The young monk’s near-wailing cry served as a split-second warning.

Blade-light came flashing straight at his face.

Ning Ji swung his rifle up to block, then let go of the stock with his right hand and wrapped his arm around, closing the distance.

The young monk’s body slammed into him; in that vanishingly small space, the two of them fell almost instinctively into a flurry of counters, the rifle wedged between them absorbing a knee strike and an elbow blow in quick succession, while the far more lethal dagger-light slid past the rifle, thrusting straight for Ning Ji’s throat and chest.

Both of them were skilled with short blades and had sparred with each other before. In this sudden, catastrophic moment, Ning Ji’s right arm shot out and tangled with his opponent’s like flashing lightning; he pressed his elbow against the blade aimed at his neck, deflecting it toward his shoulder instead. The young monk pulled the blade back, tearing open a gash, then thrust again; Ning Ji closed in tight against him, wrapping up the young monk’s upper body, trying to hook an arm around his neck.

Just as his neck was about to be caught in the lock, the young monk drove forward with a headbutt, slamming instead into the wooden stock of the rifle. Ning Ji’s grasping arm closed on empty air, but his other hand had already seized the young monk’s collar; the young monk’s blade flashed upward from below, aimed at Ning Ji’s temple. Ning Ji swung his arm to block it and was cut again, blood welling up.

In an instant, the two young men were locked in close combat, their bodies whirling like a storm; the rifle caught between them was nearly flung into the air. Then, amid the crossing blade-light, there came a crack, and the smaller figure was flung backward, tumbling across the ground in a cloud of dust, before pushing himself up off the ground with his arm. Ning Ji, too, slammed into a wall at the side of the road, blood covering his hands and body; the rifle, meanwhile, had been kicked apart in mid-air by the young monk’s final, all-out kick, wood and barrel scattering across the ground.

Ning Ji swung his fist through the air, clenched it into a ball, and glared across at his opponent, eyes wide.

“Have you lost your mind—”

Being betrayed by a comrade on the battlefield — this was the first time in his life he’d experienced such a thing.

The young monk, short dagger in hand, eyes brimming with tears, cried out in a choked, sobbing voice: “That’s my martial uncle—”

“What are you talking about — those are bad people—” Ning Ji spun around, scanning his surroundings, then pointed off to one side. “That’s the—” Suddenly, something dawned on him.

“That’s my martial uncle—” the young monk wailed again.

“That’s — the Great Brightness Sect’s — Wang, Wang—” Ning Ji didn’t quite remember Wang Nantuo’s name clearly, but he had a rough grasp of the Great Brightness Sect’s basic hierarchy, and countless thoughts were now racing through his head. “And then… and then… that fat monk is your — your master—”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaah…” The deep-autumn sunlight held little warmth, but the young monk let loose a surge of ferocity, weeping in the middle of the street. “That was my martial uncle — you killed my martial uncle—”

Ning Ji shook his head; his gaze slowly hardened, growing cold. He stood there a moment, thinking, and then blade-light slid out from his sleeve, his eyes fixed on the young monk.

In life, there are many things not easily accepted; understanding them can take a long time. But on the battlefield, it is never like that — even the death of someone dearest to you gives no time to process it slowly. Ning Ji had seen enough of this kind of thing; in this instant, he understood plainly: the young monk before him was now an enemy.

He accepted that judgment.

And on the other side, the young monk, short blade still in hand, kept weeping without pause.

It was at this very moment that Lin Zongwu’s sorrowful roar rang out from not far away.

He had already learned of Wang Nantuo’s death.

Ning Ji, having taken up a horse stance, already in a combat-ready posture, froze for a moment, blinking.

A terrifying sense of danger, as though he had been fixed in the sights of some primordial beast, came sweeping over him.

The outcome of the grandmasters’ duel had not yet been decided — but in this moment, many people, one after another, felt a shift in the very energy of the field.

“Feather Blade” Qian Luoning came streaking toward this spot, his own mouth letting out a fierce, urgent whistle-like cry.

Across the battlefield, Huaxia Army masters including Yuwen Feidu, Xiao Hei, and Hei Niu all showed the same bewildered look in their eyes.

“…W-what happened?”

Special orders had already gone out. What was unfolding on the battlefield now was an unforeseen turn no one had planned for.

…

Some time earlier, having settled matters with He Wen and decided to lend him support here in Jiangning, the Huaxia Army had had its own plan.

According to the original scheme, the assault on the other four kings near the old martial yamen was, of course, to be carried out first by the forces the Fair King himself had arranged; then the Huaxia Army would step in as outside reinforcement — Chen Fan, in the east, appearing in his identity as an Overlord Blade member to suppress Lin Zongwu and settle the old debts left over from the jianghu of years past; and finally, in the west and south, Qian Luoning’s Huaxia Army squads would enter last, raising the Black Banner over the skies of Jiangning to deliver the decisive, sealing blow. In this way, they would support He Wen’s reform efforts on one hand, while greatly amplifying the Huaxia Army’s own prestige on the other — a win-win arrangement all around.

In this plan, what Chen Fan had asked for was simply the chance for a one-on-one duel with Lin Zongwu. As the effective commander of the 29th Army, the reason he’d come here in the first place was precisely to settle, openly and honorably, the old jianghu debt left behind by his master’s line. He had received Fang Qifo’s full teachings without reservation, which was how he had come to lead armies and achieve so much on the battlefield — but over more than a decade, his own free and easy, heroic temperament had never really changed.

There were things, for him, that didn’t need doing — but when the moment presented itself, following his own inclinations was fine too.

Qian Luoning, being a more orthodox member of the Overlord Blade, had not tried too hard to talk him out of it. And as the battle unfolded, though he too was a master capable of matching Lin Zongwu, he had chosen not to join Chen Fan in the fight — this, a promise he had made to Chen Fan.

If Chen Fan won this fight, all the better — the Huaxia Army could publicize it far and wide. And if Chen Fan lost, then, according to the original plan, the Huaxia Army would still move to surround and kill Lin Zongwu — since the two men were both grandmasters of comparable caliber, and given Chen Fan’s temperament of growing fiercer against a strong opponent, even in defeat Lin Zongwu would hardly come away unscathed. At that point, Qian Luoning, along with a group of snipers, would move in to finish the job, and in the future, the Huaxia Army could still publicize its victory far and wide.

At that point, the worst that would happen would be Ning Yi himself stepping in to placate the straightforward, uncompromising Chen Fan — something along the lines of: “Just bear with it a little, and tell people outside that you won.” Given Chen Fan’s temperament of always considering the bigger picture, he could likely be counted on to go along with something like that in the future.

In truth, Ning Yi himself might well have been the one more inclined to go along with the publicity angle — it was simply that he hadn’t come to the scene this time, and so hadn’t been present to sign off on the basic terms of the plan.

This had been an extremely well-considered, carefully laid-out original arrangement.

Because of Young Hero Long’s rash, premature move, the planned order of engagement had been thrown into disarray — which was why, after Lin Zongwu had already made his move, Chen Fan had had to rush over in a hurry with his Overlord Blade contingent from the eastern position defended by the Great Brightness Sect and the “Wheel-Turning King.” But since Chen Fan and Lin Zongwu’s engagement had, in the end, gone off smoothly regardless, this minor discrepancy hadn’t really amounted to much of a problem.

But no one had anticipated that a second, far greater disruption was about to occur.

Lin Zongwu’s state of perfect harmony had lasted only the briefest moment; the circle he had walked his whole life to complete had been shattered halfway through.

Long Aotian had shot Wang Nantuo dead with his rifle.

Lin Zongwu had once believed that Sikong Nan’s death was the greatest loss of his life.

Over the years that had passed, perhaps it had been. And yet, how could grief for the dead ever outweigh the sudden, abrupt loss of the living?

In the ten-plus years since Sikong Nan’s death, Wang Nantuo had stayed at Lin Zongwu’s side, carefully and dutifully managing his affairs and handling the sect’s mundane matters. But in truth, the man once known as “Mad Tiger” had, originally, been an even rougher, wilder soul than Lin Zongwu himself, even less inclined to bother with such things. When Lin Zongwu set aside the sect’s administration, Wang Nantuo had taken it up in his place; when Lin Zongwu wanted to teach his disciples, Wang Nantuo had supported him fully; and once Xu Zhaonan began achieving results, it was Wang Nantuo who had persuaded Lin Zongwu to come and see for himself. In truth, he had almost never done a single thing that went against Lin Zongwu’s wishes…

Lin Zongwu had very nearly grown accustomed to all of it…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—”

His anguished cry could be heard across the entire battlefield; Lin Zongwu’s figure burst out from the fight, and in this instant, having lost his sense of inner peace, he was more terrifying than ever before — even Chen Fan, for a moment, could not hold him back. The two of them, one after the other, streaked toward the place where Wang Nantuo had died; Chen Fan threw a punch at his back, which Lin Zongwu casually deflected without even slowing down, moving all the faster despite his staggering gait.

Qian Luoning reacted immediately, streaking out with a whistling cry.

Ning Ji stood frozen where he was; the weeping young monk, face streaked with tears, found his own voice choked in his throat, and turned to look off to one side.

Chen Fan crashed into the charging Lin Zongwu from the side, and the two of them smashed into a nearby house, dust filling the sky; the next instant, Lin Zongwu burst back out again.

“Damn it…”

Ning Ji took off running.

The most powerful master he’d faced in his life so far was Aunt Hongti back home — her extraordinary swordsmanship and killing technique could probably have cut Lin Zongwu down without much trouble. But no matter the circumstances, Aunt Hongti had never posed him a killing threat as dire as this — this ancient demon-god, in the midst of his rampage, was even overpowering the mighty Uncle Fan.

In this moment, he gave no thought at all to proper combat tactics, simply running for his life with everything he had, off into the distance.

Amid the chaos of the battlefield, someone fired a shot at Lin Zongwu but missed. Chen Fan tried to intercept him, and the two of them, stumbling and crashing, wrestled their way forward at a dead sprint. The young monk, watching the figures charge past, cried out once, “Master…” then covered his head and ran off to one side.

No one on the battlefield could tell which side this little bald-headed boy belonged to — and this spot was about to become the very focus of the fighting.

“Big Brother,” who had killed his martial uncle, streaked off toward the southeast like lightning, while his master and that Huaxia Army grandmaster crashed onward together, smashing through and flattening anything that stood in their way like some kind of war chariot.

He had once thought of trying to talk both sides into calling a truce, but in this moment, he had no idea what to say or do, and could only run off, weeping, toward the more distant reaches of the battlefield, and then chase after the direction his master and “Big Brother” had gone.

Qian Luoning and Yuwen Feidu were also giving chase.

The one on the battlefield who most keenly grasped the shift in the situation was “Avici Butcher” blade-chief Peng Tiangang.

Once he understood that Young Hero Long Aotian had killed Wang Nantuo — and then gone on to stir up this hornet’s nest even further — Xiao Hei and the others on the battlefield were, at first, shocked and dismayed, but quickly had no choice but to make an immediate tactical adjustment.

The message Qian Luoning had conveyed with his whistling cry had been meant for exactly this purpose.

At this moment, the Huaxia Army’s men were still surrounded by many showy, boastful green-forest masters, holding their ground defensively with the help of the terrain — but now, the order to encircle and kill Lin Zongwu had come down.

The defensive strategy needed to shift to offense.

Holding these encircled positions for the space of a cup of tea, waiting for the enemy to collapse on its own, would have meant fewer casualties; shifting to the offense now would make things riskier — but of course, it might also yield greater gains.

Only a few breaths after Qian Luoning’s whistled command went out, in one courtyard amid the fighting, Hei Niu quickly issued the order.

Everyone drew their grenades.

Hei Niu raised a finger into the air.

Three,

two,

one.

At the front of the position, the grenades were thrown.

After the roar and the billowing smoke, Hei Niu grabbed up her shield and charged into the haze, several other figures charging in right behind her in the blink of an eye.

On the far side of the smoke, the wounded and the dead lay scattered every which way; someone, covered head to toe in blood, struggled to his feet, only to be sent flying into the air by a shield-strike the next instant, as the now-charging Huaxia Army soldier surged forward with brutal force.

Within the span of just a few breaths, four anchor points across the battlefield launched their counterattacks simultaneously. After the grenades had broken the enemy’s formation, the ferocious charge met head-on the green-forest fighters who had thought themselves an unstoppable tide — and that tide shattered instantly. Four spearheads of blood carved through the crowd, cutting distances of several zhang, even a dozen or more zhang, in an instant, all four of these breakthrough spearheads converging at once on Peng Tiangang at the center of the battlefield.

In this moment, the killing intent felt by Peng Tiangang, a grandmaster long steeped in the jianghu, who had killed without number, was no less than what Ning Ji, currently fleeing across the battlefield, was feeling himself; every hair on his body stood on end. Unlike Ning Ji, though, he had no way to turn and run.

And so he swung his broadsword.

“Close ranks! Hold this ground for me—”

At his command, his personal guards and trusted lieutenants gathered around him, shouting in terror, trying to throw fire-thunderbombs of their own out ahead; amid the drifting smoke of the blasts, the wave of the counter-charge came bearing down on this spot with savage force.

…

Half-covered in blood, Ning Ji ran desperately, unable in this moment even to try steering Lin Zongwu toward a more favorable ambush point; he could only rely on pure instinct, running and dodging toward the terrain that was more complex, better suited to weaving and evading.

A brick came whistling in from behind, grazing past his body, shattering a rockery in a nearby courtyard; amid the flying stone chips, Ning Ji rolled across the ground, scrambled up, and kept running for his life. His right side, wounded by his ungrateful junior brother, was still bleeding; his left side ached from being pelted with stone chips. In this moment, he found himself, of all things, envying his elder brother, who had trained in the Thirteen Protectors’ iron-body conditioning since childhood — even a golden-bell-cover level of toughness like Xiao Hei’s probably couldn’t withstand this fat monk’s full-power attacks, but at least… it wouldn’t hurt quite this much.

As a child, he had thought the best defense was offense. That idea was wrong — dead wrong!

In response to Lin Zongwu’s sudden descent into madness, both the comrades on the front line and the reserve forces behind seemed to react within moments — as he ran, he could see emergency flares rising one after another into the sky. But right now, faced with the suddenly berserk, death-defying fat monk, the Huaxia Army’s fighters simply hadn’t managed to truly pin him down.

In the blink of an eye, Ning Ji, fleeing in one direction, had already run clear of the original chaotic mass of fighting.

Chen Fan dragged along beside Lin Zongwu, crashing and grappling the entire way, occasionally smashing into a restaurant or teahouse before bursting out the other side. In his rage, nearly out of control, Lin Zongwu and the all-out-fighting Chen Fan both had blood seeping from their noses and mouths — but in this moment, the power surging within that massive frame was still climbing. He might, in truth, have already reached the level of the world’s foremost fighter.

Yuwen Feidu ran along the rooftops, then dropped down into the street; in different directions across his field of view, three other snipers were sprinting or riding horseback, converging on this spot with everything they had. Someone tried to fire at Lin Zongwu, but amid the complex terrain and the high-speed collisions, the shot had little effect.

But the encirclement was tightening with every pursuit.

Through courtyards, through gardens, past old pavilions and the burned-out ruins of houses, Ning Ji ran out onto a street, one side of which bordered the river running through the city. He froze for a moment.

Given his skill in the water, in the past he could have simply dived in to escape. But right now, the city’s canal, unattended for months, was filthy beyond description, and with half his body covered in wounds, he couldn’t afford to jump carelessly into it.

More than ten zhang behind him, Lin Zongwu and Chen Fan smashed through a brick wall, exchanging furious blows out in the open street; disheveled and battered, the fat monk’s savage gaze had also begun to fix on this spot. Ning Ji thought about turning back into the courtyards, but off to one side of his vision, a sniper had already appeared on a rooftop ahead, and he ran toward that instead.

“Kill him—” he shouted, his own expression just as savage.

Running back into the courtyard, the enemy would have an easier time avoiding gunfire amid the complex terrain — but out here on this wide-open street, even at just fifteen years old, he was willing to gamble his life against the world’s foremost fighter.

Chen Fan and Lin Zongwu were locked in combat; the sniper on the roof couldn’t get a clean shot yet, waiting for his moment, while a second sniper was also racing at full speed toward a position from which he could fire.

Ning Ji ran along the riverbank.

Lin Zongwu snatched up a bamboo pole from the roadside and hurled it; Chen Fan smashed it in half with a heavy punch, and the two of them crashed through a cluster of ramshackle bamboo sheds by the roadside, sending debris flying in every direction.

A small boat came drifting down the filthy river channel toward him. Ning Ji glanced at the mud-streaked little beggar poling the boat, and glanced again as he ran — the figure’s grimy, dark face, eyes suddenly going wide…

At the very same moment, out on the distant battlefield, the wildly charging spearhead of the counterattack cut down through Peng Tiangang’s personal guard; at some point, the chaotic assault reached Peng Tiangang himself. He swung his broadsword to fight back — someone pinned down his counterattack with a shield at high speed, someone else grabbed hold of his arm, a broadsword slashed across his chest, and Hei Niu shoved his face down, smashing this once-notoriously feared master against a hard stone by the roadside; as he struggled, she smashed the back of his skull in.

…

Qu Longjun had not managed to escape this chaos-stricken city — there had simply been far too many people trying to leave through the city gates.

She had decided to keep hiding within the city walls for a while longer. But as noon approached, she heard about the fighting breaking out near the old martial yamen — the Huaxia Army’s Black Banner raised high, the battle already underway, said to be extremely bloody.

She didn’t have the nerve to go anywhere near the chaotic battlefield to watch — and, truth be told, she barely knew any Huaxia Army soldiers to begin with. She made her way through the chaotic streets, found an old, rundown black-canopied boat by the riverbank, and set out to pole it a short distance, planning to watch the situation there from far off.

The young man’s figure, half his body bloodied, was running along the street by the river; the withered willow shade in the city swayed in the wind. For some reason, this figure felt terribly familiar to her — perhaps it was because, that night in the little courtyard back in the southwest, when the fighting broke out, he had shown her a very similar image of himself: half his body wounded and bloodied, still demanding blood-debt from his enemies.

In her days here in Jiangning, she often found herself thinking of him — his gentle, almost pure and endearing face when calm; sometimes seeming a bit wooden, hard to get close to; and then, when angered, capable of spilling blood at ten paces. In the past, she had always been afraid of conflict and killing, but perhaps, after so long amid this chaotic age, she had come to feel that this was, in fact, a more fitting face to show the world.

“Five-Foot Demon”… she had no idea why he’d earned himself a name like that in Jiangning…

As though in a dream, he appeared before her.

“Long… Long…”

She called out softly, still poling the boat, but for a moment couldn’t quite decide how best to address him.

At that moment, Long Aotian recognized the little wretch too.

He ran toward her.

Leaping through the air above the water.