Chapter 3. THE BIRTH OF LOKAJAYA THE OUTLAW
Morning in the Duchy of Tuban was no longer ushered in by birdsong or the cries of merchants in the market, but by the pounding footsteps of hundreds of mounted soldiers splitting the dusty streets. Flags bearing the red shrimp—the symbol of the Duchy of Tuban's grandeur—flew at half-mast at the four corners of the city gates. The robbery of Ki Demang Seca's house in the east, followed by the distribution of thousands of gold coins to debt-ridden villagers, had transformed unease in the palace into open panic.
Inside a secret meeting room behind the main building of the ministerial compound, the atmosphere felt suffocating. No sunlight was allowed to pierce the thick, dark-red velvet curtains. Only a few hanging oil lamps cast a reddish glow, reflecting the long shadows of those present.
Patih Sasrabahu sat in a carved teakwood chair bearing a garuda motif. Before him stood three powerfully built men, their postures arrogant. They wore no duchy military uniforms, but were dressed entirely in black, in thick canvas cloth, with red cloth belts wound around their waists. Carved across their chests were black skull tattoos with two crossed swords—the proud symbol of the Black Skull Compound, a group of the most cold-blooded hired killers along Java's northern coast.
The man standing in the middle was named Ki Ageng Rangga. His expression was cold, with hollow cheeks and a pair of small eyes that never blinked. A pair of curved, snake-shaped poisoned daggers was tucked into his left hip, while his right hand, black as coal, was covered in burn scars—the distinctive mark of the master of the Blood-Palm Technique, which could damage an opponent's internal organs with a single touch of the palm.
"I didn't summon you here to exchange news, Rangga," Patih Sasrabahu said in a deep, measured voice. "You've certainly heard what happened at the western rice granary and Demang Seca's house."
Ki Ageng Rangga gave a soft chuckle. His voice was hoarse and sharp, like two rusted blades scraping together. "A night rat calling himself Lokajaya the Outlaw, is that it? Why would the chief minister go to the trouble of summoning us just to catch a starving thief?"
Patih Sasrabahu tossed a small cloth pouch onto the table. It flew through the air and landed directly in front of Ki Ageng Rangga's feet. The chime of pure gold echoed through the silent room.
"There are fifty pure gold coins in that pouch," Patih Sasrabahu said, his eyes narrowing sharply. "That's only the advance payment. I don't care who he is, where he came from, or what arts he possesses. I want his head mounted on an execution stake in the town square before this week is over. Lokajaya is more than a thief. He's beginning to fan rebellion in the hearts of the common folk!"
Ki Ageng Rangga glanced at the gold coins beneath his feet. With one casual movement, he flicked the cloth pouch into the air with his foot and caught it effortlessly.
"That masked boy uses nerve-locking techniques and a weightless body-lightening art," Rangga said with a contemptuous smile. "Your soldiers can't catch him because they're trained for open warfare, not to hunt a demon of the night. But for the Black Skull Compound... killing people in the dark is our specialty. We'll bring you his head, Chief Minister. Along with the black scarf covering his face."
While the dark alliance in the ministerial compound began weaving its web of slaughter, Raden Said was in the rear courtyard of the Duchy Palace.
That morning, Said wore spotless white training clothes. In his hands, he held a thick, heavy teakwood sword. Standing before him was Ki Demang Jalak, the duchy's chief silat instructor, who had served for three generations. Ki Jalak was an old war veteran, thin of body but with skin as hard as copper, and a pair of clear eyes that seemed capable of seeing straight into the depths of his student's soul.
CLANG! CLANG! THUD!
The clash of two wooden swords rang through the morning air again and again. Said's movements were so fast they flowed like a flash flood crashing against a reef. His wooden sword slashed, thrust, and spun through a combination of the Pandawa Lima Technique—one of the palace's highest silat techniques. Every one of Said's slashes drove out a burst of inner force strong enough to strip the mango trees around them of their leaves.
Yet Ki Jalak parried every attack with only small, efficient movements. The old man did not answer force with force. Instead, he shifted the angle of his body by a few inches, letting Said's slashes pass through empty air before touching the tip of his wooden sword to Said's chest.
TAP!
Said stopped instantly. Ki Jalak's wooden sword was pressed precisely against his solar plexus.
"Your movements are too passionate, Raden," Ki Jalak said softly as he withdrew his wooden sword and bowed respectfully. "Your sword moves quickly, but your mind is somewhere else. You're fighting with pent-up anger in your chest."
Said lowered his wooden sword and wiped the sweat pouring down his forehead with his sleeve. He exhaled slowly, trying to steady his racing heartbeat.
"Forgive me, Master Ki," Said said quietly, bowing. "I just... feel a little distracted by the news that's been spreading throughout the duchy lately."
Ki Jalak studied his favorite student with a deeply searching gaze. A faint glimmer of understanding showed in his old eyes, but he chose to keep his observations to himself.
"You mean the news about Lokajaya the Outlaw?" Ki Jalak asked as he walked toward a bamboo platform at the edge of the training yard.
Said nodded, following his teacher and sitting beside him. "The people out there praise him as a hero, while the officials condemn him as a devil-blooded criminal. I'm just confused, Master Ki... in the martial world and affairs of state, where is the line that truly separates good from evil? Can a thief who gives what he steals to the hungry really be called evil, while an official who hoards rice as his people starve be called righteous simply because he possesses the seal of the law?"
Ki Jalak picked up an earthen cup filled with warm, unsweetened tea and took a slow sip before answering.
"This world has never been as simple as black and white, Raden," Ki Jalak replied in a low, soothing voice. "Human laws are made by those who hold power. More often than not, those laws are designed to protect the people above, not the people below. But... taking another person's rights through violence, whatever the reason, still plants the seeds of darkness."
Ki Jalak turned and fixed Said with a sharp look. "Even a thief with good intentions still plucks fruit from a poisoned tree. When pure intentions are carried out the wrong way, they ultimately give birth to an endless cycle of vengeance and bloodshed. If Lokajaya continues using his current methods, sooner or later, he will have to pay the price for the seeds he has planted."
Ki Jalak's words struck straight at the center of Said's awareness. His chest rumbled. He understood the old teacher's logic, yet his conscience, which had witnessed the misery in the rickety huts with his own eyes, refused to accept that passive truth. To Said, waiting for the law to change on its own was the same as allowing dozens of lives to be lost every day.
"Then what should be done when the law itself has become an instrument of oppression, Master Ki?" Said pressed, his eyes flashing.
Ki Jalak smiled bitterly and squeezed his wooden staff. "Someone must become strong enough and wise enough to change that law from within, or become so pure that he can awaken the human heart without ever drawing a sword. But the second path... requires a fortitude beyond anything an ordinary person can imagine."
That night, black clouds hung thick across the sky above Tuban, veiling the half-moon. The sea wind blew harder than usual, carrying a heavy scent of salt and the smell of wet earth that foretold a downpour soon to come.
Raden Said once again donned his black mori cloth. Behind the face covering, his breathing was steady. Tonight, he had no intention of robbing an official's house or a duchy granary. He had received information from one of the village youths that a convoy of carts belonging to a wealthy merchant allied with Patih Sasrabahu would pass along a trail in Kencana Teak Forest. The carts carried confiscated goods—jewelry and livestock seized from dozens of farmers in the southern region.
Using the agility of the Kapuk Ranandhu art, Said leaped from branch to branch among the towering teak trees. His movements made no sound, like the shadow of an owl hunting in the night.
But the moment Said landed on a thick branch overlooking the trail below, his sharply trained sixth sense suddenly rang out. A strange cold pricked the back of his neck—not the chill of the night wind, but the intensely concentrated chill of a killer, a pematang sangkal!
Something isn't right, Said thought at once.
Below, the trail appeared deserted. There was no jingling of cart wheels or crack of a horsewhip. There was only a dead silence—even the crickets and night frogs that usually filled the darkness with noise had abruptly fallen completely silent.
Before Said could leap backward to assess the situation, three poisoned arrows shot out from the darkness of the brush on the other side of the trail!
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
The arrows flew with extraordinary speed, aimed at three deadly nerve points in Said's chest and neck.
With lightning-fast reflexes, Said drew his slender sword from his waist.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Said's thin steel blade flashed through the air, snapping all three poisoned arrows in half before they could touch him. Sparks flew as steel struck the iron arrowheads.
"Who's there?!" Said shouted in a deep, disguised voice. "Come out!"
A cold, hoarse laugh answered Said's shout from the darkness beneath the trees.
"Your nose is pretty good, Masked Boy," the voice said. Three powerfully built figures in black clothes marked with skull tattoos stepped out from behind the teak trees. At the very front, Ki Ageng Rangga advanced slowly, a poisoned dagger ready in each hand.
"The Black Skull Compound..." Said whispered. He recognized the tattoos on the chests of his attackers. He knew the compound's evil reputation well: a group of killers who did not hesitate to use underhanded methods for gold.
"You've become quite famous lately, Lokajaya the Outlaw," Ki Ageng Rangga said, narrowing his eyes. "The people praise you, the officials curse you. But to us, you're nothing more than fifty pure gold coins walking through the night."
"You were hired by Patih Sasrabahu," Said said coldly, gripping the hilt of his slender sword.
"Who pays us doesn't matter!" shouted one of Rangga's men, who wielded twin axes. "What matters is that tonight your body will be chopped into five pieces!"
The ax-wielding henchman leaped first. His massive body shot through the air, both axes swinging in a crossing motion meant to split Said's chest.
Said did not act rashly. He leaped down from the tree branch, spinning through the air to avoid the ax blades. The instant his feet touched the ground, the second henchman, wielding a spiked chain, struck from behind!
The iron chain wrapped tightly around Said's right arm—the one holding his sword!
"Got you!" the chain wielder shouted as he pulled with all his strength, trying to slam Said's body into the ground.
But Said did not let himself be dragged away. Instead, he used the force of the pull to accelerate toward the chain wielder. Relying on the agility of the White Eel Technique, Said slid beneath the stretched chain, closed the distance with his opponent, and landed a finger strike in the man's left armpit.
TAP!
The finger strike immediately severed the chain wielder's flow of pure energy. His arm went limp, and the chain coiled around Said's arm fell away on its own. Said spun and delivered a powerful roundhouse kick straight to his opponent's jaw.
THUD!
The chain wielder was hurled five meters backward, unconscious, blood spilling from his mouth.
"Useless trash!" Ki Ageng Rangga cursed as he watched his henchman fall with ease. He looked at the ax wielder. "Advance together! Use the poison!"
Ki Ageng Rangga himself no longer held back. He leaped forward, his pair of poisoned daggers moving like two venomous snakes striking at once. Every time his daggers flashed, the air around them carried the distinctive foul smell of Corpse Flower poison—a deadly toxin capable of paralyzing the lungs through nothing more than inhaling the air around the wound.
Said was pressed hard. He had to fight while holding his breath so he would not inhale the poisonous vapor. His slender sword clashed rapidly against Rangga's twin daggers and the ax wielder's blows.
CLANG! CHING! CLANG!
Twenty techniques passed in a matter of seconds. The silent teak forest now roared with the clash of weapons and bursts of inner energy. Said realized that Ki Ageng Rangga was no mediocre fighter like the guards he had faced before. The old man had decades of experience in life-and-death combat, and every one of his movements targeted the most lethal points without the slightest hesitation.
While Said was busy parrying a twin-ax slash from his right, Ki Ageng Rangga spotted a small opening in Said's left ribs. With a cruel smile on his hollow-cheeked face, Rangga shot out his right palm, which had turned a deep, bloody black—the Blood-Palm Technique!
"Drop dead, Lokajaya!" Rangga shouted.
The poisoned palm struck Said squarely in the left ribs!
KRAK-BOOM!
A heavy impact echoed through the forest. A deadly heat shot through Said's black mori shirt, searing his skin and shaking the organs inside his chest. Said was hurled several meters backward, crashing into a massive teak trunk hard enough to split the wood.
Ghhk!
Fresh blood sprayed from Said's mouth, soaking the inside of his face covering. His chest felt as if it were being burned by a searing fire gnawing through his blood vessels. Excruciating pain stabbed all the way to his spine.
"Hahaha! No human can survive my Blood-Palm Technique!" Ki Ageng Rangga laughed as he approached Said, who knelt in pain, clutching his bruised and blackened left ribs. "That pain will spread to your heart within a hundred seconds. Now, let's see the face behind this arrogant mask!"
The twin-ax henchman laughed excitedly and moved closer to pick up Said's sword, which lay on the dusty ground.
In that critical space between life and death, Said's mind suddenly grew still. Master Jalak's words from that morning echoed through his thoughts once again: Your sword moves quickly, but your mind is somewhere else. You're fighting with anger...
Said closed his eyes behind the mask. He stopped trying to fight the burning pain in his chest with anger. Instead, he drew a deep breath through his nose and channeled all of Suryakanta's pure energy—the highest healing and inner-defense art of the Duchy of Tuban's ruling family—straight toward the poison's center in his left ribs.
Warm pure energy, like the light of the morning sun, enveloped Rangga's black poisonous energy, slowly neutralizing it in an invisible battle of inner forces within Said's body.
The blood in his chest, which had initially congealed, began flowing freely again. The burning heat gave way to a restorative warmth.
When the twin-ax henchman reached out to pull away Said's face covering, Said's eyes flew open. His pupils no longer radiated pain, but instead blazed with an astonishingly bright golden light!
"What?!" the twin-ax henchman cried in shock.
Before the man could pull his hand back, Said was already standing upright. Moving with speed far beyond anything he had shown before, Said spun and swept his right palm forward in the Ocean Wave Technique!
BOOOM!
A tremendously powerful blast of pure inner force exploded from Said's palm. The twin-ax henchman was hurled dozens of meters through the air, smashing into the teak trees before falling to the ground, limp and unmoving.
Ki Ageng Rangga took two full steps backward, his hollow-cheeked face deathly pale. "How... How could you neutralize the Blood-Palm poison so quickly?! What technique did you use?!"
Said retrieved his slender sword from the ground. His voice was no longer disguised into a deep register. Instead, it rang with extraordinary authority and inner power, radiating an unstoppable aura of majesty.
"Your evil art can only damage flesh, Rangga," Said said as he stepped forward, each footfall making the dry leaves on the ground tremble. "But the art that defends truth... is protected by the Almighty!"
Feeling cornered and panicked, Rangga roared like a wounded beast. He summoned every last reserve of his inner force, turning both palms a deep purplish black. He leaped at Said with a barrage of attacks, no longer caring about defending himself.
"Die! Dieee!" Rangga screamed hysterically.
Ten dagger slashes and three thrusts from poisonous palms flew wildly toward Said's body.
But Said was no longer fighting with anger. His eyes watched Rangga's every movement with perfect surrender and calm. With graceful steps like a dancer moving across water, Said avoided each poisoned dagger strike by a margin no wider than a thread.
At the climax of the battle, when Rangga thrust both palms simultaneously toward Said's chest, Said tilted his body, letting the poisoned hands pass beside his ears. At the same time, Said swept the hilt of his slender sword—not its sharp blade—straight toward Rangga's solar plexus and the three primary nerve points in his neck!
TAP! TAP! TAP!
Three strikes of astonishing precision rang out.
Ki Ageng Rangga froze in place. His eyes bulged wide, and his poisoned daggers slipped from his fingers and fell point-first into the ground. The entire flow of pure energy within his body suddenly reversed, destroying the core of his own cultivation from within.
The old leader of the Black Skull Compound slowly dropped to his knees before Said. His mouth hung open, but no sound could escape his throat, which had been coated by his own poison as it turned back upon him.
"You... You're no ordinary bandit..." Rangga whispered with the last of his strength before his body crumpled to the ground, losing all consciousness—and his supernatural power—forever.
The battle in Kencana Teak Forest was over. The forest fell silent again. A light drizzle began to fall, washing away the stench of poison and soaking the dry earth scarred by the traces of the fierce battle.
Said stood alone in the center of the battlefield. His black mori shirt was torn at the left ribs, revealing a dark bruise that was slowly fading back to his natural skin tone. He wiped the blood from his lips and stared at the bodies of the three hired killers sprawled on the ground.
Relief filled his chest because he had survived the deadly trap, but at the same time, a deep sorrow pressed ever more tightly against his soul. He realized that this attack by the Black Skull Compound was only the beginning. Patih Sasrabahu and the threatened officials would never stop until he was dead.
The name Lokajaya has now been written in blood and battle, Said thought as he sheathed his slender sword. I can no longer act alone without weighing the consequences. This war has begun.
Said leaped onto a teak branch, letting the rain wash away the remnants of blood and dust from his body as he disappeared into the darkness of Tuban's night, ready to face the next turn of his fate, which burned ever hotter with the coming dawn.