Lying flat on the roof of the Li family compound, Ning Ji had already spent half the day watching the monkeys perform.
Rewind to that morning. After dealing with the six household thugs of the Li family who’d come to do their dirty work, Ning Ji’s heart had been half filled with lingering rage, half stirred with a kind of stirring, righteous excitement.
The source of the rage, of course, was the whole chain of misdeeds he’d encountered in Tongshan county: Wang Jiang and his daughter Wang Xiuniang, who’d done nothing to provoke anyone, had been mistreated for no reason at all — Sister Xiuniang beaten, nearly raped, Uncle Wang still unconscious to this day — and after all of this had come to light, that wicked Li family couple had shown not the slightest hint of remorse. Not only had they driven the group out of Tongshan that very night, but come the small hours of the morning, they’d even sent killers out to silence everyone for good. This kind of casual disregard for human life, this utter indifference to right and wrong, had thoroughly, unmistakably crossed Ning Ji’s line.
At the same time, his originally planned journey of chivalrous adventure through the martial world had turned instead into a tedious trek in the company of a bunch of foolish scholars and a silly woman, something he’d already found rather off-putting for a while now. If not for the values his father and the others had instilled in him since childhood — observe more, think more, act with restraint — combined with the fact that the foolish scholars had been genuinely generous with sharing their food, he might well have broken off from the group long ago to go find his own fun.
This sudden turn of events felt almost like some kind of omen sent from the heavens — and after more than two months of not knowing much about the wider world, he’d finally begun to get a rough handle on it. Heaven itself was giving him a sign, and honestly, he’d already had more than enough of playing the fool for scraps of food. From here on, the world was wide open, the dragon was returning to the sea, the dragon… whatever the saying was, doesn’t matter — Long Aotian was about to start killing people!
He’d stuffed himself with a hearty breakfast at the little market below the Li family compound, mentally running through the details of his revenge plan over and over as he ate.
Making the decision was the easy part. It was in the details that things got complicated.
Who exactly to take revenge on, what the specific steps should be, whether everyone needed to die, who to kill first and who to kill after — every single point demanded careful consideration. For instance, the six wicked Li family thugs had mentioned earlier that morning that the Steward Wu who’d driven them out of the inn usually stayed at the Li family’s fortified compound, while the couple, Li Xiaoqian and Xu Dong, lived in the county town itself, since Xu Dong served as Tongshan’s chief constable. Which group to go after first, and whether doing so would tip off the other, was a genuine problem.
On top of that, while his own martial skill was more than solid enough — if he couldn’t win, he could always run — the group of foolish scholars, along with Wang Jiang and Xiuniang, had only just left. If he caused too much of a stir all at once, would they end up dragged back and implicated even further? That was something he had to think through carefully as well.
And beyond that, there was also the very real possibility that every last member of the Li family was thoroughly wicked. How far was he supposed to carry out this act of justice — was he supposed to just stay in Tongshan and kill absolutely everyone? By the time he was done, the Jiangning founding congress would already be over two hundred years old, and he’d have to decide whether he was even going home again, whether he still needed to go kill He Wen.
In the past, Ning Ji had always operated alongside the most elite units in the army, tempered early on by the crucible of the battlefield, and he’d killed plenty of enemies in his time. But when it came to actually planning an operation like this, he now discovered he genuinely had no real experience to draw on — much like that business with the little cur, where he’d spotted the villain early on, waited in ambush for a full month, and in the end only managed to get in on the action through sheer luck. In this moment, even as he shoveled bun after flatbread into his stomach, he found himself resting his chin in his hand, admitting somewhat helplessly: maybe, just like Aunt Gua, he really did need some kind of scheming advisor by his side.
The little cur had read a lot of books — maybe she could’ve handled this…
For some reason, this bizarre thought popped into his head, and Ning Ji shook it off almost immediately, dismissing the unreliable notion.
The little cur couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag — she’d probably already gotten herself killed out there being an idiot… If he really needed to handle something like this properly, the Huaxia Army’s own people would obviously be the most reliable — if Uncle Zheng Qi were leading things… though honestly, it wouldn’t even need to be that formal, even someone else entirely, like that big-mouth Yao Shubin, could probably come up with a decent plan too…
Or, failing that, any of the friends he’d left behind in Zhang Village would do just as well… or maybe one of Aunt Tizi’s or Aunt Gua’s disciples — if it were Sister Heini… no, forget it, that vicious wretch Heini would just beat him black and blue and then drag him back to the southwest like a dead dog, and he’d never get to leave again — serves her right that she can’t find a husband…
The ideal companions, really, would have been his elder brother and Sister Chuyi, the two of them together. His brother had a mind that was thoroughly dark and scheming despite always looking so proper and upright, and secretly loved nothing more than getting in on the action. Add in Sister Chuyi’s swordsmanship, and if the three of them could travel the martial world together, how wonderful would that be — Sister Chuyi could even help cook and mend clothes on top of it…
Having finished breakfast, he idly ran through this list of potential “advisors” one by one in his head, then sighed at the realization that not a single one of them was around now, when Long Aotian was finally about to make his move. His mind gradually settled somewhat — even for the sake of the scholars and Sister Xiuniang, who hadn’t gone far yet, he’d have to hold off a little longer before acting — though not too long, either, since once those six crippled thugs were discovered, he’d already have tipped his hand somewhat.
Walking along the road toward the Li family compound, he came across some new developments. The Li family was hanging colorful silk streamers on the flagpoles outside their compound, an extravagant display that suggested some important visitor was arriving.
Curious, he wandered over to the nearby market to ask around and eavesdrop, and quickly found that whatever was about to happen wasn’t much of a secret at all — the Li family, while decking everything out in festive colors, apparently saw this as a matter of great honor and made no effort to hide it from outsiders. It was only that the people chattering and passing along the news out here were mostly common folk and market-goers, so what he heard was fragmented and vague. After listening for a good long while, Ning Ji finally managed to piece together the general gist of it:
Apparently, the renowned heroes of the Yan family stronghold, famous throughout the realm for their Tan Gong Sword technique, were coming to pay their respects to the heroes of the Li family. And one of the Yan stronghold’s young ladies, a heroine known as the “Cloud-Water Sword,” might well be heading to Jiangning on this trip to marry some peerless hero of the Fairness Party named Shi Baobao — at which point, the Yan family stronghold would rise dramatically, becoming one of the great and powerful clans of the entire realm…
What on earth was a “slingshot sword”? Did they shoot the sword out of a slingshot? How impressive could that possibly be?
And who was this “Poopy Baby”? What kind of person in the Fairness Party would be given a name like that? What were his parents thinking? What kind of courage did it take for him to even keep living after being saddled with a name like that?
If my name were Poopy Baby, I… I’d kill my own father, and then kill myself.
Ning Ji sat by the roadside, chin in hand, mulling this over at length with great consternation.
At noon, he ate another enormous meal.
By the afternoon, when the Yan family’s procession arrived, Ning Ji had a somewhat clearer picture of things. He followed along the whole way, watching the two sides meet and exchange formal greetings with considerable ceremony — the whole solemn scene really did carry something of the atmosphere of a proper martial-arts novel, which left him rather satisfied; this was exactly how a gathering of great villains ought to feel.
As for that “Water Heroine” who was apparently marrying “Poopy Baby,” he got a look at her too — quite young, expressionless amid the crowd, looking rather dim-witted, and not nearly as pretty as the little cur. As she walked, her hand never strayed far from the two short swords on her back, so her guard was fairly sharp, at least. Still, he didn’t see any slingshot anywhere.
Full of enthusiasm, he scaled the wall and slipped into the Li family compound, hiding on the roof of the great assembly hall to secretly observe how the whole affair unfolded. Watching the fist demonstration begin below, he found it mildly interesting at first — but the moment everyone started sparring with each other, Ning Ji felt his whole body go limp with secondhand embarrassment.
Was this a bunch of monkeys playing around? Why were they bowing to each other so solemnly? Why were they laughing like that?
He even watched a monk step onto the field, laughing heartily, raising his hand in a very solemn pose before striking wood and stone — the stone did genuinely crack, sure, but why did he have to raise his right hand up to his shoulder before every strike, like he was warning the stone in advance that he was about to attack it? You don’t need to do that!
The Li family compound’s defenses weren’t especially tight, but there weren’t many good hiding spots on the roof either. Ning Ji crouched in his corner, watching the sparring, his whole face twisted with secondhand embarrassment. Especially whenever these people burst out laughing on the training ground — he’d gasp in horror, remembering how he himself had once practiced laughing like that back in Chengdu, and felt the overwhelming urge to jump down and beat every single one of them senseless.
To him, what he was witnessing right now as “the martial world” was nothing short of pure torture.
Amid all this secondhand embarrassment, his mind kept churning through various schemes.
Since this Poopy Baby of the Fairness Party apparently held real power, and given that being in league with He Wen probably made him a bad guy too, and the Li family seemed rather afraid of him, Ning Ji might as well go for the ruthless, flower-crushing approach and set up a frame job. He could do the deed to this slingshot heroine, dump the body on a bed in the Li family compound afterward, and saddle Poopy Baby with a cuckold’s shame he’d never live down, letting them tear each other apart like dogs fighting over scraps…
It was a great plan — the only problem was, he was a good person at heart, and found it hard to bring himself to do something like that to such an unattractive woman. And the little cur… no wait, this had nothing to do with the little cur at all. Anyway, he clearly wasn’t cut out for that kind of thing — maybe he could just slip some aphrodisiac into her and Steward Wu’s food instead? Though honestly, that felt like letting that Wu fellow off far too easy.
Might as well just kill her outright. This whole Yan family stronghold, colluding with the Li family and marrying off to Poopy Baby of the Fairness Party, clearly made her a bad person too — might as well just kill her and be done with it once and for all… Except that once she was dead, it would take a long while before Poopy Baby came looking for revenge, and there’d be no proof it was the Li family’s doing, so this misfortune might not even land on the Li family’s head after all. In the end, he’d still have to figure out how to frame them properly.
He racked his brain, thinking hard for half the afternoon, and in the end still couldn’t come up with a good plan.
By the time the sun began setting in the west, the group of “monkeys” had finished laughing and playing to their hearts’ content on the training ground, and headed out to the hillside outside the compound to take in the scenery, gesturing grandly and holding forth on great matters of the world. That Steward Wu was strutting around nearby with an air of superiority, occasionally telling people off — “Hey, you there… don’t block the path…” Ning Ji sighed, dragging his bench along as he walked over.
Forget it, no more thinking. This was getting annoying.
“Hey, Steward Wu!”
he called out.
“Who’s there?”
The bench-kicking Steward Wu answered.
Ning Ji walked over, swung the long bench in his hands, and brought it down straight on the man’s left knee!
The sun was setting in the west.
On the slope outside the Li family compound, Yan Tiehe, Yan Yunzhi, and the other guests who had only just arrived that day stood there dumbstruck, watching the scene unfolding not far away.
In a single exchange, “Lightning Whip” Wu Cheng, once renowned for his legwork, had his left knee smashed clean through by that boy who’d come walking up out of nowhere. He collapsed to the ground, letting out a bloodcurdling howl of agony, animal-like in its rawness. The boy’s bench came down a second time, clearly shattering his right hand, the sound of bone cracking audible even in the evening air, then a third time, slamming brutally into his head. His scream was crushed back into his own throat, and blood sprayed out…
“Told you to kick my bench! You kicked my bench…”
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!…
As the boy struck, he kept muttering curses under his breath. The onlookers couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. The Li family disciple standing closest to Wu Cheng and the boy seemed to sense the sheer ferocity of the boy’s strikes, and for a moment didn’t dare step in, simply watching as Wu Cheng, being beaten, rolled across the ground, his shattered leg — white bone visible — dragging as he tried desperately to get up, only to be knocked down again and again, dust, torn grass, and blood scattered everywhere…
“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh—”
The monk Cixin let out a great roar, raised his right palm to his shoulder in the pose of an arhat holding an alms bowl, and charged straight toward them.
This single raised hand was the secret to his palm strike — visualizing the sacred form of the alms-bowl-bearing arhat of the Buddhist tradition, gathering his internal power the instant he struck, unleashing devastating destructive force in a single palm — an ordinary body of flesh and blood stood little chance against it. In an instant he closed the distance to the two of them and thrust his palm forward — but the boy swung his bench down onto Wu Cheng’s head, then leapt up and kicked him again, and the monk’s palm struck nothing but empty air.
“Told you to kick my bench…” the boy muttered on.
The monk Cixin let out another roaring cry and struck again, and then twice more in quick succession, while the boy leapt, kicked, and smashed, sending Wu Cheng rolling and convulsing across the ground. The monk’s palm strikes whistled through the air, the two figures crossing paths again and again, yet not a single strike landed.
“Told you to kick my bench…”
“Told you to kick my bench…”
…
The monk Cixin chased after him like this for a while, and the surrounding Li family disciples, at Li Ruoyao’s signal, began closing in to surround him as well. At one point, the monk struck out with his palm again, and the boy raised both arms to block, his entire body sent flying several zhang through the air. By now Wu Cheng lay on the ground, reduced to nothing but twitching, blood pooling all around him from his wounds. As the boy broke free in that burst, the onlookers all cried out, “Not good!”
Someone shouted, “Don’t let him get away!”
The direction the boy had been sent flying toward was, as it happened, a rugged, roadless slope off to one side. “Miao Blade” Shi Shuifang, seeing him about to escape, finally made his move as well, cutting across from the side in pursuit. The boy turned in midair and leapt straight down the slope, strewn with jagged rocks and thick underbrush — the terrain here wasn’t quite as sheer as the stone mountains of Guangxi or Yunnan, but for an ordinary person, a roadless slope like this would still have been nearly impossible to navigate. The boy leapt down without hesitation, and Shi Shuifang leapt after him — having spent many years living in the rugged terrain of the Miao borderlands, and having grown thoroughly familiar with these wild mountains since taking shelter with the Li family, he was, aside from the currently absent Li Yanfeng and his men, the only one capable of keeping pace.
The boy’s figure darted and leapt among the loose rocks and underbrush, with Shi Shuifang closing in fast behind him.
On the hillside, a growing crowd of tenant farmers had gathered, shouting and stirring with excitement. Some brought horses, but upon reaching the edge of the slope and seeing the terrain, they knew there was no way to give chase, and could only shout encouragement from above, while others attempted to circle around toward the main road below. Wu Cheng lay on the ground, beaten to within an inch of his life, and as the monk Cixin caught up to the edge of the slope, people couldn’t help but ask, “Who was that?”
“What was he saying just now…”
The monk Cixin found himself at a loss for words, seeming genuinely unable to believe it himself. “What he was saying just now was… it sounded like…” He seemed almost too embarrassed to repeat what he’d heard aloud.
“Thank goodness Master Shi is able to keep up with him…”
“He won’t get away.”
Voices rose in a clamor throughout the crowd, everyone talking at once.
The open ground on this hillside offered a sweeping view, and everyone could see the two figures — one chasing, one fleeing — as they raced off into the distance, though the boy never quite managed to shake his pursuer. Running and leaping across such rugged terrain was a genuinely harrowing sight, and the crowd watched with hearts in their throats, someone praising, “Master Shi’s lightness technique truly is masterful.”
By now the two figures had run quite far off, and a shout carried back on the wind: “A real man doesn’t hide his head and show only his tail — what kind of hero is that? I am ‘Miao Blade’ Shi Shuifang! Whoever committed this violence, if you’ve got any nerve, leave your name behind!” The words rang out bold and heroic, enough to stir admiration in anyone listening.
The boy running ahead answered back as well: “Sure thing, I’m… wait, you’re Shi Shuifang?”
The first five words of his reply had come out loud and clear, carried on a surge of internal power that could be heard even back on the hillside — but before he could finish giving his name, for some reason he seemed to ask a question back instead, and after that his words grew faint and indistinct.
…
“…Weren’t you the one who killed someone in Lan Huan Dong territory in the Miao borderlands and ran off?”
…
“That’s right. A real man doesn’t change his name when he travels, doesn’t alter his surname when he sits down — I am… uh… damn it—”
Amid a stretch of wild grass and scattered rocks, Shi Shuifang, who had by now given up on continuing the chase, was in the middle of delivering a heroic line befitting the moment when he suddenly froze.
The fleeing boy up ahead had come to a stop.
He turned around and looked at Shi Shuifang, both hands clasped together, his right hand squeezing at the palm of his left.
“So it’s you…”
Shi Shuifang had no idea why the boy had stopped. He glanced around out of the corner of his eye — the hillside behind him was already quite far off, countless voices shouting encouragement his way — but not a single companion had managed to follow him this far.
The boy spread both hands wide. In that instant, the air itself seemed charged with menace. From the moment he’d started beating Wu Cheng, he’d dodged every one of the monk Cixin’s attacks, taken a direct palm strike from him without flinching, and then run this entire distance — and only now did Shi Shuifang notice that the boy’s breathing, in and out through his nose and mouth, showed not the slightest sign of disturbance, as calm as a young man who’d merely taken a leisurely stroll.
The shouts and cheers from the hillside continued on, the crowd watching as the boy suddenly came to a halt, and Shi Shuifang stopped as well. Half a breath later, the boy surged forward like a wild beast, charging straight at Shi Shuifang, who drew his Miao blade in response.
Amid the wild grass and scattered stones, the two figures closed the distance between them—
Collision.
CRACK—
Wormwood and grass scattered across the sky.