Word that the “Great Radiance Sect Leader” was challenging the Five Arenas spread quickly, and crowds of onlookers surged into the city to watch. The square where the Five Arenas stood was packed solid, with people standing shoulder to shoulder even on the surrounding rooftops, the crowd spilling all the way out into the neighboring streets.

After all, aside from the Fair Party’s elite and representatives from various great and small forces across the realm, this gathering in Jiangning had also drawn every manner of bloodthirsty adventurer and local strongman hoping to seek fortune amid danger, all eager to take part in this grand, momentous gathering. When it came to joining in on the excitement, no one wanted to be left out.

By the time the little monk Ping’an, having finished his breakfast, heard about all this, it was already somewhat late. He rushed with the crowd of onlookers to the scene, only to find the streets and rooftops already packed tight.

Though young, his martial skill wasn’t insignificant, and he certainly could have forced his way through the crowd. But despite having that ability, the little monk’s temperament was nowhere near as brash as that of the young hero Dragon, who had already taken to calling himself “Wulin Alliance Leader.” After chanting “Amitabha” and “excuse me, please” a few times at the edge of the crowd, and getting cursed at with things like “quit shoving” and “I’ll kill you, little baldy” while trying to squeeze through, he lost his nerve entirely.

In the end, he found a rather tall flagpole standing among the crowd by the roadside and climbed to the top of it like a monkey, standing there to survey the square below. He bounced a couple of times up there, calling out softly, “Master, Master…” Naturally, Lin Zongwu, standing in the middle of the square, had no way of noticing him from up there. Ping’an sighed atop the flagpole, looking down at the surging crowd below, thinking that the nickname that young hero Dragon had given him actually made a lot of sense now—he really had turned into a monkey.

The flag hanging from the pole beneath his feet belonged to “King of Hell” Zhou Shang. It fluttered in the wind, and some of King of Hell’s men, noticing him perched atop the pole, cursed him out from below: “Hey, you little brat, get down here!”

“Get down now! Or I’ll beat you to death!”

“Where’d you come from…”

“Someone drag him down—”

Several figures squeezed through the crowd, shouting angrily, but though orders were being barked out, no one actually dared climb the pole after him. Someone tried to throw something to knock him down but was stopped by the people around them. Though the little monk had a good temperament, having traveled the martial world alongside Lin Zongwu, he wasn’t entirely without his own likes and dislikes. His master was up front tearing down this “King of Hell’s” platform—what was wrong with him trampling on the man’s flag a little too? He turned and shouted back down:

“This humble monk’s dharma name is Sun! Wu! Kong!”

For some reason, using a fake name gave him an odd sense of freedom—things he wouldn’t normally dare to say, or do, suddenly felt within reach.

The people below couldn’t quite make sense of it, still shouting confused things like “what the hell…” and “get down here if you’ve got the guts…” Ping’an chuckled to himself, then murmured “Amitabha” in penance for the wicked thought he’d just had of spitting down on them.

Amid the chaotic din surrounding the square, the war of words up on the Five Arenas had apparently reached its conclusion—a hulking, tower-like figure carrying a Vajra staff strode up onto the platform to negotiate and face off against Lin Zongwu.

This heroes’ gathering in Jiangning had only just entered its registration phase. The arenas set up by the Fair Party’s five factions weren’t structured as round-by-round elimination tournaments. The Five Arenas, for instance, mostly featured core fighters from “King of Hell’s” own ranks—anyone who managed to win three rounds against them would receive official recognition, walking away not only with a hundred taels of silver but also a plaque bearing the title “Hero Under Heaven.”

In truth, though, anyone who won two rounds in this fighting format would already start receiving recruitment offers from Zhou Shang’s side. If you accepted at that point, the third round would naturally be a mere formality; if you refused, the fighters Zhou Shang sent out next might not be so easy to deal with—this was, at its core, a recruitment drive dressed up as an open competition.

Of course, despite this being the actual mechanism at work, the public messaging naturally had to sound grander and more impressive—claims like “you can’t call yourself a hero unless you’ve cleared the Five Arenas” were thrown around freely, and if anyone claimed to have decent martial skill, people in the city would encourage them to go prove it on the platform. And given this kind of reputation-building, Lin Zongwu had stepped onto the platform precisely to say: since you all seem to think you’re qualified to judge who counts as a hero, presumably whoever’s backing this arena must possess extraordinary skill themselves—so let them come out and prove it.

It was just like the old Imperial Fist Hall—with Zhou Tong presiding over it, that was the genuine Imperial Fist Hall, and when Zhou Tong judged someone’s skill, the whole realm accepted his verdict without question. But if some random nobodies set up an arena here and declared that anyone who survived a few rounds against their mediocre fighters was a hero, that simply wouldn’t do.

The two sides exchanged two rounds of verbal sparring on the platform. At first, the other side tried to deflect using Lin Zongwu’s seniority as an excuse, but gradually gave up on that line of argument. By this point, Lin Zongwu had firmly staked his position, and with thousands of onlookers gathered to watch, no matter how sound the reasoning on either side, if Zhou Shang’s people simply cowered and refused to fight, the crowd would inevitably conclude that his side had been thoroughly bested.

If they continued to hold back while the great Sect Leader Lin sat there on the platform half the day, then for the next several days, all anyone in Jiangning would be talking about would be what a laughingstock “King of Hell’s” Five Arenas had become.

What’s more, over these past two years, “King of Hell’s” subordinates had all been through real battlefield combat, had witnessed no shortage of blood and horror. Even someone touted as “the greatest under heaven”—how great could he really be? There were bound to be plenty who refused to accept it at face value.

The man who now stepped onto the platform was one of “King of Hell’s” finest enforcers over recent times—”Sickly Vajra” Zhang Xing. This man was massively built, no one quite knew how he’d grown so large, standing half a head taller even than Lin Zongwu, with a vicious temperament and monstrous strength. The heavy, man-height Vajra staff in his hands had, according to rumor, pulverized many men into pulp in battle or in arena matches. Some rumors even claimed that “Sickly Vajra” fed on human flesh, that he devoured human essence and blood, which was why he’d grown to such a terrifying size.

Over recent days, whenever some skilled fighter came to disrupt the Five Arenas, refusing recruitment and unwilling to simply let things slide on the surface, they would often find themselves facing him in the third round. By now, he had already beaten quite a number of people to death outright, every such scene extraordinarily bloody.

The moment he stepped onto the stage, Zhou Shang’s crowd below erupted in cheers, shouting for him to “beat this bald donkey to death.”

Lin Zongwu pressed his palms together, then spread his arms wide. “This humble monk has no wish to bully a junior. You may call up two more men, and come at me together.”

“Sickly Vajra” Zhang Xing swung his Vajra staff a few times, sending a whistling gust of wind through the air. “I’m more than enough on my own, monk. Are you ready to meet your death?”

“Meeting death, well…” Lin Zongwu seemed about to say something sincere in response, but abruptly gave up on the thought, letting out a sigh instead. “…Very well. I’m ready.”

Before his eyes, the Vajra staff came crashing down like a collapsing mountain.

Down below the platform, the earlier playful mockery had already drained from Ning Ji’s face, his gaze now locked seriously onto the scene unfolding above.

This “Sickly Vajra” was massively built, with an excellent foundation to begin with, and judging by the rhythm of his breathing, he had clearly trained in some extremely forceful, orthodox internal martial art since childhood. He had killed plenty on the battlefield and in the arena, his whole being saturated with ferocious killing intent—if he lived to old age, this kind of extreme physical strain and explosive fighting style would likely leave him in agony, but right now, in this moment, his body’s strength stood at its absolute peak. Within the Huaxia Army, perhaps only Chen Fan, with his own monstrous physical power, could stand against him head-on.

But in this instant, the massive figure clad in bright yellow monk’s robes on the platform stood empty-handed, his footwork suddenly sinking down heavily, his fists splitting apart—left hand rising, right hand descending—his robes billowing outward as if to embrace heaven and earth itself.

The Vajra staff came crashing down toward his raised left arm and the top of his head, with everything the man had.

“BOOM—” A muffled thunderclap sounded. On the platform, the Vajra staff seemed to have struck some massive whirlpool that had been pushed directly open—this whirlpool manifested itself across Lin Zongwu’s entire robe, which shuddered violently under the impact, and Zhang Xing’s Vajra staff was forcibly shoved aside! The massive man, not even registering the strangeness of what had just happened, charged forward with his whole body like a war chariot!

Ning Ji’s mouth had already fallen slightly open.

This was Tai Chi’s usage…

And unlike the way anyone in the Huaxia Army who’d ever studied this martial art applied it, this massive fat man on the platform combined Tai Chi’s circular, yielding motions with that overwhelmingly deep internal power, and what he displayed was no longer merely softness, nor even a simple balance of hardness and softness—it was something like the legendary force of a tsunami, a hurricane, a great whirlpool, ferocious and violent. And it was precisely because of this that the enemy’s full-strength strike with the Vajra staff had failed to break through his empty-handed defense head-on!

A use of Tai Chi this ferociously powerful—Auntie Hong might be able to defeat him, but she could never reproduce anything quite like it. As things stood in the world today, perhaps this monstrous figure standing before him was the only one capable of it.

With his sharp eye and youthful spirit, witnessing this scene left his whole body trembling with excitement. After all, for a boy his age, what soft, yielding technique could possibly compare to this kind of overwhelming, dominant ferocity? No wonder he’s my lifelong rival… he thought to himself.

Those in the know could appreciate the finer details, but for most onlookers whose eye wasn’t nearly as trained as Ning Ji’s, that single exchange was merely the opening signal of a fight just getting started. Up on the platform, the two figures collided; “Sickly Vajra’s” knee slammed directly into Lin Zongwu’s chest, only to be knocked back by the equally massive Lin Zongwu. He swung his Vajra staff, roaring wildly, unleashing a flurry of leaps and strikes, while Lin Zongwu stood his ground, barely moving, trading blows head-on against the staff, fists, and kicks in a fierce, direct clash. The crowd below, witnessing the sheer force of this battle, both sides moving with equal ferocity and speed, their massive power colliding again and again, felt their blood surge with every heart-stopping exchange.

After trading blows like this for a while, Lin Zongwu advanced several steps, and while “Sickly Vajra” continued his wild, all-out assault, the two had by now fought their way across nearly half the platform. Just as Zhang Xing swung his staff in a wide horizontal arc, Lin Zongwu’s body surged forward abruptly, one hand seizing his right shoulder, the other flashing out to wrench the Vajra staff from his grip.

The hair on Zhang Xing’s back stood on end; his body shifted, meaning to retreat first to extricate himself, but a sharp, bone-deep pain struck his thigh—Lin Zongwu, now holding the Vajra staff, had swung it against his leg.

Zhang Xing’s body jolted violently in midair, flipping over before crashing to the ground. As a martial artist, his reflexes were extremely fast, and he understood this blow meant the difference between life and death—he forced himself upward, trying to flip forward and escape the range of the attack. But just as his body sprang up, Lin Zongwu’s Vajra staff crashed down against his backside with a resounding thud, and like a startled shrimp leaping up only to be smacked right back down, he was sent tumbling right back to where he’d started.

The crowd below stared in stunned silence at this sudden turn of events.

What had, until this moment, looked like an evenly matched, head-on clash had, in this single exchange, left Zhang Xing flat on the ground, bouncing up and down in this bizarre fashion—why on earth was he bouncing like that?

Up on the platform, Zhang Xing struggled to move; Lin Zongwu, staff in hand, struck him again. After a moment, Zhang Xing managed to crawl forward a step, only to be struck down again with another blow from the staff—one strike after another, as though he were casually disciplining his own son, beating Zhang Xing until he could only writhe helplessly on the ground.

To anyone watching, this looked like a deliberate humiliation of the entire “Five Arenas,” carried out in full view of everyone.

Zhou Shang’s men on the platform’s edge whispered urgently among themselves. Lin Zongwu’s gaze had turned cold, and he continued striking the now utterly defenseless Zhang Xing with the staff, one blow after another, as if intending to slowly, methodically beat him to death right there in front of everyone. After a few more strikes, the other side finally couldn’t bear it any longer, and three fighters rushed forward together: “Sect Leader Lin, stop!”

Lin Zongwu raised the blood-soaked Vajra staff, then let it drop, releasing his grip and letting it fall into the pool of blood beneath him. His gaze turned toward the three men, now grown cold and distant.

“I’ll give you face. Or you can refuse it. Either way.” His voice came out slow and deliberate, ringing across the entire arena. “The three of you, come at me together. If you survive, you may keep your arena.”

His presence now dominated the entire square, and everyone around felt their hearts seize up. The three men who had come forward, who had perhaps meant to say something to bolster their side’s standing, found themselves suddenly unable to utter a single word.

The three let out a furious roar and charged at Lin Zongwu, who once again met them empty-handed.

Four figures danced wildly across the platform—the three attackers wielded a spear, a whip, and a blade respectively, all formidable in their own right. By the thirteenth exchange, the spearman thrust his weapon straight at Lin Zongwu’s chest, only for Lin Zongwu to suddenly seize the spear’s shaft, bending the iron rod clean in half with both hands. By the seventeenth exchange, Lin Zongwu seized his chance against the whip-wielder, grabbing hold of his throat in a crushing grip and slamming him down onto the platform with a thunderous crash.

This battle had been perilous from the very start—the three had coordinated their attacks, and whenever Lin Zongwu focused on one, the other two would immediately rush to cover the vulnerable point, forcing even Lin Zongwu, at this level of combat, to abandon a full-on assault against any single opponent. But by this seventeenth exchange, having seized the whip-wielder by the throat, with the blade-wielder’s sword coming down at his back, Lin Zongwu dissipated the force of the blow through his billowing robes, his massive frame slamming his enemy down onto the platform like some descending demon god, then tearing with both hands, ripping the man’s throat open in a spray of blood across the sky.

His assault was relentless. Moments later he struck the spearman square in the chest, then kicked out, breaking one of the blade-wielder’s legs. The crowd watched as blood rained wildly across the platform, Lin Zongwu cutting down these three formidable fighters one after another, his once bright-yellow robes now speckled crimson across hands, body, and cloth alike.

Up on the platform, Lin Zongwu tossed the bodies together into a heap, his massive frame, mingling terrifying red and yellow, looking like some demon god descended upon the earth. He then slowly sat himself down atop the pile of corpses. A dead silence fell over the surroundings; everyone had been utterly cowed into submission.

Then they watched as Lin Zongwu picked up the Vajra staff and swung it violently behind him—the staff cut through the air and smashed the massive “Five Arenas” plaque behind him to splinters.

In that moment, Lin Zongwu had utterly crushed this entire arena beneath his heel.

That afternoon, Long Aotian walked along the road near the Su family’s old estate, found a few things still edible to eat, and tossed one portion to Xue Jin, who was begging by the roadside.

Afterward, he returned to the inn he’d temporarily settled on, sitting in the main hall to gather information.

The inn he’d chosen for the time being had been settled on the night before—its location happened to be near the bridge tunnel where Xue Jin and the woman called Moon Girl lived. Ning Ji had staked out Xue Jin’s location for half the night, and after confirming the place was livable, had moved in once dawn broke. The inn was called “Five Lakes,” a rather generic, unremarkable name. Quite a mix of all sorts of people were staying there currently, and according to the waiter, people often came here to trade information about the city, or to listen to storytellers recount the latest happenings in the martial world.

Unlike the Southwest, where the newspapers always recorded a rather dry collection of world events, here in Jiangnan, ever since the Fair Party’s rule had begun, in the areas where order had stabilized somewhat, people much preferred gossip and tales from the martial world—there were even some publications specifically dedicated to recording this sort of thing, “newspapers” of a kind, whose various rumors and gossip were quite popular among traveling martial artists.

By morning, the story of Great Radiance Sect Leader Lin Zongwu single-handedly crushing Zhou Shang’s Five Arenas on behalf of “Wheel-Turning King” had already spread throughout the city. Various embellished accounts of how the great Sect Leader had single-handedly slaughtered four formidable fighters were already circulating, complete with dramatic flourishes like “his palm strikes howled like the wind” and “his kicks moved like lightning.” Various versions had already sprung up describing the names, origins, and combat records of the four formidable fighters he’d defeated. Of course, to young hero Dragon, who had personally witnessed the entire fight from the front row, all this embellished gossip felt rather dull by comparison.

His lifelong rival’s martial prowess had left him thrilled beyond words. But at the same time, he had also come to appreciate just how masterfully Lin Zongwu had orchestrated the whole spectacle, using every trick available to inflate his own aura of authority.

Take that first match against Zhang Xing, for instance—there had been no need for it to drag on that long at all. Someone with martial skill on the level of that fat man could have taken Zhang Xing’s life in a one-on-one fight with almost trivial ease. But all those earlier exchanges, that brutal, direct clashing with the “Vajra staff,” had really just been a show put on for the benefit of the surrounding crowd.

Only after letting everyone witness the sheer scale of the spectacle, and see just how monstrous Zhang Xing’s own strength truly was, had he seized the Vajra staff and finally begun striking the man—and even then, methodically, blow by blow, as though disciplining his own son. That was where the true theatrical power of the whole performance had come from. Even someone with no understanding of martial arts could grasp, from that alone, just how formidable this fat man truly was. But if he’d simply taken Zhang Xing down from the very start, most people watching would never have been able to appreciate it—they might even have assumed he’d simply beaten up some random, unremarkable kid.

The rest of the fight that followed had been the same—the brutal, bloody methods had been employed purely to intimidate, to maximize his own aura of terror to the fullest extent possible. Understood this way, all those seemingly unnecessary theatrics and displays of ferocity during the fight suddenly made perfect sense.

Truly formidable…

Having thoroughly worked out the puzzle behind the whole spectacle from that morning’s fight up to now, Ning Ji couldn’t help but marvel at just how consummately refined the fat man’s mastery truly was. As his father used to say: no wonder this fat man made such a successful cult leader.

Thinking back on himself, he realized he still couldn’t quite manage even the simple act of confidently announcing “Long Aotian” in front of others—even standing there with hands on hips laughing triumphantly wasn’t something he’d quite mastered yet. Truly… he still had a lot of growing up to do, still needed more practice.

At this moment, he found himself somewhat resenting his own laziness over these past few months. He’d claimed that leaving home was meant to be about honing his martial skills, and yet, more than three months out on the road, he’d only actively gone out of his way to right wrongs and help people twice. Pretending to be a harmless young physician most of the time might have saved him a lot of trouble, but hadn’t it also cost him a great many trials and challenges he could have faced?

Long Aotian, oh Long Aotian—you’ve already made it all the way to Jiangning, and when trouble comes your way, you ought to charge right in. These people are all villains; the moment you spot one, you should be striking them down. Skill is something forged through actual fighting, after all, and you can announce your name as many times as it takes—surely with enough repetition, you’ll get smoother at it eventually?

He sat in the main hall with his lips pursed, mulling this over, and began scanning the room around him with an unfriendly glare, thinking he might as well drag out some villain and give him a public beating right then and there—surely that would get the name Long Aotian known throughout the whole inn… But after scanning the room a while, since no one seemed inclined to provoke him first, he found himself unable to quite justify starting trouble out of nowhere.

Most of the people around him were discussing Sect Leader Lin, though a few also brought up Zhou Shang’s side, saying that having suffered such humiliation, Zhou Shang would never let it go, and that trouble in the city was surely brewing sooner or later. Listening to this talk of “trouble brewing,” Ning Ji found himself secretly looking forward to it once again.

He ought to find an opportunity to take down that “Heaven’s Reaper” Wei Xuwen, said to be somewhere in the city, and leave the name Long Aotian behind while he was at it—that would surely make him famous throughout the whole city. Yes, he’d need to keep an eye out for whatever came next…

While he sat there scheming about how to learn from Fat Lin, working out the finer details of how to make “Long Aotian” a household name—after all, he’d only just decided this morning that today marked the first day the martial world would never be the same—he still felt quite fired up about it. Thinking about it stirred a wave of excitement inside him…

At that moment, not far off in the main hall, several martial-world types were holding a crude little newspaper, discussing all sorts of gossip from the martial world.

“…I heard… last month, over in Tongshan, something big happened…”

Something in what they said caught Ning Ji’s ear.

“…Here’s how it went, apparently… the Yan Family Fortress caravan, coming here recently to arrange a marriage alliance with ‘Equality King’ Shi Baofeng, passed through Tongshan last month…”

“…Ah… what an ordeal they went through… they ran into a real demon lord…”

That demon lord is definitely me, Ning Ji thought, recalling his exploits in Tongshan last month, righting wrongs and terrifying the Li family’s villains. He realized they were talking about that very incident. It had actually made it into the newspapers… A wave of excitement surged through him at the thought.

“…This demon lord, with his formidable martial skill, actually managed—despite being surrounded on all sides—to kidnap the young lady of Yan Family Fortress… And afterward, he even left his name behind…”

“…This demon lord’s title is… the Shameless Lecherous Demon, Long Aotian…”

…

…

“…That’s not… that’s not right…”

Sitting there in the inn, little Ning Ji’s expression shifted through a whole range of colors as he listened to the group talking, his gaze gradually turning glassy…

…

…

“…Everyone, listen carefully—this so-called ‘Shameless Y-Demon’ isn’t actually ‘shameless’ in the sense of being despicable and without shame. It’s actually the phrase ‘Five-Foot Y-Demon’—the character for ‘five,’ as in one-two-three-four-five, and the character for ‘foot,’ as in a unit of measurement. It’s saying he’s… short in stature, extremely small, and that’s how he got this nickname…”

“…This is the ‘Five-Foot Y-Demon,’ Long Aotian—everyone with women in their household had better be extra careful…”

In another inn’s hall elsewhere in Jiangning city, a handsome young man with a limp and a dark-skinned man were sitting and drinking tea, taking a break. They were quietly discussing some business they’d come here to handle. Then a young woman with even darker skin and a sturdy build came over, took a sip of water, and gestured toward them.

“Listen to what this storyteller’s saying…”

“Mm… just heard it. Blackie, you got some kind of opinion about this Y-Demon? He’s so short, maybe it’s because no one liked him that he…”

“That’s not it, Yuwen… this Long Aotian… there’s something off about this…”

“…Well, I suppose it’s understandable, uh?”

“…”

“…”

Blackie frowned, Little Black frowned, and the young man named Yuwen Feidu, a soybean held in his hand, ended up frowning too, glancing at his companions.

“It couldn’t be, could it…”

“No way, no way…”

“Oh no…”

“That’s impossible…”

The group exchanged uncertain, worried glances, trying to bolster each other’s spirits and reassure one another.

“If it’s true… he’ll get beaten to death when he goes home, won’t he…”

“There must be more to the story…”

“Sigh, running away from home, that’s all it was…”

“How did it end up like this…”