freeze and slow those affected by it, and Jin Shu believed that his bullets would transform those he shot with them into metal statues, making the Frost Rune useless. And secondly, because he wanted to save his Qi and time. Now he would have bullets that could both freeze and burn those he shot with them.

---

Jin Shu had to use two Qi Stones before he was done inscribing the runes. After he absorbed all of the Qi from the second stone, he was surprised to notice that the Qi in his core was nearly completely full. This meant he could break through to the next stage very soon.

He started to reassemble his gun when Su Bing spoke up from the side. "I've been meaning to ask, what is this strange weapon you use? I've never seen anything else like it before."

"This is my own unique weapon. As far as I know, there is no second one in existence. I call it an M1911. It uses these cartridges, called bullets, and fires them when I pull this trigger. It's kind of like a crossbow, except much more powerful." Jin Shu explained how the pistol functioned in a very brief way.

"Hmm...? You want to be an assassin, don't you?" he asked Su Bing, as she had previously said she liked his comments about her possibly being a great assassin.

"Well... I wouldn't say I want to be an assassin exactly, but I would like to be like my father, an assassin who fights against evil," Su Bing answered hesitantly.

Jin Shu pointed to the gun on the table and said, "I can't do it right now, but I could make you a weapon like this one, except silent. That would be useful for an assassin. At least, I think I can. I've yet to try inscribing a Silence Rune onto a bullet. I can also teach you a few stealth techniques." Although Jin Shu wasn't a trained assassin, he was a special forces soldier in his past life, and he had participated in a couple of covert operations in his military career.

"You will make me a weapon and train me!? Why would you make such a great effort for me?" Su Bing exclaimed in confusion, with a little excitement in her voice.

Jin Shu gave her a brutal explanation. "Yeah, if I'm being brutally honest, you've been relatively useless so far, although I'm glad for your company. However, if I give you a little training and make you a powerful weapon, you could become a great assistant for me."

"Ah... I'm sorry for being useless..." she said with a very sad, almost crying tone.

"It's not your fault. You just haven't been able to show the things you are good at yet," he reassured her.

"Anyways, now that we are done here, we can go to a blacksmithing shop, and I can borrow their forge to create a few new weapons." Jin Shu got up to leave, now that he was finished with his runesmithing.

Jin Shu and Su Bing walked out of the back room to see Shou Nanren sitting at the counter, gently wiping the surface of the Qi Stones with a bit of polish.

"Shou Nanren, I'm taking an inscribing tool. The extra Qi Stone I gave you should cover the cost," Jin Shu declared as he and Su Bing walked out of the shop.

---

Jin Shu and company walked into a blacksmith's forge. The blacksmith's assistant behind the counter welcomed them.

"Welcome to Zu City Forge. What can I do for you today?"

"I would like to rent your forge," Jin Shu told the assistant.

"Um...? Hold on while I check with the owner." The assistant turned and walked into the back where the forge was located.

The assistant came back about five minutes later with a tall, tan-skinned man, who was wearing a blacksmith's apron. "I've heard you want to rent our forge? How long do you want to rent it for?" the tan-skinned man asked.

"I would like to rent it for half a day. I will pay you fifty gold coins." Jin Shu said while placing a bag of gold coins on the counter.

"Haha! I like the way you do business, young man. Okay, the forge is yours for half a day." The tan-skinned man laughed and grabbed the bag of coins off the counter.

---

Jin Shu had decided that he needed more weapons after nearly dying to the skeleton. Before encountering that skeleton, he had underestimated this world, thinking that he could roam unabated. He didn't think that anything could survive when faced with his gun and the special bullets he had crafted for it. He also realized that he had no weapon that wasn't lethal, and he didn't want to have to kill everyone who slighted him, like some murderous lunatic.

He started with creating a non-lethal weapon—a baseball bat. He inscribed on it a Weight Increase Rune, Frost Rune, and Wind Rune.

Next, he was going to create something special that he had gotten the idea for recently while thinking about how his Living Metal bullets worked. Normally, when a gun fires a bullet, the bullet casing is ejected. Jin Shu had overlooked this fact when he created the bullets for his gun. With the way his bullets were made, with an Explosion Rune, the bullet casing should have exploded, in which case it would stop the gun from functioning. However, the casing didn't explode; it ejected properly.