Master Wu gave chase after Fu Baiyu, his kicked saber having nearly cut Zhuge Jingzhan down.
This had truly frightened Zhuge Jingzhan.
Zhuge Jingzhan immediately called out: “Guard me and move — now!”
Several guards immediately broke off and returned to him, two of them flanking Zhuge Jingzhan on either side and lifting him into a sprint. Both men were exceptionally strong — carrying a person between them as they ran, it was as though they were skimming the ground in flight.
Their toes barely touched the tender new grass just breaking through the soil, and they could shoot forward an enormous distance.
It seemed as though Zhuge Jingzhan would be caught at any moment — when suddenly, from above, a white blur flashed through the sky.
The rearmost guard heard the sound and turned to look. He saw nothing — the white blur had already shot past him.
Ye Zhangzhu.
As Ye Zhangzhu passed the rearmost guard, he seized the guard’s shoulder and flung him backward — a large and powerfully built man, sent flying backward like a hurled chicken, limbs flailing. He crashed into something with a thud. Ye Zhangzhu didn’t even look; he lengthened his stride and went after Zhuge Jingzhan.
What the man had hit was a tree. Unluckily, there was a broken stub of a branch — it emerged from his chest.
Three more guards still ran at Zhuge Jingzhan’s back, with Ye Zhangzhu closing on them fast.
Two of them turned, and two sabers came sweeping down at him from left and right simultaneously.
Ye Zhangzhu thrust both hands forward — his two great sleeves surged out like dragons erupting from the sea and slammed into both men. Two dull impacts, and both guards were sent flying backward.
The blow of his sleeves against their bodies shredded their clothing and seemed to scrape away a layer of flesh along with it.
Both men fell backward with arms fully spread, and neither moved after landing — clearly dead in an instant.
The third guard, witnessing this, dared not strike. He wheeled and bolted to the side.
Ye Zhangzhu’s sleeve swung and caught this man at the back of the head — the man’s skull seemed to burst open, a mist of blood.
The two guards carrying Zhuge Jingzhan went pale with fright. They concentrated entirely on pushing forward as fast as they could — now was no time to conserve strength; they squeezed out everything they had.
It seemed as though he was about to close the distance — when suddenly from the air came a single resonant sound.
Like someone plucking a zither string from atop the clouds.
Ye Zhangzhu’s eyes sharpened. His body came to an abrupt stop. Before him, a white light flashed — then something seemed to drive itself instantly into the earth.
Then the white light flew back — like a snake’s tongue darting back into its mouth, at a speed the eye could barely follow.
Someone descended from the air, landing to stand between Ye Zhangzhu and his quarry. The figure looked for all the world like a young farmhand just returned from the fields.
He wore short-sleeved attire — plain grey cloth, nothing exceptional. His upper sleeves were rolled up, his trouser legs rolled as well.
If this man held a hoe in his hand right now, no one would question his identity for a moment.
But in his hands was not a hoe. It was a long, narrow bundle.
More precisely — a long cloth bag, the kind one might use to hold an umbrella. The mouth of the bag had a drawstring; pull it and the opening cinched shut.
He stood there, cradling it. The bag’s mouth was open, yet what was inside had not been removed — that flash of white light must have shot out from the opening.
Ye Zhangzhu’s brow furrowed slightly. He looked down at the ground — the hole punched into it was not large, like the kind left by a metal spike driven in hard.
Had Ye Zhangzhu been a fraction slower, that hole would not be in the ground but in his body.
The young farmhand turned to look back at Zhuge Jingzhan, his eyes playful — as though mocking Zhuge Jingzhan’s disheveled state.
Yet when Zhuge Jingzhan saw him, he finally managed to let out a long breath.
“Good thing you came quickly.”
Zhuge Jingzhan said, “Weren’t you at Gang County?”
The Number Four Under Heaven still wore that warm, guileless smile. He said, “That was yesterday’s pleasure.”
He turned and looked at Ye Zhangzhu. “This is today’s pleasure.”
Ye Zhangzhu asked, “You are the one called Number Four Under Heaven?”
The Number Four Under Heaven nodded. “And who are you?”
Ye Zhangzhu gave no answer. He stepped forward.
And so the Number Four Under Heaven smiled again — everyone in Yang Xuanji’s household knew: the wider his smile, the more monstrous he was being.
Ye Zhangzhu stepped forward. From the cloth bag, a white light shot out with unimaginable speed.
Ye Zhangzhu tilted his shoulder — the white light swept past him. It had missed, yet the Number Four Under Heaven’s smile held the look of someone who had already succeeded.
What delighted him was his opponent’s reaction. It had been a very, very long time since he had encountered someone this strong.
The white light that had flown past turned around behind Ye Zhangzhu and came screaming back — straight at the back of his head.
From Ye Zhangzhu’s sleeve slid a folding fan. He gripped it and swept it behind himself… the scraping of fine metal against metal.
Ye Zhangzhu had not used a weapon in combat for a very long time.
An extremely fine silver thread coiled around Ye Zhangzhu’s folding fan — whose ribs, it turned out, were forged from refined steel.
That silver thread of unknown material wound around the fan ribs, cutting groove after white groove into the steel.
Ye Zhangzhu’s hand drove backward with force — the Number Four Under Heaven’s feet were pulled forward an involuntary step. So the Number Four Under Heaven stopped smiling.
He felt his opponent was truly… deserving of death.
The Number Four Under Heaven’s hand slapped against the cloth bag — the silver thread snapped. Ye Zhangzhu suddenly lost the resistance and his arm swung backward.
“It’s been a long time…”
The Number Four Under Heaven murmured softly.
He pulled the cloth bag away — inside it truly was an ancient zither, roughly a third longer than an ordinary instrument, with a third more strings as well.
This was also the first time Ye Zhangzhu had ever seen anyone use such a peculiar weapon. Yet those in the martial world all knew: the more peculiar and bizarre the weapon, the harder it was to master — and once mastered, the power tended to be extraordinary.
The Number Four Under Heaven held the zither horizontally across one arm, reached over with his other hand, and plucked a string.
One string instantly flew out, heading straight for Ye Zhangzhu’s brow.
Ye Zhangzhu raised his folding fan upright to meet it — the string struck the refined steel ribs with a sharp ring, then retracted like a snake pulling its tongue back in.
In the next instant, the Number Four Under Heaven’s hands moved faster and faster. The strings shot out one after another toward Ye Zhangzhu.
Each string flew out in a perfectly straight line, none tangling or interfering with the others — and each was aimed at a lethal point on Ye Zhangzhu’s body.
Ye Zhangzhu’s folding fan snapped open in his hand. Before him, the fan wheeled up and down, spinning — like the most elegant of dances.
Through the metallic ringing, the fabric of Ye Zhangzhu’s fan shredded apart, scraps of it flying in all directions.
Before long, only the bare ribs of the fan remained — every sheet of the fabric had been cut to pieces.
Yet through all these countless string attacks, not only had Ye Zhangzhu not retreated a single step — he had moved forward six or seven paces, until he was very close to the Number Four Under Heaven.
And so the Number Four Under Heaven’s expression turned grave. The playfulness was gone, the monstrous darkness was gone — there was only gravity.
The last person who had made him regard an opponent this way was that near-unkillable great simpleton Gongshu Yong at Yang Xuanji’s side.
The Number Four Under Heaven swept one hand up and out — several strings flew simultaneously. Ye Zhangzhu’s fan opened again in his hand: no fabric, yet when spread, the ribs still arranged themselves in even formation.
The strings came — Ye Zhangzhu moved the fan up and down, then snapped the ribs shut.
Those strings were clamped between the ribs. They could not be retracted.
Ye Zhangzhu pulled backward — the ancient zither resting on the Number Four Under Heaven’s single outstretched arm was yanked flying toward him.
But in that very moment, the Number Four Under Heaven’s hand caught one of the strings — and then abruptly let go.
That string, taut as a bowstring, swept horizontally across at Ye Zhangzhu’s throat.
As the zither flew toward him, Ye Zhangzhu kicked it upward into the air. The drawn string was also sent arcing into the sky.
In the next instant, the Number Four Under Heaven was already at Ye Zhangzhu’s front.
In his hand was yet another thread — he whipped it forward, one loop wrapping around Ye Zhangzhu’s neck, then he wrenched backward hard.
In the instant of lightning and flint, Ye Zhangzhu’s folding fan inserted itself into the loop — the fan snapped open, and the steel ribs cut the loop apart like blades.
A dull sound.
A dagger had slid from the Number Four Under Heaven’s sleeve and driven into Ye Zhangzhu’s left shoulder.
If Ye Zhangzhu had not forcibly dropped his body down by a fraction, this would have passed through his heart.
Bang.
The Number Four Under Heaven was kicked flying by Ye Zhangzhu. A muffled grunt sounded from the air.
After landing, the Number Four Under Heaven’s feet skidded backward along the ground. He looked down — there was a boot print on his chest.
The pain made the Number Four Under Heaven grin. It was somewhat savage, and there was crimson blood in the gaps between his teeth.
He raised both hands high, his grin cold — then wrenched both arms sharply back inward…
Several strings came looping around from behind Ye Zhangzhu. Ye Zhangzhu shot upward, his feet blasting a cloud of dust from the ground, and he vaulted to a high position.
Those strings swept beneath Ye Zhangzhu’s feet as he rose. One passed across the sole of his boot — and sheared clean through one entire layer of his thick-soled cloth footwear.
In the next instant, the Number Four Under Heaven pulled the strings — the ancient zither flew back into his hands.
Ye Zhangzhu, still airborne, hurled his folding fan. Like a black bolt of lightning it drove straight at the Number Four Under Heaven’s throat.
The Number Four Under Heaven raised the zither to block, and drove backward off his feet.
The fan ribs struck the body of the zither with a thud — and could not penetrate it.
When he looked again, the Number Four Under Heaven had vanished far off in the distance. Just like that — he had withdrawn.
Ye Zhangzhu looked down at the wound on his shoulder. From the color of the blood, the dagger had apparently carried no poison.
He tore open the fabric around his shoulder, applied wound medicine, and his expression was as grave as it had ever been.
The Number Four Under Heaven’s strength had exceeded Ye Zhangzhu’s imagination.
He knew clearly — in the exchange just now, whichever of the two had made the slightest error would in that very instant have been killed.
Many, many years had passed since Ye Zhangzhu had encountered an opponent like this.
—
In the distance, the Number Four Under Heaven sprinted away with the ancient zither cradled in his arms. After running a stretch, a suppression seized his chest — then he coughed up a mouthful of blood.
He quickly moved into a stand of trees, leaned his back against a trunk, and caught his breath.
Suddenly he tensed, one hand pulling up a zither string.
In the next instant, Fu Baiyu stepped out from behind another tree nearby, with a small smile. “Injured?”
The Number Four Under Heaven smiled in return. “You try?”
Fu Baiyu: “Ha ha ha ha… what are you thinking — we’re comrades, aren’t we? Want me to help you walk?”
The Number Four Under Heaven also laughed. Still laughing, he said, “Sure — come over and help me.”
Fu Baiyu laughed as he retreated, backing up step by step. “You don’t seem to like having a companion around. I’ll go on ahead then — shaking the one chasing me wasn’t exactly easy, and that person is nothing like me in terms of goodwill.”
He turned and sprinted away into the distance.
The Number Four Under Heaven let out a long, slow breath, and found that he too had apparently known fear — his back was faintly damp.